Yesterday I got up sore from the night before and took the bus to the Sadaka-Reut offices to help Hana finish up some office work and to read over a half-year report in English. As I was sitting at the office computer, I heard the music from the musical Chicago playing near me. I walked out of the little mini room where Hana's office is to where the main computer room and saw Yotam blasting the music from his laptop. I expressed my deep aproval and went back to my computer. A little while later, I heard the unmistakeable sound of the Dexter show theme song. Instead of walking calmly, I burst into the main computer room and saw Natali, the youth group coordinator showing Yotam the Dexter opening. God, I love this internship.
After staring at a computer screen for forever (ha) I took the bus down to the beach. I sat on the sand for a good hour reading, writing, taking pictures of myself to document my abundant happiness, and then walked to a falafel stand where I had had my first falafel a month ago. Today, I went back to the offices to start writing my first article: an article that details the two different Israels I have experienced - the Zionistic Israel I saw while on my exchange program and the major political issues I am seeing now on this internship. Underneath both Israels there is the base of the country that I know and love: things that have carried over since I lived here as a baby.
I finished the article and sent it to my father and to Amy Bradley to edit (Amy, check your email), and then took the bus back into Tel Aviv to take the train to go to Moda'in. I'm spending the weekend in Moda'in, then from there going to Kfar Saba to teach on Sunday and Monday.
I'm happy and tired - now that I'm officially busy, I'm having the time of my life. In between the internship, officially deciding that I am attending Bennington College in the fall, and watching gripping episodes of Lost (curse you Shaked for hooking me onto this show), I find myself realizing that my activities with Sadaka-Reut and Israel in general are really giving me the opportunity to become the person that I want to be. Walking down the street in Yafo to catch the bus to the train station after having written an article about Zionism vs. The Reality of Israel (possible title?) for an Israeli-Palestinian peace organization was sort of a moment for me, in which I caught myself being really happy and proud of myself and what I am doing.
So now, if everyone will excuse me, I am going to go eat Mexican food with the Kagan family, and then bunker down to watch Lost with the Kagan boys, who are obnoxiously hinting as to who is going to live and who is going to die. I will hurt them if they give up any details.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Lod, Protest Tactics, and a Camera Party
I could write an entire book on my day today, and it still wouldn't be enough.
Yesterday was fun - I was working with a couple groups of nine to eleven year olds on their English, and I was impressed with myself at how well I was able to communicate with them in Hebrew. According to the English teachers, Idit and Lily, all of the students really enjoy spending time with me. I really enjoy spending time with them too, and all of the teachers seem really surprised at that, like I'm going to rush into their room sobbing that it's too much, I can't handle it.
Today, I took the bus down to Yafo where some of the volunteers from Sadaka-Reut were going to Lod for a demonstration. I was really excited. I haven't ever really been to a demonstration before, not even in America. I mean, I was at an Obama rally twice, but it's not really the same, and anything I was at before I was too young to understand the significance.
Diran drove me, Yotam, Ro'ee, and Mahmoud to Lod, which is a small Arab town outside of Tel Aviv. When I had spoken to my father about my plan to help with the demonstration, he had told me that Lod will be interesting for me to see because it's such a poor town and a good example of the kind of conditions Arabs and Palestinians in Israel are living in.
Mahmoud is actually from Lod, so our first stop was his house, where his friends and family were making signs and posters. From there, we went to eat at a typical hummus and pita type restaurant, and on our way back, we stopped at a bakery to get what is called Knafe. (The k is actually pronounced.) I asked Ro'ee what Knafe was made out of, and he said "Uh...cheese...honey...um..."
It was literally just cheese and honey, with something baked on top. I was given an enormous piece, and as Ro'ee, Yotam, and Mahmoud practically inhaled their pieces, I was slightly more dubious and slightly slower in my consumption. In the end, I only finished half of it, as it was far too sweet to be believed.
When we got back to Mahmoud's house, the four of us sat at a table outside, all of us with different sections of the newspaper (I had Sudoku). I really like these tiny details, these small moments between me and the guys, because I feel like I'm getting to know them on a level that is not directly related to the conflict. Before I felt my conversations with them were so serious all the time, but now we just hung out like humans. I mean, they're not that much older than me. I don't know specifics, but I think Yotam and Ro'ee are 20 and Mahmoud is 21.
Soon thereafter, the four of us walked from Mahmoud's house to Abu Eid Refugee Camp, where the demonstration was going to meet. About four months ago, the Israeli government bulldozed eight houses in one of the neighborhoods of Lod, claiming that the Palestinians that were living there were not living there under the right documentation, and therefor did not actually own the houses. Since then, there have been weekly marches and demonstrations starting at the site of the wreckage (now called Abu Eid Refugee Camp, as the eight families are all living in tents) and then walking to City Hall.
Today was the same kind of demonstration, except that it was a much bigger deal, because tomorrow is Yom HaAdama, or Land Day, which is very special to Palestinians, as it represents reclaiming their land. Bus after bus after bus after bus of protesters pulled into the site, and soon the demonstration was full of hundreds of people, which was a big step up from their average of fifty.
I had two rules for myself in the demonstration: do not chant anything unless you know what it means, and do not hold up a sign unless you know what it says. That being said, I held up a sign that Diran, one of the Sadaka Reut volunteers, had made, which said: Stop the Racial Discrimination. I did chant a couple times with the only thing I could participate in with my lack of Arabic. There was a chant where the man with the megaphone was shouting out different occasions where the Israeli government had displaced Palestinians, and the crowd would shout (in Arabic, which sounded so much cooler than it does in English) "WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH", except the Arabic was only two syllables.
It was incredible to be in the middle of the demonstration. I literally was so amazed, and it never ever ever went away, that feeling of awe. I have never seen that level of brotherhood before, that number of people - that number of YOUNG people coming together for a shared cause. I know that there were significant protests at the State House only a little after I left, which is ironic, but I wish that rallies and marches existed like that in Columbus. Or maybe I don't, because that might mean that our shared living situation is awful or something or we're being denied the rights to be citizens...
I stayed by Diran's side for the entire rally. I was really impressed by how many people I saw at the march that were my age. By the time we started marching, it was already dark, so my photos are really bad, since I had to use the flash and I don't play that game. I did manage to take some pictures that I feel really capture the energy there. At one point, one of the female facilitators of the rally came up to me and Diran and told us that they wanted the women to go to the front. Diran didn't know why they wanted this, and immediately I thought of the protest tactics I had learned through Tom's Radical 60s class - in Chicago, they would put the nuns, priests, and women in the front of the protests so that even if things got hairy, the police wouldn't attack. In the end, though, the police attacked the nuns, priests, and women anyway. Hana also said that a possibility of why they wanted the women in the front was to make it look like it wasn't a bunch of radical Palestinian men - that it was more balanced, with a large range of people.
On the way back from the rally, I sat with Hana on the bus and we had a really good talk. I asked her some questions that I had been thinking about, like why Sadaka-Reut didn't have more opportunities to bring Israeli kids and Palestinian kids together. She said that the organization used to do a lot more of it, but what they found is that they were more effective when they were promoting critical thinking about all kinds of subjects with the students separately, and then when they came together once or twice a month, they were allowed to just BE together, and not have to press a dialogue on them. She also told me that Matan, my cousin who was my mentor from La Escuelita (we're almost ready to go 'public' with the website) and his grandfather, my great Uncle, Ruvein, are like, famous in the activist community. Ruvein's kind of like one of the Last of the Mohicans, as one of the last really faithful Marxists or something. And Matan, his grandson, went to jail for two years for refusing army service on the grounds that the IDF is no longer a defense force, but an offensive force. They're pretty hard core.
When I was in the rally, I felt really good. I counted how many times the march stopped to boo something - once at a construction site where the government was building new apartments (representing the dislocation of Palestinians in order to move in more Jews), a Yeshiva - a place where religious Jews study (representing the Palestinian disdain for the religious Jews' Zionistic fervor), twice at the Police station (representing an offensive force, not a peace keeping force), and then at City Hall (representing the failed policies that are oppressing Palestinians).
I didn't boo with them, and I only chanted once. I was more just walking around, taking pictures and probably looking very shell shocked and out of place. My jaw was open half the time and I focused so much on listening to their rhythm Arabic chants. I don't know why, I love that language. It's so interesting, and even when it's just conversational, I feel like there's a secret rhythm to it. Maybe that's my Western Civilization-instilled Orientalism, but I still want to learn it. It's one of the most difficult languages to learn, however.
Yesterday was fun - I was working with a couple groups of nine to eleven year olds on their English, and I was impressed with myself at how well I was able to communicate with them in Hebrew. According to the English teachers, Idit and Lily, all of the students really enjoy spending time with me. I really enjoy spending time with them too, and all of the teachers seem really surprised at that, like I'm going to rush into their room sobbing that it's too much, I can't handle it.
Today, I took the bus down to Yafo where some of the volunteers from Sadaka-Reut were going to Lod for a demonstration. I was really excited. I haven't ever really been to a demonstration before, not even in America. I mean, I was at an Obama rally twice, but it's not really the same, and anything I was at before I was too young to understand the significance.
Diran drove me, Yotam, Ro'ee, and Mahmoud to Lod, which is a small Arab town outside of Tel Aviv. When I had spoken to my father about my plan to help with the demonstration, he had told me that Lod will be interesting for me to see because it's such a poor town and a good example of the kind of conditions Arabs and Palestinians in Israel are living in.
Mahmoud is actually from Lod, so our first stop was his house, where his friends and family were making signs and posters. From there, we went to eat at a typical hummus and pita type restaurant, and on our way back, we stopped at a bakery to get what is called Knafe. (The k is actually pronounced.) I asked Ro'ee what Knafe was made out of, and he said "Uh...cheese...honey...um..."
It was literally just cheese and honey, with something baked on top. I was given an enormous piece, and as Ro'ee, Yotam, and Mahmoud practically inhaled their pieces, I was slightly more dubious and slightly slower in my consumption. In the end, I only finished half of it, as it was far too sweet to be believed.
When we got back to Mahmoud's house, the four of us sat at a table outside, all of us with different sections of the newspaper (I had Sudoku). I really like these tiny details, these small moments between me and the guys, because I feel like I'm getting to know them on a level that is not directly related to the conflict. Before I felt my conversations with them were so serious all the time, but now we just hung out like humans. I mean, they're not that much older than me. I don't know specifics, but I think Yotam and Ro'ee are 20 and Mahmoud is 21.
Soon thereafter, the four of us walked from Mahmoud's house to Abu Eid Refugee Camp, where the demonstration was going to meet. About four months ago, the Israeli government bulldozed eight houses in one of the neighborhoods of Lod, claiming that the Palestinians that were living there were not living there under the right documentation, and therefor did not actually own the houses. Since then, there have been weekly marches and demonstrations starting at the site of the wreckage (now called Abu Eid Refugee Camp, as the eight families are all living in tents) and then walking to City Hall.
Today was the same kind of demonstration, except that it was a much bigger deal, because tomorrow is Yom HaAdama, or Land Day, which is very special to Palestinians, as it represents reclaiming their land. Bus after bus after bus after bus of protesters pulled into the site, and soon the demonstration was full of hundreds of people, which was a big step up from their average of fifty.
I had two rules for myself in the demonstration: do not chant anything unless you know what it means, and do not hold up a sign unless you know what it says. That being said, I held up a sign that Diran, one of the Sadaka Reut volunteers, had made, which said: Stop the Racial Discrimination. I did chant a couple times with the only thing I could participate in with my lack of Arabic. There was a chant where the man with the megaphone was shouting out different occasions where the Israeli government had displaced Palestinians, and the crowd would shout (in Arabic, which sounded so much cooler than it does in English) "WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH", except the Arabic was only two syllables.
It was incredible to be in the middle of the demonstration. I literally was so amazed, and it never ever ever went away, that feeling of awe. I have never seen that level of brotherhood before, that number of people - that number of YOUNG people coming together for a shared cause. I know that there were significant protests at the State House only a little after I left, which is ironic, but I wish that rallies and marches existed like that in Columbus. Or maybe I don't, because that might mean that our shared living situation is awful or something or we're being denied the rights to be citizens...
I stayed by Diran's side for the entire rally. I was really impressed by how many people I saw at the march that were my age. By the time we started marching, it was already dark, so my photos are really bad, since I had to use the flash and I don't play that game. I did manage to take some pictures that I feel really capture the energy there. At one point, one of the female facilitators of the rally came up to me and Diran and told us that they wanted the women to go to the front. Diran didn't know why they wanted this, and immediately I thought of the protest tactics I had learned through Tom's Radical 60s class - in Chicago, they would put the nuns, priests, and women in the front of the protests so that even if things got hairy, the police wouldn't attack. In the end, though, the police attacked the nuns, priests, and women anyway. Hana also said that a possibility of why they wanted the women in the front was to make it look like it wasn't a bunch of radical Palestinian men - that it was more balanced, with a large range of people.
On the way back from the rally, I sat with Hana on the bus and we had a really good talk. I asked her some questions that I had been thinking about, like why Sadaka-Reut didn't have more opportunities to bring Israeli kids and Palestinian kids together. She said that the organization used to do a lot more of it, but what they found is that they were more effective when they were promoting critical thinking about all kinds of subjects with the students separately, and then when they came together once or twice a month, they were allowed to just BE together, and not have to press a dialogue on them. She also told me that Matan, my cousin who was my mentor from La Escuelita (we're almost ready to go 'public' with the website) and his grandfather, my great Uncle, Ruvein, are like, famous in the activist community. Ruvein's kind of like one of the Last of the Mohicans, as one of the last really faithful Marxists or something. And Matan, his grandson, went to jail for two years for refusing army service on the grounds that the IDF is no longer a defense force, but an offensive force. They're pretty hard core.
When I was in the rally, I felt really good. I counted how many times the march stopped to boo something - once at a construction site where the government was building new apartments (representing the dislocation of Palestinians in order to move in more Jews), a Yeshiva - a place where religious Jews study (representing the Palestinian disdain for the religious Jews' Zionistic fervor), twice at the Police station (representing an offensive force, not a peace keeping force), and then at City Hall (representing the failed policies that are oppressing Palestinians).
I didn't boo with them, and I only chanted once. I was more just walking around, taking pictures and probably looking very shell shocked and out of place. My jaw was open half the time and I focused so much on listening to their rhythm Arabic chants. I don't know why, I love that language. It's so interesting, and even when it's just conversational, I feel like there's a secret rhythm to it. Maybe that's my Western Civilization-instilled Orientalism, but I still want to learn it. It's one of the most difficult languages to learn, however.
 |
| Mahmoud, Yotam, and Ro'ee's backs. I am creepy. |
 | |
| A street in Lod. |
 |
| What you first see when you enter Abu Eid Refugee Camp. |
 |
| What you see next in Abu Eid Refugee Camp |
 |
| There's a door in the rubble. |
 |
| This used to be a family's house. |
 |
| They now live here. |
 |
| The flag of Tunisia |
 |
| The flag of Palestine. |
 |
| Yotam and Diran. |
 |
| Blurry fervor. |
 |
| Chanting. |
 |
| These guys led the majority of the chants. |
 |
| "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies." |
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Thoughts from Places
So there's this whole world of Youtube video bloggers (aptly shortened to vloggers), and because I am a Giant Nerd, I partake in the watching of (nice) several of these vloggers. Hank and John Green are brothers (recognize John Green as the author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and others??) who video blog back and forth. One of the series of vlogs they do is something they call "Thoughts From Places", in which they basically capture clips of them in different places around the world and record their thoughts. And I thought it'd be really cool to make my own Thoughts from Places video, except that I have zero video making skills and zero video making camera. But...this blog is basically a written forum for Thoughts from Places, right?? I mean, isn't that what I've been DOING?
Today I woke up in my friend Shaked's bed, groaned and bemoaned the fact that I was awake before ten thirty, and got dressed. Shaked, her friend Ofir, and I had been out the night before like dumb people, especially since I had been out the night before that and got a total of four hours of sleep. All three of us had school (in a manner of speaking) the next day, and so when I collapsed at one thirty in the morning on Shaked's bed, I realized that Israelis Don't Sleep and while that works for them, I, the eighty-five year old lady, need me some of that sleep.
I took the bus from Shaked's house to Brener Elementary School, which is a local elementary school in Kfar Saba. Brener Elementary School is located in one long strip of schools, and so one of my very greatest moments this past trip was waltzing into the principle's office of the wrong school. Win. She kindly redirected me to the right place, in which I spoke with the right principle this time. One of my connections had made a connection who had made a connection for me to aid the English teachers around Brener. Once everyone knew who I was and why I was there, they were very kind to me. The sat me down in the teacher's lounge while my distant connection was on her way to the school to meet the principle to speak about not only my volunteer work, but a program they're setting up with the Columbus Jewish Day School in New Albany. I spoke with Enat, who is a special education student aid, and shortly after, the teacher who I am going to be working with came in.
Idit is Australian, and when I was observing her classes, she is one of those hard-ass teachers who everyone loves but doesn't want to cross because she will yell at them. The students totally respected her, and even when she was glowering, there was a general atmosphere of amity.
One of the things I realized while watching the classes, helping a bit with the students, and basically observing the way elementary schools work in Israel was how much I want to be a teacher. It's such an annoying compulsion, especially since I made that bet with Amy last year that I wouldn't be a teacher in a school district by the time I was twenty-nine. Oh well. Looks like I've ruined that bet.
I don't know why - maybe the fact that both my grandmothers and my parents are/were teachers engrains teaching in my blood. I fantasized about having my own theater program at a school (we'd do a Shakespeare show every year) and teaching Social Studies or English. By the time the day was over, I would zone in and out of dreaming about what classes I would teach. How immensely nerdy is that?!?!?!
I had the same feeling when I was interviewing Ibsitam last week. I don't know why - I think maybe I felt obligated to pass on knowledge of current events and history to people who aren't aware of it, so that Ibsitam's voice could be heard, something romantic like that. Maybe my need to teach is really driven out of dumb romance - oh well. It doesn't matter - even if I am going to end up a teacher, I'm not going to college in the fall for a teaching degree (which is good, because I'm pretty sure that the school I think I'm going to doesn't actually have a teaching degree).
It looks like I'll be teaching at Brener on Sundays and Mondays, when they have school. In two weeks, the schools are out for basically three weeks for Passover break, but as soon as they resume, I'll be teaching again (I think I'll be leaving shortly after that). Then, I'll go back to Ramat Gan on Monday afternoons so that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday can be devoted to Sadaka-Reut. I've been thinking about the newsletter Hana, my mentor, wants me to put together, and I'm not quite sure what I want to write yet. She had mentioned that maybe it would make sense to finish the newsletter when I get back from Israel, so I have more time to digest everything that I experienced. I don't know if that's necessarily good or bad, but it looks like what might happen, as I really have no idea what to write about. I thought about writing about the universalism of friendship, but that was back when I thought that the majority of Sadaka-Reut's workshops integrate Palestinians and Israelis. They actually don't - most of the workshops separate the two. I guess I could write about the universalism of friendship within the organization, but this is a group of very like-minded people all sharing a philosophy (wow, the definition of friendship), not a group of younger kids who come from very different places politically.
Oh well. I have time to think about that. I also want to wait to start writing until after I've visited checkpoints around Jerusalem, and if I AM going to Nazareth, after I've gotten back and digested everything I saw there.
Here are two of my favorite Thoughts from Places videos, both made my John Green:
Lust and Folly in London and Scotland, I'm Not Going Down: Thoughts from Amsterdam
Today I woke up in my friend Shaked's bed, groaned and bemoaned the fact that I was awake before ten thirty, and got dressed. Shaked, her friend Ofir, and I had been out the night before like dumb people, especially since I had been out the night before that and got a total of four hours of sleep. All three of us had school (in a manner of speaking) the next day, and so when I collapsed at one thirty in the morning on Shaked's bed, I realized that Israelis Don't Sleep and while that works for them, I, the eighty-five year old lady, need me some of that sleep.
I took the bus from Shaked's house to Brener Elementary School, which is a local elementary school in Kfar Saba. Brener Elementary School is located in one long strip of schools, and so one of my very greatest moments this past trip was waltzing into the principle's office of the wrong school. Win. She kindly redirected me to the right place, in which I spoke with the right principle this time. One of my connections had made a connection who had made a connection for me to aid the English teachers around Brener. Once everyone knew who I was and why I was there, they were very kind to me. The sat me down in the teacher's lounge while my distant connection was on her way to the school to meet the principle to speak about not only my volunteer work, but a program they're setting up with the Columbus Jewish Day School in New Albany. I spoke with Enat, who is a special education student aid, and shortly after, the teacher who I am going to be working with came in.
Idit is Australian, and when I was observing her classes, she is one of those hard-ass teachers who everyone loves but doesn't want to cross because she will yell at them. The students totally respected her, and even when she was glowering, there was a general atmosphere of amity.
One of the things I realized while watching the classes, helping a bit with the students, and basically observing the way elementary schools work in Israel was how much I want to be a teacher. It's such an annoying compulsion, especially since I made that bet with Amy last year that I wouldn't be a teacher in a school district by the time I was twenty-nine. Oh well. Looks like I've ruined that bet.
I don't know why - maybe the fact that both my grandmothers and my parents are/were teachers engrains teaching in my blood. I fantasized about having my own theater program at a school (we'd do a Shakespeare show every year) and teaching Social Studies or English. By the time the day was over, I would zone in and out of dreaming about what classes I would teach. How immensely nerdy is that?!?!?!
I had the same feeling when I was interviewing Ibsitam last week. I don't know why - I think maybe I felt obligated to pass on knowledge of current events and history to people who aren't aware of it, so that Ibsitam's voice could be heard, something romantic like that. Maybe my need to teach is really driven out of dumb romance - oh well. It doesn't matter - even if I am going to end up a teacher, I'm not going to college in the fall for a teaching degree (which is good, because I'm pretty sure that the school I think I'm going to doesn't actually have a teaching degree).
It looks like I'll be teaching at Brener on Sundays and Mondays, when they have school. In two weeks, the schools are out for basically three weeks for Passover break, but as soon as they resume, I'll be teaching again (I think I'll be leaving shortly after that). Then, I'll go back to Ramat Gan on Monday afternoons so that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday can be devoted to Sadaka-Reut. I've been thinking about the newsletter Hana, my mentor, wants me to put together, and I'm not quite sure what I want to write yet. She had mentioned that maybe it would make sense to finish the newsletter when I get back from Israel, so I have more time to digest everything that I experienced. I don't know if that's necessarily good or bad, but it looks like what might happen, as I really have no idea what to write about. I thought about writing about the universalism of friendship, but that was back when I thought that the majority of Sadaka-Reut's workshops integrate Palestinians and Israelis. They actually don't - most of the workshops separate the two. I guess I could write about the universalism of friendship within the organization, but this is a group of very like-minded people all sharing a philosophy (wow, the definition of friendship), not a group of younger kids who come from very different places politically.
Oh well. I have time to think about that. I also want to wait to start writing until after I've visited checkpoints around Jerusalem, and if I AM going to Nazareth, after I've gotten back and digested everything I saw there.
Here are two of my favorite Thoughts from Places videos, both made my John Green:
Lust and Folly in London and Scotland, I'm Not Going Down: Thoughts from Amsterdam
Thursday, March 24, 2011
RAIN and a Camera Party
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Rain does not equate total debilitating fear. It's surprising that more Israelis will freak out over rain than they will about a bomb going off in Jerusalem for the first time in seven years.
Yesterday I went to Bat Yam again with Ro'ee and Yotam, except this time I sat in on Yotam's workshop. The only problem was that none of the students could come to the first half of the workshop, so we ended up sitting and talking for a half hour before he met with three students. His workshop is more about critical thinking through writing, and so what he did was assisted the students in picking out an article from a newspaper and then each student would write about what happened from a different perspective. After the workshop was over, Yotam told me that the student's were insanely scattered and it was a really bad class.
I went to the offices after we were finished in Bat Yam. I was there to interview one of the commune facilitators, Ibsitam, for my collection of interviews. While she was finishing up work, I walked down the street from the office to a small market. I bought several freshly baked borekas, which are basically puffy pasteries filled with either potatoes or cheese. They were so incredible. So incredible that I needed to mention them in a blogpost.
When I returned to the office, Ibsitam was ready to be interviewed. I didn't even get to ask the majority of my questions with her - she talked steadily for about an hour, and touched on many things. I'm glad that her interview was like that. I think I prefer when the subject just talks and so they end up talking about the things THEY think are relevant, instead of what I may think is relevant. One of the things she pointed out that I had never even thought of was the way the landscape of the land of Israel has changed once it became a state. The European Jews brought over tons of different kinds of trees that were foreign to Middle Eastern soil, and many Palestinian villages were destroyed, and so even the architecture is different. She said it looked much less Middle Eastern.
I was really kind of depressed when I got home last night, after having interviewed Ibsitam. I was very confused as to how I was feeling. Most of me was angry, and then I felt guilty at being angry.
This morning, I woke up late, stalked the Bennington College website for a good hour, and then left to go to the Sadaka-Reut office to meet Samer there. Samer, myself, and another woman named Mariam walked to an Arab school. The first thing I noticed when we reached the school was that it was A) a lot bigger and B) a lot prettier than the school in Bat Yam. When we got to the classroom, all of the students, having been told by Samer that I don't speak Arabic and only a little Hebrew, started yammering and crowding around me, speaking in either Hebrew or broken English. Everyone, and I mean everyone, introduced themselves, once, twice, three times and wanted to know about me.
In general, the feeling I got from the students at this school was that they were just plain friendlier to me than the Israelis in Bat Yam. I don't know what this is attributed to, but I also noticed that they took the workshop a bit more seriously than the Israelis had for Yotam and Ro'ee. Samer is making a documentary with the students about Women's Rights, and today he had the students interviewing each other and filming each other about their opinions of Women's Rights in the Palestinian community. Everyone was interviewed and everyone took it seriously enough to give a long, quality response. I was really impressed.
I walked around Yafo for a bit when Samer and I got back from the workshop. As we were walking to the offices, Samer said there would be a possibility of me and the commune boys going to Nazareth for a day or something. I had told him I was originally born in Nazareth and he suggested the idea. I would LOVE to go to Nazareth - not necessarily because it's where I was born (I have Pardes Hana to haunt me for days about the idea of 'home'), but because it's an Arab city, and I really want to go.
When I was introducing myself (in Hebrew) to the students in the class, I said I was born in Nazareth. I used the Hebrew word "Naz-rat", and then immediately several students in the classroom corrected me. "Naz-eret," they said. This is the Arabic word for it. One of the girls also taught me how to write my name in Arabic. I practiced it when I got home.
Yesterday I went to Bat Yam again with Ro'ee and Yotam, except this time I sat in on Yotam's workshop. The only problem was that none of the students could come to the first half of the workshop, so we ended up sitting and talking for a half hour before he met with three students. His workshop is more about critical thinking through writing, and so what he did was assisted the students in picking out an article from a newspaper and then each student would write about what happened from a different perspective. After the workshop was over, Yotam told me that the student's were insanely scattered and it was a really bad class.
I went to the offices after we were finished in Bat Yam. I was there to interview one of the commune facilitators, Ibsitam, for my collection of interviews. While she was finishing up work, I walked down the street from the office to a small market. I bought several freshly baked borekas, which are basically puffy pasteries filled with either potatoes or cheese. They were so incredible. So incredible that I needed to mention them in a blogpost.
When I returned to the office, Ibsitam was ready to be interviewed. I didn't even get to ask the majority of my questions with her - she talked steadily for about an hour, and touched on many things. I'm glad that her interview was like that. I think I prefer when the subject just talks and so they end up talking about the things THEY think are relevant, instead of what I may think is relevant. One of the things she pointed out that I had never even thought of was the way the landscape of the land of Israel has changed once it became a state. The European Jews brought over tons of different kinds of trees that were foreign to Middle Eastern soil, and many Palestinian villages were destroyed, and so even the architecture is different. She said it looked much less Middle Eastern.
I was really kind of depressed when I got home last night, after having interviewed Ibsitam. I was very confused as to how I was feeling. Most of me was angry, and then I felt guilty at being angry.
This morning, I woke up late, stalked the Bennington College website for a good hour, and then left to go to the Sadaka-Reut office to meet Samer there. Samer, myself, and another woman named Mariam walked to an Arab school. The first thing I noticed when we reached the school was that it was A) a lot bigger and B) a lot prettier than the school in Bat Yam. When we got to the classroom, all of the students, having been told by Samer that I don't speak Arabic and only a little Hebrew, started yammering and crowding around me, speaking in either Hebrew or broken English. Everyone, and I mean everyone, introduced themselves, once, twice, three times and wanted to know about me.
In general, the feeling I got from the students at this school was that they were just plain friendlier to me than the Israelis in Bat Yam. I don't know what this is attributed to, but I also noticed that they took the workshop a bit more seriously than the Israelis had for Yotam and Ro'ee. Samer is making a documentary with the students about Women's Rights, and today he had the students interviewing each other and filming each other about their opinions of Women's Rights in the Palestinian community. Everyone was interviewed and everyone took it seriously enough to give a long, quality response. I was really impressed.
I walked around Yafo for a bit when Samer and I got back from the workshop. As we were walking to the offices, Samer said there would be a possibility of me and the commune boys going to Nazareth for a day or something. I had told him I was originally born in Nazareth and he suggested the idea. I would LOVE to go to Nazareth - not necessarily because it's where I was born (I have Pardes Hana to haunt me for days about the idea of 'home'), but because it's an Arab city, and I really want to go.
When I was introducing myself (in Hebrew) to the students in the class, I said I was born in Nazareth. I used the Hebrew word "Naz-rat", and then immediately several students in the classroom corrected me. "Naz-eret," they said. This is the Arabic word for it. One of the girls also taught me how to write my name in Arabic. I practiced it when I got home.
 |
| The doorway to Sadaka-Reut. Sadaka is the Arabic word for friendship, Reut the Hebrew. |
 |
| One of the boys of the class is being interviewed on his opinion of women's rights in the Palestinian community. |
 |
| One of the girls, Ronda, is being filmed. |
 |
| Samer (left) and one of the boys from the class. |
 |
| Rim. She was very nervous. |
 |
| Antonelli. She was much less nervous. |
 |
| One of the main streets in Yafo. |
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Tenara's Walkabout Question: WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE EACH OTHER.
The more and more I learn about the conflict, the less and less confident I am that I can truly express my opinion, because I really can't solidify my opinion. Although if you read all the way down to the end of this blogpost (bless you for that, by the way), you'll disagree with me. Believe me, I have a lot more inner turmoil than I might exhibit (HA).
Today I met the elusive Samer (he's really nice) and another Arab girl who helps out with the program but doesn't stay in the commune. Her name is Diran. Diran, Samer, Ro'ee, Yotam and I watched two movies today about 1948. The first was called The Time That Remains by a Palestinian director Elia Suleiman. The movie really focused on Elia's biography and that of his father's. It began in 1948 when Nazareth was claimed by the Israeli army. In 1948, Elia's father, Fuad, made guns for the opposition, and while the rest of his family left for Jordan, he stayed behind and eventually started a family. I really liked the beginning about his father, but after Elia was born it was less about the root of the conflict and more about growing up in Israeli occupied Nazareth. The movie was actually quite funny at times, and every so often you would catch a glimpse of Israel's influence on Palestinian life in sharp relief: an Arab girl's choir sang two Zionist songs; one in Hebrew, one in Arabic, the relationship between Israeli soldiers who know their Palestinian neighbors very well, etc. My favorite part of the movie is when the children of the school Elia went to were shown Ben Hur and everyone was so confused as to how that movie was supposed to represent their homeland, especially since Charlton Heston and Elizabeth Taylor were supposed to be 'Israelites'.
The second movie was a much older Israeli movie made in 1973. It was called The House on Chelouche Street, and apparently, according to Yotam, there were a lot of really famous Israeli actors in it. This movie was also about 1948, but focused much less on Israeli/Palestinian relations around the start of the country, and more about the Jews that were living there at the time. The story centers around a fifteen year old boy, Sami, whose family came from Egypt. At first while I was watching the movie, I thought for a second that his family was speaking Spanish, and I could understand everything they were saying! Then, later on, Sami explained to someone he had just met that he spoke Hebrew, Arabic, Ladino, French, Armenian, and some Greek (??) and English. I realized what I had been hearing was Ladino, which is a combination between Spanish and Hebrew (sort of like how Yiddish is a combination of German and Hebrew), although I heard a lot more Spanish than Hebrew. Anyway, throughout the entire movie Arabs were only mentioned once. It was a very interesting movie to watch, as it really provided me with the Israeli narrative for 1948. Every Israeli character had either been born somewhere else or their parents had been born somewhere else. Everyone was dirt poor and everyone spoke Hebrew and a billion other languages. And throughout the entire movie, there was this subliminal feeling of dissatisfaction, that even though they were in Israel, they were really only there because there was nowhere else they could be without getting beaten up for being Jewish.
So yes. There is the basis of the right wing argument: Jews have nowhere else to be, nowhere else to go without being persecuted against. The Palestinians are Arabs and have several other Arab countries to go to - why won't they leave and give us the one country we can live in and feel safe?
It's important, I think, to know that the anti-semitism that was the result of the diaspora really fueled Zionism, and that happened long before the Holocaust. I suppose the Holocaust was a final push, but the idea that Jews are entitled to this land was there long before Hitler was a live. The problem is, no matter how you spin it, even if Jews are entitled to some kind of land, there were kind of maybe sort of people here when we decided "hey, this is the land we want". Not like someone just spun a globe and put their finger LUCKILY on the same place that a bunch of the Jewish people's religious history existed, but it was either here or Uganda. And let me tell you. I would NOT have wanted to live in Uganda during the South African apartheid.
When I talk to people who are right-wing or center-right wing, a lot of what there saying has merit. Yes, Jewish people were persecuted against for hundreds of years, and as a religion, they have always been a minority. I think it's interesting that for Israeli kids who are right wing, the idea of being a Jewish minority is so frightening to them, even though they've grown up in a place where being Jewish isn't at all foreign. When they asked me what it's like growing up Jewish in America, I find it hard to answer in the way they're expecting. Maybe that's because my kind of "growing up Jewish" is so very different from their "growing up Jewish", but my "growing up Jewish" is even different from other Jewish kids in Columbus.
Here's the thing. I never felt like I was a minority. I really, really didn't. Yeah, so everyone around me was Christian. Yes, my parents purposefully didn't put me in a Jewish school so I could meet other humans that were different than me, but I never felt different to them. Religion really wasn't a central part of my life, actually. It still kind of isn't. I like to tell people that I'm culturally Jewish - I like chullent, latkes, playing dreidl, lighting candles, and Jewish humor, but I don't feel that I AM A JEW - I don't know why, I just don't.
And another REALLY REALLY important part of not feeling like a minority in America is the fact that I'm white. That's really where I feel the difference comes in. Being white in Israel is very different than being white in America. It's not even about how many white people there are vs. black people: the nature of white imperialism made it that even though there are neighborhoods where you don't see a single white person, you are also very not likely to find a single rich person either. I never felt like a minority in America because I was well off, middle-class, white, blonde, and blue eyed. I mean, let's be serious here.
So, maybe it's the fact that I don't have the background narrative to being a minority as a Jew, or maybe it's that I really can't buy that excuse, at least not anymore. I think the first problem that arose from Zionism was the idea that the Jewish people were 'entitled' to anything. No one, not a single person is ever ever ever ever ever 'entitled' to anything. Call me whatever you want (actually, bring it), but not one person deserves something more than another person, unless it's like medicine when you're sick, or, you know, a hug when you're sad and your friend isn't. I just can't see the value in arguing that Jews were entitled to a homeland because they were beaten up in the past, so that's the underlying excuse to occupying a group of people.
Everyone deserves basic HUMAN things, like the right to practice whatever freaking religion they want and not get killed, like the right to food, water, shelter, love, art, happiness, ambition, knowledge, whatever. These are the basics. Everyone deserves these things. So yes, as a people, the Jews were right to look to the world for a change, and when they found that the world really wasn't going to help them, that they had to do it themselves - even then, I don't have a problem. My problem is that the entitledness creates within someone an arrogance that they can choose to storm into someone's home and decide that this is the place where only Jews can be citizens, even though they weren't even citizens to that land in the first place.
The angrier and angrier I get, and the farther and farther back I look to solve the problem (HA), the more and more I realize that this is honestly an unsolvable puzzle - you've basically lost the bottom half and there's no real way you can put together so that it makes sense in the future in any linear way. You basically just have to weld the puzzle pieces (I like how in this metaphor, the pieces are metal???) into new pieces and be creative and think outside the box so that the puzzle is finished even without the bottom half, which is lying in a Crazy Chaos Pile at the floor.
Not to be negative, but people reeeeaaallly didn't like the Jews starting from like, forever until forever. And this isn't me trying to guilt trip anyone or anything, because people reeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaallly don't like Muslims now or ever, and people reeeeeaaaaaallly don't like communists now and (even though there was a slight window of hope for communists back in the late 1800s) no one is ever GOING to like communists ever again ever. The point is just I really can't find a way to answer the question "Well, Miss Smarty Liberal Pants, If the Jews Were Jerks When It Came to Israel, What Do You Propose They Do? Just Keep Getting Beaten Up? Just Keep Getting Killed? Just Keep Suffering Through Anti-Semitism? Just Keep Converting To Christianity? Come On, Miss Smarty Liberal Pants, Tell Us! What's Your Answer to THAT Question!!!!".
I can't. I honestly can't. No one can. What happened happened happened happened. And it's done. I disagree with a WHOLE LOT of what happened, but now the only think I can think of focusing on is welding that puzzle together in a new way. The Holocaust Syndrom isn't relevant anymore, I don't think. The Jews have no more reason to fear death any more than any other 'minority' in the world. And guess what? As long as anyone is slightly different from whoever's in power, they have reason to fear. As a woman, I have reason to fear - rich, old, white men are trying to redefining 'rape'? As in, if I knew the guy, or if I was drugged, or if there isn't visual physical evidence, I wasn't raped. My body WASN'T violated.
I really can't find it within myself to be afraid of being a minority as a Jew or as a woman. I really can't. Maybe it's because I don't actually think of myself as a very serious Jew, or that being a woman really has nothing to do with ANYTHING except the fact that you can grow lungs and stuff in your stomach. Has anyone ever seen that Family Guy episode where Brian and Stewie go to alternate universes and they visit the universe where dogs are in charge and humans are kept as pets, and the Human Brian comes back to Human Quohag with them? And Stewie says to Human Brian, "Thank God you're white, you have NO IDEA how big that is here."
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If it wasn't for Udi and Alon's Carl Jung Study Group in the next room, I WOULD SCREAM.
WHY? Why does EVERYONE HATE EACH OTHER. I AM SO DONE WITH IT.
Today I met the elusive Samer (he's really nice) and another Arab girl who helps out with the program but doesn't stay in the commune. Her name is Diran. Diran, Samer, Ro'ee, Yotam and I watched two movies today about 1948. The first was called The Time That Remains by a Palestinian director Elia Suleiman. The movie really focused on Elia's biography and that of his father's. It began in 1948 when Nazareth was claimed by the Israeli army. In 1948, Elia's father, Fuad, made guns for the opposition, and while the rest of his family left for Jordan, he stayed behind and eventually started a family. I really liked the beginning about his father, but after Elia was born it was less about the root of the conflict and more about growing up in Israeli occupied Nazareth. The movie was actually quite funny at times, and every so often you would catch a glimpse of Israel's influence on Palestinian life in sharp relief: an Arab girl's choir sang two Zionist songs; one in Hebrew, one in Arabic, the relationship between Israeli soldiers who know their Palestinian neighbors very well, etc. My favorite part of the movie is when the children of the school Elia went to were shown Ben Hur and everyone was so confused as to how that movie was supposed to represent their homeland, especially since Charlton Heston and Elizabeth Taylor were supposed to be 'Israelites'.
The second movie was a much older Israeli movie made in 1973. It was called The House on Chelouche Street, and apparently, according to Yotam, there were a lot of really famous Israeli actors in it. This movie was also about 1948, but focused much less on Israeli/Palestinian relations around the start of the country, and more about the Jews that were living there at the time. The story centers around a fifteen year old boy, Sami, whose family came from Egypt. At first while I was watching the movie, I thought for a second that his family was speaking Spanish, and I could understand everything they were saying! Then, later on, Sami explained to someone he had just met that he spoke Hebrew, Arabic, Ladino, French, Armenian, and some Greek (??) and English. I realized what I had been hearing was Ladino, which is a combination between Spanish and Hebrew (sort of like how Yiddish is a combination of German and Hebrew), although I heard a lot more Spanish than Hebrew. Anyway, throughout the entire movie Arabs were only mentioned once. It was a very interesting movie to watch, as it really provided me with the Israeli narrative for 1948. Every Israeli character had either been born somewhere else or their parents had been born somewhere else. Everyone was dirt poor and everyone spoke Hebrew and a billion other languages. And throughout the entire movie, there was this subliminal feeling of dissatisfaction, that even though they were in Israel, they were really only there because there was nowhere else they could be without getting beaten up for being Jewish.
So yes. There is the basis of the right wing argument: Jews have nowhere else to be, nowhere else to go without being persecuted against. The Palestinians are Arabs and have several other Arab countries to go to - why won't they leave and give us the one country we can live in and feel safe?
It's important, I think, to know that the anti-semitism that was the result of the diaspora really fueled Zionism, and that happened long before the Holocaust. I suppose the Holocaust was a final push, but the idea that Jews are entitled to this land was there long before Hitler was a live. The problem is, no matter how you spin it, even if Jews are entitled to some kind of land, there were kind of maybe sort of people here when we decided "hey, this is the land we want". Not like someone just spun a globe and put their finger LUCKILY on the same place that a bunch of the Jewish people's religious history existed, but it was either here or Uganda. And let me tell you. I would NOT have wanted to live in Uganda during the South African apartheid.
When I talk to people who are right-wing or center-right wing, a lot of what there saying has merit. Yes, Jewish people were persecuted against for hundreds of years, and as a religion, they have always been a minority. I think it's interesting that for Israeli kids who are right wing, the idea of being a Jewish minority is so frightening to them, even though they've grown up in a place where being Jewish isn't at all foreign. When they asked me what it's like growing up Jewish in America, I find it hard to answer in the way they're expecting. Maybe that's because my kind of "growing up Jewish" is so very different from their "growing up Jewish", but my "growing up Jewish" is even different from other Jewish kids in Columbus.
Here's the thing. I never felt like I was a minority. I really, really didn't. Yeah, so everyone around me was Christian. Yes, my parents purposefully didn't put me in a Jewish school so I could meet other humans that were different than me, but I never felt different to them. Religion really wasn't a central part of my life, actually. It still kind of isn't. I like to tell people that I'm culturally Jewish - I like chullent, latkes, playing dreidl, lighting candles, and Jewish humor, but I don't feel that I AM A JEW - I don't know why, I just don't.
And another REALLY REALLY important part of not feeling like a minority in America is the fact that I'm white. That's really where I feel the difference comes in. Being white in Israel is very different than being white in America. It's not even about how many white people there are vs. black people: the nature of white imperialism made it that even though there are neighborhoods where you don't see a single white person, you are also very not likely to find a single rich person either. I never felt like a minority in America because I was well off, middle-class, white, blonde, and blue eyed. I mean, let's be serious here.
So, maybe it's the fact that I don't have the background narrative to being a minority as a Jew, or maybe it's that I really can't buy that excuse, at least not anymore. I think the first problem that arose from Zionism was the idea that the Jewish people were 'entitled' to anything. No one, not a single person is ever ever ever ever ever 'entitled' to anything. Call me whatever you want (actually, bring it), but not one person deserves something more than another person, unless it's like medicine when you're sick, or, you know, a hug when you're sad and your friend isn't. I just can't see the value in arguing that Jews were entitled to a homeland because they were beaten up in the past, so that's the underlying excuse to occupying a group of people.
Everyone deserves basic HUMAN things, like the right to practice whatever freaking religion they want and not get killed, like the right to food, water, shelter, love, art, happiness, ambition, knowledge, whatever. These are the basics. Everyone deserves these things. So yes, as a people, the Jews were right to look to the world for a change, and when they found that the world really wasn't going to help them, that they had to do it themselves - even then, I don't have a problem. My problem is that the entitledness creates within someone an arrogance that they can choose to storm into someone's home and decide that this is the place where only Jews can be citizens, even though they weren't even citizens to that land in the first place.
The angrier and angrier I get, and the farther and farther back I look to solve the problem (HA), the more and more I realize that this is honestly an unsolvable puzzle - you've basically lost the bottom half and there's no real way you can put together so that it makes sense in the future in any linear way. You basically just have to weld the puzzle pieces (I like how in this metaphor, the pieces are metal???) into new pieces and be creative and think outside the box so that the puzzle is finished even without the bottom half, which is lying in a Crazy Chaos Pile at the floor.
Not to be negative, but people reeeeaaallly didn't like the Jews starting from like, forever until forever. And this isn't me trying to guilt trip anyone or anything, because people reeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaallly don't like Muslims now or ever, and people reeeeeaaaaaallly don't like communists now and (even though there was a slight window of hope for communists back in the late 1800s) no one is ever GOING to like communists ever again ever. The point is just I really can't find a way to answer the question "Well, Miss Smarty Liberal Pants, If the Jews Were Jerks When It Came to Israel, What Do You Propose They Do? Just Keep Getting Beaten Up? Just Keep Getting Killed? Just Keep Suffering Through Anti-Semitism? Just Keep Converting To Christianity? Come On, Miss Smarty Liberal Pants, Tell Us! What's Your Answer to THAT Question!!!!".
I can't. I honestly can't. No one can. What happened happened happened happened. And it's done. I disagree with a WHOLE LOT of what happened, but now the only think I can think of focusing on is welding that puzzle together in a new way. The Holocaust Syndrom isn't relevant anymore, I don't think. The Jews have no more reason to fear death any more than any other 'minority' in the world. And guess what? As long as anyone is slightly different from whoever's in power, they have reason to fear. As a woman, I have reason to fear - rich, old, white men are trying to redefining 'rape'? As in, if I knew the guy, or if I was drugged, or if there isn't visual physical evidence, I wasn't raped. My body WASN'T violated.
I really can't find it within myself to be afraid of being a minority as a Jew or as a woman. I really can't. Maybe it's because I don't actually think of myself as a very serious Jew, or that being a woman really has nothing to do with ANYTHING except the fact that you can grow lungs and stuff in your stomach. Has anyone ever seen that Family Guy episode where Brian and Stewie go to alternate universes and they visit the universe where dogs are in charge and humans are kept as pets, and the Human Brian comes back to Human Quohag with them? And Stewie says to Human Brian, "Thank God you're white, you have NO IDEA how big that is here."
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If it wasn't for Udi and Alon's Carl Jung Study Group in the next room, I WOULD SCREAM.
WHY? Why does EVERYONE HATE EACH OTHER. I AM SO DONE WITH IT.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Purim Party Fun
This weekend I spent in Kfar Saba again with two friends of mine who weren't in the exchange program, but who I met in a Starbucks in Columbus once for an hour, and the wonderful world of Social Networking allowed that I grew close with Shaked and Inbal. When I came to Israel for the exchange program, I stayed with them for a night, and this time I've spent a weekend with them. Inbal and Shaked are two very beautiful very nice girls also in their senior year of high school. I spent Friday with Inbal, as Shaked was working. Inbal's mother absolutely stuffed me with food - I was still full from lunch when dinner rolled around. She said, "Don't you want rice?" I said, "I have rice on my plate right now." She said, "No you don't. Not enough." Yeah, she basically redefined the whole Jewish mother thing.
Inbal and Shaked took me out on Friday night. It was Purim, and so everyone was dressed up in costumes. I had so much fun. On Saturday night, I went with Shaked and her family to a family brunch thing, and in the evening we went to Shaked's friend's music recital. In Israel, every senior has a national test for whatever high school focus (basically like a college major) they've chosen. Shaked's friend is a music major, and so she was doing her practical exam that night (they're called Bagruyot). She and another girl (who is actually the best friend of one of my very close friends from the program - yeah, Kfar Saba isn't that big) sang six jazz songs. It was really interesting to get to see Shaked and Inbal's high school. Because Israel is such a small country, school works so differently for students here - the thought of every student taking the same test all across the United States seems so strange to me because in each state, the curriculum can be different, even within cities (i.e. GRAHAM). Of course, since from the top to the bottom of Israel it takes about seven hours driving distance, everything is much smaller.
On Friday night when Shaked and I finally rolled into bed at about five in the morning, I could hear the birds outside waking up and begin to sing. It was the most beautiful peace. And on Sunday morning when I awoke after seeing the Bagruyot performance and hanging out with Shaked all night, bonding with her over boys and life and our interests, I realized something. Remember that metaphor of the square hole in my chest which was supposed to somehow fit Israel and Columbus together, but never managed to do so? I figured out that I was completely limiting myself that way.
The point should not be to struggle to fit Israel into that hole but to widen that hole, stretch it out, chisel it so that I can fit everywhere that I feel at home within this giant mess of a shape that can't really be classified as a circle or a square or a rhombus or whatever other shapes exist (I hate geometry). I don't want to fit everything about Israel inside that hole (nor do I want to fit everything about Columbus in there as well), as there are parts of Israel that I definitely do not connect with. In that same sense, there are places and people and things where I feel at home from all over the world - not just Columbus or Israel.
I guess this should have been obvious to me from the start, but it wasn't. I'm glad that even if, in theory, this stretching and pulling and chiseling is difficult for me to accomplish, at least I know that I don't have to feel pressured to feel completely at home in one place or another, or both. I can feel at home where I feel at home, and the rest is like an enormous journey, or whatever. I wonder if that's the immigrant's syndrom, because, as weird as it is to classify myself as this, I am techincally an immigrant. I moved from Israel when I was five to another country. My parents are even more confusing - they're immigrants to both countries - first to Israel when they were young and then back to America when they were old-er.
I think the syndrom is that you leave the place you call home for another place, and even though you long for your home, you begin to create a home where you are. Then, when you should return to your original home, you realize not how much it has changed, but how much you have changed, how much you have been effected by living somewhere else, by creating another home. Isn't it like that quote by Nelson Mandella? "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." That's a pretty sucinct way of putting it.
I can't believe I've been here for nearly a month. I was talking to Myca the other day and said something about my being here for three weeks. "Three weeks?!" she cried. "You mean like three years? Three DECADES?" It's true that I feel like I've been here for an eternity and at the same time, I feel like I just stepped off the plane. I find that any time I think about the six more weeks I have left here, coming home, knowing what college I'm going to, prom (I spent a loooot of money on an Israeli prom dress, guys), Walkabout Presentations, Symposium, gra...graaa...graaadduuuu...graduaaattttiiiooo- no I can't even say it. I start to get panicked again. I also found out today that my mom isn't going to be able to take me to college since she has to start working really early. The idea that these thoughts are already in my head makes me want to simultaneously get on a plane right now and figure out the rest of my life and also curl up with my computer and watch That 70's Show for hours on end. Life? What life? What reality? I don't play that game, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Inbal and Shaked took me out on Friday night. It was Purim, and so everyone was dressed up in costumes. I had so much fun. On Saturday night, I went with Shaked and her family to a family brunch thing, and in the evening we went to Shaked's friend's music recital. In Israel, every senior has a national test for whatever high school focus (basically like a college major) they've chosen. Shaked's friend is a music major, and so she was doing her practical exam that night (they're called Bagruyot). She and another girl (who is actually the best friend of one of my very close friends from the program - yeah, Kfar Saba isn't that big) sang six jazz songs. It was really interesting to get to see Shaked and Inbal's high school. Because Israel is such a small country, school works so differently for students here - the thought of every student taking the same test all across the United States seems so strange to me because in each state, the curriculum can be different, even within cities (i.e. GRAHAM). Of course, since from the top to the bottom of Israel it takes about seven hours driving distance, everything is much smaller.
On Friday night when Shaked and I finally rolled into bed at about five in the morning, I could hear the birds outside waking up and begin to sing. It was the most beautiful peace. And on Sunday morning when I awoke after seeing the Bagruyot performance and hanging out with Shaked all night, bonding with her over boys and life and our interests, I realized something. Remember that metaphor of the square hole in my chest which was supposed to somehow fit Israel and Columbus together, but never managed to do so? I figured out that I was completely limiting myself that way.
The point should not be to struggle to fit Israel into that hole but to widen that hole, stretch it out, chisel it so that I can fit everywhere that I feel at home within this giant mess of a shape that can't really be classified as a circle or a square or a rhombus or whatever other shapes exist (I hate geometry). I don't want to fit everything about Israel inside that hole (nor do I want to fit everything about Columbus in there as well), as there are parts of Israel that I definitely do not connect with. In that same sense, there are places and people and things where I feel at home from all over the world - not just Columbus or Israel.
I guess this should have been obvious to me from the start, but it wasn't. I'm glad that even if, in theory, this stretching and pulling and chiseling is difficult for me to accomplish, at least I know that I don't have to feel pressured to feel completely at home in one place or another, or both. I can feel at home where I feel at home, and the rest is like an enormous journey, or whatever. I wonder if that's the immigrant's syndrom, because, as weird as it is to classify myself as this, I am techincally an immigrant. I moved from Israel when I was five to another country. My parents are even more confusing - they're immigrants to both countries - first to Israel when they were young and then back to America when they were old-er.
I think the syndrom is that you leave the place you call home for another place, and even though you long for your home, you begin to create a home where you are. Then, when you should return to your original home, you realize not how much it has changed, but how much you have changed, how much you have been effected by living somewhere else, by creating another home. Isn't it like that quote by Nelson Mandella? "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." That's a pretty sucinct way of putting it.
I can't believe I've been here for nearly a month. I was talking to Myca the other day and said something about my being here for three weeks. "Three weeks?!" she cried. "You mean like three years? Three DECADES?" It's true that I feel like I've been here for an eternity and at the same time, I feel like I just stepped off the plane. I find that any time I think about the six more weeks I have left here, coming home, knowing what college I'm going to, prom (I spent a loooot of money on an Israeli prom dress, guys), Walkabout Presentations, Symposium, gra...graaa...graaadduuuu...graduaaattttiiiooo- no I can't even say it. I start to get panicked again. I also found out today that my mom isn't going to be able to take me to college since she has to start working really early. The idea that these thoughts are already in my head makes me want to simultaneously get on a plane right now and figure out the rest of my life and also curl up with my computer and watch That 70's Show for hours on end. Life? What life? What reality? I don't play that game, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Good Chats
Yesterday, I woke up early to take the bus down to Yafo in order to meet Yotam and Ro'ee at their apartment. The three of us were going to a junior high in Bat Yam (a neighborhood south of Yafo which is south of Tel Aviv which is west of Ramat Gan. Which is where I live). Ro'ee and Yotam teach workshops to ninth graders (junior highs go from seventh to ninth grade in Israel) - Ro'ee does theater and Yotam does a kind of arty discussion type thing. I had asked why Mahmoud and Samer (still haven't met Samer - he was asleep when I got to the apartment) weren't going with them. Ro'ee explained that Sadaka - Reut thought it wise that the Israelis go to the Israeli schools and the Palestinians go to the Palestinian schools. At first I thought it may have been better for the Israeli kids to meet some Palestinians, but after watching Ro'ee's workshop, I now know that it's much better to separate the two.
Ro'ee's workshop was fun at the beginning. I participated in the theater warm up. It was interesting to watch some of the same games and exercises that I lead for my theater stuff, but in a different language. That being said, it was fairly easy for me to follow.
After the warm up, the students (five ninth graders) started talking about the terror attack that happened last week. They seemed to be asking more questions than saying anything definitively, and Ro'ee was warding off the questions and trying to rally the kids into doing a scene. It was more of an improv scene, except less focused on being funny and more focused on exploring different situations. The first situation was that a group of girls is offered a joint of marijuana, and one of the friends decides to take a hit. From that moment, the students led the scene into whatever situation they believed would be most accurate. So, as I watched (I was impressed by my ability to follow the Hebrew), one of the girls took a hit, instantly became addicted (according to her friends), and then her friends went and told her mother, who told her she had to go to rehab every day for a month. The entire exploration took about twenty minutes.
After that scene, Ro'ee suggested that they do a scene where the students were in an Arabic class. They didn't want to do that. They wanted to change the class to a bible study class. Well, that didn't entirely work out either, because the students were losing focus. Then Ro'ee suggested the big kicker - a scene where one of the girls brings home an Arab boyfriend. The students told him they didn't want to do that at all, and instead continued talking about the terror attack (I'll attach a link explaining what happened at the end).
After about five minutes talking about the attack (again, I spotted a lot of questions), Ro'ee announced that they were done for the day. Here I didn't entirely understand what they were talking about, so as Ro'ee and I walked outside into the sun to wait for Yotam to finish teaching, I asked him what the discussion had been about. He told me that the students were asking questions like why the Palestinian man had killed them, how he had broken into the home, how he had stabbed the child, etc., etc., and then Ro'ee told me that one of the students had said "I just want to burn all the Arabs." That was when Ro'ee had stood up and said that the workshop was over.
When Yotam came outside, the three of us sat in the grass and talked for about an hour and a half. I asked a looooot of questions. They explained to me the difference between Zionist Left and Radical Left (Zionist Left means you want to have Jewish Democracy with a two state solution to the conflict, Radical Left means you want to have a plain old Democracy where everyone is an equal citizen. How radical). Ro'ee also talked about the history classes in Israel. I had expected that Israel taught a very stilted history of their country, but Ro'ee told me that the comprehensive history of the State of Israel doesn't really exist, at least not in his experience. He said his history classes stopped when they reached the year 1948, and that after that he'd receive a paragraph summarizing each war after the war in 1948. I was really surprised.
It's the same thing in the Arab schools - because they're Israeli schools for Arabs, the 'Arab narrative' isn't taught. Ro'ee and Yotam agreed that's one of the biggest problems. Ro'ee used the example of the student talking about burning all Arabs. "They say racist things, yes, but it's complete ignorance, not based on personal experience." This is why Sadaka-Reut is attempting to use the volunteers to give workshops: to inform the students, to teach them the Arab narrative, to give them a place where they could think critically and discuss the conflict. The problem that I saw was that the students really had no interest in talking about it at all.
"Leftist Zionists think that Israel became a morally wrong state in 1967, when Israel began occupying," Yotam told me. "Radical Leftists think the root of the conflict isn't in 1967, but in 1948. There was supposed to be a law that said anyone living within the perameters of the proposed Israeli borders would become a citizen of Israel. According to most Israeli schools, all the Palestinians left, that's why they're not citizens. That's not true. Some left. Some ran away. Some where kicked out."
To me, it would have seemed obvious that the root of the conflict started in 1948, when Israel first became a country, but Ro'ee and Yotam told me that it wasn't obvious at all to most people. They also asked about the perspective of the conflict from America. I told them what I know: that in my social circles, or academic circles, it's really not talked about. It's not that it's taboo or anything, it's just that Graham teaches different classes with just as much relevance and importance - the Genocide Awareness class, the American Political Thought and Radicalism class, etc. It'd be really cool if someone at Graham taught a Middle Eastern studies class, if not about the Israeli - Palestinian conflict specifically then just about the people in power in the Middle East at all. Ro'ee and Yotam were also asking about the Jewish community in Columbus. Again, I told them all that I knew: that from what I've seen and who I've talked to, the conflict itself is really not discussed among Jews in Columbus - it's more Zionism and the importance of "making aliyah", which means to visit Israel or to live there.
When I got back home to Ramat Gan, I was angry. I hate how racism is so parallel everywhere you go. The biggest racist issue for Palestinian/Israeli relations is the fact that 'they're' Arab - it's all to do with nationalism, where in the United States it's all about being Muslim. There's the foreign workers who are coming into Israel from Africa, Eastern Asia, Russia, South America - stealing Israeli jobs. Sounds familiar? The difference between foreign workers in Israel is that they come in on a government granted visa. It's not a good system at all, actually - it costs a lot of money to maintain that visa and there's very little hope at all of becoming a citizen - but it's different than South Americans coming into America with no visa at all. Ro'ee said "It sucks. It's depressing." It is, but it's also fascinating. I'm thinking right now about the most recent American politics that have been on my mind - the union debacle, the budget cuts to women's health, Guantanamo Bay - it's so different from here. The same level of beurocratic mess and awfulness, but different. I tried to come up with a parallel between the conflict in Israel to something in the U.S., but there really isn't anything. I find it's easier for people to relate to the conflict if they can find a parallel in their own lives.
Today I went into Tel Aviv to meet up with my mother's friend, Merav, who actually got me the internship with Sadaka-Reut. We had lunch in this really adorable sandwich and salad and bakery type place, and we talked a lot about Sadaka-Reut and the conflict. She was far more optimistic than anyone else I have talked to. She works in a research organization that collects information and data about all the social action organizations in Israel. One of the things that she does is work with a team of people who put pressure on companies that are involved or are helping with the occupation to pull out. She said, "The economic situation is the weakest point of this regime." She believes that, much like what happened with the apparthide in South Africa (where the final push was corporations pulling out of the apparthide), companies disassociating themselves with the conflict will motivate the Israeli government to cease the occupation. It was refreshing to sit with her and feel her motivation and optimism.
After lunch, I took the bus back to Ramat Gan but stopped halfway at a park that was off the side of the road. It's an enormous park with a huge sculpture at the top of the hill and benches and picnic tables. It was about five in the afternoon when I got there, and the sun was just setting. I was scribbling away in my notebook and there was a guy who was training his dogs on the lawn in front of me. They were doing really awesome things - one of the dogs sat on a recycling bin and didn't move until the guy said so. After a while of my watching them, the guy asked me if I was afraid of dogs. I said no. He said most kids are afraid of dogs and it's a problem when he tries to train them. I laughed. He asked me if I had a dog. I said yes. He asked me what kind she was. I said she was black. He laughed. I asked what kind of dogs those were. He said they were Belgian shepherds - as opposed to German shepherds. He also informed me that they were the best and most well trained dogs in the world. He asked me why I didn't bring my dog to the park. I said that she was in America, so it would be hard to do. He asked if I live in America. I said yes. He asked me what I was doing here. I said doing volunteer work. He asked what, and I told him about La Escuelita (even though that internship is almost done). He asked me where I lived in America, I said Columbus, OH. I also apologized for that not being interesting. He said all of America was interesting. I laughed.
THIS. WAS. ALL. IN. HEBREW. I was shining with self-worth. He talked about training his dogs. He is a professional dog trainer, don't you know. He told me there were lots of good dog shows in America. I said my dog was more sweet than smart. He said all dogs are sweet, only the Belgian shepherds are the smart ones. When I left the park I told him good luck, and he said "Same to you." HEBREWHEBREWHEBREWHEBREWHEBREW.
I am going to Kfar Saba again tomorrow to stay with some friends. Tomorrow is the beginning of Purim, which is basically a Jewish Halloween. It celebrates the story of Queen Esther. I don't know how we got to this point, but in the bible after the Jews won victory over our oppressors (sound familiar?), the men dressed like the women, the women dressed like the men, and everyone got drunk. Now people dress in different things, although at the Purim party at La Escuelita last night, Liat was dressed as Ofer and Ofer as Liat, although it was kind of odd to see Ofer put two bean bags down his shirt and call himself a woman. I don't have a costume yet for Purim. I'm thinking maybe gypsy? I have a lot of hippy-looking clothing, so I could put it all on at once and I'd look like a gypsy, right? The friend I'm staying with is going to be a cowgirl. This should be a lot of fun - it's a non stop weekend of parties. In much the same spirit as Halloween, people also send baskets of sweets to each other. On the counter in the kitchen is a basket of junk food (oh, it'll be gone by the time Udi and Alon get home from work), and on the table beside me is a bunch of Indian sweets. I also bought two muffins and two chocolate balls from the bakery with Merav today. Yeah, I wasn't joking when I said the flight attendants were going to have to roll me off the plane as I come home. I won't walk across the stage at graduation, I'll waddle. Cute, no?
Here's the first link I could find that gives a brief overview of the terror attack from last week. It's a letter to the UN. Israeli Terror Attack
Ro'ee's workshop was fun at the beginning. I participated in the theater warm up. It was interesting to watch some of the same games and exercises that I lead for my theater stuff, but in a different language. That being said, it was fairly easy for me to follow.
After the warm up, the students (five ninth graders) started talking about the terror attack that happened last week. They seemed to be asking more questions than saying anything definitively, and Ro'ee was warding off the questions and trying to rally the kids into doing a scene. It was more of an improv scene, except less focused on being funny and more focused on exploring different situations. The first situation was that a group of girls is offered a joint of marijuana, and one of the friends decides to take a hit. From that moment, the students led the scene into whatever situation they believed would be most accurate. So, as I watched (I was impressed by my ability to follow the Hebrew), one of the girls took a hit, instantly became addicted (according to her friends), and then her friends went and told her mother, who told her she had to go to rehab every day for a month. The entire exploration took about twenty minutes.
After that scene, Ro'ee suggested that they do a scene where the students were in an Arabic class. They didn't want to do that. They wanted to change the class to a bible study class. Well, that didn't entirely work out either, because the students were losing focus. Then Ro'ee suggested the big kicker - a scene where one of the girls brings home an Arab boyfriend. The students told him they didn't want to do that at all, and instead continued talking about the terror attack (I'll attach a link explaining what happened at the end).
After about five minutes talking about the attack (again, I spotted a lot of questions), Ro'ee announced that they were done for the day. Here I didn't entirely understand what they were talking about, so as Ro'ee and I walked outside into the sun to wait for Yotam to finish teaching, I asked him what the discussion had been about. He told me that the students were asking questions like why the Palestinian man had killed them, how he had broken into the home, how he had stabbed the child, etc., etc., and then Ro'ee told me that one of the students had said "I just want to burn all the Arabs." That was when Ro'ee had stood up and said that the workshop was over.
When Yotam came outside, the three of us sat in the grass and talked for about an hour and a half. I asked a looooot of questions. They explained to me the difference between Zionist Left and Radical Left (Zionist Left means you want to have Jewish Democracy with a two state solution to the conflict, Radical Left means you want to have a plain old Democracy where everyone is an equal citizen. How radical). Ro'ee also talked about the history classes in Israel. I had expected that Israel taught a very stilted history of their country, but Ro'ee told me that the comprehensive history of the State of Israel doesn't really exist, at least not in his experience. He said his history classes stopped when they reached the year 1948, and that after that he'd receive a paragraph summarizing each war after the war in 1948. I was really surprised.
It's the same thing in the Arab schools - because they're Israeli schools for Arabs, the 'Arab narrative' isn't taught. Ro'ee and Yotam agreed that's one of the biggest problems. Ro'ee used the example of the student talking about burning all Arabs. "They say racist things, yes, but it's complete ignorance, not based on personal experience." This is why Sadaka-Reut is attempting to use the volunteers to give workshops: to inform the students, to teach them the Arab narrative, to give them a place where they could think critically and discuss the conflict. The problem that I saw was that the students really had no interest in talking about it at all.
"Leftist Zionists think that Israel became a morally wrong state in 1967, when Israel began occupying," Yotam told me. "Radical Leftists think the root of the conflict isn't in 1967, but in 1948. There was supposed to be a law that said anyone living within the perameters of the proposed Israeli borders would become a citizen of Israel. According to most Israeli schools, all the Palestinians left, that's why they're not citizens. That's not true. Some left. Some ran away. Some where kicked out."
To me, it would have seemed obvious that the root of the conflict started in 1948, when Israel first became a country, but Ro'ee and Yotam told me that it wasn't obvious at all to most people. They also asked about the perspective of the conflict from America. I told them what I know: that in my social circles, or academic circles, it's really not talked about. It's not that it's taboo or anything, it's just that Graham teaches different classes with just as much relevance and importance - the Genocide Awareness class, the American Political Thought and Radicalism class, etc. It'd be really cool if someone at Graham taught a Middle Eastern studies class, if not about the Israeli - Palestinian conflict specifically then just about the people in power in the Middle East at all. Ro'ee and Yotam were also asking about the Jewish community in Columbus. Again, I told them all that I knew: that from what I've seen and who I've talked to, the conflict itself is really not discussed among Jews in Columbus - it's more Zionism and the importance of "making aliyah", which means to visit Israel or to live there.
When I got back home to Ramat Gan, I was angry. I hate how racism is so parallel everywhere you go. The biggest racist issue for Palestinian/Israeli relations is the fact that 'they're' Arab - it's all to do with nationalism, where in the United States it's all about being Muslim. There's the foreign workers who are coming into Israel from Africa, Eastern Asia, Russia, South America - stealing Israeli jobs. Sounds familiar? The difference between foreign workers in Israel is that they come in on a government granted visa. It's not a good system at all, actually - it costs a lot of money to maintain that visa and there's very little hope at all of becoming a citizen - but it's different than South Americans coming into America with no visa at all. Ro'ee said "It sucks. It's depressing." It is, but it's also fascinating. I'm thinking right now about the most recent American politics that have been on my mind - the union debacle, the budget cuts to women's health, Guantanamo Bay - it's so different from here. The same level of beurocratic mess and awfulness, but different. I tried to come up with a parallel between the conflict in Israel to something in the U.S., but there really isn't anything. I find it's easier for people to relate to the conflict if they can find a parallel in their own lives.
 | |
| The two balconies of the Sadaka-Reut commune. |
After lunch, I took the bus back to Ramat Gan but stopped halfway at a park that was off the side of the road. It's an enormous park with a huge sculpture at the top of the hill and benches and picnic tables. It was about five in the afternoon when I got there, and the sun was just setting. I was scribbling away in my notebook and there was a guy who was training his dogs on the lawn in front of me. They were doing really awesome things - one of the dogs sat on a recycling bin and didn't move until the guy said so. After a while of my watching them, the guy asked me if I was afraid of dogs. I said no. He said most kids are afraid of dogs and it's a problem when he tries to train them. I laughed. He asked me if I had a dog. I said yes. He asked me what kind she was. I said she was black. He laughed. I asked what kind of dogs those were. He said they were Belgian shepherds - as opposed to German shepherds. He also informed me that they were the best and most well trained dogs in the world. He asked me why I didn't bring my dog to the park. I said that she was in America, so it would be hard to do. He asked if I live in America. I said yes. He asked me what I was doing here. I said doing volunteer work. He asked what, and I told him about La Escuelita (even though that internship is almost done). He asked me where I lived in America, I said Columbus, OH. I also apologized for that not being interesting. He said all of America was interesting. I laughed.
THIS. WAS. ALL. IN. HEBREW. I was shining with self-worth. He talked about training his dogs. He is a professional dog trainer, don't you know. He told me there were lots of good dog shows in America. I said my dog was more sweet than smart. He said all dogs are sweet, only the Belgian shepherds are the smart ones. When I left the park I told him good luck, and he said "Same to you." HEBREWHEBREWHEBREWHEBREWHEBREW.
I am going to Kfar Saba again tomorrow to stay with some friends. Tomorrow is the beginning of Purim, which is basically a Jewish Halloween. It celebrates the story of Queen Esther. I don't know how we got to this point, but in the bible after the Jews won victory over our oppressors (sound familiar?), the men dressed like the women, the women dressed like the men, and everyone got drunk. Now people dress in different things, although at the Purim party at La Escuelita last night, Liat was dressed as Ofer and Ofer as Liat, although it was kind of odd to see Ofer put two bean bags down his shirt and call himself a woman. I don't have a costume yet for Purim. I'm thinking maybe gypsy? I have a lot of hippy-looking clothing, so I could put it all on at once and I'd look like a gypsy, right? The friend I'm staying with is going to be a cowgirl. This should be a lot of fun - it's a non stop weekend of parties. In much the same spirit as Halloween, people also send baskets of sweets to each other. On the counter in the kitchen is a basket of junk food (oh, it'll be gone by the time Udi and Alon get home from work), and on the table beside me is a bunch of Indian sweets. I also bought two muffins and two chocolate balls from the bakery with Merav today. Yeah, I wasn't joking when I said the flight attendants were going to have to roll me off the plane as I come home. I won't walk across the stage at graduation, I'll waddle. Cute, no?
Here's the first link I could find that gives a brief overview of the terror attack from last week. It's a letter to the UN. Israeli Terror Attack
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Home?
 | |||
| This is the spread of food at my favorite restaurant in my old hometown, Misadat Iron (pronounced EEron). The "main course" is only two shish-kebabs, because, as you can see, it's pretty easy to stuff yourself with this amazing array of salads. (My favorite is the pink cabbage). |
 |
| Beyond those overgrown trees is the front door of the last house I lived in before my family moved to America. |
 |
| This is a shot taken in between the fence posts. That long overgrown driveway leads to what would have been the garage of my old house. I don't think it is actually home to a car anymore. |
Yesterday, I went home? I guess you could say that. I went to my hometown of Pardes Hana. My mother's Best Friend in the Whole Wide World, Shulamit, picked me up in the afternoon, and we drove from Tel Aviv to Pardes Hana, a forty-minute drive.
It's weird to call Pardes Hana my hometown, because I didn't actually spend the majority of my life there. It's also really weird to explore the idea of home at all. On the way to Pardes Hana, I was looking out the window, and for some reason, I felt like I really knew the way there, even though had Shulamit asked me for directions (and I don't know why she would, she lives here), I wouldn't have been able to give them to her.
My entire life has been this weird disconnect from one place to another. Like, when I'm in America, I feel disconnected, in a way, from the majority of the people who live there. Of course I have my friends who I adore and love and we live lives that are very parallel, but there are just some customary cultural things that I don't connect with for America (like taking family pictures in front of a white sheet, where everyone's wearing the same clothes. When I was younger and wanted to be Very American, I was into it. Now it just seems weird. Sorry if anyone who reads this takes those pictures; while they're weird, they're always very adorable). Sometimes, when I am sitting with a group of Israelis in Columbus, tuning the Hebrew out (I have now learned that is one of my best skills, and one that is completely dangerous here), I feel like I miss Israel so much it hurts.
Now that I'm here, though, I can't help but notice how completely American I am. Israelis don't use drying machines - they dry their clothes on racks outside. Because of this, the clothes always feel very strange on my skin after they've dried. I don't dress like Israelis, I don't speak like Israelis (even when I'm speaking Hebrew - and I don't mean the accent), I don't even have the same mindset as all Israelis. At the same time, I don't think I 'dress American', nor do I think that I talk like most Americans (maybe I'm wrong), and I certainly don't have the same mindset as most Americans.
But there is something very fundamental about coming to a place that was the first place you'd ever seen. There is something so familiar even when it's changed. Tiny little things, like the fact that Pardes Hana doesn't have sidewalks, or that the sides of the roads are exploding with eucalyptis trees, or that no matter where you are, some part of the town is always under construction. There is also something so strange about seeing people who have known you your entire life, even when a huge chunk of it is missing.
When I got to Shulamit's house, her son, Amitai, came home from school. Amitai and I have known each other since we were both babies. I'm talking diaper time. Amitai is almost two years younger than me, so we both rolled around on the floor babbling nonsense together. The first time I saw him after my family left Israel, I was seven and he was five, so there wasn't a whole lot of conversation that flowed. The second time I was fourteen, and he was twelve. The third, I was fifteen, he was thirteen. Now I'm eighteen and he's sixteen.
It's remarkably strange watching someone grow from a distance, and I'm sure Amitai will agree with me. Amitai was quieter when he was younger, but always sweet and genuine. Now, he has a tattoo, plays in a metal band, has a spiky bass guitar, and is an all around Cool Kid. The persona should be completed by a stand-offish attitude and a good dose of Stick It To the Man, but he's still the same sweet and genuine kid, although I guess I can't say kid anymore.
Amitai and I sat and talked for two hours straight. His English is really great, and he's very, very sharp. Then, at about nine, we went to his dad's house. Roni has also known me since forever. He is the same, but different. Everything is the same, but different, even my favorite restaurant in Israel. Now, it's not that Misadat Iron is particularly GOOD. I mean, it's good, but it's not the best restaurant in Israel, nor would I assume it's the best restaurant in Pardes Hana. It's just that it's a place I remember going to eat even when I was five, and we've been back ever since. Every time I am in Israel, I eat here. I suppose the food is the one thing I can say hasn't yet changed about Pardes Hana - it tastes exactly the same. The difference is perhaps the person who is eating it.
Today, Shulamit and I went to do some banking stuff for my parents, at the same bank we always used when we lived here. Every time I am at that bank, there is always a fight between two people as to who was in line first. After banking was finished, Shulamit drove me to my old house.
I can't describe it, I honestly can't. The only way I can actually describe the feeling is maybe that you walk up to this house you haven't seen in thirteen years and then you realize that there's enormous hole right in the middle of your chest that you haven't seen or noticed in thirteen years. And this house is like, a square peg for your ciclical hole, because different things have filled in the sqaure bits to make the hole into a circle. And as you're taking pictures of this place you used to live in, you can't decide whether you desperately want to take out all the other stuff in that hole so the square peg can fit again or if you want to close up that hole with more of that other stuff. Maybe the reason it felt so strange was because I was there alone. Running down the dirt road on the side of my house wearing a dress as the winter wind slapped my face was a huge freaking deja vu, and I think what was missing was my family.
After one of the weirdest experiences in my life, I went to the Berenstein's house, or as me and my dad like to call it, Frank's Estate. The Berensteins have been in my life since - YOU GUESSED IT - I was a baby. Frank and Nurit have four kids - Miryam, Adah, Ayelet, and David. Each one of those sisters have babysat me at one point - first Miryam, then Adah, then Ayelet. Each one of them has seen some kind of development in my life. And while we were gone in the United States, the Berensteins were off doing tremendous things, and somehow, they all landed back at Frank's Estate. It's a huge, huge plot of land that used to be a farm and still kind of is - there are chickens and goats. The main house is where Frank and Nurit live. Then there's the middle house, where Adah and Ayelet and David live (David's currently off traveling the world as is the custom for Israelis once they finish the army), and where Adah, Ayelet, and Miryam manage and run their baby-clothing store. They call it The Studio. Then there's Miryam's house, where she lives with her husband, Itai, and her two children, Inbar and Ula. Beyond the last house there's a bunch of bees (Frank's a bee keeper)!
I haven't seen Miryam not exhausted since I lived in Israel. When I was here as a fourteen year old, she had just had Inbar, and so she was a thin, weathered version of herself finding out what it was like to be a mother (my own mother had much of the same experience of watching the girl that used to babysit her kids turn into a mother as I'm sure Miryam has watching me become an adult). The next time was slightly more rested, but Inbar was still only a year old, and so sleep was not a part of the deal. Now, Ula is three months old, and while Miryam is happy (very happy), she is exhausted. I spent most of my time with Ayelet (Adah was in Tel Aviv at their store that day) and Miryam and her kids.
This has been the weirdest two days of my life. How do you go back to a home that you hardly lived in? I know that five years is five years, but compared to thirteen, it's a really insignificant amount of time. While I am not FROM Columbus, I grew up there. The majority of my emotional development took place in Ohio, even if my motor skills and speaking skills and you know, general human skills took place in Pardes Hana. I have always hated the fact that there's this expectation that I should right away feel at home here in Israel, even though for the majority of my life I have lived in the United States. I feel very at home in Columbus, very familiar, very safe. There is something like a dull, vague familiarity about Pardes Hana, and it comes in flashes - a line of eucalyptis trees on the side of a road, sitting in the front seat of a car, looking out of the window as the sun blinds you, eating the same freaking pink cabbage salad you have always loved since you were a tiny thing. I feel like a stranger, while everyone else keeps telling me that this is my home. Everyone knows me, but I hardly know them. And while this is the most upfront of what I feel here, every so often I catch myself feeling the opposite in Columbus - that I'm not at home, that I'm stuck, that I should be somewhere else. The problem is, when I get to where I think I should be, I find that it doesn't hold the completeness that I'm looking for.
I don't mean to sound miserable, because I'm not really. I'm disconcerted by this entire experience, and yeah, it has made me feel homesick. The only thing is that I DO NOT KNOW WHICH HOME I AM FEELING HOMESICK FOR, AND THAT IS EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING. I know I am supposed to be in Israel to learn more about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, help social action organizations, have fun, be independent, but I feel like I have just suddenly been confronted with one of the biggest question marks in my life, and maybe that is the real reason I am here.
On the social actiony/conflict resolution news, I had a very interesting conversation with Ayelet today. She and I were talking about Japan, and the awful things that have been happening there. She said, "I can't imagine if something like that happened here. We would never recover." I asked her to elaborate, and she told me how she really felt about this country. She said, "My grandparents generation lived here and founded the country, and the biggest goal for them was that there would be a country to fight for. Then my parents' generation rolls around, and their biggest goal was that by the time our generation grew up, there would be peace. Now? My generation doesn't even believe that peace will happen. This is such a stuck country. The economy is stuck, the conflict is stuck - everything is stuck. And if people are serious about all this revolution talk? We are so going down. Naw, man. Portugal's where it's at." (Apparently there is revolution talk and the Berensteins are all moving to Portugal, although it is the first I have heard of either of this.)
I don't actually think that everyone Ayelet's age (mid twenties) thinks that this country is stuck, otherwise guys like Ro'ee and Yotam and Mahmoud wouldn't be working in organizations like Sadaka-Reut, fighting, fighting, fighting for some kind of political change. It was somewhat refreshing to hear her opinion, because a part of me agrees with her and has for a while. Not that peace will never happen, but it won't happen while Israel is stuck in this grind, and it DEFINITELY won't happen until the majority of Israelis admit that occupation and settlement is kind of not okay.
I could write an entire new and intensely long blogpost about how I exactly feel about a conflict I still know very little about after being here only for two and a half weeks, but I want to reiterate - I am not a self hating Jew (as in hating Israel or whatever), nor do I stand with all of Israel's policies. There. Reason and rationality. It's a beautiful thing.
Tomorrow morning I am going with Ro'ee and Yotam (and I think Mahmoud and Samer) to a school in Bat Yam (a neighborhood south of Tel Aviv) where they teach art classes to children with socio-political themes. I'll mostly observe and ask questions and take pictures, so that I have information for the newsletter when it comes time to write it.
 |
| This is the road I used to run down as a five year old wearing colorful dresses as the winter wind hit my face. |
 |
| Miryam holding/kissing Ula while Inbar is trying to figure out how to eat a pillow starfish. |
 |
| Miryam with Ula and Inbar as Itai sits in the background, enjoying some solitude before his children bombard him. |
This was a pretty deep and forlorn post. I promise for some more triviality next time!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
