Nick's Rotary Year: October 2008

I’ve written a lot of my travels but I thought I should include more of everyday Israeli life at least for one posting. Don’t worry I’ll get back to the adventure in the next installment. As if anyone is actually sitting at home waiting for these things.

After only a week of classes, (which include Economics of the Middle, Dynamics of Conflict, Arab-Israeli Relations, and Iraq: Politics and Society), we began the holiday season. This is three weeks of vacation in which Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukko are the central holidays. For Rosh Hashanah (New Year), I spent much of my time with my Rotary Host Counselor, Yisrael Lazar. Yisrael has been a very gracious host to me through my first few months, involving me with all of the Rotary activities related to his club as well as inviting me to many extra-curricular activities that he and his family take part in. I was first invited to a Rosh Hashanah party with the entire club at one of the member’s houses that overlooks the Mediterranean. Most of the club was there with their significant others, which put the party around 50 or 60. Yisrael then read a story from the last book published by Jews in Europe before the Holocaust. Then a hired comedian entertained the club with a rather lengthy set. Throughout, Yisrael and his wife tried to keep me included by translating all of the jokes from Hebrew to English. This made me feel rather conspicuous, made worse by the comedian repeatedly glancing in our direction even asking once why we were talking. He thought we were heckling him. I was told not to worry, that he wasn’t funny anyway.

The next day I joined the Lazar’s at their home for a Rosh Hashanah meal. Along with a couple of Rotary Club members with their wives, Yisrael’s son, Asher, who had just returned from the US was present with his girlfriend. He had been discharged from the Army the previous spring after 3 years of service (like every other young man in the country) after which he visited his two older siblings that live in New York and New Jersey. Yisrael and his wife, Ruth, live in a rather small apartment by American standards but the furnishings are simple and elegant. The staircase winds up from the entrance foyer and as you enter the main living room that contains dark wood cabinets, a large leather couch and comfortable armchairs, it is impossible to not first notice the assortment or artwork covering each wall. They range in style from modernism to abstract to expressionism. There is even a Dali in one of the bedrooms. They are all originals. The other thing I noticed, being an American, was the lack of a television. An elegant table-setting, candles and a center-piece of pomegranate seeds (representing the 613 mitzvote or commandments in the Bible), had been carefully placed on the large dining room table. The men proceeded to be offered martinis then sat on the couches and spoke of the upcoming election and the current economic situation in the Middle East. After a few minutes, Ruth called us to the table and with little religious ceremony began the meal. First, slices of apple were passed around, which were then dipped into honey to welcome a sweet New Year. The other traditional food at a Rosh Hashanah meal is gefilte fish, popular among Ashkenazi Jews (literally German Jews but representing Eastern European traditions). The fish (usually carp) is usually ground into patties with eggs, carrots and onions then poached and chilled. They can be either sweet or savory and taste kind of gamey. It doesn't sound particularly appetizing and I think the taste does not come as any surprise. I took seconds, though not particularly enjoying either serving. The meal finished with cigars for the men and cigarettes for the women on the balcony overlooking Haifa Bay. Yisrael, in-between puffs from his Cuban, told of the Lebanese rockets which had landed just down the hill from their apartment two years previous. I looked down the hill where he pointed, at a cluster of bushes no different from the rest. At that moment, with my first Cuban in my mouth and a stomach full of traditional Jewish dessert, it was hard to imagine such a reality.

-N

We returned to the ancient city in the slowly fading light of a desert evening. The sunset comes upon you suddenly in this place, and then without warning, the street lights are on, the cool breezes of night begin to whip around the corners and Jerusalem, most of it, sleeps. There are areas, other than the old city and residential neighborhoods, in this town. There is downtown, the new capitalist-oriented section buzzing with modern restaurants, bars and shops. It was here that we stayed in an inexpensive hostel. We dropped our bags off and immediately headed for a grocery store for supplies. Ben-Yehuda is an exclusively pedestrian, broad, brick-lined street with a line of trees running down its spine. There are street-performers here, young men break-dancing, a woman playing a giant harp and other novelties. New women's fashions are stuffed into the glass fronts of the stores while the smell of schwarma, falafel, coffee and pastry shops is intoxicating. This is the new Israel: the modern, global, secular Israel. It reminds me of similar places in almost every other big city in Europe: Barcelona, Paris, Dublin, Rome etc. But the difference is that you know that this is just an oasis of modernity in a much larger landscape of religion and history, and not the general trend. This place seems almost anathema to what such a city represents. But it is also perfectly depicts the reality of Jerusalem. Just as the old city is divided between the Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim Quarters, the neighborhoods outside those ancient walls represent more contemporary divisions: Russian neighborhoods, the downtown, the anglo-phone neighborhood where Hebrew is barely spoken, Arab neighborhoods, etc. And these places are just as strictly segregated. Jerusalem has been a divided city for thousands of years and nothing about its new developments tells me anything is going to change very soon.

We awoke in the middle of the night to the shouting of a woman from Trinidad and Tobago. Earlier in the night, she was very nice and talkative, speaking honestly about her perceptions of this country and its people, having a rather open mind, I thought. When she woke me up at 3 in the morning I had a less kind impression of her. She had, apparently, discovered bed bugs and was immediately packing all of her things. Everyone in the dormitory of eight was awake. After she had stormed out of the room and slammed the door after her, I leaned over my top bunk and asked Tucker if he thought there were any bugs. He replied no as did Annalise when I asked her. I took out my flashlight and inspected my own sheets, finding nothing alarming. I wasn't convinced. For the next two hours, every little sensation on my skin felt like a miniature bite and I couldn't convince myself otherwise. I didn't want to bother Annalise or Tucker but they were struggling with the same problem. It is such a difficult thing to control the sensations of your body when your mind is convinced of something, even if it is imaginary. There were no bed bugs after all but a nearly sleepless night made me think differently.

The Jerusalem International YMCA has been the home of the Jerusalem Rotary Club since 1921 when it was founded by the British in the first year of their mandate. The old and beautiful building resides directly across the street from the King David Hotel, which some of you may remember from the terrorist bombing of 1946, carried out by Irgun, a militant Zionist group, destroying much of the south wing. We joined the Rotary club for the weekly afternoon meeting, enthralled by their speaker that day, David Rubinger, probably the most famous Israeli photographer. His pictures have graced the cover of Time nearly a dozen times. He is now in his 80's and still taking photographs. He told us the story of how he got into photography, which I thought I would recount to you now because it has stuck with me. While in the British service, he was stationed for a month in Paris and one evening went to see the opera. He and his frined arrived late and unable to enter until intermission, decided instead on a bar around the corner. There he met a young Frenchwoman named Claudette who he immediately began a relationship with. When he left several weeks later on a train bound for Marseilles where he would board a ship for the Israel, she ran to the station to meet him. She kissed him and placed in his hands a new camera, which must have cost her several months wages. He had never before taken a photo. He was 21 and said that he never forgot that gift though unfortunately he forget about the girl.

We met a young Palestinian man at the Rotary meeting who was a pharmacist in Jerusalem but lived in the West Bank and he offered to show us around Bethlehem. We readily agreed. The checkpoints at the security wall, which I have heard much about, were a breeze for us Americans, though much more rigorous for Palestinians. On the other side of the wall, we hopped in one of the dozens of cabs waiting and sped away toward Bethlehem. There are five churches that now reside on the spot where Christ was supposedly born. The Christians came in droves, hoping to glimpse that sacred spot. The line to go under the altar of the Armenian church where 2008 years ago the most pivotal moment in the history of Western civilization took place was more than an hour and so we decided to move on. Although I must say that I was stunned how patient everyone in line seemed to be, compared to the mobs I had experienced trying to merely get on a bus. We moved through the other churches, catching snippets of Italian, French, Arabic, Hebrew, German, Hindi, and some African dialects which I couldn't pinpoint. After fighting our way through the mobs of pilgrims, we walked through the deserted streets of this Palestinian village. In the distance we could see the security wall snaking its way North and the pristine Jewish settlements just on the other side. I thought how difficult it must be to look at that landscape everyday, a constant reminder of the losses which this culture suffered over the past few generations. Our guide gave us a particularly one-sided perspective, which surprisingly was Pro-Israel. I had my doubts as to the motives of such rhetoric coming from a Palestinian but I said nothing and forced myself not to make any remarks. The return to Jerusalem was as easy and swift as the exit and before long we were back at the hostel. Tucker and I decided to sleep on some mats on the roof of the hostel instead of the dormitory. The sky was cloudless and I slept peacefully in the cool desert night and not a thought of bed bugs entered my dreams.

-N