Simply Lowered into the Earth

One week ago Friday I spent nearly 12 hours in a hospital watching my boyfriend's father fight the cancer that took him away a few hours after the entrance of Shabbat. With Eitan, his mother, sister and brother, I watched Eitan's father, Yisrael, take his final breaths through a bag of oxygen and a telling heart monitor that we all watched in fear and a dreaded knowing of how the evening was going to end.

Having watched my own grandfather slip away from the world of the living just eight months ago, I promised Eitan that once the struggle finished, he would see his father at peace, there would be no more worry in his brow or pain in his clenched jaw. Just as my grandfather let go of all of us with a tear and a smile, so too would his abba.

The death of my boyfriend's father is not a likely topic for a blog that seeks to explore truths on the journey to resolution. But after a year of studying the history of the Middle East, I'm not so sure that resolution is an option, but the truths are still important for the hope that someday something will change. And so, after witnessing the death, burial and mourning rituals for Eitan's father, I believe that there is a truth to be told, a truth of Israel as the state for the Jewish people, to be Jewish in sorrow and in joy.

Eitan's father came from Romania to Israel in the 1960s. Much of his family was killed in the Holocaust, he was born in 1949, one year after the birth of the State of Israel. Yisrael Harod grew up in Yash, a small Romanian city, perhaps even a village. He grew up in an abusive household until his mother left his father for a better life. Yisrael and his mother were poor, very poor. Many of his meals were bread and sometimes onions that made the meal seem like a feast. As a boy at school, as a Jewish boy, he was often beat up and made fun of. He could not always play with other children for fear of his safety. I imagine the fact that he was destitute did not help the situation either. He managed to get small jobs here and there and he saved his meager earnings so that he could purchase for himself a brand new screwdriver, a shiny tool that he never actually used. He would once in awhile remove the tool from its box, admire and polish the specimen, the reward of his hard work and a glimpse into the value and respect he placed in his hard-earned belongings from unceasing work in the future.

When Yisrael Harod arrived in Israel, escaping the clutches of Ceaucescu, he was placed with other new immigrants, in tents, where he would stay with his mother until more permanent arrangements could be made. He learned Hebrew. He joined the army as was his national duty. He met Amira, Eitan's mother. He knew he wanted to marry her very early on in knowing her. She thought he was interested in her friend or her sister, but he had eyes only for her and told her as much.

Only 39 years later, a moment in time, three children later, two of them married, two grandchildren, only 60 years of life, I watched Amira gently smooth the tensed skin of her husband's forehead. His eyes had already rolled back into his head, or perhaps directed heavenward and into the abyss of eternity.

The sun began to lower onto the horizon line of Petach Tikvah, a city of Israel that dates back to the late 19th century. One of the first Jewish settlements in what was then a province of the Ottoman Empire, where Russian immigrants came to escape pogroms, to make real an ideology that sought a safe haven for self-determination of the Jewish people.

We gathered around Yisrael's bed on this Friday night, as though we were standing around the dining room table in his home in Holon, just 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv. Eitan's older brother Yaakov led us in the kiddush. Usually he pours a special grape juice into the kiddush cup. On this night he poured a glass of the sweetest Shabbat wine. We started singing together Shalom Aleichem, welcoming the Shabbat. There is a verse in this song that wishes that those who come may also go in peace. It is my hope that Yisrael heard us singing and was calmed by it and that his journey into whatever it is that comes after life was peaceful. We blessed the wine, each took a sip. Amira dipped her finger into the cup and placed the wine-dripping fingertip to the lips of her husband's mouth, struggling to lift the elastic band of the oxygen bag.

And, as every Friday night, and every Shabbat, when the prayers were finished, she wished all of us a "Shabbat Shalom U'mevurakh", a peaceful and blessed Shabbat. And as every other Shabbat, she kissed each of us, Eitan, Yaakov, Ronit, Yisrael and me, Heidi, wishing us luck on our way and more blessings. I couldn't imagine a more beautiful farewell for a loved one.

In the hallway a small table was set up for the pairs of lit Shabbat candles blessed by other family members of other hospital patients. Sometimes it is the most subtle things that remind me of where I am. Shabbat candles in the hospital corridor.

A few hours after Eitan's father passed, we sat with his body in a room until the family was ready to leave him. Eitan went to look at his father and called to his sister to show her the smile that had appeared on his wan and weary face. There was no more struggle, his ever-thinning face in that past months revealed a very noble bone structure that gave him much dignity throughout his illness and into his death.

As it was Shabbat when Yisrael left his family, the funeral was held on Sunday morning. We gathered at a cemetery in Rishon LeTzion, where Yisrael's mother was buried, where Amira, one day far from now, will rest beside him.

In Israel, the Jewish funeral is simple, as is the burial, it is a humble admission of the frailty and brevity of our human experience. Friends and family gathered at 2:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, June 21, 2009, the first day of summer, to honor the memory of Eitan's father and to support the family, because that is the job of the Jewish community in times of death as well as celebration.

Yisrael was brought out on a simple black stretcher, carried by Eitan, his father's co-workers and friends. His small, emaciated, frail shell was wrapped in a tallit, a prayer shawl. I was indescribably moved by this simple shroud, so symbolic in its form. The tallit helps to bring one, in prayer, to a place of concentration, to help one elevate the spirit to the Creator, to arrive at a place of reflection, redemption, wonder and atonement. When we say the Shema and the V'ahavta, two of the most quintessential and beautiful prayers of the Jewish liturgy, the four corners of fringes, tzitzit, of the tallit are wrapped around the index finger of the right hand, symbolizing the four corners of the earth, that we gather everything and everyone in our prayer, as we are reminded that we are commanded to love and know the unity of creation, of humanity, with all of our hearts and all of our souls.

The rabbi officiating began his chanting. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away...He took an exacto knife to the shirts of Eitan and Yaakov, creating a tear to indicate the loss of a loved one. A woman did the same to Amira and Ronit. They were officially in mourning. Eitan gave a moving eulogy about his father, who came to Israel, who struggled throughout his life, who wanted to have a family with a Jewish identity, freely and safely in this land, where his children would never be beaten for being Jewish. Would not be hungry from the deprivations of life under Communist rule, and could achieve the dreams he could not realize for himself.

The pall bearers carried Yisrael's body to his grave site. His body was lowered into the grave. And two by two or three by three, friends helped the Harod family to bury their father and husband in the rust-colored dirt just unearthed to make space for Yisrael's body to rest. They were not alone in this shattering moment. Gathered around were friends and superiors of Eitan from the army, in a variety of uniforms and ranks, friends of his from high school and from childhood. They came from the North and from the South. Yaakov's friends and teachers from the Haredi yeshiva that he attends in the black hats and dark suits. Ronit's friends and old boyfriends. The small and intimate sides of the family of Yisrael and Amira. My international friends and their Israeli boyfriends who came to support me as well as Eitan. All of us young people, dressed in our youth, in our dresses and tank tops, our shorts and our flipflops, our lives ahead of us, the child inside of us taking a moment to imagine ourselves in Eitan's place.

The rabbi continued his blessings...The Lord gives and the Lord takes away...the Mourner's Kaddish was recited. Rocks were picked up off the ground and placed on the gravesite with memorial candles and wreaths of flowers from Eitan's army colleagues and his father's co-workers from the electrical engineering plant that he worked at for decades.

Amira insisted that we leave, it was time to leave Yisrael alone. "He told me so!" she said, as she handed out coins for all of us to give to the man collecting charity as we exited the cemetery.

For the past week, the Harod family household has been in strict mourning. The mirrors are covered, there has been prayer three times a day, a Torah has sat in a holy ark in the living room for the shacharit (morning) service and Torah reading. The family has not changed its clothes, nor washed, nor left the house. A time to reconnect, a time to mourn, a time to allow the community to serve and comfort them.

Eitan has not had to worry about work. Nor Ronit, nor Yaakov. It is understood in the state of the Jews that in times of rites of passage, caring for the soul, carrying out the rituals of over 5,000 years of history is the most important thing to do. We can do this here, without penalty, in perfect observance according to our own needs, from the most fanatic and finicky, to whatever comforts the bereaved. We can immerse ourselves in the practices of the ancestors and find solace in the cycle of life, that death happens and when it does, we have methods to attend to our grief, to our loss, to the most permanent thing that happens in our impermanent existence.

May the memory of Yisrael Harod be for a blessing...

Tristan Anderson

This afternoon, I received an e-mail message from a fellow member of the online organization mepeace.org. In it was a link to an event that took place on Friday, March 13, 2009 in the West Bank city of Nil'in.

Nil'in and Bil'in are often in international news media as two cities which have been divided by the separation fence/security wall/apartheid wall, as you see fit to call it. I choose the first, the separation fence plus the addition of separation wall.

Every Friday, various international, including Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations gather at Nil'in to protest the wall and the damage it has caused to the livelihoods of the residents there. Often there are clashes between I.D.F. soldiers and nonviolent activists.

Apparently, this past Friday the 13th, Tristan Anderson, a resident of Oakland, California, a peace activist and a journalist was hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired at the protesters by I.D.F. forces. Tristan suffered serious wounds to his head and is currently receiving treatment at the Sheba Medical Center located at the Tel HaShomer army base near to Tel Aviv. The hospital at Tel HaShomer often makes it into the headlines as it is the hospital where many Israelis, Palestinians and internationals receive treatment following conflict-induced injuries.

As far as Google tells me, no major news networks, until the last half hour, have picked up this story, although it happened already nearly three days ago. The Jerusalem Post now features a story stating that Tristan's condition is stable, although he is on a respirator.

I have a few questions.

According to the group Anarchists Against the Wall, the fact that Tristan was hit in the head by a tear gas canister is not that surprising. This group claims that it is becoming a recurring event that I.D.F. troops fire these canisters directly at protesters instead of in an arch so as to avoid direct hits.

If this is true, why are I.D.F. troops doing this?

If these protesters are nonviolent demonstrators, why are I.D.F. troops firing weapons at them at all?

Are the protestors warned?

If so, how are they warned?

If warned, how much time do they receive after warning to move out of the designated target area?

Are there regulations as to what kind of weapons can be fired at nonviolent protesters?

If rocks are thrown or catapults used, at what point does the army decide to use weapons?

What security breach or territorial breach are the protesters making, if any, which warrants a military action against them?

What is the responsibility of the occupying army to protect internationals in such a zone as the West Bank?

Another issue. There was a delay in transporting Tristan to Tel HaShomer because he was first attended to by medics of a Red Crescent ambulance and not an Israeli Magen David Adom or other ambulance service. Unable to cross the checkpoint, Tristan waited fifteen minutes before the Israeli ambulance arrived, transferred him from the Red Crescent ambulance to the Israeli ambulance and then he was on his way to the hospital. Israeli activists on the scene called the Israeli ambulance and I say, fortunately, Tristan was picked up in a timely fashion and swiftly carried to the Sheba Medical Center. Red Crescent ambulances are not permitted past certain areas in Israel because of the fear that they are a disguise for weapons and terrorists. People lose their lives pretty regularly here because of these past experiences and realities and the perpetual fear.

I live in Israel. I can say with all of my heart and soul that a person in this country is free to demonstrate, to protest, to libel and to slander the State of Israel with immense rage, freely and openly without fear of bodily harm.

Every year, in spite of threats from the Ultra Orthodox residents of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem that they will bomb buses if the Gay Pride Parade will take place, the Pride Parade proudly occurs with growing numbers every year.

Within Israel's borders, I am willing to say that things are normal for better and for worse, just like any other country in which the people are decision makers in the country's processes and actions.

However, when it comes to the Territories, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it seems to me that everything changes. It is the wild, wild west, it is hell and there is no order and only chaos. And I can only discuss what I know from hearsay and from photographs and from links on the internet.

And if for a moment anyone wonders why Israelis don't rise up against the immorality that occurs on both sides of the wall, it is important to know that they are either so cynical and jaded by decades of conflict that they don't believe it, even the video footage, or, they are afraid, scared and willing to consent to anything that tells them the actions are necessary for security.

I wasn't there. I didn't see Tristan receive the blow by the tear gas canister. I watched the video clip. And I have questions. I don't know who will answer them.

Ahmadinejad Between the Palms of My Hands

Every good yoga class begins with a moment of silence in meditation on an intention. The intention could be a wish for oneself or for a friend or family member. The intention can be set on a principle in the physical, the emotional or the intellectual -- flexibility, compassion, acceptance, ambition.

Lately, when I sit down on my mat and fold my hands against one another to my heart, instead of pressing them to each other I make something of a cup. And in that cup, I like to imagine President Ahmadinejad. I hold him between the palm of my hands. In my mind's eye I can see him in the photographs of newspapers and websites and television clips. I think of his smile, he seems to always have such a sincere smile, it starts from his eyes. If you notice, his eyes in some shots actually sparkle. Once I have the clear image of him, I start to ask him not to spew such hatred all over the world. I ask him not to make statements that lead to the Israeli mentality that one day, Iran will send nuclear weapons to destroy Israel, as Ahmadinejad insinuates, dictates and rallies in exact words and nuances. I ask him to stop using his influence to instill fear that perpetuates violence that the majority of Israeli society believes to be justified.

Suddenly, Ahmadinejad morphs into Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, the Chinese government in its ocupation and administration of Tibet, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshal of Hamas, Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud in Israel, and the hundreds of thousands of young men and women in the world, learning religion-manufactured and condoned hatred and intolerance -- in the madrasas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the fundamentalist revival churches of the United States and the extremist yeshivas of Israel.

Of course one will argue and take offense that I have equated some of these people with others who are outright terrorists, racists, bigots, plain haters. But my intention is not to call Netanyahu a terrorist, for I do not believe that is what he is, nor would I ever call Israel a terrorist state, as so many seem to be doing these days. My point is to draw attention to the spotlight and power of which all of these players possess. With guns, armies, youth and ideology, leaders of a military occupation of an interminably fragmented Palestinian nation, such as Netanyahu, leaders of pseudo-governments using terrorism to achieve its aims like Meshal and Haniyeh, and leaders of an Islamic repressive Republic with unapologetic ill will towards others like Ahmadinejad hold an incredible position in the eyes of the world. Often I am floored by the vast, limitless fanfare they receive for all of their misdeeds, for the oppression they inflict, for the hate and disaster with which they infest the world.

When I see Ahmadinejad between the palms of my hand and the rest of these men and movements, I ask them and I ask the world to give them attention for making positive contributions to the world. I ask Ahmadinejad to stop pointing a finger to Israel so that he may divert the misery and dissatisfaction of his people away from the sorry state in which Iran finds itself today. I ask him and his fellow leadership to take some damn responsibility for the way things are and to fix them, and not by method of destroying another nation-state. I ask al-Bashir to exorcise the Satan that resides within him and reflect on the genocide that he has orchestrated. I ask Meshal and Haniyeh to stop fighting the battle to the end of days, to lift up their people from the dependence on the compassion and sympathy derived from perpetual victimhood for the purpose of the Palestinian national movement's progression.

I ask Netanyahu to stop building settlements. Not because I believe, anymore, that that is the answer to the problems. But we have to do something that makes sense, something that comes from the need to live in the here and now with peace of mind.

At the end of the yoga practice, one finishes where one began. On the mat, hands folded, the journey completed. I see Ahmadinejad once again, full smile on newspapers, websites and television clips. With a full heart, I ask him and the others to try getting attention and adoration by leading from a different angle.

From Tel Aviv

Last year on my birthday, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan. This year on my birthday, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) began bombing targets in Gaza to stop the rain of rockets falling on Southern Israel since the end of the ceasefire with Hamas on December 19. I wonder what next year's birthday will bring.

Technically, it is arguable that the incursion into Gaza can be called a war, as it is not a conflict between two countries but rather one country and a political-military entity. In Israel, however, the media has called it as such, as have the politicians. And so I state, that, my observations in Israel during a time of war are most disheartening.

What fails to make sense to me is: How is it that war is still considered an effective method of change? The United States got away with dropping nuclear weapons on Japan in 1945, bringing the war on that front to a stark and horrifying conclusion, but do we, as a human race ever EVER want for that to happen again? Are we not more evolved, more refined, more capable in the 21st century of managing conflict in a place, by the way, where people have more in common that what they have been led to believe?

It is understandable that the world is up at arms, marching through streets shouting slogans to end the war, to call for a ceasefire. It is unfathomable how in a week and a few days, hundreds have lost their lives, thousands have been wounded and those who survive this disaster will be left with nearly nothing to eke out an existence in the aftermath of Israel's attempt to remove Hamas from rule in the Gaza Strip.

However, there is more in the streets than a call for a ceasefire and a call for peace. There is a continued call for the end of Israel, and that is where the conflict intensifies and the Israel-supporting Jews and Israelis supporting the government's decision to invade Gaza, become more hardened, more embittered and more alienated from the rest of the human population.

The discussion, the demonstration, the debate, the tears, the anger cannot be about bringing an end to the State of Israel; it has to be a call for Israel to abide by international law and to make good on its promises. If anyone, the residents of the West Bank have greater reason to be fed up with Israel's policies than with those in Gaza, because Abbas and Fayad are toeing the line and, still, for the Palestinians the situation under occupation has not improved.

The violence is unforgivable on both sides. How it is that Hamas believes it will prevail with this method of rockets falling, killing, destroying, terrorizing and harassing Israelis of all walks of life, including Arab-Israelis, is incomprehensible. How an organization claiming to be for a living, developing nation could be so willing to jeopardize the lives of so many, filling them with hatred along way is also beyond my capabilities of understanding. But they have a right to resist, but they have a right to a country, but they have a right to Jerusalem, to compensation for refugees...
This is not what Hamas wants. Hamas wants an eternal battle, they will always need an enemy, if it is not the Jews or Israel, it is Fatah. If it is not Fatah, it is the United States, it is Egypt, one day it could be their current sponsor, Iran. They play a despicable game with people's lives, with children's lives. Children who have no choice but to emulate what they see and experience in their environment.

At the Tel Aviv University campus last week, Palestinian and Arab-Israeli students held a protest against the violence. Around a hundred students came out in their keffiyehs and their signs of solidarity with Gaza. They were angry and I found out, extremely sad.

My friend Davide and I spoke to two female demonstrators to ask what they wanted to get out of this demonstration. They wanted a stop to the violence. Telling us about a mother and her four children who were killed that morning in IAF bombings. One of the young women said, "They want all of the land," then thought again, "All of OUR land."

I responded to her, "It's all of our land, there's enough for all of us, and we have to all live here, so what do we do?"

I continued to ask her how do we make it stop? What's our plan? Other Jewish students were coming up to them and asking, "what about the rockets?"

They couldn't answer how to make the rockets stop, and neither were they justifying them.

But I wasn't interested in that argument. I was more concerned with the fact that none of us had a plan or a vision of what instead.

I continued to talk to the other young woman about the situation. She continued to tell me about the brutality, the starving, the suffering. And I told her, "I know, I want it to stop too, but how?"

We looked at each other and I asked her if I could give her a hug. I did, and when I pulled away I could feel tears forming in my eyes. When I looked up at her, she had started crying. There was no more anger in her body language, there was total sadness, defeat and helplessness.

She said, "I am so sad I feel like crying."

"Me too," I said.

And No Religion Too

An Islamic History Seminar field trip to the Old City of Jerusalem inspired many reflections on the nature of human history. The way empires, kingdoms, dynasties, peoples and the different institutions that humans create pile up one on top of another with little concern for what came before. King Herod, the Romans, the Umayyads, the Mamluks, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British, the Israelis, the Palestinians. The intuitive desire to leave a mark, to persist and to survive, all the more so when those efforts are challenged.

I remember my first visit to Israel. The year was 1993, I was 11 and a half years old. Our tour guide, Joe Gilboa, said to us, "Right where you are standing, there is at least 5,000 years of human history, layer after layer, civilization on top of civilization right under your feet."

Fifteen years later, those words have more significance for me than when I heard them standing under the hot Jerusalem sun, somewhere near the Mount of Olives a decade and a half ago.

Unfortunately, so it feels sometimes, I cannot help but get very involved and very emotional about what transpires on the ground here. My identities start arguing with each other and debates in seminars or among friends and colleagues take on very personal dimensions for me. A Jew, an American, a woman, a Catholic-Sicilian family background, a yoga background, seven years in the San Francisco Bay Area, girlfriend of an I.D.F Army Captain, employee of the Palestine-Israel Journal, a human rights activist, a Zionist. Give me a conflict or a situation and my opinion and thoughts and interpretation of the facts will be colored by all of these identities in my life. And I do not always know how to reconcile my conflicting emotions and identities, for example, how I feel when hearing the history of the Temple Mount, its glorious Jewish past and its inaccessibility to me now as a non-Muslim.

I can never simply have an opinion that designates a good and bad side and then formulate a point of view from there. So I live in this limbic state of semi-dread that I will not live to see any resolution to the conflict of peoples and places to which I feel so connected and so hopeful that a breakthrough could actually turn the wheel of human consciousness.

Tens of rockets have fallen on Sderot and Ashkelon since the tahadiyeh (calm) with Hamas ended. There are photographs of mothers and children in these Israeli cities with looks of terror and tears marring their features. There are also images of overflowing cesspools in Gaza, reports of continued fuel and food shortages as well. (Along with reporters such as Israeli Gaza correspondent, Amira Hass, reporting deliveries of pistachios from Tehran and Damascus via tunnels leading from Egypt to Gaza.)

On both sides, there is a palpable sense of defeat, surrender to violence, continued rockets that will be matched by an I.D.F. air and land incursion. I am afraid that a lot of people are about to suffer a lot more when the winter storm that has brought much needed rain upon these lands moves past us and the skies become clear. Perhaps I feel even more downcast because I fear and I am beginning to feel that there is no solution available for Gaza aside from military action. (I could be convinced otherwise with a compelling argument, however.)

My professor of Selected Topics in Modern Middle Eastern History succinctly described the challenge that Hamas poses to a peaceful future in the Middle East. They have an agenda for which they believe time is on their side. A divine-sanctioned mission to reconquer these lands in the name of Islam and 200 years is nothing in comparison to an eternity of paradise under the auspices of Allah. On the other side of the coin, I read in Haaretz this morning that Israeli religious parliament party Shas is calling for the reassembling of settlements in the West Bank that were dismantled concurrently with the disengagement from Gaza. The Shas Party, too, operates on a time scale that synchronizes with this idea of eternity. An attitude and view toward the struggle that bears no concern or compassion for those of us who would prefer to see a better today instead of a questionably, arguably, very subjectively constructed conception of a God-given, messianic future. Today, today, today, I want all of this to end today. And I want to believe and see with my own eyes that it is possible to stop killing each other and hating each other and ruining each other's right to human dignity.

We can have it differently, I just don't understand why we can't take the responsibility upon ourselves to see through the lies and deceit, to stop trusting what the "people in charge" say and do, and instead listen to our gut that it doesn't have to be so hard. But I am beginning to understand that in order to have that, we'd have to create a John Lennon "Imagine" world, with no religion, just start there.

I wonder if we tried...

Moongazing and Cats that Kill

If you are borderline depressed, have schizophrenia or any other personality disorders in your gene pool, it is best not to move to Israel.

Forget the politics, forget the conflict, forget accusations of apartheid, the reality of occupation or the threat of Iran's pursuit of a cache of nuclear weapons. These are nothing compared to trying to hold onto your sanity while living one week in Tel Aviv.

The highs are followed by such frightening lows, that it's best not to get too attached to those moments of homeostasis, erase the notion of euphoria from your mind.

Last night, on a walk through Kikar Rabin, the site of the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, the gathering place for demonstrations, national celebrations and various other festivals and fairs throughout the year, four men brought their telescopes to provide a view of the moon to passersby. Telescopes magnifying the wonder that is the moon from the viewpoint of Earth, 95 times. I gazed upon a three-quarter's full moon, a flat silver disc made three dimensional, spherical, pocked by meteors the size of basketballs, leaving craters 200 kilometers in diameter.

Each view of the moon from the four telescopes brought such a sense of joy to my person. I felt a wide smile stretch my face from side to side, like a child presented with a lollipop, a treat to be savored.

The moon, pearly-grey, hardly smooth, yet so very peaceful. For a few seconds of gazing I felt all of my senses drawn into the silence and stillness of the moon. And there was something so humbling about seeing this member of space up close, when it is in actuality so far away. To see the excitement of the amateur astronomers sharing their knowledge of moon and to admire the craftsmanship of the men who built the telescopes, which they brought to share with the community.

Nearly everyone who looked through the sight of the telescope responded in delight, "Eizeh yofi," how pretty, "magniv," and so on. Everyone was impressed with this simple opportunity to see the moon up close.

Eitan and I continued on our walk, we were heading to Blockbuster. A Saturday night movie rental to make for an easy passage into a new week.

Before crossing the street to reach the store, suddenly, a vehicle between a vespa and a motorcycle screeched shortly, turned sideways, throwing the male driver off into the street, leaving the woman rider to fall under the bike. Ten people rushed to help. Fortunately there were no cars coming from the opposite direction and a near catastrophe remained but a minor, yet unsettling accident.

I tried to remember the stillness of the moon but my heart was jumping. I decided to focus upon the fact that so many people came to help the girl out from under the bike and felt back to normal after a couple of blocks.

There are many days, where, if I can avoid it, I leave home as infrequently as possible. It's dangerous out there. Unfortunately, I discovered that even my own home is not impervious to the treacheries of the outside.

Until today, my apartment in Tel Aviv offered refuge from a pretty hectic world. However, as daylight surrendered to dusk, a perhaps semi-crazy, French woman prowled outside my window, desirous of killing the cat, which came with this apartment. My protective bubble burst. I should have known that in Israel, there is no place immune to disorder and disruption.


This year, Rosh HaShanah and Eid al-Fitr (the festival at the end of Ramadan) coincided with one another. The moon calendars aligned on September 29th and thus, for nearly two whole days a majority of the population, both in Israel and the Occupied Territories, were celebrating important and joyous holidays of the calendar of Judaism and Islam, respectively.

Ten days later, Yom Kippur descended upon the land, sending shops, restaurants, cafes and businesses into a state-mandated closure, along with various checkpoints leading to and from the West Bank. A time of reflection, fasting, with only ambulances and police cars patrolling the streets to attend to the yearly bicycle accidents and injuries incurred by stone throwing in certain neighborhoods where cars dare to drive on this holy of holy days.

In fact, on the eve of Yom Kippur, riots broke out in the city of Acre (Acco), incited by Jewish youths throwing stones at an Arab driver, who the Jews alleged had been blasting the radio and smoking a water pipe through the neighborhood as Yom Kippur began. (How one drives and smokes a hookah simultaneously is beyond my comprehension and this particular testimony remains of a dubious nature.)

The driver and passenger were wounded and the repercussions of this encounter are ongoing.

Journalists are comparing this situation to Bosnia, I think of similar conflict, communal violence, in India between Hindus and Muslims. Whatever you call it, it's bad. A theater festival, that many Arab-Israelis rely on for a business boost in Acre, has been canceled. The racial slurs are flying and so are the stones and shattered glass.

In Israel, I feel like the reverberations of all activity throughout find their way to each and every other city and community in the country. Maybe, the tension of these riots contributed to what happened outside of my kitchen window today.


To honor this holiday season and to allow for a graceful move into the fall and winter, during which I imagine I will be spending much time inside (especially because I am hoping and praying for biblical, torrential rain this season to alleviate the frightening drought that is threatening this country), I have been on a mission to clean and beautify the living space that I share with Eitan.

Bathroom, bedroom, living room -- cleaned. I repotted houseplants, vacuumed the corners and removed cobwebs. Finally, when I finished and sat down to write some e-mails, I saw the silhouette of the French woman who lives in the adjacent building, lurking, looming.

She feeds about a dozen cats that linger about the building, mangy creatures that I am convinced are one day going to unite and fight us all out of our apartments and then take over the rest of the city, they are that aggressive.

Anyhow, suddenly she appears at my window, screaming at me.

"My cat, your cat! Your cat, why do you feed that cat! Your cat has killed my cat! I cannot find my cat, why don't you do something about that cat!"

Then she walked away.

I remained seated, somewhat shocked and a little confused as to whether or not she meant to yell at me. In the near distance I hear, "Salot! Putin!!"

Not so nice French words, directed at the cat, which, as previously mentioned, came with the apartment.

The woman came back to my window, yelling at me.

To which I replied, "why are you yelling at me?"

And again the same accusations of this bad cat, "Your cat killed another cat four months ago and now she has killed mine, I cannot find my pet."

I am alone in the apartment and feeling rather uncomfortable, vulnerable, and debated whether or not I should cry, that trigger point of insult and burnt pride when I feel that someone thinks I am a bad person when I didn't even have anything to do with the situation. Maybe if I started to cry she would leave me alone.

She walked away again.

She came back. I explained to her that the cat is here, was here before I was. She kept saying that she was looking for Valerie, the cat's owner. Valerie used to live here, I explained. She is not here anymore, she left the cat behind.

She came at me again, "You kill people in the streets! You kill children!"

"Huh?"

That was my internal reaction, coupled with, "now what the hell am I supposed to do? Is she nuts?"

I called Eitan. I needed someone to be on the phone in the event that suddenly I was assaulted by this woman. For the second time in my stay in this apartment, I appreciated the bars on the window, potential for damage or bodily harm --- minimized.

The woman informed me that I needed to kill the cat and if I will not, she will. To which I responded, "please, be my guest." (Animal lovers forgive me, I felt a little threatened myself, like maybe she was going to fling something at me from outside, or poison my water supply.)

In the midst of this insanity, I received a last-minute babysitting plea from a neighbor up the street, mother-in-law stuck in traffic, could I come for an hour or so? I jumped at the opportunity to get the hell out of dodge. Fortunately, this phone call came during a break in the killer cat episode, which resumed shortly thereafter.

It is very challenging to "keep my cool" here. I yelled back, I didn't know how else to stop this woman from screaming at me. She moved on. Her shrieks of "Salot! Putin!" continuing into the early evening.


Riots in Acre.
Moongazing in Tel Aviv.
Killer cats on Smolanskin.

And it's only Sunday.

Middle East News Digest

In the Middle East, there is a lot of talk of peace and war. War is always a possibility, peacemaking is laboriously frustrating. Living in Israel, I live in a semi-state of denial, knowing that catastrophe is always both a minute and an eternity from the present. There is simply no knowing what will be the breaking point or the turning point and for the media, every day is a heyday to rile up the public around one glaring issue or another -- Iran's nuclear tests, Bedouin youth convicted of Al-Qaeda connections, Israeli soldier shoots rubber bullets at blind-folded Palestinian at close range, for example.

Acts of aggression that could lead to escalation in the conflict are public information, always. Acts of reconciliation, however, are hard to find and take up little space in newspapers and mainstream websites, if reported on at all.

The irony in the whole situation is that while the newspapers are plastered with foreboding news of destruction, corruption, deficit and injustice, making it seem as though that is all that goes on around here, I have absolutely no personal encounter with any of these things.

If I were to write my own weekly digest, the headlines would include: "Attended Peace Cafe to Brainstorm Online Facilitated Dialogue Opportunities Between Israelis, Palestinians and Internationals." Another one would read: "Participated in Women Only Yoga Class at the Sulha Peace Gathering."

The content of this digest would be filled with pleasant interactions and exciting connections between myself and other people who are hoping for a better future for the people of Israel and Palestine.

I would include another section, a weekly column: The Office in East Jerusalem. This week's title would read, "Date Juice and Damascus Shawarma, Hummus Next Week."

The inches of this publication's columns would be replete with reports on the myriad peace organizations each vying for dates on calendars to promote demonstrations, lectures, commemorations, movie screenings, how to apply for a visa from the West Bank successfully, and various other opportunities for recognizing the innumerable ways in which alleged enemies already do coexist, and the efforts to draw more and more people into that reality.

Some of the serious issues that I would report include the language barrier, getting Israelis to learn more Arabic and English, and more Palestinians and Arabs to learn more Hebrew or English. Additionally, I would include ongoing abuse at checkpoints, discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in Israeli schools, Holocaust survivors starving and struggling in their old age because the government has broken its promise time and again to provide a stipend to these people. However, at the end of these dismal reports, I would list the MANY organizations advocating for these marginalized groups and individuals, listing how it is that you can help in the efforts to improve the situation. And just for encouragement, I would include a list of goals achieved by each of these organizations.

The thing that I'm getting at is how media, popular, mainstream media really works to make the population hopeless and paralyzed. And if I can't speak for the population, then I can at least speak for myself.

For the past three weeks, I have been receiving the International Herald Tribune and Haaretz (in English) at my doorstep each morning. For the ten minutes I walk to the bus, I read the paper -- trying not to step on steaming piles of dog shit or bump into the elderly couple I pass by each morning, or the street sweeper who has also become familiar. While waiting for my Cafe Aroma, I sit down, in hopes that the sweat will stop rolling of my back and behind my legs and read the paper, I continue this while on the 15 minute bus ride en route to Tel Aviv University. I arrive at Hebrew class, tuck the paper away into my bag, and try to pull myself out of the rage, sadness, disbelief and fear that I voluntary expose myself to during the hour or so morning commute. True, after that hour every morning I am a more informed citizen both internationally and domestically, but I am also a more apathetic citizen who can only shrug her shoulders and make snide remarks about the end of the world and its impending arrival.

Thankfully however, I counterbalance this reading business with a little bit of activism. I practice yoga under the guidance of my newest teacher, the wise and real Ernessa. I learn a little bit of Kabbalah (yes the Madonna kind) and I attend these peace gatherings. At the end of the day, the end of the week, I realize that there is a bigger picture of the world that is painted as catastrophic, myopic, a ticking bomb with a detonator held in the hands of many -- speculators, dictators, typhoons and hurricanes, to name but a few.

But I am beginning to ask myself how I can let that dictated reality be so much stronger that the reality that I experience through touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing every day? How can I feel that the world is coming to an end when I somehow manage to find myself surrounded by people engaged in dialogue, arguing productively, creating art, music, dance and prayer, willing to share with me their personal life stories and struggles, to listen to those of my own? The last thing I would want to do is dishonor or undermine the significance and the progress and the unending dedication to these causes that people self and soulfully give to each other and their efforts. Yet I do that day after day after day.

As a planet full of people, our actions and their repercussions generate so much power, so much energy. We are pulled into our dramas, our successes, our failures, our hopes, our disappointments. Atoms and electricity flying every which way. We create such a hum, buzz and bang with nearly every move we make, each of which emit different qualities and flavors -- creating, destroying, sustaining, to broadly categorize (thank you to Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu for the vocabulary to explain this thought). And then, we have a choice about what to do with these outcomes, these facts on the ground. Sometimes I choose apathy and I feel like I am waiting out the end. Sometimes I choose joy and I radiate light to my friends and loved ones, instilling hope and rejuvenation in my surroundings. Sometimes my vision narrows and I find myself contributing more to the darkness that seems to always loom over the future.

In this moment of clear seeing, I am relieved to recognize these tendencies, to see them for what they are. Unfortunately, I cannot ignore the injustices, the murders, the hatred, the bigotry, the racism, the hunger, the suffering, and I find that these aspects of existence cast a very tall, long and wide shadow over the predominantly beautiful, effortless world that I inhabit day-to-day. But if I cannot make space for recognizing the good as well as the bad and the ugly, then I find that I am not much use to anyone at all. And that would be one of the greatest tragedies ever to befall humankind. I am not exaggerating my own importance, as it is equally shared by every other being on the planet.

As Nelson Mandela shared in his 1994 inaugural speech, words written by author Marianne Williamson, "...as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

I would like to be liberated from my own fears that the world cannot change, that people cannot recognize their power to light up the darkness in the world. At least for now, and if only for this second and a few after that, my eyes are open to those who know their power and use it for the purpose of bringing light.