Almost there guys. I'm almost caught up enough to breeze to the present and let you know what I'm up to every couple of days!
So breeze on I will:
I. Old Friends in E. Jerusalem and Labeling
II. Getting Lost Twice but Finding Everything
III. Hebrew University and Hadassah on Mt. Scopus (This one's for the history buffs, and for anyone who went to Hebrew U)
IV. Jerusalem's Complexities Continued: East Jerusalem Tour of Arab Neighborhoods
I. Old Friends in E. Jerusalem and Labeling
One of my goals here is to reconnect with everyone that I can who I know in Israel and Palestine alike.
So, when Sameh Aweadah and Hani Salman agreed to meet with me after my weekend in Ramallah that Saturday night, I was ecstatic. These are two people that I worked with at a peace camp a couple of summers back, and two people that I LOVE with a genuine passion for our short time together there.
Then again, I tend to love a lot of people with a genuine passion when I get to know them.
David and I met Sameh and Hani at a local place in East Jerusalem just North of the Damascus Gate. There we joked about our difficulties speaking Arabic and English respectively, and caught each other up on our current whereabouts.
And, inevitably, every conversation in Jerusalem gets around to a conflict somehow.
The thing I love about Sameh is how honest and strong his opinion is. I know that in any discussion I have with him directly, I will not be able to sway his opinion, but that afterwards he goes home and thinks about what I said and come back either with a change of heart or with a new discussion to spark.
Enter one of these discussions:
"I think you cannot be Muslim or socialist at the same time."
To my American ears, this claim struck a discordant chord. Of course there were socialist undertones in Islam! You could definitely pick and choose from Islam and apply it to your socialist ideology and vice versa.
"What are you talking about Sameh? Of course you can."
"No you can't. If you're a Muslim, you abide by Muslim law which directly contradicts socialist ideologies."
"Maybe," pipes in Hani, "but are you saying you cannot take some elements of Islam and not accept others, and in this you can still be a socialist?"
"Yeah," David and I say.
"I mean you can definitely take the portions of the Qur'an that talk about giving to those who are in need and loving thy neighbor as thyself and apply them to socialist ideology," I continue.
"No you can't."
As I said, a man of his opinion.
"Why do you think that?" David asked.
"Listen, I understand what you are saying, taking small aspects from each or not applying ideology here or there to fit into your own identity. But I don't consider you to be a Muslim by religion if you don't follow the rules and society within Islam. Socialism is a society where everyone is able to take part in the different parts of society. Islam inhibits women from doing this. By definition, a Muslim cannot be a socialist. For example. I am a Muslim because my parents were, and that's it. But I am pretty solely socialist, and my wife does not have to follow the discrepancies in Islam, but more according toward socialist ideals."
"Ah, I see what you mean," Hani answered. "I think I agree with you, though I think you can still identify as a Muslim religiously and take part in particular rights."
We continued to debate on this point for the next 15 minutes, with Hani, myself and David postulating counterpoints to this strong point.
Why do I include this conversation? It's one in a string of many I've had with people here. For people here, religion is something that truly colors identity in a way that Westerners who pick and choose their identities according to an assortment of ideals and practices just do not understand. The fact that I got asked at the border about my Muslim name is somewhat an extension of this, and the confusion about my being Jewish with this name also confirms the confusion that occurs when a "picker and chooser" does not follow what would ordinarily be a straightforward identity path.
I still disagree with Sameh's interpretation of identity, but I respect his opinion. The strength in his assertion is a result of a society here of labeling who you are in relation to them, and the notion of one's identity here as telling to what your actions or beliefs are. Perhaps this is a human thing, to know how one person relates to us, but I'm becoming aware of how quick this process is in Israel, and then how quick a person here in Israel or Palestine chooses to act based on how you answer them or they perceive you to be.
I'll give you a tangible example of the perception: while postering for the Jerusalem Youth Choir (a high school chorus made up of Palestinians and Israelis), I walked into the Dan Panorama, where the security guard started speaking harshly to me in Arabic "lah, lah, lah, shoo inta bidi? (no no no what do you want?)" as if I were not worthy of the Dan Panorama (the irony behind this was that my mother, brother, and I stayed there our first time in Israel--I responded that I was American in fact and spoke Hebrew). I went to the front desk where he spoke to me in English and he set down some posters in the poster section.
I exited and walked up the street, where a woman stopped me and asked me in Hebrew, "S'licha, atah yodeah eifoh hamispar shalosh me'ot v'chamishim barechov hazeh?" (Excuse me, do you know where the number 350 is on this road?)" I answered "Lo, ani lo yodea, slicha ve'mazal tov" (No I don't know sorry. Good luck).
Walking into Primo Kings half a block later, the security guard asked me in Hebrew, "Ma atah oseh?" (what are you doing?) and I responded "Yesh li posterim l'concert b'yom hashishi she'ani rotzeh lateit lachem (I have posters for a concert on Friday that I would like to give to you all). The passing hotel worker made eye contact with me and quipped, "Marhaba, kif ha'alik? Mabsoot?" in Arabic (hey, what's up? You happy?), to which I responded, in my limited Arabic, "Ayweh, mabsoot shukran, oo inta?" (Yes, I'm happy, thank you, and you?) and he responded in turn. The desk worker, who had not heard any of these interactions, asked me after all of this, "Can I help you?"
Needless to say... I am a genuine source of confusion here because of this culture of labeling in combination with this culture of quickness. Most people I've come into contact with are used to making an assumption about one's identity quickly and approaching them in that way; it's a part of the culture here. For my own identity, I do have to do a bit of explaining before they understand why I speak much more Hebrew than Arabic, I am from the US, and I am Jewish.
II. Getting Lost Twice But Finding Much
I love to get lost when I'm in a new place.
But getting lost in Jerusalem is freaking scary, because it can happen so very easily, and there are some vital times you can't find a person who knows where you need to go.
I had taken the Sunday afternoon to go to Teddy Stadium to check out the rock climbing wall there and to the Jerusalem Mall to strike up some old Ramah Seminar memories. At around 3:50 I started to walk back from the mall to my home. This is the route I should have taken.
This is the actual route that I took.
When you look on a map, you think "How could you do that Hasan? How could you mess this up so badly?"
In my mom's case, she'd ask, "Huh, maybe we should start to invest in a different family navigator."
Well, dear readers, this is how: Jerusalem has hills that mask wherever streets are going and causes them to go in completely inane and unpredictable directions, not all streets are marked and I don't have a smart phone.
Thus, I got a nice tour of the Jewish College for Girls and walked straight through the Yeshiva University.
I also took this video to share a nice little viewpoint I found somewhere in all this.
Later in the week I was supposed to take the bus from here to here while postering around town.
Instead, I took the bus from here to here, and walked from here to here.
And, just when I thought I had wasted precious postering time, I found Bob Gutman's home away from home: the Shalom Hartman Institute, whose adjoining schools accepted my posters with open arms!
So the new saying will go now: when lost in Jerusalem trying to do something important, you can find something else important, at the very least.
Or you'll be scared and lost.
III. Hebrew University Campus and Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus
Going back to my first post about the limits in the land, I mentioned briefly Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, and now I want to speak about it more. A lot of people who look at the weird green block in the '67 line around Jerusalem and say "what's that all about?" I had the same question, and over the course of several conversations with people/a small amount of research, I have some very imperfect history in addition to some imperfect observations.
Oh, I mention all this because I went there to poster for this concert and I was really fascinated by what I saw there.
Ok, now for some imperfect history:
The Mt. Scopus area was originally purchased in 1916 from the British owned Gray Hill Estate. The University started from this Estate following its inauguration in 1917. It was an early Zionist vision to establish a Jewish University in the holy city. Designed by Sir Patrick Geddess and Frank Meers, the first three buildings (Wolfson National Library, Mathematics Institute, and the Physics Institute) were erected in 1920.
From the beginning, Hebrew U has brought academics and students from all different backgrounds to its center in the pursuit of higher education. This is and has always been a place where anyone can study, regardless of the headlining name.
I experienced this first hand as I raided the different poster boards in the area. In my time snooping around, I ran into American exchange students joking with Muslim Palestinian women and men at the small coffee shop in the Administration Building/Student Center, watched a Haredi man say excuse me to the group as he hurried to who knows where, and found some Israelis furiously typing on their computers (it was finals week).
Truly a really wonderful place at the outset, but as you know here, what is not said is another degree of the reality (e.g: I didn't see Palestinians and Israelis together on campus, despite they are both a part of the campus life and on campus). I plan to return to when I can to act like a student while I do some covert observing.
As a side note, it's really nice now to be a person that has the 'luxury' to choose when I want to be on an university campus. I live next to the other Hebrew U. Definitely gonna work at their library/run up their stadium stairs just like I did back in UNC (woooo acknowledging and taking advantage of your privilege).
Hadassah has an equally compelling and interesting history. It also has very similar attitude toward diversity/pluralism, and as such, a very similar group of diversity moments. Though created as a Jewish entity in , the fact that its creators are Jewish is its only real tie to the religion. From the Mt. Scopus' campus' inception until 1948 and then again from 1975 until the present (from 1948 to 1967 Jordan declared it a demilitarized enclave and because of political reasons, was rendered unoperable; following '67 when Israel acquired the West Bank from Jordan, it renovated the campus until its eventual re-opening in 1975), the hospital catered to all people of all backgrounds and ages. "Medicine knows no identity," was definitely pertinent to this location.
Fun fact: my great-uncle was there when Hadassah reopened. There's a story somewhere about him cutting a ribbon that opened a building too during the same trip. You go great uncle!
Ok. So why am I mentioning this?
Let's go back to the original question. Look at the little green block here and there. It's square in the middle of East Jerusalem and surrounded by Arab neighborhoods. What is that all about?
So the University and hospital continued to function throughout all of the conflicts in the area. In 1947/48, things got hot and heavy, and both campuses abandoned their actions. After the ceasefire and the eventual negotiation in 1949, Jordan and Israel agreed to allow an access road to the Mount Scopus campus, and Hebrew U continued as it did before the war. Hadassah, as mentioned before, did not return until '67 because it became so inconvenient to continue its operations, and so they moved to this location in Ein Kerem, West Jerusalem.
All right. That's cool. Are you done?
No.
But Hebrew U and Hadassah are in that green block. I get it. Can't we move on?
No. We haven't addressed two things: what is Issawiya doing in there and the relationship between Hebrew U and French Hill.
Issawiya has been there since 1838. It has moved slightly because of development. The neighborhood where Hebrew U bought the land that was on the outskirts of Issawiya, then, and is now directly next to it because of development.
Another notable thing about this area is the French Hill neighborhood. Notice that it seems to connect this green block to West Jerusalem. This was intentional. The Israeli government after '67 decided to utilize the land that they found themselves in control over (annexed, conquered, liberated... whatever your word choice is) in order to start solidifying Israel against future attacks (in addition to other concerns, but this one was at the root). So, the Israeli government decided to reach out to an area they owned during the entire period between '48 and '67 but had difficulty developing to its potential: Mount Scopus. Thus, French Hill was born, and became the first actual township/settlement built and inhabited across the green line.
So, Hebrew U had an indirect hand to the beginning of settlements/townships across the green line so as to provide a safe and secure way for Israelis to access Mount Scopus, an area that was Jewishly owned for the good of the surrounding public. The Mt. Scopus Hadassah area was renovated in the meantime as well because of the results of the '67 war, and became a center for everyone in the Jerusalem area regardless of race.
I haven't touched that though Palestinians on the other side of the wall are welcome to these two places... the nature of checkpoints and the laws in Israel make it very hard to get to these locations. This isn't to say Hebrew U denies Palestinians admission or Hadassah denies Palestinians. I'm talking here about what the wall and the current state of affairs in the West Bank does for people who want to take advantage of these resources, which are, by their charter and creed, open to the public.
That paragraph needs to be longer, cause this is not a simple situation. But in particular contexts, I think I need to say that this moment, to me, emphasizes some of the costs and inevitable contradictions in maintaining the current occupation/state of Israeli military actions in the West Bank,
while at the same time billing oneself as a Jewish state as democratic and seeking to promote the work of organizations that will enact this ideal by serving everyone in the area that it can.
As David Sklar says in his blogpost: How can a country with so many contradictions, so many groups, communities, and people purposely pulling in opposite directions, move forward?
I don't think I have an answer that will address everything. I don't think anyone, truly, does. So the best I can do is give you snippets.
IV. Jerusalem Complexities Continued: East Jerusalem Tour of Arab Neighborhoods
My group and I went on a tour with Ir Amim, an organization whose explicit goal is to educate people on the social and political issues that impact the Jerusalem municipality and thereby the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. This was a bus tour of the different areas, starting from Gilo in the south and going to Shu'afat in the north east. Our route went something like this.
I know. Most of you on first glance see Ir Amim as another leftist group that seeks to push an agenda of peace and reconciliation. While this is true, I found the tour brutally honest about many things that a leftist group would probably not admit or do on a tour. Here are a few:
1) The tour guide was Israeli with an incredible American English accent (or maybe she was American and made Aliyah with her family when she was young... I can't remember). Throughout the process, she emphasized how scary it was to live through the Second Intifada. "While I waited for the bus, I wondered if this one would be my last."
2) She said she feels "relieved that the wall is in place, as it keeps my family safe."
3) Whenever she talked about Israel, she said the words "we."
4) She said that she'd feel uncomfortable if the wall were located on the green line. "It wouldn't be safe enough."
This all said, here is another snippet of this tour. It's eight minutes long and shows a little bit of the complexities with the Arab neighborhoods within Jerusalem.
In addition to this snippet, she talked about the same things I had been talking about in the past: East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods have significantly less municipal services in their neighborhoods as compared to Israeli Jewish neighborhoods (an urban planner pointed out water barrels on the top of Arab houses in these houses; a person told me these are for when running water does not come, or when there is dirty/unclean water through the pipes). Trash in these neighborhoods are piled high. Comparatively, Israeli neighborhoods have people who pick up this trash as their job (a high number of which are Palestinian Arabs). The same cannot be said for Arab neighborhoods.
These are all realities, but then she said something that, again, a leftist organization would not say: "The authorities in the Jerusalem municipality are aware of this, and over the past four years they have continually said that it's a problem they need to address. This is significant as this problem had never been acknowledged before. This type of thing takes time, of course, and logistics can sometimes be a burden to enacting this image. Ir Amim just wants you to get a sense of the complexity of this issue by letting you see that it still is a problem to be addressed, regardless of what the municipality is saying."
On education: "Arab schools learn under the Jordanian curriculum because the families didn't want their kids learning at an Israeli school." *note: my placement at Yad B'yad is trying to combat this trend!* "This is all well and good, but there is right now a huge classroom and school shortage in E. Jerusalem, and this has been the case over the past 20 years. Right now there are 40 psychologists on call in W. Jerusalem schools vs. 10 psychologists in the overcrowded E. Jerusalem schools. In that time, the municipality has built several parks and neighborhoods for Jewish people to live over the green line."
Again, take into account the paragraph before.
On the separation wall/security fence (cement boundary... whatever you want to call it). The woman talked about how the boundary definitely helped curb the attacks and violence in Israel proper, but that there were other factors to this trend as well: "There was a complete culture shift in Arab resistance from the West Bank when Arafat died in 2004. Arafat was a proponent of armed resistance whereas Abbas, the current prime minister, supported nonviolent resistance. A lot of Israelis will say that they have violent Palestinians already behind bars. But since Abbas has been Prime Minister, he too has jailed countless Palestinians who have committed significant acts of violence (everything from murder to bombs). This has also been a significant factor in why there was a drop in attacks. Sure now people are throwing rocks, but it is not as significant as it was back during the Second Intifada because of Abbas' crackdown on violence from the Palestinians in the West Bank."
Somehow, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are working together in a way that isn't very readily apparent.
On housing demolitions: "Housing demolitions occur from W. Jerusalem to E. Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, it is illegal to develop without the state's permission, as it is all state-owned land, so if there is any illegal building, then it is destroyed. The reason is both environmental and also because the municipality wants to curb population explosions. This is changing: over the last five years the land is becoming more privatized in a specifically Jewish way.
The after-effect of all of this is the following: E. Jerusalem often needs to develop or to build beyond their communities, but Jerusalem puts a cap on anything above a particular *small* percent of the current buildings in E. Jerusalem. E. Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods have populations that are growing much faster than that of W. Jerusalem, and they have less space for the amount of people living there, so you would think that the municipality would proportionally allow this, but they don't. Thus, more demolitions happen on the E. Jerusalem side for this very reason. 70% more actually. Israelis over the green line get permits to build easier because they do not grow or build at as fast a rate, or because the government had a plan for them."
The tour was definitely enlightening as most of these tours have been thus far... but I left wanting to talk with a person in charge of security, or a person on the development board.
A new quest is born, and with it, a new blog post in the future!
Jerusalem and Other Ventures from the Ground Up
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Week #3: Hasan's Volunteer Work
Aha! I have caught up enough to answer the long-held question:
WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU REALLY DOING IN ISRAEL?
Well, here's a snapshot!
I. Hasan Bhatti, Music Advisor/Organizer for the Jerusalem Youth Chorus
II. Hasan Bhatti, English Teacher and Volunteer for Yad B'Yad
III. Hasan Bhatti, One Time Volunteer/Barterer for Al Jebel Afterschool, and The Spoken Word Poem I Wrote About It
IV. Hasan Bhatti, Searching for One More Placement
I. Hasan Bhatti, Volunteer for the Jerusalem Youth Chorus
As part of the program I'm on, each of us has our own individual placements that we work with for two to three days a week. As I had indicated on my fundraising pages, I wanted to utilize ultimate and vocal music as a way to bring youth and Israeli, Palestinian, Israeli-Arab, etc. together.
So fancy that when I found the Jerusalem Youth Chorus run out of the Jerusalem International YMCA (whose plaque indicates its intention quite clearly as peace and reconciliation through communal programming) that brought Israelis, Palestinians, and immigrants together through vocal music.
And fancy that when I, the vocal musician + community organizer + youth educator, decided I'd like this to be one of my placements. Fortunately they had a volunteer spot open, and so I jumped right in.
Micah Hendler, the person who started and now directs the chorus, was a Seeds of Peace camper and counselor. He found his calling in high school and college through vocal music. "It's just the way that I found myself relating to other people in the world." The chorus was a project he did as part of his independent study thesis at Yale and he decided shortly afterward that if he had spent this much time thinking about this idea, he had better put it into action. After a skype call with the International YMCA, the CEO said he loved the idea and thus the Jerusalem Youth Chorus was born.
I went to my first day two Mondays back where I got to know Micah and sat in on the rehearsals from 4:30 to 8.
One might say that this is a very long time to sing even for stimulated high schoolers, but the members don't actually sing the whole time. The group devotes the first 45 minutes to rehearsing followed by a 15 minute break. For the next hour and a half they enter dialogue groups conducted in Hebrew and Arabic covering issues in Jerusalem that affect each side. After another 15 minute break, Micah takes them again for the final 45 minutes of rehearsals.
Three of the guys in the chorus speak only Arabic while everyone else can speak Hebrew and English. Micah speaks Arabic pretty fluently, but this doesn't help much of the other singers. There is little integration between the two just because of the raw language barrier, but when they sing, they smile, laugh and high five one another freely without need to speak.
This is the beauty of music that needs no language to speak but the manipulation of vocal chords.
Micah has also become a kind of mentor-friend as well along the way. After all, he graduated in 2012 and started this chorus literally the week afterwards, so our ages are very . We've drank scotch on his porch while munching on burgers, we discuss the dynamics and difficulties facing the chorus, and we both were directors and arrangers of vocal music during our high school and college career. He's asked me for advice on music matters, arrangements, and community organizing for the chorus.
Given my background and experience, I'm really excited to put these skills to the test with a very passionate and driven individual :-)
Oh, and tomorrow (2/10/14) I'll be going to Tel Aviv with the chorus while they sing with Voices for Peace, another Palestinian/Israeli chorus in Tel Aviv.
.......... I don't know if you can tell or not. But I REALLY like this placement :-).
II. Hasan Bhatti, Volunteer for Yad B'yad
More on this as my duties come into fruition.
But I've spent some time here, and the teachers are of the kindest I've met, the students just as warm as those back in the states (except they speak more esoteric, and in my opinion, beautiful languages interchangeably).
I've worked so far with 2nd graders, 4th graders, and 9th graders. The goal is to start doing poetry/creative performance with them. We'll see if this happens.
III. Hasan Bhatti, One Time Volunteer/Barterer for Al Jebel Afterschool, and The Spoken Word Poem I Wrote About It
Two Wednesdays back, I went with Mischa and David to what we thought was going to be a permanent volunteer placement for us (I'll explain at the end of the post): an afterschool for Bedouin children on the outskirts of Al-Azeriya.
Some background: Al-Azeriya is a Palestinian Arab village outside of Abu Dis on the West Bank side of the security fence/separation barrier (look at this map to see where it is in relation to the wall; notice that it's almost completely surrounded... and in the distant future, per the plans for the wall, it will be almost completely surrounded). Everyone here does not have Jerusalem citizenship, thus they have a very hard time crossing the wall unless they have a really really good excuse go over in order to get a permit from the Israeli government (which itself is a long long process).
The stories about Palestinians being delayed at or inhibited by checkpoints is a fact that these folks have to deal with on a day to day basis.
Al-Azeriya I have no good credible history on, nor have I spoken with anyone there. So I'm sorry to the history buffs; the history will not be shared this time around...
And hooray for everyone else, who are tired of my historical rampages (but, honestly, in order to understand this conflict... you need to at least start to look at history)
Al-Jebel literally means "The Hill" in Arabic. This is an area that is almost fully made up of displaced and relocated Arab Bedouins. These are people who have been kicked out of their ordinary stomping grounds that were located in Area C, which is completely controlled by the Israeli for security and governmental use (where no one but Jewish Israelis are allowed except for that 1% of the land in Area C that Israel has designated to Palestinians. Yes folks. This is a fact on the ground. See here for details).
But more on Area C soon. This is just the story concerning Bedouin Arabs.
You always hear about Bedouins being forced from their land because of governmental or security needs, but you do not hear about where they end up. Al-Jebel is where a portion of them ended up. This place was filled with permanent structures, rocks, excess metal, rusty scissors, random auto parts, toxic waste next to a water jug, llamas, half constructed houses, piles of rubble, rusted nails, limited resources....
and at the same time, they had homes, an endless supply of freshly baked pita, and a community, all against a breathtaking view of the West Bank hills.
See my videos here and here for a little more background on Al-Azariya and the Bedouins that live there.
Our task for the afternoon was to entertain the local boys in Al-Jebel for the afternoon. We had brought with us a soccer ball and a tennis ball as our tribute, and an excitement to work at a place across the wall.
As soon as we got there, we realized this boys' program was a much less structured than we had originally though. The boys were not located at the center; they were all over the place.
When they saw us coming through, this is what occurred: they looked at the two balls, our American bodies, and beckoned us over with excited Arabic phrases. We all interacted with each other quite nicely for a time. We played with them in a secluded courtyard that was all rocks and dirt (but had two soccer goals, so it was enough), we introduced ourselves and talked about what we were doing there, and we handed out sweets we had gotten for them.
And then, things started to get frazzled
Two of them began to claim these balls as their own. And good thing none of us knew enough Arabic to barter.
This was going to be interesting.
And it was very interesting. We all were there with a couple of phrases of each others language. So we communicated in the ways that we could (gestures, communicating as much as we could with our limited knowledge... the random giving of candy) and it seemed to work ok, except the two kids who occupied our tennis ball and soccer ball were not letting up.
So we ignored them, because we were going to be there for another hour. Later on we got them to cooperate and
In that time, we did different odds and ends with them.
#1: we pulled out our technology (ipods/iphones/ipads) and started to show them different applications. They were so intrigued by all of this. This was not something they wanted to steal, but something they wanted to use. I was happy to see that they respected us that much.
#2: Each of the smaller boys wanted us to lift them up and twirl them in the air. So we did.
Except, everyone wanted it... so we both got quite a workout and also got quite a back ache.
#3: They each started to ask us to chase them.
This #3 was probably my favorite.
The game went like this: I ran and ran until I caught them. Many of these kids are not speedy, but they are quick as gazelles, which puts my quickness to absolute shame.
But there was something so beautiful about this game: it came in the context of Al-Azeriya, of Al-Jebel, and of Bedouins, all of which are under a bind in some sort of freedom, yet in those moments of running just to run, we did just that: run.
And that in there was freedom.
I wrote a poem about these moments of feeling free while we ran in a place that is ridden with limits, and performed it at a spoken word evening the next night. Here's the poem in its entirety.
When we came back from our time there, we were exhausted, but in a completely positive way. We were excited to go back...
But unfortunately we will not be going back, at least for the short term. The director has gotten concerns from local families about men they do not know working with their children, which I can definitely understand. It's a culture that does not trust outsiders because of what they have been through, and for me it's
But it still left me sad, because all of us in that moment had a really fun time.
What is most sad about this situation is that we had plans to make a structure and start to teach them English slowly through activity. Perhaps this will change soon. I'm sincerely hoping that it will
so that we can fumble, laugh, and learn from each other like we did that day.
WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU REALLY DOING IN ISRAEL?
Well, here's a snapshot!
I. Hasan Bhatti, Music Advisor/Organizer for the Jerusalem Youth Chorus
II. Hasan Bhatti, English Teacher and Volunteer for Yad B'Yad
III. Hasan Bhatti, One Time Volunteer/Barterer for Al Jebel Afterschool, and The Spoken Word Poem I Wrote About It
IV. Hasan Bhatti, Searching for One More Placement
I. Hasan Bhatti, Volunteer for the Jerusalem Youth Chorus
As part of the program I'm on, each of us has our own individual placements that we work with for two to three days a week. As I had indicated on my fundraising pages, I wanted to utilize ultimate and vocal music as a way to bring youth and Israeli, Palestinian, Israeli-Arab, etc. together.
So fancy that when I found the Jerusalem Youth Chorus run out of the Jerusalem International YMCA (whose plaque indicates its intention quite clearly as peace and reconciliation through communal programming) that brought Israelis, Palestinians, and immigrants together through vocal music.
And fancy that when I, the vocal musician + community organizer + youth educator, decided I'd like this to be one of my placements. Fortunately they had a volunteer spot open, and so I jumped right in.
Micah Hendler, the person who started and now directs the chorus, was a Seeds of Peace camper and counselor. He found his calling in high school and college through vocal music. "It's just the way that I found myself relating to other people in the world." The chorus was a project he did as part of his independent study thesis at Yale and he decided shortly afterward that if he had spent this much time thinking about this idea, he had better put it into action. After a skype call with the International YMCA, the CEO said he loved the idea and thus the Jerusalem Youth Chorus was born.
I went to my first day two Mondays back where I got to know Micah and sat in on the rehearsals from 4:30 to 8.
One might say that this is a very long time to sing even for stimulated high schoolers, but the members don't actually sing the whole time. The group devotes the first 45 minutes to rehearsing followed by a 15 minute break. For the next hour and a half they enter dialogue groups conducted in Hebrew and Arabic covering issues in Jerusalem that affect each side. After another 15 minute break, Micah takes them again for the final 45 minutes of rehearsals.
Three of the guys in the chorus speak only Arabic while everyone else can speak Hebrew and English. Micah speaks Arabic pretty fluently, but this doesn't help much of the other singers. There is little integration between the two just because of the raw language barrier, but when they sing, they smile, laugh and high five one another freely without need to speak.
This is the beauty of music that needs no language to speak but the manipulation of vocal chords.
Micah has also become a kind of mentor-friend as well along the way. After all, he graduated in 2012 and started this chorus literally the week afterwards, so our ages are very . We've drank scotch on his porch while munching on burgers, we discuss the dynamics and difficulties facing the chorus, and we both were directors and arrangers of vocal music during our high school and college career. He's asked me for advice on music matters, arrangements, and community organizing for the chorus.
Given my background and experience, I'm really excited to put these skills to the test with a very passionate and driven individual :-)
Oh, and tomorrow (2/10/14) I'll be going to Tel Aviv with the chorus while they sing with Voices for Peace, another Palestinian/Israeli chorus in Tel Aviv.
.......... I don't know if you can tell or not. But I REALLY like this placement :-).
II. Hasan Bhatti, Volunteer for Yad B'yad
More on this as my duties come into fruition.
But I've spent some time here, and the teachers are of the kindest I've met, the students just as warm as those back in the states (except they speak more esoteric, and in my opinion, beautiful languages interchangeably).
I've worked so far with 2nd graders, 4th graders, and 9th graders. The goal is to start doing poetry/creative performance with them. We'll see if this happens.
III. Hasan Bhatti, One Time Volunteer/Barterer for Al Jebel Afterschool, and The Spoken Word Poem I Wrote About It
Two Wednesdays back, I went with Mischa and David to what we thought was going to be a permanent volunteer placement for us (I'll explain at the end of the post): an afterschool for Bedouin children on the outskirts of Al-Azeriya.
Some background: Al-Azeriya is a Palestinian Arab village outside of Abu Dis on the West Bank side of the security fence/separation barrier (look at this map to see where it is in relation to the wall; notice that it's almost completely surrounded... and in the distant future, per the plans for the wall, it will be almost completely surrounded). Everyone here does not have Jerusalem citizenship, thus they have a very hard time crossing the wall unless they have a really really good excuse go over in order to get a permit from the Israeli government (which itself is a long long process).
The stories about Palestinians being delayed at or inhibited by checkpoints is a fact that these folks have to deal with on a day to day basis.
Al-Azeriya I have no good credible history on, nor have I spoken with anyone there. So I'm sorry to the history buffs; the history will not be shared this time around...
And hooray for everyone else, who are tired of my historical rampages (but, honestly, in order to understand this conflict... you need to at least start to look at history)
Al-Jebel literally means "The Hill" in Arabic. This is an area that is almost fully made up of displaced and relocated Arab Bedouins. These are people who have been kicked out of their ordinary stomping grounds that were located in Area C, which is completely controlled by the Israeli for security and governmental use (where no one but Jewish Israelis are allowed except for that 1% of the land in Area C that Israel has designated to Palestinians. Yes folks. This is a fact on the ground. See here for details).
But more on Area C soon. This is just the story concerning Bedouin Arabs.
You always hear about Bedouins being forced from their land because of governmental or security needs, but you do not hear about where they end up. Al-Jebel is where a portion of them ended up. This place was filled with permanent structures, rocks, excess metal, rusty scissors, random auto parts, toxic waste next to a water jug, llamas, half constructed houses, piles of rubble, rusted nails, limited resources....
and at the same time, they had homes, an endless supply of freshly baked pita, and a community, all against a breathtaking view of the West Bank hills.
See my videos here and here for a little more background on Al-Azariya and the Bedouins that live there.
Our task for the afternoon was to entertain the local boys in Al-Jebel for the afternoon. We had brought with us a soccer ball and a tennis ball as our tribute, and an excitement to work at a place across the wall.
As soon as we got there, we realized this boys' program was a much less structured than we had originally though. The boys were not located at the center; they were all over the place.
When they saw us coming through, this is what occurred: they looked at the two balls, our American bodies, and beckoned us over with excited Arabic phrases. We all interacted with each other quite nicely for a time. We played with them in a secluded courtyard that was all rocks and dirt (but had two soccer goals, so it was enough), we introduced ourselves and talked about what we were doing there, and we handed out sweets we had gotten for them.
And then, things started to get frazzled
Two of them began to claim these balls as their own. And good thing none of us knew enough Arabic to barter.
This was going to be interesting.
And it was very interesting. We all were there with a couple of phrases of each others language. So we communicated in the ways that we could (gestures, communicating as much as we could with our limited knowledge... the random giving of candy) and it seemed to work ok, except the two kids who occupied our tennis ball and soccer ball were not letting up.
So we ignored them, because we were going to be there for another hour. Later on we got them to cooperate and
In that time, we did different odds and ends with them.
#1: we pulled out our technology (ipods/iphones/ipads) and started to show them different applications. They were so intrigued by all of this. This was not something they wanted to steal, but something they wanted to use. I was happy to see that they respected us that much.
#2: Each of the smaller boys wanted us to lift them up and twirl them in the air. So we did.
Except, everyone wanted it... so we both got quite a workout and also got quite a back ache.
#3: They each started to ask us to chase them.
This #3 was probably my favorite.
The game went like this: I ran and ran until I caught them. Many of these kids are not speedy, but they are quick as gazelles, which puts my quickness to absolute shame.
But there was something so beautiful about this game: it came in the context of Al-Azeriya, of Al-Jebel, and of Bedouins, all of which are under a bind in some sort of freedom, yet in those moments of running just to run, we did just that: run.
And that in there was freedom.
I wrote a poem about these moments of feeling free while we ran in a place that is ridden with limits, and performed it at a spoken word evening the next night. Here's the poem in its entirety.
When we came back from our time there, we were exhausted, but in a completely positive way. We were excited to go back...
But unfortunately we will not be going back, at least for the short term. The director has gotten concerns from local families about men they do not know working with their children, which I can definitely understand. It's a culture that does not trust outsiders because of what they have been through, and for me it's
But it still left me sad, because all of us in that moment had a really fun time.
What is most sad about this situation is that we had plans to make a structure and start to teach them English slowly through activity. Perhaps this will change soon. I'm sincerely hoping that it will
so that we can fumble, laugh, and learn from each other like we did that day.
IV. Hasan Bhatti, Searching for One More Placement
Because Al-Jebel hasn't worked out, I'm in the market for another placement. Preferably it'll be an Arabic speaking placement. We shall see. Hopefully it shall work out!
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Weekend #3: Welcome to Ramallah
And now, something completely but not altogether different.
Two Fridays ago, my roommate and I took a jaunt across the green line, beyond the wall, past the abandoned Arab villages that are filled with trash and only have municipal services once a month, past the Jews and Muslims bustling to their religious services, past Jerusalem municipal walls (yet still very close to the light rail line)...
to the locus of the Palestinian government (in exile, according to Palestinians): Ramallah, Area A, West Bank.
Digest:
I. Intro to Ramallah: Clean, Beautiful, and 'Dangerous'
II. Wen Muqata'aa? Arafat's Tomb and the PA Government Complex
III. The Old City and the Ramallah Hills
IV. An Evening of Coffee, Food, Expats and Politics, featuring a call for Hasan to start making judgments in the land of Israel
V. Through the "most crazy checkpoint around Jerusalem": Qalandiya
I. Intro to Ramallah: Clean, Beautiful, and 'Dangerous'
As I said before, Area A is completely controlled by the Palestinian Authority. There is no IDF authority officially placed in these areas, making them "insecure" places for Israelis by the government's telling. We saw this first hand as we crossed the Qalandiya checkpoint into the southern tip of the city, where this sign stood quite loudly in its lovely sheet of red metal.
This is of course not the whole truth. There are Israelis and Jews that pass into Area A all the time and have no problem. There are other Israelis that pass into Area A that are not so fine.
Again, the g'vulot here are all relative and dubious, and I, the US citizen and a person with slightly Arabic tints in my physiology, can't begin to understand the pluses and minuses of a simple sign.
This was actually my first thought after we got off the Arab bus (which, for all of you that may be thinking this was a bad idea: it is just as unsafe as an Israeli bus with its jerks and reckless speeding, is just as dirty, and has just as lovely and friendly people on it): I do not have the problem of appearing Israeli or Jewish here because I do not wear a yarmulke (a cap) or tzitzit (a prayer shawl, two public markers of being Jewish). It is this fact that makes me appreciate yet also hate the existence of the sign I saw above. Who knows how people would have reacted if a kippah/yarmulke sat on my head as I went down a street I had been on for the first time or with people I probably had never seen before.
And lord knows that the last thing a Palestinian might think me to be Jewish just by looking at me.
But I'll get back to Qalandiya, the checkpoint known for often times being an absolute mess.
So we got off the bus and we walked into town. I registered a whole lot of things at first glance.
1) The streets were deserted. This is because we arrived at 11:00 AM, an hour before the weekly Juma prayer for Muslims (most holy prayer time)
2) The streets were well kept and clean
3) The businesses here resembled the random assortment of German Colony malls
4) There was a coffee shop named Stars and Bucks. And it had better coffee than the Seattle-based organization.
5) Sh'warma with unlimited sides for 13 shekhels? Uh. Yeah. Get in my belly.
Here's a vid of the first couple of moments off the bus.
So, we promptly annihilated our hunger with marinated chicken, curried cauliflower, and as many fixins as we could fit into our pitas.
And then, we went to go find Arafat's tomb (Muqata'aa) and the central PA government building.
II. Wen Muqata'aa?
"Wen Muqata'aa?"
"aldkfjpoiuopqwervndspoiqweuroqw."
Yeah, that's essentially what would happen when I'd converse with people in Arabic.
Our Arabic lessons hadn't started so we were running on Lonely Planet-phrases-that-you-probably-would-never-actually-say-unless-you-really-really-wanted-to-seem-like-a-tourist.
One of these phrases was 'wen,' the Arabic word for where. Yes, English speakers, it's confusing. Then again, who are we to judge their languages for being confusing when it's a DIFFERENT language from ours, and ours has no business meaning anything in this language unless this language says so.
I'm also lying a bit. This was my first interaction. My second went like this:
"Wen Muqata'a?"
"Ho... skdjfppisaf. hon aafdioupqwerj sa?" (oh, it's there, gestures down and around, get it?"
"Sa7." (yes I get it)
No I didn't.
The third:
"Wen Muqata'a?"
"Down this road, to the right, and it'll be at the end of the road."
If there was one major lesson I took from this trip, it was that I had a lot of Arabic translation and pronunciation to work on.
So we found Arafat's tomb. As we went inside, this is how it looked, and this was on the way into the tomb.
The room we entered was surrounded by glass with floors and walls completely white. A bodyguard dressed in army clothes stood off to the left and another one with a lieutenant's uniform stood behind the tombstone. I wanted to ask him questions. So I did.
"Can you tell me about Arafat?"
"As you can see from the grave, he lived from 24 August, 1929 to 11 November 2004."
He didn't answer my question. Maybe he didn't understand. Let's try again.
"Oh! Yes, I see that. Can you tell me about Arafat?"
"About Arafat?"
"Yes." Yeah he just didn't understand the first time. Or he was on autopilot to present some information to tourists.
"He was our leader for a very long time. We all loved him."
"Ah. What was he to you?"
"He was like a father to me. Like a father to our people."
"Mm. How so?"
"What?"
"How was he a father to you? What did he do that made you think this way about him?"
A combination of behaviors occur at the same time in his face. He is at once confused, nervous, domineering, and unsure. The buffed up body guard inches closer and says something to him in Arabic. I'm unsure what he said because, again, I'm not that good, but I do know it was probably in reference to my question.
"He provided everything for our people. He was a great leader."
If you do your research on Arafat, you'll learn that his style of leadership included sending millions of dollars that was given to the PA in aid to his wife in France so that she could live the high life while the Palestinian Authority withered. You'll also learn he encouraged his people through all violent struggles yet also sat at many peace tables. You'll also see his immense public political career, decorated in several accomplishments, several failures, and several things in between.
So while it was nice to hear this man's account, I knew it might have been forced. I decided to let it lie because I think I might have struck a personal tension that I didn't care to stretch.
III. The Old City and the Ramallah Hills
So we left with our unanswered answers and went to explore the Old City where many Christian families from Ramallah resided. Some videos of this can be found here and here.
As we walked back to our program director's friends' house where we were staying for the night, we also happened on a lookout of the hills surrounding Ramallah. Really beautiful. Take a look.
Despite the fact that I joked in the video with David, it is in moments like that when I look at a land so beautiful or important for people in the context of the conflict that I feel the most elated.
And the most crushed.
IV. An Evening of Western Coffee, Expats and Politics
A) Coffee, Al-Quds University, and Abu Dis
We continued our trek up and down the winding streets of the Old City, out to Batan Ahwa Street, where I took a couple of snapchats of the hills cont'd (or, in Sandy's case, the sun). We took a right on Dar Ibrahim/Rukab and took a right just past the only gas station we saw in the city (the street right next to blue P that leads down to Al Ram and Jaffa). On the way, we found Osama's Side Business, some random colors chilling on a balcony, and a memorial to a child who had been killed. You can track our path here (start from right next to "Ramallah School" leading to Batan Ahwa).
After a couple more turns and some help from the Lonely Planet, we laid our bottoms to rest at a coffee shop called Cafe De La Paix. A local Ramallan man came up, quite Frenchly (... late, slowly, slurred his Arabic.... love you Johan and Francois ;0)) and asked us to sit, Frenchly, so we did. Here is a video from me while we were there, talking about other impressions of Ramallah in the moment.
After a latte, a cappuccino, and a walk through the Ramallah market, we got in touch with our host for the night Casey, an English teacher at Al-Quds University as part of a Bard College fellowship. The university is located in Abu Dis, a town that is often covered in both controversy and tension.
Take a look at the Jerusalem municipal map once again. If you'll notice, Abu Dis is half inside and half outside of the Jerusalem municipal area. However, all of Abu Dis is blocked from Jerusalem because of the separation barrier, no one in Abu Dis has Jerusalem citizenship cards, and because it is beyond the wall, the Jerusalem municipal services rarely come.
But... this is the tip of the iceberg.
As we sat with Casey, he talked about the university and his job as well. Al Quds University is right next to the separation barrier, and the campus has had people who throw rocks and other objects over the wall/into the nearby IDF guard post. Earlier in the week, this happened, and the response was a squadron of fully armed IDF soldiers who responded by shooting tear gas and rubber bullets over the wall. They also pulled over students indiscriminately and started to question them harshly and brutally. On the day that we arrived at Casey's, he had just finished writing a letter to the IDF on behalf of all the staff from Al-Quds, stating that the action was not committed by a student and that the behavior breached fundamental rights of students at the university.
I asked him how often the IDF comes into Abu Dis for the same purpose. Casey told us that this happens almost every day, and not always because of perceived violent activity. "Such is life in the occupation."
As an Israeli woman said with Ir Amim, a group that takes people on a tour of the contentious areas of Jerusalem's neighborhoods, "I now feel safer with the wall in place. But with it comes a very vital question that I ask myself: how much must my safety cost? The wall to me both secures and haunts me."
But... this is also just another tip of an iceberg that runs deeper than I can encapsulate with just one conversation. I hope I'll be able to spend some time there at some point during my visit.
B) Danish Birthdays, the Freedom of Having No Connection to Israel, and A Call for Hasan to Start Making Judgments
We then met up with a Danish friend that had crashed on our couch for the night to celebrate her birthday at a local Arabic barbecue place called Zarour. There we met a couple of her friends as well over marinated chicken, hummus, turkish salad, and bottomless baskets of khubz (bread).
There was even a Danish birthday song which... was amazing. You choose three instruments, and then in the breakdown between verses, you play this instrument. For a taste, go here. You will not be disappointed.
We got to talking about what we were doing in the area, us with our Hebrew/Arabic learning volunteer program with the Arab/Israeli school Yad B'Yad, and them with their work with refugees in Bethlehem and Ramallah. We asked each other questions about what we were doing and listened politely, but it was apparent that both of us just lived in completely different worlds. Some of the people at the table were very interested in the concept of a dialogue/relationship-building program through a school, while others said that this was all well and good but did not address the current situation on the ground.
And I had to agree with him. Yad B'Yad is a program that embraces long-range change, not one that will address the current issues like the separation barrier/security fence, or water issues, or contiguous states, or Jerusalem as a binational capitol in the here and now.
But what was most interesting to me about this conversation was that it showed how easy it was for these people our age who were not Jewish, nor had any real affiliation to Judaism, to not be associated with Israel, whose importance at this current time relies on it being a place for Jews to feel at home. To them, the issue was humanitarian, not about a Jewish state. In a way, it's a privilege of not having to grapple with the reality of being Jewish and how this intersects with the state of Israel.
It was then that I decided that I needed to start making some clear judgments about my relationship to this land, and in that conversation, I let them know the dilemma I felt as a Jew who saw the occupation as extremely problematic for the overall safety and security for everyone in the area. What Israel is doing in with the Palestinian people in the West Bank, with its multicultural citizens within its borders, and all of those that do not conform to any of these labels disturbs me to my very core; but I cannot turn my back on this land or the people who love it, and this includes those in Israel that make legislation that continues these situations. In fact, I know I now have to fight for what I believe in, or I'll get caught listening to other people, and in turn, validating their opinion.
People here tend to let others know exactly where they stand; it is a blunt culture. So, I'm going to try my hand at it and start to converse in bluntness about me, an American by default, a Pakistani Jew by religion/lineage, a Muslim solely by lineage, a believer in relationships as a method of changing life.
Recap of my thoughts can be found here.
C) Putting What I Discovered into Practice with Other Expats
In fact, I even got to put this into practice a few hours later.
After our delicious dinner and political discussion, we met back up with Casey's friends at a giant expat party... which actually became more like a less sloppy Friday evening at Colby college with much better beer and much worse hard alcohol.
There we met Anna, another writing teacher from Bard who had been working at Al-Quds for the past half a year. We continued our conversations with her about our respective actions in the area.
"Where are you coming from?"
"We're living in W. Jerusalem doing a volunteer program."
Every time I speak this sentence, I am acutely aware of how judged I feel just for where I live and for what I do.
Aval, bas/tayib.
"Oh. What do you both do?"
"We work with organizations in the Jerusalem area that do peace work between all the different populations in the area, and social justice work with underserved populations as well."
"Oh yeah? Where do you do that?"
"At Yad B'yad, a school for Arabs and Israelis, and at an afterschool program in Al-Azeriya."
"And how effective do you think they are?"
"Well, we haven't started there yet. Our first day is on Monday for the first and Wednesday for the second."
"Ah."
"Why?"
"Well. I think dialogue and relationship building is good for helping building relationships. But it doesn't help anything with regard to this conflict."
"Oh yeah?," I asked. I was actually genuinely interested in this perspective. After all, I am pretty confident in relationships being the first building block for any true actions regarding justice or peace in the area, and anyone who has a different perspective obviously has it for a different reason. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I think it normalizes the conflict and doesn't address its roots."
Wow. Expats certainly have the judgment gene come out when here too.
"Well. I don't necessarily agree. I think dialogue and an exchange of perspectives between people normalizes relationships, not the conflict, and it does so over a much longer period of time. I see dialogue as the first step in a longer process."
"Well that's the problem, though. The dialogue will take too long for anything to change."
"That's true, but how will you also know how to act cleanly and together in this situation when dialogue is not a part of this process?"
"Fight for what you believe in now and worry about cohesion later."
I had heard this perspective before, but it was in that moment that I really came to respect Anna's certainty about leaving who are not with you behind in favor of what is right. It was very Gandhi.
"I agree. Dialogue is a top-down process, and it is dependent on both sides being a part of it. I do think it needs to be a part of the solution, because you won't start to better understand the people's needs here."
"Yeah. Maybe. I still think they're ineffective when applied to this area."
"Well that's what I'm here to see in real time. My focus is on education as a mode of communal development and empowerment for all people in conflict zones, so if it works it works. If it doesn't, well then I guess I need to change tracks."
She shrugged at this comment. Oh well.
David sold his idea to her better than I did. He talked about how theater can be a useful method for establishing relationships over a combined activity. Apparently I need some practice in my delivery, or a better thesis statement.
D) Darwish and Thai Food
Being a poet, I was very excited to go to the PA's Mahmoud Darwish museum that was a mere two blocks from Casey's house. Here is a beautiful poem by him, just as an example.
He wrote a lot about Palestinian life, the conflict, and started many literary projects for Arabs and Palestinians in his lifetime. Respected by everyone in the area, Darwish truly changed people with his words.
Here are a couple of videos and pictures from my time there: Palestinian flag, View from the flag, Description of Darwish, my reactions after the Darwish Museum.
And then, we got the best thai curry I've ever had. Yum.
V. Through the Qalandiya Checkpoint
Aka, the checkpoint that every single person in Israel and Palestine sighs heavily afterward and says. "What a mess."
So here starts my story about the Qalandiya Checkpoint, from the other side.
But first, a quick video of the hauntingly beautiful murals on the Palestinian side of the wall. You can't read many of the messages, but there was everything from "Beware: humans inside," to "Free Palestine." None of the larger messages seemed violent from afar. And here is is one and another within Ramallah just before we got on the bus.
While we waited in the car line, David and I decided to get off the bus and walk through the checkpoint, both to make it quicker, and also to experience it in real time.
Quick aside about this: for most checkpoints, Palestinians with Palestinian cards must get off the bus and show their papers, while internationals and non-Palestinian citizens can stay on the bus while the IDF comes around and checks your papers. There is a movement here that tells internationals to "show solidarity, walk through the checkpoints," instead of sitting on the bus, as the process on the bus is much quicker and less cumbersome.
This last fact didn't really factor into our decision, though throughout the whole process, I did start to feel a fear of not being let in that I probably wouldn't have off the bus, both because of my previous Israeli border experience, and also because of the way the checkpoints were structured (as I'll detail below). Who knows if this is a fraction or anything at all like how other people in the lines around me felt. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.
I'll attach some photos to give some senses as well.
We approached the line leading into one of the four main gates. Everything had metal bars. There was a turn-style much like the New York subway system in a gate that David remarked was much like the Tijuana border between the US and Mexico in Southern California.
Every person had to go through the turn-style one by one, and at any point it was stopped in time so that the guard could check people's papers, leaving a person completely surrounded by metal bars.
Myself and David went through together, put our things through the metal detector much like airport security. I went through the standing metal detector, and nothing beeped, and began to show the girl my passport.
When I did, she told me over the loudspeaker, which was pumped up to an insanely loud volume: GO BACK.
I asked her what? motioning that I didn't understand her. The microphone was on way too loud for me to be able to understand it.
"GO BACK."
Did I do something wrong?
So I went back through the metal detector and came back through. She asked for my VISA over the loudspeaker again. I showed it to her. She said, "Have a nice day," I think as sweetly as she could, but over the loudspeaker it kind of sounded like an oppressive comment.
Phew.
I realized after the experience how hard my heart was beating, not only because it was a new experience for me to be there, that I didn't know exactly what to do, and because I was worried about my name possibly causing an issue like the first time (though I realized this was ridiculous in retrospect as many many Palestinians with Muslim names pass through those gates easily with the correct papers, and I also had a US passport with an Israeli visa), but because of how intense it all was for a person who didn't have to do that often: the metal, the turn-style, the loud speaker, and the feeling of being completely without your fate for a good couple of minutes.
And this was all at a very low impact time during the day (3:00 PM).
But I shouldn't blow this out of proportion. I imagine those who pass through this checkpoint regularly have gotten used to this feeling and know how to navigate it rationally, and I imagine I'd also feel less shaken as I did this regularly and understood my own privilege in that situation.
A week later in Bethlehem, I felt much more relaxed about passing through. I even cracked jokes with the border guard who had just woken up to pass myself and David through. I spoke English most of the time, and I guess this worked well to my advantage.
But more on that next entry.
Two Fridays ago, my roommate and I took a jaunt across the green line, beyond the wall, past the abandoned Arab villages that are filled with trash and only have municipal services once a month, past the Jews and Muslims bustling to their religious services, past Jerusalem municipal walls (yet still very close to the light rail line)...
to the locus of the Palestinian government (in exile, according to Palestinians): Ramallah, Area A, West Bank.
Digest:
I. Intro to Ramallah: Clean, Beautiful, and 'Dangerous'
II. Wen Muqata'aa? Arafat's Tomb and the PA Government Complex
III. The Old City and the Ramallah Hills
IV. An Evening of Coffee, Food, Expats and Politics, featuring a call for Hasan to start making judgments in the land of Israel
V. Through the "most crazy checkpoint around Jerusalem": Qalandiya
I. Intro to Ramallah: Clean, Beautiful, and 'Dangerous'
As I said before, Area A is completely controlled by the Palestinian Authority. There is no IDF authority officially placed in these areas, making them "insecure" places for Israelis by the government's telling. We saw this first hand as we crossed the Qalandiya checkpoint into the southern tip of the city, where this sign stood quite loudly in its lovely sheet of red metal.
This is of course not the whole truth. There are Israelis and Jews that pass into Area A all the time and have no problem. There are other Israelis that pass into Area A that are not so fine.
Again, the g'vulot here are all relative and dubious, and I, the US citizen and a person with slightly Arabic tints in my physiology, can't begin to understand the pluses and minuses of a simple sign.
This was actually my first thought after we got off the Arab bus (which, for all of you that may be thinking this was a bad idea: it is just as unsafe as an Israeli bus with its jerks and reckless speeding, is just as dirty, and has just as lovely and friendly people on it): I do not have the problem of appearing Israeli or Jewish here because I do not wear a yarmulke (a cap) or tzitzit (a prayer shawl, two public markers of being Jewish). It is this fact that makes me appreciate yet also hate the existence of the sign I saw above. Who knows how people would have reacted if a kippah/yarmulke sat on my head as I went down a street I had been on for the first time or with people I probably had never seen before.
And lord knows that the last thing a Palestinian might think me to be Jewish just by looking at me.
But I'll get back to Qalandiya, the checkpoint known for often times being an absolute mess.
So we got off the bus and we walked into town. I registered a whole lot of things at first glance.
1) The streets were deserted. This is because we arrived at 11:00 AM, an hour before the weekly Juma prayer for Muslims (most holy prayer time)
2) The streets were well kept and clean
3) The businesses here resembled the random assortment of German Colony malls
4) There was a coffee shop named Stars and Bucks. And it had better coffee than the Seattle-based organization.
5) Sh'warma with unlimited sides for 13 shekhels? Uh. Yeah. Get in my belly.
Here's a vid of the first couple of moments off the bus.
So, we promptly annihilated our hunger with marinated chicken, curried cauliflower, and as many fixins as we could fit into our pitas.
And then, we went to go find Arafat's tomb (Muqata'aa) and the central PA government building.
II. Wen Muqata'aa?
"Wen Muqata'aa?"
"aldkfjpoiuopqwervndspoiqweuroqw."
Yeah, that's essentially what would happen when I'd converse with people in Arabic.
Our Arabic lessons hadn't started so we were running on Lonely Planet-phrases-that-you-probably-would-never-actually-say-unless-you-really-really-wanted-to-seem-like-a-tourist.
One of these phrases was 'wen,' the Arabic word for where. Yes, English speakers, it's confusing. Then again, who are we to judge their languages for being confusing when it's a DIFFERENT language from ours, and ours has no business meaning anything in this language unless this language says so.
I'm also lying a bit. This was my first interaction. My second went like this:
"Wen Muqata'a?"
"Ho... skdjfppisaf. hon aafdioupqwerj sa?" (oh, it's there, gestures down and around, get it?"
"Sa7." (yes I get it)
No I didn't.
The third:
"Wen Muqata'a?"
"Down this road, to the right, and it'll be at the end of the road."
If there was one major lesson I took from this trip, it was that I had a lot of Arabic translation and pronunciation to work on.
So we found Arafat's tomb. As we went inside, this is how it looked, and this was on the way into the tomb.
The room we entered was surrounded by glass with floors and walls completely white. A bodyguard dressed in army clothes stood off to the left and another one with a lieutenant's uniform stood behind the tombstone. I wanted to ask him questions. So I did.
"Can you tell me about Arafat?"
"As you can see from the grave, he lived from 24 August, 1929 to 11 November 2004."
He didn't answer my question. Maybe he didn't understand. Let's try again.
"Oh! Yes, I see that. Can you tell me about Arafat?"
"About Arafat?"
"Yes." Yeah he just didn't understand the first time. Or he was on autopilot to present some information to tourists.
"He was our leader for a very long time. We all loved him."
"Ah. What was he to you?"
"He was like a father to me. Like a father to our people."
"Mm. How so?"
"What?"
"How was he a father to you? What did he do that made you think this way about him?"
A combination of behaviors occur at the same time in his face. He is at once confused, nervous, domineering, and unsure. The buffed up body guard inches closer and says something to him in Arabic. I'm unsure what he said because, again, I'm not that good, but I do know it was probably in reference to my question.
"He provided everything for our people. He was a great leader."
If you do your research on Arafat, you'll learn that his style of leadership included sending millions of dollars that was given to the PA in aid to his wife in France so that she could live the high life while the Palestinian Authority withered. You'll also learn he encouraged his people through all violent struggles yet also sat at many peace tables. You'll also see his immense public political career, decorated in several accomplishments, several failures, and several things in between.
So while it was nice to hear this man's account, I knew it might have been forced. I decided to let it lie because I think I might have struck a personal tension that I didn't care to stretch.
III. The Old City and the Ramallah Hills
So we left with our unanswered answers and went to explore the Old City where many Christian families from Ramallah resided. Some videos of this can be found here and here.
As we walked back to our program director's friends' house where we were staying for the night, we also happened on a lookout of the hills surrounding Ramallah. Really beautiful. Take a look.
Despite the fact that I joked in the video with David, it is in moments like that when I look at a land so beautiful or important for people in the context of the conflict that I feel the most elated.
And the most crushed.
IV. An Evening of Western Coffee, Expats and Politics
A) Coffee, Al-Quds University, and Abu Dis
We continued our trek up and down the winding streets of the Old City, out to Batan Ahwa Street, where I took a couple of snapchats of the hills cont'd (or, in Sandy's case, the sun). We took a right on Dar Ibrahim/Rukab and took a right just past the only gas station we saw in the city (the street right next to blue P that leads down to Al Ram and Jaffa). On the way, we found Osama's Side Business, some random colors chilling on a balcony, and a memorial to a child who had been killed. You can track our path here (start from right next to "Ramallah School" leading to Batan Ahwa).
After a couple more turns and some help from the Lonely Planet, we laid our bottoms to rest at a coffee shop called Cafe De La Paix. A local Ramallan man came up, quite Frenchly (... late, slowly, slurred his Arabic.... love you Johan and Francois ;0)) and asked us to sit, Frenchly, so we did. Here is a video from me while we were there, talking about other impressions of Ramallah in the moment.
After a latte, a cappuccino, and a walk through the Ramallah market, we got in touch with our host for the night Casey, an English teacher at Al-Quds University as part of a Bard College fellowship. The university is located in Abu Dis, a town that is often covered in both controversy and tension.
Take a look at the Jerusalem municipal map once again. If you'll notice, Abu Dis is half inside and half outside of the Jerusalem municipal area. However, all of Abu Dis is blocked from Jerusalem because of the separation barrier, no one in Abu Dis has Jerusalem citizenship cards, and because it is beyond the wall, the Jerusalem municipal services rarely come.
But... this is the tip of the iceberg.
As we sat with Casey, he talked about the university and his job as well. Al Quds University is right next to the separation barrier, and the campus has had people who throw rocks and other objects over the wall/into the nearby IDF guard post. Earlier in the week, this happened, and the response was a squadron of fully armed IDF soldiers who responded by shooting tear gas and rubber bullets over the wall. They also pulled over students indiscriminately and started to question them harshly and brutally. On the day that we arrived at Casey's, he had just finished writing a letter to the IDF on behalf of all the staff from Al-Quds, stating that the action was not committed by a student and that the behavior breached fundamental rights of students at the university.
I asked him how often the IDF comes into Abu Dis for the same purpose. Casey told us that this happens almost every day, and not always because of perceived violent activity. "Such is life in the occupation."
As an Israeli woman said with Ir Amim, a group that takes people on a tour of the contentious areas of Jerusalem's neighborhoods, "I now feel safer with the wall in place. But with it comes a very vital question that I ask myself: how much must my safety cost? The wall to me both secures and haunts me."
But... this is also just another tip of an iceberg that runs deeper than I can encapsulate with just one conversation. I hope I'll be able to spend some time there at some point during my visit.
B) Danish Birthdays, the Freedom of Having No Connection to Israel, and A Call for Hasan to Start Making Judgments
We then met up with a Danish friend that had crashed on our couch for the night to celebrate her birthday at a local Arabic barbecue place called Zarour. There we met a couple of her friends as well over marinated chicken, hummus, turkish salad, and bottomless baskets of khubz (bread).
There was even a Danish birthday song which... was amazing. You choose three instruments, and then in the breakdown between verses, you play this instrument. For a taste, go here. You will not be disappointed.
We got to talking about what we were doing in the area, us with our Hebrew/Arabic learning volunteer program with the Arab/Israeli school Yad B'Yad, and them with their work with refugees in Bethlehem and Ramallah. We asked each other questions about what we were doing and listened politely, but it was apparent that both of us just lived in completely different worlds. Some of the people at the table were very interested in the concept of a dialogue/relationship-building program through a school, while others said that this was all well and good but did not address the current situation on the ground.
And I had to agree with him. Yad B'Yad is a program that embraces long-range change, not one that will address the current issues like the separation barrier/security fence, or water issues, or contiguous states, or Jerusalem as a binational capitol in the here and now.
But what was most interesting to me about this conversation was that it showed how easy it was for these people our age who were not Jewish, nor had any real affiliation to Judaism, to not be associated with Israel, whose importance at this current time relies on it being a place for Jews to feel at home. To them, the issue was humanitarian, not about a Jewish state. In a way, it's a privilege of not having to grapple with the reality of being Jewish and how this intersects with the state of Israel.
It was then that I decided that I needed to start making some clear judgments about my relationship to this land, and in that conversation, I let them know the dilemma I felt as a Jew who saw the occupation as extremely problematic for the overall safety and security for everyone in the area. What Israel is doing in with the Palestinian people in the West Bank, with its multicultural citizens within its borders, and all of those that do not conform to any of these labels disturbs me to my very core; but I cannot turn my back on this land or the people who love it, and this includes those in Israel that make legislation that continues these situations. In fact, I know I now have to fight for what I believe in, or I'll get caught listening to other people, and in turn, validating their opinion.
People here tend to let others know exactly where they stand; it is a blunt culture. So, I'm going to try my hand at it and start to converse in bluntness about me, an American by default, a Pakistani Jew by religion/lineage, a Muslim solely by lineage, a believer in relationships as a method of changing life.
Recap of my thoughts can be found here.
C) Putting What I Discovered into Practice with Other Expats
In fact, I even got to put this into practice a few hours later.
After our delicious dinner and political discussion, we met back up with Casey's friends at a giant expat party... which actually became more like a less sloppy Friday evening at Colby college with much better beer and much worse hard alcohol.
There we met Anna, another writing teacher from Bard who had been working at Al-Quds for the past half a year. We continued our conversations with her about our respective actions in the area.
"Where are you coming from?"
"We're living in W. Jerusalem doing a volunteer program."
Every time I speak this sentence, I am acutely aware of how judged I feel just for where I live and for what I do.
Aval, bas/tayib.
"Oh. What do you both do?"
"We work with organizations in the Jerusalem area that do peace work between all the different populations in the area, and social justice work with underserved populations as well."
"Oh yeah? Where do you do that?"
"At Yad B'yad, a school for Arabs and Israelis, and at an afterschool program in Al-Azeriya."
"And how effective do you think they are?"
"Well, we haven't started there yet. Our first day is on Monday for the first and Wednesday for the second."
"Ah."
"Why?"
"Well. I think dialogue and relationship building is good for helping building relationships. But it doesn't help anything with regard to this conflict."
"Oh yeah?," I asked. I was actually genuinely interested in this perspective. After all, I am pretty confident in relationships being the first building block for any true actions regarding justice or peace in the area, and anyone who has a different perspective obviously has it for a different reason. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I think it normalizes the conflict and doesn't address its roots."
Wow. Expats certainly have the judgment gene come out when here too.
"Well. I don't necessarily agree. I think dialogue and an exchange of perspectives between people normalizes relationships, not the conflict, and it does so over a much longer period of time. I see dialogue as the first step in a longer process."
"Well that's the problem, though. The dialogue will take too long for anything to change."
"That's true, but how will you also know how to act cleanly and together in this situation when dialogue is not a part of this process?"
"Fight for what you believe in now and worry about cohesion later."
I had heard this perspective before, but it was in that moment that I really came to respect Anna's certainty about leaving who are not with you behind in favor of what is right. It was very Gandhi.
"I agree. Dialogue is a top-down process, and it is dependent on both sides being a part of it. I do think it needs to be a part of the solution, because you won't start to better understand the people's needs here."
"Yeah. Maybe. I still think they're ineffective when applied to this area."
"Well that's what I'm here to see in real time. My focus is on education as a mode of communal development and empowerment for all people in conflict zones, so if it works it works. If it doesn't, well then I guess I need to change tracks."
She shrugged at this comment. Oh well.
David sold his idea to her better than I did. He talked about how theater can be a useful method for establishing relationships over a combined activity. Apparently I need some practice in my delivery, or a better thesis statement.
D) Darwish and Thai Food
Being a poet, I was very excited to go to the PA's Mahmoud Darwish museum that was a mere two blocks from Casey's house. Here is a beautiful poem by him, just as an example.
He wrote a lot about Palestinian life, the conflict, and started many literary projects for Arabs and Palestinians in his lifetime. Respected by everyone in the area, Darwish truly changed people with his words.
Here are a couple of videos and pictures from my time there: Palestinian flag, View from the flag, Description of Darwish, my reactions after the Darwish Museum.
And then, we got the best thai curry I've ever had. Yum.
V. Through the Qalandiya Checkpoint
Aka, the checkpoint that every single person in Israel and Palestine sighs heavily afterward and says. "What a mess."
So here starts my story about the Qalandiya Checkpoint, from the other side.
But first, a quick video of the hauntingly beautiful murals on the Palestinian side of the wall. You can't read many of the messages, but there was everything from "Beware: humans inside," to "Free Palestine." None of the larger messages seemed violent from afar. And here is is one and another within Ramallah just before we got on the bus.
While we waited in the car line, David and I decided to get off the bus and walk through the checkpoint, both to make it quicker, and also to experience it in real time.
Quick aside about this: for most checkpoints, Palestinians with Palestinian cards must get off the bus and show their papers, while internationals and non-Palestinian citizens can stay on the bus while the IDF comes around and checks your papers. There is a movement here that tells internationals to "show solidarity, walk through the checkpoints," instead of sitting on the bus, as the process on the bus is much quicker and less cumbersome.
This last fact didn't really factor into our decision, though throughout the whole process, I did start to feel a fear of not being let in that I probably wouldn't have off the bus, both because of my previous Israeli border experience, and also because of the way the checkpoints were structured (as I'll detail below). Who knows if this is a fraction or anything at all like how other people in the lines around me felt. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.
I'll attach some photos to give some senses as well.
We approached the line leading into one of the four main gates. Everything had metal bars. There was a turn-style much like the New York subway system in a gate that David remarked was much like the Tijuana border between the US and Mexico in Southern California.
Every person had to go through the turn-style one by one, and at any point it was stopped in time so that the guard could check people's papers, leaving a person completely surrounded by metal bars.
Myself and David went through together, put our things through the metal detector much like airport security. I went through the standing metal detector, and nothing beeped, and began to show the girl my passport.
When I did, she told me over the loudspeaker, which was pumped up to an insanely loud volume: GO BACK.
I asked her what? motioning that I didn't understand her. The microphone was on way too loud for me to be able to understand it.
"GO BACK."
Did I do something wrong?
So I went back through the metal detector and came back through. She asked for my VISA over the loudspeaker again. I showed it to her. She said, "Have a nice day," I think as sweetly as she could, but over the loudspeaker it kind of sounded like an oppressive comment.
Phew.
I realized after the experience how hard my heart was beating, not only because it was a new experience for me to be there, that I didn't know exactly what to do, and because I was worried about my name possibly causing an issue like the first time (though I realized this was ridiculous in retrospect as many many Palestinians with Muslim names pass through those gates easily with the correct papers, and I also had a US passport with an Israeli visa), but because of how intense it all was for a person who didn't have to do that often: the metal, the turn-style, the loud speaker, and the feeling of being completely without your fate for a good couple of minutes.
And this was all at a very low impact time during the day (3:00 PM).
But I shouldn't blow this out of proportion. I imagine those who pass through this checkpoint regularly have gotten used to this feeling and know how to navigate it rationally, and I imagine I'd also feel less shaken as I did this regularly and understood my own privilege in that situation.
A week later in Bethlehem, I felt much more relaxed about passing through. I even cracked jokes with the border guard who had just woken up to pass myself and David through. I spoke English most of the time, and I guess this worked well to my advantage.
But more on that next entry.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Day 7 (cont'd) to Day 12: All That's Left, Ben Yehuda Waking Up After Shabbas, and The Diaspora Museum
Hey again.
I'm gonna just power through.
There's a distinct part of me that thinks I'm writing too much...
But, at the same time, this is only a SHRED of what I've done since I've been here.
So maybe it evens out.
Aval, im zeh lo ha'emet... Well, hopefully you like reading the epic form.
Digest:
I. Tel Aviv Beach and All That's Left
II. Yaffo Street Waking Up After Shabbas, The Case of the Dry Rugelach, and I Found My Heart in Marzipan
III. Ein Kerem: Jerusalem's Only Secular Yeshiva (Steve Sager will want to read this)
IV. David, The Old City, and The Guitar
V. The Jewish Diaspora Museum
I. Tel Aviv Beach and All That's Left
After Emily introduced us to the labyrinth that is human rights law in Israel, our group took a stroll down the the Tel Aviv Beach, the same one upon which I almost stepped on a giant beached jellyfish in 2001.
It's funny how strong memories can influence your future life. I definitely kept my eyes fixed on the sand before me.
After some group check-ins about the week we had while passively creating sand-art, we headed down the road to an "All That's Left" Party. All That's Left is an organization of folks who is interested in building the diaspora angle of resistance to the occupation. The organization is not geared toward BDS (which I'll talk about more in a post later-- being here now makes me actual see and hear the ramifications more personally). Most of the actions are geared towards nonviolent protest against any continuation of military actions that are inhibiting the rights of Arabs in the West Bank (including checkpoints, the security fence/wall, etc.).
I have gone into why these are important issues to understand when you talk about pro or against Israel's actions in the West Bank (which is currently the "occupied territories"). I can go into more detail about this point of view.
But I'm feeling lazy tonight. I think I'll do this in a later post.
If you really have any questions or concerns regarding this position, leave a comment or email me. I'm always game to discuss all of it.
Anyway, the party was filled with Jews from Israel and the diaspora with no real political intention in particular except to eat pizza and drink beer. It was on a rooftop which made the sunset quite glorious. I also kind of captured a nice moment I found connections to my past: a girl from Colby who was good friends with the one and only Kevin Baier, and the sister of a good friend of mine from AVODAH.
This past paragraph seems pretty trivial in the grand scheme of everything I'm doing here.
Wrong.
This paragraph was to emphasize that human geography is not a lie people. It exists in real time, everywhere you go. Advice: ask questions. You'll find yourself spinning in connections.
II. Yaffo Street Waking Up After Shabbas, Weekends in Jerusalem, The Case of the Dry Rugelach, and I Found My Heart in Marzipan
The first real free Shabbat I spent recuperating. I was still midway through a fist fight with jetlag and I hadn't slept much due to the amount of grad school applications I turned in.
My program-mate (and roommate) David had the same idea. So we both stayed in together, doing small odds and ends around the house so that the maximum amount of time spent walking at any one time was approximately 20 seconds (which was approximately, in turn, .001% of how much walking we did per day over the previous week. Not to mention my Insanity workouts).
After we had sufficiently odded and ended for a bit, we looked into our empty fridge later that evening for some grub and we found that we both would rather eat something than starve.
So, at 6:00 PM, we went down to Ha'rechov Yaffo.
For those of you that don't know, Jerusalem almost completely shuts down from Friday evening to Saturday evening because of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish holiday, that commands us as Jews to take a full day of rest. This is not to say that everyone in Israeli society does this (in fact, almost every Israeli city except Jerusalem continues business as usual), but most stores, bars, and restaurants in Jerusalem generally shut down from sunset on Friday to an hour or so after sunset on Saturday.
Another quick piece of culture shock: weekends in Israel are Friday and Saturday.
Sunday is literally the new Monday.
So at 6:00 PM when we started our stroll, the city proverbially was just starting to wake up following a full day of Shabbat rest. As we continued to walk, we began to see more people start to show up on the nightlight scene. Yaffo calmly spouted 7 or 8 people toward us every half a minute, and the rate grew with time.
We stopped at a felafel joint for some cheap fuel and continued on in the semi-ghost town.
And then I made a bad decision.
On the corner of King George and Yaffo, a pastry shop sat coyly with all its various delicacies displayed visibly in the 40 foot long 10 foot high window. For the first week, I indiscriminately decided I would also find the best rugelach in Jerusalem. With the ornate and impressive displace, I thought I had found my place. So I went in, paid a shekhel for a rugelach and bit in.
Oh was I so so wrong.
It had no moisture. I literally was eating chocolate on paper towels.
Granted, I finished it. I needed to prove to myself that, well, I had to deal with my own mistakes. And remember that I should probably not judge a book by its cover.
And so the search carried on until...
MARZIPAN.
The pastry shop lurks unsuspectedly in Machaneh Yehuda like a skinny kid in sumo wrestling ring.
Don't be fooled. This skinny kid makes the most delicious chocolate rugelach I've ever tasted.
Our Hebrew teacher Itamar came in with a huge box of them to share. They looked pretty soggy from the get go, so I was a little bit worried. But then after that first bite..................
I'm drooling. This is gloriously gross.
Oh. AND it's vegan. So vegans can enjoy too!
III. The Ein Kerem Bina: Jerusalem's Only Secular Yeshiva
The next day, Hebrew Itamar took us on a walk through the Jerusalem Forest that led to the pleasant little town of Ein Karem. This town is most known for being the birthplace of John the Baptist and the spring where Mary and Elizabeth met, and thus most of the people we saw came in search of these monuments.
Again, as most of you know, Jerusalem is holy to all three Abrahamic faiths.
Just as emphasis, a block down from there, we stopped at a place called the Bina. The Bina is a secular Jewish Yeshiva that gives folks the opportunity to learn from ancient Jewish texts without express religious intent. Lessons here root from the same general inquiry: how can we bring ethics, values, and traditions within Judaism into use in the modern day setting?
To be honest, this was a nice refreshment from what I perceived to be a very religion-heavy yeshiva crowd in Jerusalem. To see this existed brought me back to text studies with Rabbi Sager, and I was happy to see that yet another important piece of my life had followed me here. Hopefully I can sit in on a class or two and channel my inner Sager!
IV. David, The Old City, and The "Guitar"
The Old City might be one of the more beautiful walks in this entire city. To see this walk (featuring my own story about the Muslim Quarter and the beautiful fabrics/gifts from all the shop owners around the old city, see my videos here, here, and here.
And then. A story. I'll start it in the middle:
*I will demarcate my thoughts in the present moment in normal font, and my thoughts thirty minutes after in italics*
"Your dad is Muslim?"
David and I had stumbled into a very-hard-to-get-out-of situation. Most of it was my fault. I should have been more guarded against merchants in the Old City as I had been back in 2005.
But I guess I lost some of my willpower since then, cause there we were being handled by an expert haggler.
"Your dad is Muslim?"
"Yes. He's Muslim. Why?"
"Ok. You swear he's Muslim?"
"Yes. I swear."
"Ok. Ok. Listen. I never give this deal to anyone but because you are Muslim, I'll make this deal. 150 shekels and you take it home."
At this point, I'm feeling quite happy about the fact that my father is Muslim. A deal because of my identity? Well that's mighty nice of you, after I had already felt the limit of my identity.
Damn. This guy was good.
But I didn't have any money to pay him; I didn't plan on getting this far into a haggle, and I was already kind of hesitant about this guitar we might buy. But I felt bad! We were wasting this man's time if we said no!
Yup. All part of his plan.
David offered to pay because we were both going to contribute this to the house.
David looks at me and says to me, "You sure you want to do this? I mean, we should maybe think about this before we do it."
Voice of reason.
Melek, our merchant, was not amused. In fact, he felt completely affronted, turning on David and unleashing the following sermon:
"Why are you cut my business? I give you a good deal and you repay me by cutting my business? That's not nice man. I'm here trying to be a good Muslim and helping another Muslim and you're not going to be happy about that? You cut my business and I don't appreciate anyone who cut my business. These people are bad people and I don't like them. I can tell you're not a bad person so why are you cutting my business?"
Damned good actor.
At that point I was feeling like I had to buy this thing.
He played on my Western guilt and man, did he succeed. You didn't even get to test it out first! You thought that it was good from the get go
What was most astonishing about this situation was how little I thought about anything going wrong.
But I did. Somehow in that moment, I did think that nothing about this was wrong.
"Ok. I'll take it."
Oops.
"Tamem."
As he put the guitar into two plastic bags I had a moment where I could say no.
You probably should have.
But I thought, no. This will be fine. And if not, I know how to fix guitars.
Errr, no you know how to fix strings and change the action. Frets? Body? That's kind of out of your skill set.
So we walk away from the store
Dumbass.
and continued our journey up to Sha'ar Shchem/Bab al a7mood (Damascus Gate).
Thirty minutes later
I take the guitar out of the plastic bag and begin to play it.
First fret, good.
Second fret, good.
Third fret.......
uh oh.
Third fret doesn't exist. In fact if you put your finger there, you play the fourth fret.
*CUE ALL ITALICIZED THOUGHTS*
Hopefully I can find a way to fix this problem on the guitar.... we'll see what I'm capable of.
At the very least, even though I am not myself a Muslim by religion, I know enough about the religion to carry on a conversation with Melek about what it means to be a "good Muslim."
V. The Jewish Diaspora Museum at Tel Aviv University
This was a weird trip. My group and I are all Diasporic Jews... so we were going there, essentially, to learn about ourselves.
But, so we did. And some significant lightbulb moments and "so true" situations did happen about what it means to be a Jew in the diaspora. (Special question addressed to Rabbi Steve Sager and Rabbi Daniel Greyber here, and a pretty wonderful truth about Jews here).
Also the amount of history and famous figures throughout history that they compiled was IMMENSE. I definitely could have lived in the history of culture section for like, a decade, and still have not made my way through all of it.
But, in the same right, there were two moments that left me VERY conflicted.
1) There were several moments where history was completely glossed over or oversimplified. One example was in the plaque within the remembrance section, which itself was a very beautiful and well thought out portion of the museum. Though I was unable to get a picture of it, what it said, in its essential terms, was that 6 million Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis (which is true) and that we must always remember this fact as Jews.
If not... I actually legitimately fear that things will start to brim over here.
But Tel Aviv University was nice. I even found some of Julie Finkel and Hilary Neher's footprints.
I'm gonna just power through.
There's a distinct part of me that thinks I'm writing too much...
But, at the same time, this is only a SHRED of what I've done since I've been here.
So maybe it evens out.
Aval, im zeh lo ha'emet... Well, hopefully you like reading the epic form.
Digest:
I. Tel Aviv Beach and All That's Left
II. Yaffo Street Waking Up After Shabbas, The Case of the Dry Rugelach, and I Found My Heart in Marzipan
III. Ein Kerem: Jerusalem's Only Secular Yeshiva (Steve Sager will want to read this)
IV. David, The Old City, and The Guitar
V. The Jewish Diaspora Museum
I. Tel Aviv Beach and All That's Left
After Emily introduced us to the labyrinth that is human rights law in Israel, our group took a stroll down the the Tel Aviv Beach, the same one upon which I almost stepped on a giant beached jellyfish in 2001.
It's funny how strong memories can influence your future life. I definitely kept my eyes fixed on the sand before me.
After some group check-ins about the week we had while passively creating sand-art, we headed down the road to an "All That's Left" Party. All That's Left is an organization of folks who is interested in building the diaspora angle of resistance to the occupation. The organization is not geared toward BDS (which I'll talk about more in a post later-- being here now makes me actual see and hear the ramifications more personally). Most of the actions are geared towards nonviolent protest against any continuation of military actions that are inhibiting the rights of Arabs in the West Bank (including checkpoints, the security fence/wall, etc.).
I have gone into why these are important issues to understand when you talk about pro or against Israel's actions in the West Bank (which is currently the "occupied territories"). I can go into more detail about this point of view.
But I'm feeling lazy tonight. I think I'll do this in a later post.
If you really have any questions or concerns regarding this position, leave a comment or email me. I'm always game to discuss all of it.
Anyway, the party was filled with Jews from Israel and the diaspora with no real political intention in particular except to eat pizza and drink beer. It was on a rooftop which made the sunset quite glorious. I also kind of captured a nice moment I found connections to my past: a girl from Colby who was good friends with the one and only Kevin Baier, and the sister of a good friend of mine from AVODAH.
This past paragraph seems pretty trivial in the grand scheme of everything I'm doing here.
Wrong.
This paragraph was to emphasize that human geography is not a lie people. It exists in real time, everywhere you go. Advice: ask questions. You'll find yourself spinning in connections.
II. Yaffo Street Waking Up After Shabbas, Weekends in Jerusalem, The Case of the Dry Rugelach, and I Found My Heart in Marzipan
The first real free Shabbat I spent recuperating. I was still midway through a fist fight with jetlag and I hadn't slept much due to the amount of grad school applications I turned in.
My program-mate (and roommate) David had the same idea. So we both stayed in together, doing small odds and ends around the house so that the maximum amount of time spent walking at any one time was approximately 20 seconds (which was approximately, in turn, .001% of how much walking we did per day over the previous week. Not to mention my Insanity workouts).
After we had sufficiently odded and ended for a bit, we looked into our empty fridge later that evening for some grub and we found that we both would rather eat something than starve.
So, at 6:00 PM, we went down to Ha'rechov Yaffo.
For those of you that don't know, Jerusalem almost completely shuts down from Friday evening to Saturday evening because of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish holiday, that commands us as Jews to take a full day of rest. This is not to say that everyone in Israeli society does this (in fact, almost every Israeli city except Jerusalem continues business as usual), but most stores, bars, and restaurants in Jerusalem generally shut down from sunset on Friday to an hour or so after sunset on Saturday.
Another quick piece of culture shock: weekends in Israel are Friday and Saturday.
Sunday is literally the new Monday.
So at 6:00 PM when we started our stroll, the city proverbially was just starting to wake up following a full day of Shabbat rest. As we continued to walk, we began to see more people start to show up on the nightlight scene. Yaffo calmly spouted 7 or 8 people toward us every half a minute, and the rate grew with time.
We stopped at a felafel joint for some cheap fuel and continued on in the semi-ghost town.
And then I made a bad decision.
On the corner of King George and Yaffo, a pastry shop sat coyly with all its various delicacies displayed visibly in the 40 foot long 10 foot high window. For the first week, I indiscriminately decided I would also find the best rugelach in Jerusalem. With the ornate and impressive displace, I thought I had found my place. So I went in, paid a shekhel for a rugelach and bit in.
Oh was I so so wrong.
It had no moisture. I literally was eating chocolate on paper towels.
Granted, I finished it. I needed to prove to myself that, well, I had to deal with my own mistakes. And remember that I should probably not judge a book by its cover.
And so the search carried on until...
MARZIPAN.
The pastry shop lurks unsuspectedly in Machaneh Yehuda like a skinny kid in sumo wrestling ring.
Don't be fooled. This skinny kid makes the most delicious chocolate rugelach I've ever tasted.
Our Hebrew teacher Itamar came in with a huge box of them to share. They looked pretty soggy from the get go, so I was a little bit worried. But then after that first bite..................
I'm drooling. This is gloriously gross.
Oh. AND it's vegan. So vegans can enjoy too!
III. The Ein Kerem Bina: Jerusalem's Only Secular Yeshiva
The next day, Hebrew Itamar took us on a walk through the Jerusalem Forest that led to the pleasant little town of Ein Karem. This town is most known for being the birthplace of John the Baptist and the spring where Mary and Elizabeth met, and thus most of the people we saw came in search of these monuments.
Again, as most of you know, Jerusalem is holy to all three Abrahamic faiths.
Just as emphasis, a block down from there, we stopped at a place called the Bina. The Bina is a secular Jewish Yeshiva that gives folks the opportunity to learn from ancient Jewish texts without express religious intent. Lessons here root from the same general inquiry: how can we bring ethics, values, and traditions within Judaism into use in the modern day setting?
To be honest, this was a nice refreshment from what I perceived to be a very religion-heavy yeshiva crowd in Jerusalem. To see this existed brought me back to text studies with Rabbi Sager, and I was happy to see that yet another important piece of my life had followed me here. Hopefully I can sit in on a class or two and channel my inner Sager!
IV. David, The Old City, and The "Guitar"
The Old City might be one of the more beautiful walks in this entire city. To see this walk (featuring my own story about the Muslim Quarter and the beautiful fabrics/gifts from all the shop owners around the old city, see my videos here, here, and here.
And then. A story. I'll start it in the middle:
*I will demarcate my thoughts in the present moment in normal font, and my thoughts thirty minutes after in italics*
"Your dad is Muslim?"
David and I had stumbled into a very-hard-to-get-out-of situation. Most of it was my fault. I should have been more guarded against merchants in the Old City as I had been back in 2005.
But I guess I lost some of my willpower since then, cause there we were being handled by an expert haggler.
"Your dad is Muslim?"
"Yes. He's Muslim. Why?"
"Ok. You swear he's Muslim?"
"Yes. I swear."
"Ok. Ok. Listen. I never give this deal to anyone but because you are Muslim, I'll make this deal. 150 shekels and you take it home."
At this point, I'm feeling quite happy about the fact that my father is Muslim. A deal because of my identity? Well that's mighty nice of you, after I had already felt the limit of my identity.
Damn. This guy was good.
But I didn't have any money to pay him; I didn't plan on getting this far into a haggle, and I was already kind of hesitant about this guitar we might buy. But I felt bad! We were wasting this man's time if we said no!
Yup. All part of his plan.
David offered to pay because we were both going to contribute this to the house.
David looks at me and says to me, "You sure you want to do this? I mean, we should maybe think about this before we do it."
Voice of reason.
Melek, our merchant, was not amused. In fact, he felt completely affronted, turning on David and unleashing the following sermon:
"Why are you cut my business? I give you a good deal and you repay me by cutting my business? That's not nice man. I'm here trying to be a good Muslim and helping another Muslim and you're not going to be happy about that? You cut my business and I don't appreciate anyone who cut my business. These people are bad people and I don't like them. I can tell you're not a bad person so why are you cutting my business?"
Damned good actor.
At that point I was feeling like I had to buy this thing.
He played on my Western guilt and man, did he succeed. You didn't even get to test it out first! You thought that it was good from the get go
What was most astonishing about this situation was how little I thought about anything going wrong.
But I did. Somehow in that moment, I did think that nothing about this was wrong.
"Ok. I'll take it."
Oops.
"Tamem."
As he put the guitar into two plastic bags I had a moment where I could say no.
You probably should have.
But I thought, no. This will be fine. And if not, I know how to fix guitars.
Errr, no you know how to fix strings and change the action. Frets? Body? That's kind of out of your skill set.
So we walk away from the store
Dumbass.
and continued our journey up to Sha'ar Shchem/Bab al a7mood (Damascus Gate).
Thirty minutes later
I take the guitar out of the plastic bag and begin to play it.
First fret, good.
Second fret, good.
Third fret.......
uh oh.
Third fret doesn't exist. In fact if you put your finger there, you play the fourth fret.
*CUE ALL ITALICIZED THOUGHTS*
Hopefully I can find a way to fix this problem on the guitar.... we'll see what I'm capable of.
At the very least, even though I am not myself a Muslim by religion, I know enough about the religion to carry on a conversation with Melek about what it means to be a "good Muslim."
V. The Jewish Diaspora Museum at Tel Aviv University
This was a weird trip. My group and I are all Diasporic Jews... so we were going there, essentially, to learn about ourselves.
But, so we did. And some significant lightbulb moments and "so true" situations did happen about what it means to be a Jew in the diaspora. (Special question addressed to Rabbi Steve Sager and Rabbi Daniel Greyber here, and a pretty wonderful truth about Jews here).
Also the amount of history and famous figures throughout history that they compiled was IMMENSE. I definitely could have lived in the history of culture section for like, a decade, and still have not made my way through all of it.
But, in the same right, there were two moments that left me VERY conflicted.
1) There were several moments where history was completely glossed over or oversimplified. One example was in the plaque within the remembrance section, which itself was a very beautiful and well thought out portion of the museum. Though I was unable to get a picture of it, what it said, in its essential terms, was that 6 million Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis (which is true) and that we must always remember this fact as Jews.
- Yes. I obviously agree with this statement. But I would go one step further. There were 6 million other people that died as well, and that this is somehow not important to Jewish identity and remembrance is a little peculiar to me. The souls of our ancestors are important to remember and honor (z"l), but... I think it a little careless to present our people as bent on preserving memory and not really thinking much about those who died alongside us, especially when such a thought is a very distinct characteristic of being a diaspora Jew.
- The answer is yes, I think this way because I am a multi-cultural Jew, think of myself beyond just as a Jew, and thus think of others in the world who have different identities like mine who have been called out or persecuted because of their identity. I honestly think it wrong for Judaism to be branded as a religion that thinks of its people more than others, when the reality is that I, as a Jew, does not along with many other Jews who work tirelessly to make the world a better place for everyone.
- Listen, I agree that this is something that can unite all Jews in the world. Everyone around the world has some connection to Israel.
- At the same time, I think this is a completely misleading line. Some people who are Jewish do not connect to Israel as a way to show that they are Jewish. Their lineage, values, and traditions may be Jewish in how they live their life on the ground, and their political or emotional allegiance to the state has no bearing on this fact.
- Ok. Israel is the place that was promised to us and, by tradition, we must have a connection. Say this is the case. Well, there are some that say, "No I don't want to go back-- my tradition has changed to the modern era. Israel contains my Jewish brothers. But the state does not reflect my genuine identity as a Jew. So I'm sorry. I can't sign onto this.
- I myself am in the midst of this struggle: trying to contend with the actions of a state I should probably love according to my tradition, yet also trying to maintain my values of justice, peace-making, and love for those in our community regardless of background. I'm also trying to contend with Palestinians in the same realm. Why? Everyone in this land loves it, and so do I, and thus we have at least some connection, a community, that needs to be formed, taken care of, and honored. Is this not the root of all Jewish narrative--to start to see the situation from all the difference perspectives, establish a community based on the exchange and argument of ideas, and work together to help everyone in the same place? That we must work for the betterment of ourselves in the context of our neighbor and be able to use power not as a way to ensure our own goals, but for the goal of people who are similar to us?
- People ask how should you do this. How how how. How it will do so is very hard, but after several conversations with both sides on the ground here, I have found that a significant number of people here want, at the root, to be part of a community of people living peacefully. Yes, conflict will happen as it happens in every society. But many are tired of fighting. Many are tired of dying. Many are tired of being afraid. Many are tired of oppressing one another and being repressing by one another. The systems are old and they're in need of a tune up, and with it the state here in Israel is going to have to change in order for any of the ideals in "HaTikvah" for the land of Zion, and if the government or people on the ground on either side doesn't want this, then they will have to put up with the number of people worldwide that are growing tired and more passionate about making this land a place that people can live without a violent conflict to worry about.
- Many of which are going to be Jews who have found their soul in the values, culture, and traditions of justice, peace, and love within your community.
- But again, these are the people I've talked to. I've also talked to people who are evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, who hate Jews because of what the IDF does to them and they wish that the land of Israel would be wiped away, who hate secular Jews because they are not close enough to God, who launch rockets aimlessly or vandalize property all the while telling their God that it is good and to guide them in their quest, who think all of Judea and Samaria need to be a part of Israel in order to fulfill the true message of the promised land.... and so on.
- There is a lot of work to be done to make this a reality. I want to be a part of this in any way that I can. I hope that security, justice, opportunity, and peace can be held by the majority of people here, instead of with those that are currently left with them because of how history has transpired and because of how they interpret needs of their respective state/people.
- And... this is again all my perspective up until this time. Who knows what will change in the next couple of months. But this is why I take issue with the conclusion of the museum, which placed Israel as a centerpiece to the Diaspora Jewish identity.
If not... I actually legitimately fear that things will start to brim over here.
But Tel Aviv University was nice. I even found some of Julie Finkel and Hilary Neher's footprints.
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