Yesterday we began with a lecture on Israeli media. The lecturer, well-known in circles of folks who study political science and elsewhere, explained several interesting phenomena to us. First, he said that the Palestinian Israeli conflict is an existential crisis which unites all Israeli Jews—something that is probably obvious but not something I had been able to articulate myself. He also shared that few Palestinian views make it to Hebrew news. What a tragedy that Arabs and Jews are largely divided by language barriers. I understand that Hebrew, a dead language prior to the state of Israel, has miraculously emerged to unite Jews in Israel, but Arabic would have been a lot more practical in terms of being able to get along with the Arabic speakers in the region. As an advocate of multi-lingual education, I wish there were strong Arabic/Hebrew programs in all schools (and I know there is multilingual instruction, but not on a large and effective scale… and we could certainly point fingers at the ineffectiveness of language instruction in the US… but that can be a later blog post when I’m out of the Middle East).
Our speaker also described class structure as well as distinctions among Jews regarding their original geographic origins. Some of the class distinctions are blurring, and, surprisingly, the ultra-orthodox Jews are the lowest of socio-economic classes, according to our speaker. The ultra-orthodox Jews believe the men should spend their lives studying religion, and their wives have many children (eight kids on average). The state has been supporting them, but it is a large tension as that segment of the population continues to grow. The speaker described several other cleavages in Israeli society, including the twelve often-changing political parties and the ineffectiveness of the government to govern when the prime minister can basically be thrown out when the parliament sees fit to call for another election. He compared this system to that of Italy’s, where the government isn’t highly effective but where its civil society manages to fill in the gaps. He said Israel has over 40,000 civic organizations and has more protests per capita than any other country on earth.
After sorting through these helpful details that help me construct a frame for what I’ve been observing, I took my trip into Jaffa (see previous entry). I went with several women from our group, along with one of the Israeli administrators (she couldn’t be more accommodating and helpful). I found myself first inside a winding marketplace full of dimly-lit stalls of Middle Eastern jewelry and clothes imported from India. A lot of women here wear these great peasant-style skirts and loosely-fitting blouses, so I decided it was time to see if I might find some of the same clothes for myself. The folks who work in the markets here aren’t nearly the hungry sharks I encountered in Egypt, so I find myself having to encourage them to help me out in terms of picking out items that I might like. I found a few long skirts that are made of a shiny fabric with great prints and bright colors; they’re also reversible. Then I met up with our group a half hour later at a large sculpture that looked like a circle of train tracks in a common plaza area where folks had set up their wares on the cement. It was a flea market where you could find old tools, old clothes, antiques, photos, anything, really. From there I walked down the street with the group and passed up a bakery and a nut roaster. The bakery sold bread that looked like the Lebanese bread I liked so much, topped with a pesto of sesame seeds, oregano, cumin, and other spices. The nuts were fresh, and I enjoyed some lightly salted peanuts and cashews. These nuts are really only second to the Lebanese nuts I’ve eaten.
I split from the group and walked up the hill to Old Jaffa, revisiting sites I had already seen, including the wishing bridge where you can see Old Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the sea. I walked downhill toward the artists’ quarter, an enclave of stone buildings containing apartments where clothes are hung to dry and studios where artists paint, sculpt and sketch. I went to a few galleries before they closed for the Sabbath. I found a photography exhibit called, “Imagenes de Mexico” (right, Images of Mexico) by a man who had spent some time in Mexico in the 60s and more recently since the turn of the century. He digitally enhanced some of the photos (especially the black and whites from the 60s). I felt the earth shake as I looked at pictures of my other beloved country, Mexico. High-cheekboned faces stared out from embroidered headscarves as they carried goods to market and tilled the lands. Part of me felt like, “Wow, nothing changes. Here I am in a distant land looking at images of that country where part of my identity formed, and it resonates so strongly here.” I actually didn’t like the techniques he had used to enhance the photos. It was against the Mexican aesthetic which I’m used to, but then I tried to dismiss my criticism and think that aesthetics only belong to those of us brave enough to create with them.
Afterwards I met a sculptor in his studio. I had been admiring the way he used pomegranates (not only a favorite fruit of mine but also an ancient sign of fertility). He’s an older Iraqi Jew who fled as a refugee with nothing but the clothes on his back as a boy with his parents. He was also displaying some paintings from Muslim Iraqi artists he works with, and he told me about an exhibit I might try to see in New York in his gallery there. He works with mothers of both Arabs and Jews who have lost loved ones in the conflict, and in his latest project , he had Arab and Jewish artists use ceramic plates to make images for peace. He said that in Jaffa he spends time with Arabs and Jews, eats with Arabs, and says he has no problem getting along with Arabs and that a lot of people feel this way. He also goes back into Iraq and Middle Eastern countries on his US passport, and I was heartened to hear a voice like his.
I decided to make my way down the hill past the closed shops toward food, as it was getting on 2:30 or so and I hadn’t had lunch. As I happened upon a bar where I spotted beer on tap, I approached the bar that overlooked the Mediterranean from the hill. The bartender was also the owner, and he let me test both of the Belgian ales he had on tap (Belgian ale—I felt like I had won the lottery!). Once I decided which one I liked better (the honey ale), he poured me a glass. I looked at the water and was inspired to write a few poems—the kind I’ll probably never show anyone, just thoughts about some people I’ve missed and was surprised to be thinking about. Later, the bartender brought me labneh (a cheesy yogurt) and some pretzels, and we talked at length, and for once we avoided politics altogether. I found out that he married a Brazilian woman. They had met in London in the early 80s. The bar owner was there in order to take in the music scene, where he saw David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Bob Marley, and Pink Floyd, among others. Anyway, he met his wife, and five years later when to Brazil where he ended up with her again. Economically they couldn’t make it, so they went to Israel together. After five years and at least one child, she finally converted to Judaism, and they married. I got to see the pictures of the bar owner from his days in Brazil, and it reminded me of my days on Mexican beaches, camping and taking showers inside palm shacks. We had a sort of kinship, and I was sad to leave, but the beach awaited.
I walked north from Jaffa to Tel Aviv and made it to Fleischman Beach after just over an hour of walking along the lovely Tel Aviv boardwalk. I entered the water among a bunch of young men who actually had surf boards in the four foot waves. To their credit, they were actually catching waves. I rode in a couple of waves and felt like I was encroaching on some sort of brotherhood so pulled myself out of the water and fell asleep on the beach. I ended up meeting four of my colleagues from the program and had a decent meal with a spectacular view from the roof of a restaurant overlooking the sea.
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August 6th, 2007 at 2:10 am
It is really wonderful to hear about your adventures. It’s amazing to think that there are only 130 miles of terrain that seperate us right now between your location in Tel Aviv and our location in Beirut. And, so very enlightening that so much of what you are enjoying there, i.e. enchanting rooftop views of the Mediterranean, eating labneh and kaak and good roasted nuts is so much a very fundamental part of our life here in Lebanon. What you illustrate here in your daily experiences definitely shows that there is much less that seperates us than what we think. Our own biases can be like our own self-made prisons. Thank you for your efforts to share the day-to-day as information is the sledgehammer that can help us all knock down our self-constructed prison walls.