Sunday, April 30, 2017

והאבן להם חומה, מימינם ומשמאלם

Apologies for missing last week’s post—I will make it up in a few weeks with extra posting. I just returned from hiking the Imbroe Gorge in Crete, hence the title. Yes, hiking between two solid walls of rock makes me both feel very small, and overwhelmed with the power of tectonic plates. The plan is to hike the Samaria Gorge tomorrow—hopefully I’m not too sore!

Last week, I (finally!) got to go scuba diving in Greece. When scuba diving in Thailand, you get to see gorgeous marine life. When scuba diving in Greece you get to see complex geological formations, like caverns and stone chimney stacks, 2500 year-old pottery, and a 2000 year-old anchor. My dive master is part of the Antikethyria project, which returns to the wreck site where the Antikethyria mechanism, a 2nd century B.C.E computer-like device, was found. He and a team of other technical divers join with archaeologists to explore the wreck, and recover artifacts, including human remains from 2200 years ago. I was pretty impressed.  This was my first ever cold water dive, and I was pretty proud of myself for diving in 18 degree celsius water in only a 5mm wetsuit (everyone else had on a minimum of 7mm or a dry suit)

I also visited Etz Hayyim, the one remaining synagogue in Henia. There is, quite literally, one Jewish Cretan who survived the Holocaust, and he dedicated himself to preserving this synagogue. It’s quirky, with a chandelier loaded with tchotchkes in the middle of the sanctuary, and a mikveh out back with stagnant water in it. The backyard has the remains of a few communal rabbis. They have what they call a Havurah, composed of both Jewish and non-Jewish community members, which meets every Friday night. Apparently the local NATO base provides many of the Jewish congregants. I had been planning on going there Friday night, but was too exhausted after a day trip to Elafanisi beach.

 Elafanisi is gorgeous and huge. It’s consistently ranked as one of the top ten most beautiful beaches in the world. There is both a beach and an island, connected by a narrow strip of sand. The island is big enough that I got lost on it (then again, that may not be saying much). The trip also included a hike to the Agia Sofia cave (stalactites!) and sampling of locally made honey from thyme plants.

Backing up to Chios and Athens…

When I took the overnight boat from Ko Tao, I did not know what to expect, and walked into a room filled with rows of bunk beds, clothed in orange sheets. When I walked onto the overnight boat from Chios to Piraeus, I once again didn’t know what to expect. The experience could not have been more different. Above a large storage room for our luggage, there were luxury escalators to take us to the seating compartments upstairs. There, were room after room of  lounge chairs and couches surrounding coffee tables. In the middle of the boat was first a gift shop, which even had some English language reading material, followed by a café. Deck numbers two and three had theater-style seating around televisions. And there I was concerned that there wouldn’t be any heat on the boat. Ha! This is superior to an Amtrak train--it’s like a cruise.

I packed a lot into my one day in Athens, including getting to the Acropolis half an hour after it opened, and avoiding the crowds, spending several hours at the Acropolis museum, seeing Hadrian’s Arch (this side: the ancient city of Theseus. This side: the modern city of Hadrian) and Olympus’s temple, and visiting a museum dedicated to ancient Greek technology. Admiring Hadrian’s architecture truly seemed like the best way to intentionally avoid celebrating the Israeli government’s establishment of Yom HaShoah.

Unfortunately, my boat from Athens to Crete was not quite as luxurious. I wound up sharing a stretch of couch with some other twenty-something’s, and not sleeping particularly well. Ah, well.
Chios, which keeps getting autocorrected to chips or chaos, is about as adorable as isolated Greek island can get. First impressions: the air is clear, the Aegean Sea looks calm and inviting, there is greenery and wildflowers everywhere. Two houses down from my AirBnB was the Pinaleon Taverna that could have fallen off the pages of Eat, Pray, Love: stone and plaster wall around the edge, bamboo ceilings, woven wooden baskets hanging from the bamboo, potted plants and seashells decorating the outer windowsill, and iron pots and forks around the inner wall. A large old-school iron furnace in the center of the restaurant, which was only necessary at night, red wooden chairs with woven straw seats, and the owners schmoozing with some locals on the front steps. I got my first Greek salad and spanakopita, and immediately considered dropping out of life, and permanently moving to Chios. The only thing holding me back is irregular internet access, and the difficulty of getting around without a car.

As I wandered around the island, I noticed a few interesting things. The first was an abandoned military installation near Karfas, the beach where I was staying. I was tramping along through someone’s property, and noticed some barbed wire. I looked behind me, and there was a gunnery sticking out of a covered base. I walked around it from the other side and saw a bunker behind it. It looked like it was from sometime between the 40s-70s, but I’m not so good about dating military equipment. I also saw my first ever Syrian refugee camp from a distance, as I was not permitted to enter.


*Title comes from the Song of the Sea, Exodus 14:22. Except that my walls are rocks.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

ואפילו כולנו חכמים, כולנו נבונים, כולנו זקנים, כולנו יודעים את התורה, מצוה עלינו לספר

A few vignettes from my ten days in Israel:

On Categorization: I went to Sod Siach on Shabbat Chol HaMoed, wearing my one short-sleeved dress. There I noticed a woman wearing a sleeveless top. Great, I thought, now I can avoid repeating outfits for the last day of chag. Shevi’i shel Peach, I wore my sleeveless dress. A taxi driver stopped to see if I wanted a ride, because, obviously, sleeveless dress = secular.

When I get to Sod Siach on the last day of chag, the doors were closed, so I start chatting first in English, then in Hebrew with the guy my age sitting next to the building, who winds up being ba’al shacharit.

“So,” he asks, “you’re a rabbi, or studying to be a rabbi?”

“Chas veShalom!” I respond. “You assume that all American women who come to daven at Sod Siach are rabbis?”

“Biderech klal, kein.”

Later, when the two of us get chastised for chatting outside of shul during Yizkor, and urged to come back in for the prayer for victims of the Holocaust who “belong to everyone” I remark to him “except for the Mizrahim.” He adds “and the Americans, and the Australians.”  I decide that we can be friends.

On Yichus: On Shabbat, I do Gelila. No one comes to talk to me after shul. On last day of chag, I do Shlishi. By Kriyat Yam Suf, someone has already come over to ask if I’m Eliana Fishman.

“Nu, how do you know my dad?”

“I also know your mom! We stayed with them in New York. How’s her health?”

That he asked about my mom’s health and not my dad’s health means that I can pinpoint when, approximately, they saw each other last. Needless to say, I’m quite social post-shul. Drishat shalom to Imma and Abba from Elchanan and Vered Noam.

On Bashert: On the last day of Chol HaMoed I see a Facebook post from a distant friend who lives in Jerusalem that she is having a plumbing emergency, and does anyone have a place that she and her nine- month old son can stay for chag. I message her to let her know that I have two spare bedrooms in Katamon that she is most welcome to. Sarah, her husband Yehuda, and baby Akiva spend chag with me, on the same day that Big Akiva announces his engagement. The apartment had been feeling large and lonely, and it was wonderful to fill it, and catch up with Sarah, and meet her husband and son. They also helped banish my grandfather’s aura, which still lingers in the apartment.

On Avoiding the Occupation: Ruth, who was partially in charge of Seder at the Pollards, is big on doing “activities” during the Seder (having everyone bring an object that represents freedom to them, and talking about it, having the table debate the pros and cons of leaving Egypt, etc.) At one point, towards the end of Magid, she starts talking about what it means when an enslaved people becomes an oppressor.

“No, no, no!” interrupts her son, Gabe. “I’m going to talk about that for my freedom object.” 

During the meal, Gabe explains to his mother that he had printed out the NIF 50 years of Occupation pamphlet, and brought it as his freedom object, only it turns out that he left it in Jerusalem. Then Gabe decides  that he doesn’t want to talk about it. They debate back-and-forth about whether they should talk about it, it’ll make people uncomfortable, oy politics. I am watching the absurdity of Israeli society playing out before my eyes (they don’t talk about Occupation, they just fight about whether or not they can talk about Occupation). Finally, it is decided that Ruth will say something, with no discussion after it. To paraphrase her words “We need to be conscious of what happens when, through no fault of our own, an oppressed people becomes an oppressor.” Apparently, that’s what “talking about the Occupation” looks like in Israel.

Tuesday night, after a lovely dinner with some family members, I arrive at the apartment in Jerusalem at about 1 AM. I have an email from my friend Jon from DC asking if instead of grabbing breakfast on Wednesday morning, I would like to join him and his sister on a tiyul to the Herodium. I have no idea what that is, but sure, sounds fun. Great! They’ll pick me up in their car at 9. After a quick stop at the Palmach Super, I meet them. We’re chatting, catching up, when all of a sudden I see signs for Gilo and Bethlehem.

 “You guys aren’t taking me to the West Bank, are you?”

“Uh, yeah, actually we are.”

“Jon! You know I wouldn’t do that!”

“But aren’t you going to Bethlehem in a month?
“As part of a Palestinian solidarity mission! Not to an Israeli tourist site in a car with Israeli plates!”

We turn around and go to the Castel, which we thought was a Crusader fortress, but winds up being an ode to Israeli nationalism and military pride, built atop the former home of a Mukhtar. We also go to Gan Hemed, a park next to a former olive press with clear signs of Islamic architecture. At neither site is there any mention of what happened to the Arabs that used to live there.

Takeaways: When in Israel, Google before going. Also, in Israel, avoiding *talking* about the Occupation is easy. Avoiding the Occupation itself is harder.

On Surprise: I don’t consider myself to be an expert on Occupation—far from it. Despite that, I was consistently surprised by how little the American Olim that I spoke to know about the Occupation. Mind you, I only talked about it if someone asked why I was coming back to Israel in May, and opted to go with the true answer (CJNV trip) instead of the pretty answer, which is also true (my friend’s wedding). But those people who I spoke with had no concept of what a shetach tzvaee sagur/closed military zone is, or how it’s used to seize Palestinian land. They had not heard of the law encouraging border security to ban entry to those who support BDS/settlement boycotts. Admittedly, these are largely people who did not serve in the Israeli military, so I would not generalize this to anyone beyond American Olim (or even just the American Olim that I happened to talk to, though one of them was a Shatil staffer, who I really would have thought would know). Once again: the failure of the American Jewish educational system, and the failure of American Jewish institutions who ignore Occupation. I’m officially no longer buying into the narrative of “American lefties are less educated on the ‘matzav’ than American righties/centrists”.

On American Identity: David, my good friend from DC who I haven’t seen in 8 years, is married to Margo, a Russian Olah, working for Hiddush, a religious pluralism org, and is raising his two-year-old daughter in English, Russian, and Hebrew. He and I hung out on Saturday night until 1:30 AM, and then I had lunch at his and Margo’s apartment on the last day of chag. He thinks that American olim are treated better than other olim (like Margo) because they are seen as “having giving something up” to make Aliyah, and having done it for the “right reasons” (Zionism instead of economic opportunity). This kind of put a spin on many of my interactions with Israelis who were so kind (cashiers calling me neshamah, free samples at the takeout place, a response of besimcha/bikeif whenever I thanked someone for anything).   As a Jew and as an Ashkenazi, I am aware of my tremendous privilege in Israel, but I hadn’t considered the ramifications of my Americanness. I have always been intentional about speaking Hebrew with an American accent, both because I’m proud of my American identity, and because I reject the notion that Israelis “own” Hebrew/the Israeli way of doing things is better than my way of doing things. Something to think about.

Currently in the Athens airport, waiting for my flight to Chios. More next week!



*Quotation from the Haggadah: Though we are all wise, all discerning, all elders, all know Torah, we are commanded to tell

Monday, April 10, 2017

When Gregor Samsa Awoke One Morning...

Welcome to my last post from India! We are staying with our fairy Mumbai parents, Max and Eve. Eve is a consular officer at the American consulate in Mumbai, and without her help, I may never be allowed to leave India. Let me tell you that story...

Our AirBnB host in Amritsar informed me that my visa, which I thought was a 90-day visa, expiring on May 30th, was in fact a 30-day visa, expiring on March 30th, and the guy who wrote the visa just has horrible handwriting, leading me to think that an r was a y. AirBnB host insists that we go to the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Amritsar, to get the situation sorted out (apparently, if he is found to be hosting someone who overstayed her visa, he gets in trouble). On Monday afternoon, we head to the office, where the FRRO folks inform me that since I have flying out of Mumbai, I have to obtain my exit permit from Mumbai. Otherwise, I won't be able to leave the country.

On Tuesday, we flew to Mumbai. Wednesday morning, bright and early, Ashoke, Max and Eve's driver (they have both a driver and housekeeper. It's a pretty sweet life. More about that later.) drives me to the FRRO in South Mumbai. After waiting on a whole bunch of lines, the receptionist informs me that in order to obtain an exit permit, I have to fill out an online form, bring a copy of Max and Eve's passports including their visas, a request letter from them stating that I'm allowed to stay with them, a copy of their electricity bill, a request letter in which I detail all of the places that I have stayed in India, and a copy of my passport and visa. Mind you, Eve and Max don't pay their own electricity bill--the consulate does. Also, the consulate is a bit uncomfortable giving out copies of diplomatic passports, so we need approval from the consulate both for the passports, and also for a different form of proof of residency, which is what we think the electricity bill is getting at.

While all this is going on, Leanne, who had been feeling sick for several days is getting a fever and muscle aches. She and Joanna head to a consulate-recommended hospital where she gets IV fluids, a prescription for rehydrating solution, and some blood work to test for Dengue Fever. More on that later.

I spend Wednesday night filling out forms and writing the request letter (no template to copy from online). Thursday morning, Max harasses the consulate to get them the paperwork that I need. Ashoke takes me down to the FRRO office, arriving about 45 minutes before they stop taking new cases. I'm assigned to an office, and a counter, and told to wait. Minutes later, someone comes out and asks why I'm waiting, and then ushers me in. Dude goes through my paperwork, and instructs me to buy one of their fancy folders for my casefile for 30 rupees. Then he tells me if I come back at 3 and pay $90, I'll have my exit permit. I return to the office at 2:55, and no one's there. Apparently, my dude's lunch order never came, so he's still on break. At 3:30, a different officeworker comes by, hands me my exit permit, tells me to review it, pay at the cashier, and then she'll sign it. Cashier doesn't want to give me change, but at this point I am unwilling to give the Indian government a single cent more than I have to, so I insist. After two days, I leave with an exit permit. Hopefully, I'll actually make it out of the country in a few hours.

Other interesting stories from Mumbai and Amritsar....

Twenty five kilometers from Amritsar is the Wagah-Attari border between India and Pakistan. Every day at sunset they have a ritualized ceremony where they take down the flags and close the border. Doors open on the India side at 3 PM, even though the ceremony won't start until 5:30. We're advised to get there early to ensure that we get seats--the stadium which probably seats about 4,000 fills up daily. By the time the performance actually starts, its standing room only, and there are easily 5,000 people in the stadium. As soon as we exit the car, touts grab our hands to paint Indian flags on the backs of our palms (40 rupees for two hands). More touts sell orange baseball caps with Indian flags on them. There's a one kilometer walk between where the car drops us off and the stadium itself, which includes a security checkpoint, where once again we get to experience some good ole pushing-and-shoving. We see several additional sets of bleachers under construction, which will probably fit another 2,000 people into the stadium. Our foreign passports (actually, our white skin) entitle us to the best seats in the house, adjacent to the border itself. Unfortunately, we are still sitting in the oppressive Amritsar heat, and even underneath some shading it's still pretty hot. Vendors sell sodas, ice cream and chips, but we found ourselves longing for hot pretzels and Cracker Jacks. At around 4:30, the music starts. First India starts blasting music, and in response Pakistan starts blasting their music.  Oy.

First activity: A 60 women arrange themselves in a line, and the emcee, dressed in white, has them take turns parading up and down the center of the stadium while waving said flags. Second activity: dance party! Again, almost entirely women, who are able to distinguish the beat of the Indian music from the beat of the Pakistani music. Due to some well-positioned trees, I can't quite make out what is happening on the Pakistani side. I do sneak some peaks through the sparse leaves of one of the trees--it seems like their emcee is just waving a flag solo. Their stadium is also less full than ours. At the appropriate time, the real ritual starts. Pakistani and Indian soldier, who are both dressed in colonial-era headdresses start symmetrical routines of high kicks, frog marches and fist-pumping, directed at their counterpart dancer. It's clearly perfectly coordinated. The one difference is that India has two female soldiers start off the ceremony, and they lack counterparts. Because feminism, or something. A perfect nationalist pissing contest. Better this than nuclear war?

The US consulate provides Max and Eve with a gorgeous three-bedroom apartment less than a kilometer from the consulate, with a pool and gym in the building. In addition to a housekeeper and a driver, they have daily deliveries of dairy products, and a dog-sitter for their dog, Porter, when they go out. On Friday I both got to cook shabbat dinner for the first time in three months, and I didn't have to clean up after myself, because their housekeeper did it 😊. Max and Eve have a floor-to-ceiling chest full of board games, so I got to have the best kind of shabbat--a board game Shabbat! Unfortunate'y, Leanne, who had been feeling better on Friday, got sick again on Saturday. One of her Dengue tests came back positive, so she was hospitalized, and I didn't get to say goodbye before I left :(  Saturday night we went to "A Lil Flea" which is a cross between an NYC street festival and an open air concert, with food from all over the world crossed with Indian food. Truly the only place in the world where you can get paneer tacos.

Postscript: I arrived in Israel last night, via Ethiopia. My flight from Addis to Tel Aviv included 30 Ethiopian-Israeli teenagers on מסע לאתיופיה 2017. It was kind of like being on a flight with a USY group. Oy. Despite my politics and the damage that Holi had done to my passport, I got through customs easily, met Tzvi, and am now typing this update from Kfar Sabba. Chag Sameach all!

Sunday, April 2, 2017

האי דוחקא דהוי בכלה מנייהו הוי

Greetings from Amritsar, the most sacred city for Sikhs. I was excited about coming here due to my teenaged obsession with Bend it Like Beckham, a movie featuring the expat Sikh community in the U.K. Joanna was excited because of her fascination with the efficiency of Sikh volunteerism, and their model of feeding community members, visitors, and the poor together, strengthening inter-class ties. At the outset of our trip, Joanna gave the percentage chance of Sikh conersion at 50%. After two days here, I am absolutely convinced that I am opposed to religious pilgrimages, and that divinity cannot be found in mad crushes of people. I may stop praying for Bayit Shlishi.

This morning we went to the Golden Temple. We got on line to see the Inner Sanctum at 8:17 AM. Shortly thereafter, Joanna and I got separated from Leanne. For the next three hours, Joanna and I played Geography while inching our way down the line. I had already accepted that Indians don't really value personal space--if you are not crushed up against the person ahead of you in line for the ATM, Indians assume that you're not waiting for it, and if you so much as pause to look for your wallet while paying at the store, someone else will come up next to you, and demand that the cashier ring them up before you've paid. But today was on a whole new level. Parents encouraged their children to push and shove their way past the bamboo sticks that served as dividers, so that parents could pass through, claiming they needed to watch their children. When we passed through the first gate into the temple, many pilgrims paused to kneel at the threshold. People jumped over them. I later learned that Leanne gave up on entering the temple after about an hour, as she was so tired of men touching her.

The one bright spot during the long wait on line was that we got to see some of the Sikh volunteerism in action. Volunteers were giving out water in tin cups to people waiting in line. After we were done with our cups, they were collected, and brought to a series of five bins filled with either fresh or soapy water. A group of women methodically dunked the cups in the bins, assembly-line style, and at the end they were refilled, and passed back out.

The Inner Sanctum wasn't really anything to write home about--it's a pretty temple, but nothing compared to some of the grand temples that I saw in Thailand, or the Taj Mahal. Certainly not worth the three-hour wait. The view from the outside is much more interesting. While there is some sort of museum within the Golden Temple complex, I was so exhausted after getting through the line, that I wanted to drink water, and then go straight back to the AirBnB.

Our lunchtime excursion involved the most intense maneuvering around rickshaws, hand-drawn carts, bicycles, etc. that I've experienced in India. At one point, my pants got caught on a passing rickshaw, and I had to scream to prevent the driver from inadvertently ripping my pants, and possibly chopping off my leg.

Tonight we saw Naam Shabana, our first Bollywood film. It's an action movie centering on a Muslim woman from Mumbai who gets recruited by India's security service following the murder of her boyfriend (and the inability of India's legal service to prosecute his murder). There was insufficient singing and dancing, and an American movie would have had at least three more plot twists to make you think that the good guys were actually the bad guys, but all-in-all it was a fun girl power movie with lots of fight scenes. I will admit to falling asleep for part of the second half, but anyone who knows me knows not to keep me up past 9 PM.

Backing up to Dharmasala...

Not sure who thought it was a good idea to build a city into the side of a mountain, but I loved Dharmasala. Thus far it has been the only city in India that I've seen with any degree of quiet or natural beauty. The downside is that going anywhere requires extremely steep walks--either uphill or downhill. On Tuesday, we attempted one of those walks before I had breakfast, which led to a very cranky Eliana.

After breakfast, we went on a tour of the Dalai Lama's complex, and a museum on the Occupation of Tibet. Like in Thailand, there weren't a whole lot of explanations of the symbolism or significance of many of the temples and ritual objects. I did learn that rows of massive cylinders contain texts of prayer, and spinning a cylinder gets you the same merit as if you said all of the prayers yourself. We went on a walk into the woods where Tibetan prayer flags hang from the trees, and there's a monuments that lists all of the names of Tibetans who have self-immolated for their freedom. On Wednesday, I got to eavesdrop on an Israeli explaining the Tibet situation to someone from home. The parallels between Tibetans and Palestinians (population transfer to decrease Tibetan political power, refugees who aren't allowed to return to their homes, Occupation, etc.) seemed less obvious to her than they were to us.

Tuesday evening we went to the movie theater, and saw the new live-action Beauty and the Beast for $3. Leanne and Joanna were totally enthralled, and initially wanted to commit to seeing the movie at least once a day, every day, for the remainder of our trip. I have gotten them to back down to seeing it only once more, with Max and Eve in Mumbai. There's a decent chance that we will karaoke every song in the movie (although, aside from the one song that Audra McDonald sings, that may not be such a bad thing. Seriously, if Audra McDonald is in your cast, just have her sing *all* the songs).

On Thursday, we hiked a Himalaya! We went on a half-day hike with Ajay, one of the owners of the AirBnB where we stayed. I loved it. Leanne loved it. Joanna hated it. I did, unfortunately, get quite sunburnt, which gave me a bit of a headache. We spent the rest of the day at Illiterati--an ironically named literary cafe.

*Title comes from BT Berachot 6a. Rava says that the crowding at the kalla, the gatherings for Torah study during Elul and Adar, is due to demons. Damn Demons.