glutted with ceremony

an activist i was hanging up posters with at Ben Gurion University just now asked if i wanted to join him for a scholarship ceremony, but i just couldn't do it. i'm brimming with formality, poignant moments and intergenerational mixed seating. i'm glutted with ceremony.

last night was a Lag Ba'omer event for all the Diaspora youth in longterm programs in Israel. Lag Ba'omer is the holiday I could never remember what for when I was in Hebrew School. It is the 33rd day in the count of the omer, which is counted for 7 weeks from the last day of Passover. It commemorates the day when the students of Rabbi Akiva were spared from massacre and the day of sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai's death, and is celebrated with bonfires all over the place. it was a full day.

We hiked the Burma Road, a route used to penetrate to Jerusalem and win the War of Independence in 1948. Later, Jeff and I went to the VIP reception, because the principal of the Netivot secular high school had been chosen to speak about what it was like to have us as volunteers at the school. Unexpectedly, they passed us the microphone to say a few words, so we stumbled something--embarrassingly, in English-- in front of a cabinet minister, the chairwoman of the Jewish Agency, the Education Director of the Jewish Agency, and a lot of other big names we didn't know.

At the MASA Gala event, they went all out to highlight all the academic and volunteer activities of the 7000 participants. It was over-the-top, with all the Hebrew songs Americans know, speeches by the Minister of Immigration and Absorption, by Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, and the chair of the Jewish Agency, fireworks, food. Basically, this is a joint project of the Ministry of Education and the Jewish Agency, and they are spending A LOT of money on it.

But their mission is clear. Olmert said something that I always thought was supposed to remain implicit: "Take your experience, and bring it back to your communities. Stay. Stay for a month, a year, a few years. Then, pack your bags, and come home. We want you here. We need you here..."

The demographic problem seems like it should be on the hush-hush, but it's readily spoken about on the street. It's something strange to me. It's strange that Zionism is such a lofty dream so successfully attained but given so little legitimacy. When the crowd of 7000 young people was standing in the bleachers, singing Adon Olam ("master of the universe") and Am Yisrael Chai ("the people Israel lives") at the tops of their voices, I said to Jeff, "If our non-Jewish friends saw us now, they would think we were part of a cult." He agreed. Why does Zionism, especially as executed by the Jewish Agency, feel cultlike, when in my heart I know that it's a legitimate and just dream--for an oft-persecuted people to have a secure piece of territory to claim citizenship in, to invite their refugees, to form a united people?

I want to feel that solidarity, but not too much. There are communal values and there are personal criticisms, and I want both. So, I will continue to go down in front of the stage to dance like a free person, but the next day I will return to my computer to make my critique.

milk and honey

Last night at T'mol Shilshom, a popular book cafe in the center of Jerusalem, I ordered hot milk with honey and vanilla-flavored tea. Late-evening spring milk-and-honey drinking in Jerusalem is always deserving of documentation :)

nationalism and the joy-factor

These were the countries of origin represented at the BBQ today:

Israel
England
United States
Turkey
India
Hong Kong

There were about 25 people, we spoke English and Hebrew, we ate good food, they offered me cigars and weren’t joking. They advised me on life, told me that everything will fall into place. I know this, I am certain of it, but I know that this is only true if one is proactive. I just want to be facing the right direction when the wind blows. Invite me, chances are I’m game.

The sun has just set on Yom Ha’atzmaut #58. You’ve never seen an Independence Day like this. The day is preceded by Memorial Day, with public ceremonies all over the country. Two memorial sirens, one in the evening and one in the morning, blare across the country for two minutes in which every vehicle and every person comes to a standing halt. I went to an evening memorial ceremony at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. A handsome public personality MC’d the event, read poems, and introduced testimonies of the mothers and sisters of soldiers who have fallen in the past year. The mayor of Tel Aviv gave a short speech about moving forward in unity. Between these pieces, testimonies and slide shows of the fallen soldiers were broadcast on large screens around the square. After each soldier’s tribute, a different musician performed. Thousands of people sat on the stone floor of the square, singing or listening, some with tears in their eyes, some holding their lover’s hand, staring into space. People seemed to be there because it was a night not to be alone. It was a feeling of just being together.

Then, at sundown, Yom Ha’atzmaut began with fireworks displays all over the city. People took over the streets in central Tel Aviv, children young and old showered each other with shaving cream, yeshiva guys paraded, singing, waving Israeli flags, and thousands of people gathered for Israeli folk dancing and public sing-alongs, along with regular barhopping, block parties, and, by necessity, racial profiling at its most vigilant.

I went to the public sing-along at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where thousands of people sat, stood, and danced maniacally to Israeli folksongs. Notably, it was mostly a kippah/skirt-clad crowd, and in the beginning, I felt self-conscious in my sleeveless dress (which was silly--my friends responded, "But this is Tel Aviv!"). Then as I got into the groove, I seriously enjoyed dancing with these women, fumbling through the Yemenite steps, or just doing the sloppy hora that I know from my adolescent run at American Bar Mitzvahs. Exhausted, I left in the middle of the festivities, at 3:30 AM.

Today was national BBQ day, like any country’s Memorial Day. I have to admit, it felt novel and refreshing to celebrate this holiday without the gravity of prayer. Still working on my religious joy-factor, I guess.

on the narrative of giants

For those who oversee volunteers, whether they be unpaid interns in a newsroom or trash collectors out on a scenic byway, this is your surest tactic: make your volunteers part of the narrative.

In a single short conversation each shift, this is what Bradley does for his interns at the English website of Haaretz. When the computer network is down and no one has access to the wire, we have no choice but to sit and talk. He talks about how Ahad HaAm worked at the paper. Natan Alterman, Israel’s first national poet, was found scribbling poetry instead of writing news stories, and was fired on the spot. His desk must be somewhere in storage, and Bradley’s always wanted to look for it because it must have Alterman’s poetry etched into it.

It’s a little unfathomable. That Haaretz is the equivalent of the New York Times in Israel, and its legacy must have such controversy embedded in its name-- it was founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the far right-wing military Zionist journalist.

“It’s a looney bin.” Bradley says. Even working here, he tells us, it’s hard to understand how they produce top-notch work. Everything’s disorganized, and everyone’s crazy. As an intern, this means I immediately felt needed and appreciated. In the workplace in Israel, you are automatically entrusted with more responsibility than in a suspicious American workplace :). Like all the interns, I’ve been updating the English-language website, so that when the Pentagon staff gets to work in the morning and opens this page, it’s easily navigated with neat 80x60 pixel photos under each section. I always thought there was a single webmaster who oversaw such things, someone checking every word on the website 24 hours a day. No, it’s me and a buddy. We figure things out by trial and error, drink hot chocolate, take a lunchbreak.

With a single anecdote-- like the one about the intern who with a single letter nearly triggered a scandal by writing “Jew York” on a front page headline-- we are convinced that precision is important, our work is indispensable, and that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. Which we are. Otherwise, there’s not much reason to live in Tel Aviv.

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check out Haaretz's English website at www.Haaretz.com

foreign workers speak excellent Hebrew

Lightning strikes. Really, it does, and it may be the last of the season. There are clouds, a bright half moon, and I can taste the stale exhaust of the buses and taxis. I’ve been in the office for a little longer than I expected. Ever since I read a biography of Ralph Nader’s early advocacy days, I romanticized late night activism in a messy office. So when I heard my colleague's voicemail that my email hadn’t gone through, it seemed like a no-brainer to go back to the office just to send it through. It would be a lame reason not to get the newsletter distributed before Pesach.

Now I’m inside the building and it’s eleven minutes to eleven. I come downstairs, and I find that I’m the only one inside the building, locked inside. Thank you, creators of cell phones, I think to myself. I call Shany, one of my co-workers, and she cheerfuly stays on the line with me while I go back up to the office, scramble through drawers to find the master keys, and rush downstairs to get out before the alarm is activated.

The first key opens the first door. The second key is supposed to open the second door, but the second door is a sheet of steel and stuck. It has a skeleton keyhole that I can see through. I only have a tiny aluminum key and nowhere to put it. I’m in-between one door and the next, trapped in the foyer, starting to perspire.

I’m glad for myself that I always fill my water bottle, a ridiculous thought, since the building has running water, if I am indeed trapped. Shany says, “Well, you can sleep there tonight…it’s not a problem.” She’s joking and it’s actually pretty funny, because if an American were on the line, this would be a more serious drama.

BANG! I kick the door out. Inhale, exhale, relieved.

I walk home through the red light district of Tel Aviv. I remember Paul Simon and sing, “…a come-on from the whores of Seventh Ave. I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there…”

But the whores are all indoors, and the come-ons come my way, even though I’m wearing work jeans and tie-dye, unshowered. A Russian guy asks me the time, and I fumble, not able to recall numbers in Hebrew, after such a long day. I think of the 17-year old Philippino girl at the bus stop this morning. She spoke perfect Hebrew.

Another day in Tel Aviv.