A land of pain and possibility

Today we changed our initial plans and drove to Tel Aviv for one final day of attempting to understand Jewish-Israeli narratives. Per the request of one of our Arab, Muslim students, we drove through Efrat, a settlement in Gush Etzion. She wanted to really see what a settlement looked like and how people lived there in her ongoing effort to understand Jewish-Israeli life. 

After driving through the settlement we came to a checkpoint. As always, per the request of our Palestinian guide, we moved a couple of blonde white girls to the front of the bus. In all other cases we have driven through with no problems. 

Today, we had a problem. The privatized security guards working the checkpoint - mostly mizrachi and Ethiopian Jews to add a new dimension of intersectional oppression - decided to board the bus. They came on and walked through, guns and all, and decided we needed to each unload all our luggage and walk through metal detectors. 

The bus pulled to the side and the students nervously pulled out their bags and passports. Everybody's passports and cell phones were collected and we sent our bags through an X-ray machine and walked through metal detectors. 

I went first, and one of the security gaurds, noticing the Michigan gear we were wearing, told me that his family lives in Ann Arbor and he had made alyiah from New York. What the fuck, I wanted to ask, are you doing here checking a bunch of other Americans? 

Instead I made small talk in hopes it would ease our passage. The students all came through mostly fine, our one Chinese student was asked more questions, but they all were mostly on confused shock. 

Finally came Husam, our Palestinian guide. Mustafa, our Palestinian driver, had no problem as he has an East Jerusalem identity card. Husam pulled out his work permit and his ID card, and the guard decided it was the wrong permit. They began debating this and I went to fetch our Israeli guide, who had been leading students to the bathroom. He came in, everybody yelled in a mix of Hebrew and English, and eventually I was handed all the passports back and we loaded ourselves back onto the bus, with half the students in tears after their own experience and watching Husam argue for his right to do his job. 

After a lot of processing on the bus, Husam encouraged everyone to cheer up, to enjoy their last day, and to use this experience to move their activism forward. That man has a level of patience, humanity, forgiveness and perseverance I cannot fathom. 

So we spent the day in Tel Aviv and had a beautiful lunch in Jaffa and then I left the students as they headed to the airport and I made my way to a hotel in Jaffa. 

After a shower and a few hours of laying in bed enjoying the sheer silence and solitude after three weeks of constant togetherness, I made my way out onto the streets of Jaffa in search of some seltzer. This was the one moment of hope I have had all day. The neighborhood I'm staying in is quite mixed, and as I walked down the streets I hear Hebrew and Arabic, saw little Ethiopian kids and hijabi women and Mizrachi Jews. I walked into a small market and when it was clear to the shop owner that my Hebrew was terrible, he immediately started speaking to me in Russian. Eventually we made our way in a combination of Hebrew, English and sign language.

My god this land is a fucked up place, but here in Jaffa, surrounded by orange trees, lemon trees and kumquat (!) trees, listening to the sounds of so many languages, I am clinging to the moments of beauty, hope and possibility. 

 Yuva, our Israeli guide; me; Husam, our Palestinan guide; Rima, my incredible co-leader; and Mustafa, our driver. Last night we celebrated the end of the trip and Mustafa's birthday, we danced the Palestinian debke, ate kenafe, and I tried to avoid all the hookah smoke. 

Catching up

It's been awhile, I know. In part because this work is so exhausting. A full day usually begins with breakfast at 7:30 and ends with a group debrief or small conversations around 10 or 10:30. The combination of teaching, emotional caring, babysitting, logistics managing and so on certainly wears one down. Group dynamics exploded in Jerusalem and I spent most of my days there talking with the wounded parties before we enforced a group pieces song conversation. In part, though, I haven't written because I haven't been able to find the words to say. I haven't quite processed all that we have seen, and with two days left, I feel I must. 

We have been all over this land. From Bethlehem to Hebron to Tel Aviv to Haifa to Nazareth to Nablus to Jerusalem to Ramallah to Psagot to Budrus to Susya and back to Bethlehem, the stories of this place are painful. Nearly everyone we meet with - Palestinians and Israelis alike - seem to have two core messages: 

1) This place is not filled only with pain, but also with hope and joy. 

2) Yes we will live side by side with our neighbors, no it will not be easy and we will not love every moment of it, but yes we will do it. 

This land has changed in the five years since I lived here. The suffering of Palestinians seems worse, and the humanity of Israelis seems to be dissipating. High-ranking centrist military and political leaders have been drawing comparisons to 1930s Germany. That's a comparison I hate to make, but picture this for a moment:

I walk through Yad VaShem, which by the way has a sign at the entrance thanking Sheldon Adelson for his support. In the museum I see the ID cards Jews were forced to carry. I see images of Nazis beating Jews for answering a question incorrectly. I see Jews living on top of each other, piled into the Warsaw Ghetto with limited water and electricity. I hear the Nazi rhetoric that Jews are out to kill the Germans and are a threat to society. 

By the time I leave Yad VaShem I am crying not so quiet tears under my sunglasses and hoping the students are far behind me. I walk outside and see our Palestinian guide and the Palestinian founder of the tour company we are using, both of whom look at me and immediately stand to hug me, knowing that my tears are not just about the horror of the Holocaust but also the parallels between this and the horror of having spent the previous day in Hebron. 

Now picture this:

Sam Bahour, a Paestinian-American businessman who lives in Ramallah speaks to the group. He pulls out ID card after ID card, laying out the many pieces of paper that the Israeli government has made him get to prove that he is a man worthy of doing business. 

We hear the news that a young Bedouin man had been attacked. He is working at a grocery store in Tel Aviv and takes the trash out. He is stopped by a group of young men who turn out to be undercover policemen. They beat the shit out of him, despite the efforts of Israelis to stop them. He is currently in a hospital recovering from the injuries inflicted on him by the Jewish state. His crime? Being Arab. 

We are in Susya. A tent city in the South Hebron Hills. It rose up after the inhabitants were evicted from their original town of Susya, just over the field on top of the hill, when archaeologists discovered the remains of a synagogue. After finding the synagogue, religious Zionists determined that they must build a community there so the residents of Palestinian Susya were evicted and the town of Jewish Susya rose in its place. There is no running water in Palestinian Susya, the Israeli government refuses to connect them to the pipes that were built for Jewish Susya. And so they live in makeshift tents reinforced with styrofoam and gather rain water in the winter and spend huge amounts of money on water in the summer. 

Then there is the rhetoric. They hate us, they are a threat to us, they want to destroy us. They teach their children to hate, they don't know how to be civilized, they don't have western customs. I understand why Israelis say this. I understand that the depth of separation makes it impossible to see the other as human. I understand that the Second Intifada left scars that will take a long time to heal. 

But I also know that this is not the truth of most Palestinians. In Palestine I see a culture that is vibrant and alive. I see a people who long for self-determination and the ability to drive from Ramallah to Bethlehem without crossing checkpoints. I see a people who remind me of my grandmothers, lovingly forcing an extra serving of food on me, caring for me, welcoming me into their homes. But I also see a people who are slowly being suffocated, boiled to a point where life becomes unbearable, if it not so already. 

In Israel I also see a vibrant and alive culture and community. It is one that feels comfortable to me, the beaches of Tel Aviv and the silence of Shabbat and the sheer Jewishness that unfolds as I walk down the street. But I also see a society drowning, turning itself inward and retreating to the ugliest parts of oneself. The fear and the anger and the rejection of human rights is overwhelming the goodness of Israelis. 

On Wednesday night when the program ends I will sit in Jerusalem and drink a glass of wine knowing that twenty minutes - just twenty minutes!!! - away, Husam, our Palestinian guide, will be figuring out the best checkpoint to cross through to get from his apartment in Beit Sahour to his family's apartment in Silwan. His wife and children have Jerusalem residency but he had West Bank residency, and thus his life is a constant game of logistics of the occupation. When his entire family drives through a checkpoint crossing into Israel, he gets out of the car and walks through the checkpoint for West Bank Palestinians while his wife and four children drive through. His biggest challenge now, he says, is making sure his children don't come to hate Jews and Israelis, but it is a difficult task when this is their regular experience. And why does Husam go through all of this? So that I, a Jewish American, can sit in West Jerusalem and drink a glass of wine. 

So this perhaps is why I have not written anything recently. The absurdity of occupation, my complicity in it, the urge to defend a country that is oppressing millions, the realization that this is not the Judaism I was raised with - this tension makes its almost impossible to articulate the experiences of this land. 

But now it is 7:30, and 19 undergrads are waiting for me to tell them they need water bottles and hats and sunscreen, and to remind them to bring their passports and not to forget their cell phones again.  So I leave you with what I realize is a rather depressing post. I'm off to Europe on Saturday so hope my stories will become more entertaining as I attempt to communicate in languages I do not speak. 

 

Group think, or how 19 year olds begin to act like 3 year olds

Note: This post is two days old because the students are so needy that I haven't had a free minute to finish and post it. 

I am sitting on Rothschild Boulevard enjoying a cappuccino and the early morning silence of Tel Aviv as it begins to come to life.  I feel I could write for hours about the past two days - we have been in Tel Aviv for Israeli Memorial and Independence Days - two emotionally, politically, nationalistic days. We went to the Holocaust Museum, to Rabin Square, to Jaffa, to the beach, to a joint memorial service and so on. 

The emotion of the past two days feels almost too much to try to articulate now and so instead I will share the comedy of schlepping 19 undergrads around this land. 

I think I am gaining a sense of what it feels like to parent teenagers, and I am feeling a deep sense of karma from my teenage self. 

Scene 1: 

Last week in Bethlehem, we allowed the students to take cabs to a basketball game to meet our guide, who would chaperone them then. They were to return by 9 pm for a meeting with us. At 915 there was no word so we called multiple students. No response. At 930, no response, no students. At 945, one group of students arrived at the hotel and their exhuberent faces fell as they saw the look on my and Rima (my co-lead's) faces. We sat there arms folded, waiting for an explanation. 

Rima looks at them and says: "How do you think we're feeling right now?" I struggled to keep a straight face as I could not believe I was here on the side asking teenagers how they thought I felt about their late arrival and lack of communication. 

Scene 2:

Any time we get off the bus the first question we are asked is "Where is the bathroom?" Or, "What is this place?" We spend time on the bus talking about our next destination and as soon as we get off they have forgotten everything - or been asleep for the whole thing. They literally cannot figure out anything for themselves. Our new motto is "problem solve!" Everywhere we arrive they ask where the bathroom is. Everytime we get on the bus they ask how long until we get somewhere. Everytime we leave for the day they ask what they need to bring with them. 

Updating this post now from Nazarerth:

Scene 3:

There is a heatwave in Israel now. It was 95 degrees yesterday and will be 100 today. Lord knows I don't handle the heat well, and my Mishkin sweat genes are in full force. Yet after checking the weather and announcing the impending heat wave to the students, I had the good sense to wear breezy clothes, to put on my hat, to carry more water. These students rolled onto the bus yesterday wearing pants and with I filled water bottles. After a full day of listening to complaints about the weather I finally said to the whole group that unfortunately, Rima and I cannot control the weather, and thus asking us why it was so hot was not useful. Instead I taught them how to say "I'm hot" in Hebrew and we reviewed with them everything they might need to bring with them to cool off today. 

Scene 4:

We have a student who has diabetes and celiac. A shitty combination in general, but extra challenging in this land. She has had a hard time eating and thus we have been going out of our way to make sure she has enough food that she can eat. Unsurprisingly, it is easier to find gluten free food in Tel Aviv than in the West Bank. Because we were leaving yesterday for Nazareth, I asked her two days ago if she had enough food for until we got to Jerusalem. Yes, she said, she did. The morning we were planning to leave Tel Aviv, I asked again, reminding her it would be challenging to get any food that we could guarantee was gluten free until we reached Jerusalem. Yes, she said, she had enough food. Lo and behold, we arrive in Nazareth, and at 8 pm she informs me that she needs more food that is gluten free! When I asked her why she had not said she needed more food at 8 am when we were in Tel Aviv and I asked her she just shrugged and looked confused. 

Honestly, I sometimes wonder if these kids are 3 years old or 19 years old. I feel like my patience is being tried in new and exciting ways, though I am also finding the rewards of teaching to be so much greater than they are in Ann Arbor. 

Thankfully, through a much longer story of a real shit show at the hotel we were meant to stay at last night, I am staying at a hotel away from all the students and I just woke up from my first night of eight hours of sleep in the past two weeks and I feel so refreshed and like such a winner. Inshallah this sleep and silence will give me the strength for the next couple of days of heatwave and student crankiness. 

Claiming these People

I realized yesterday that I have never traveled here and been the only Jewish person on a trip. Our group is made up of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, people of color, white people, and Christians, the majority of whom are seeing this land for the first time. We are also staying at a hotel and working on a farm that attracts many European, particularly German, tourists. Thus far we have only hear Palestinian narratives.

And thus, there is a challenge for me that I did not anticipate. I knew I would be the only Jewish person until our Israeli guide joins us on Tuesday (right now we have only a Palestinian guide), but I did not know how it would make me feel. I didn't realize the Zionism that would creep into me, the urge to share Jewish narratives and Israeli narratives. I didn't realize that I would sit alone - early to breakfast yesterday - eyeing a group of older Germans suspiciously. What were they doing here, I thought, Who were they to come and tell a Jewish nation how it should be conducting itself?

It hit me yesterday in Hebron. After a long tour and a visit to the tomb of the patriarchs, we were to walk up Shuahada Street (google it - the road is an old Palestinian market taken over complete by settlers and now off limits to most Palestinians.). Our guide was not allowed to join us so I walked us up the street. At the entrance we were stopped by Israeli soldiers and while they checked our passports I made small talk, cheerfully telling them about our group, that I had lived in Tel Aviv, etc. Later, a little lost, I stopped and asked a settler woman pushing her baby in a stroller what road we were on and again we had a nice casual conversation. 

I felt horrified by how easily I could switch to friendliness with the people supporting an enterprise I feel so actively against and am working to dismantle. Later, during our debrief, a student shared how odd it was to watch me speak in Hebrew and English with the soldiers as if they were not holding giant machine guns and checking our passports. The thing was, I had not even notices the guns. Obviously somewhere I knew they were holding guns but I have spent so much time in this environment that it did not even register on my mind to consider it abnormal as I spoke with them about the weather and their time in the army so far. 

Wow I felt horrified, I also felt grateful. We have such a tendency to distance ourselves from people like us that we don't agree with and to dehumanize others. "Sure, white people are racist but not me - I'm a good white person." Or, "Germans had something in them to allow them to become Nazis - that could never happen here." The eagerness to distance ourselves, to insist that we are different, is a dangerous one I think. I think we have to claim these people as our own. Yes, I claim these soldiers pulling aside a hijabi student on our trip for extra questioning. I do not like it, I do not want to claim him and his islamaphobia and his racism and his hostility and his display of masculinity. 

But I think I must. I can easily see the different life in which my great grandmother left Eastern Europe for Palestine not New York and I grew up here during the second intifada and now I am standing at a checkpoint, suspicious of the girl in the hijab. 

It's painful, it makes me a little sick to my stomach. But it feels necessary. To claim these people, and then to work to make these people better. A Palestinian we met with said, "You are not a self hating Jew of you criticize Israel, you are a self hating Jew if you are not concerned with saving the soul of Israel."

Yesterday in Hebron, these words echoed in my mind. 

 

We learned about the different zones in Hebron and who had access where. A student on the left is looking up at the Israeli soldier monitoring us from a rooftop. 

 This fencing goes over the Palestinian part of the main shopping market in Hebron. The fencing is there because settlers live in the top apartments and throw garbage down on Palestinians. You cannot quite make it out but the little white flag to the left is an Israeli flag claiming the land. 

Nescafé, a quest for better coffee

When I arrived on Tuesday night I stayed at an Airbnb in Tel Aviv, where the host showed me the Nescafé container and described it to me as coffee. For those who have never suffered this horror, Nescafé is instant coffee, and for some reason it is a favorite among Israelis and Palestinians alike. I think we can all agree that what we see below is not coffee.  

When I woke up, I figured it couldn't be as bad as I remembered and wouldn't it be responsible of me to drink free coffee rather than go purchase it. Feeling proud of myself I turned on the kum kum, jammed a spoon into this bottle, and found crunchy hard Nescafé refusing to budge from the bottle unless I hammered it with my spoon. Thankfully after a full night of jet lag and Xanax and melatonin induced slumber, I felt well rested enough to head out on the mean streets of Tel Aviv and search out coffee. Finding my coffee shop Hebrew still on top form, I enjoyed a cappuccino on the patio of a cute cafe by my apartment. 

Flash forward two days and here I sit drinking Nescafé like its my favorite thing. 

It has been one full day with the students plus their arrival day, and already I'm exhausted. Who knew undergraduates could be so loud? I feel like I am living in Markley, my freshmen dorm, again. Last night we lied to them and told them the hotel staff had complained about their noise level so they had to keep it down. This worked for all of one hour and I promptly went to sleep, only to be awoken by the sounds of hysterical laughter and yelling. 

 I learned yesterday that if one holds out until breakfast is served, one can acquire Turkish coffee, a far better treat. Yet my poor coffee addicted self cannot handle two hours of being awake without any caffeine. So now at 6 am I find myself the only one awake, enjoying the cool morning breeze, happily drinking my Nescafé as if it is as delicious as a Roo's Roast Lobster Butter latte, and ready to head back downstairs for a second round.

 

Jet lag, an effort to stay awake.

In an effort to keep myself awake for two more hours, here is a post:

I think I set foot in the Middle East when I got to my gate in Detroit. Over half the passengers (by no scientific data other than my listening) were speaking Hebrew or Arabic. Despite having an extra seat next to me, it was quickly taken over by a couple with a baby. The man took the seat next to me and proceeded to be the world's biggest man spreader while his wife took care of his baby who had a whole seat to his tiny little self. I spent basically the entire flight fighting for some space on the arm rest while listening to the dulcet tones of this baby crying. I usually try to be super generous and forgiving of babies on planes because I know it is so hard to be the parent but this dude and his man spreading made me lose all sympathy. 

My Paris flight was exclusively Jews, most of them frum 8th grade girls on a middle school trip. There was a lot of davening. 

Because a student of ours was detained for seven hours in the airport on Thursday, I decided to sign myself up for the program all the other students are using, where someone meets you and escorts you through security. At the end of the jetway I was swept down an elevator and out to a car then driven around the planes to another entrance back to the airport where I was given the opportunity to take a smoking break before heading inside to passport control. In the end it was highly unnecessary as I made it through security just fine, but I did enjoy having an escort take me around and carry my bags for me! 

In conclusion because I cannot stay awake any longer, I ate an enormous falafel, I walked along the beach, and now I am listening to the familiar sounds of driveways being hosed down - an Israeli activity I have never understood. 

For now, here I am in my happy place. 

 

Packing

You guys. This is all I'm bringing for SIX weeks. I feel like a miracle worker. It turns out one of Ryan's skill sets is dictatorially determining what one does and does not need for six weeks abroad.