This one is about expectations and "The Alchemist"...

Be prepared for a total stream of consciousness entry:

I can expect of myself and battle to maintain the values I believe significant. But I cannot impose myself or my way of thinking on others. My choice to be emotionally transparent this year is my choice alone. I’ve also learned this year how tactlessly choosing not to be so can harm. It’s painful to know I’ve been so inconsiderate to some, especially when I pride myself on being the opposite. It’s selective and it shouldn’t be. But I can only expect of myself.

I’m now reading The Alchemist, a novella about a boy who sets off on his “Personal Legend” (always capitalized in the book) to find treasure buried underneath the pyramids of Egypt. On the boy’s journey from Spain, he meets an Englishman, an aspiring alchemist in search of a master of the craft, hoping the master can help him to decipher the words written in the books he’s carried. At one point, about 45% of the way through the book (love the Kindle stats), they try trading perspectives, or more specifically learning styles. The boy instructs the Englishman to watch their caravan as it journeys through the desert, to learn from the caravan and desert’s relationship: “how the soul of the caravan speaks to the soul of the desert.” At the same time, the Englishman instructs the boy to read his books on alchemy and start trying to decipher their many codes.

Both try their hand at the other’s understanding but give up unsuccessful.

“The boy went back to contemplating the silence of the desert, and the sand raised by the animals. ‘Everyone has his or her own way of learning things,’ he said to himself. ‘His way isn’t the same as mine, nor mine as his. But we’re both in search of our Personal Legends, and I respect him for that.’ “

 Why is it that as I get older, I find deeper understanding in the simplistic? The journey of self-understanding I’ve been on this year continues to bring me back to the simple things, to Occam’s Razor and such. I’m specifically thinking about how I interact and entrust in relationships with others, we’re passed my thoughts on Israel/Palestine; that was so last blog post (though notice how naturally and obviously it fits). And all of the ideas I’ve shared so far in my blog are not new or groundbreaking, they just happen to resonate a little more with me right now. Act on values and give them time.

I have my journey, my Personal Legend, which is to continue learning and connecting through honesty, though hopefully there’s a treasure hunt in there at some point. Its implications have been felt heavily this year. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized my journey differs from others’. Just because my values dictate that I take a certain path doesn’t dictate that others need or would even want to follow. I think friendships grow through the intersections of these value-defined paths. Those whose values don’t align with mine won’t find our paths interacting very often, if at all. Valuing exploration brought many, maybe all, of the participants on this teaching program. Our paths have bumped and at times ran parallel. Yet there are many whose other values, ones more readily accessible in everyday life, guide them in a different direction, as mine guide me in another.

The good friends, those important people who challenge me to think, grow, and evolve, those are the one’s whose paths bump and intersect more often because their values-aligned actions determine it to be so. We travel with similar intention/direction, yet in our own varying levels of circuitousness. We will push and pull because of our proximity. We will build the other up and call the other out because it’s important to us. As the boy says, “We’re both in search of our Personal Legends.” Shit this sounds cheesy as fuhk because I hate quotes but it’s the idea of respecting another’s journey, especially because I damn sure want whomever’s out there to respect mine.

I have a very specific drawing in my head illustrating this “ value paths” thought coherently. And I’m trying to put you, the reader, as far into my mind as is possible, but it’s a little messy. I’ve only shared this blog so far with about 10-12 people. I’ll share it with more, but I’ve unconsciously (because only someone who isn’t conscious can write the previous paragraph) included a call to action for those who hold me closely:

Call me out; it’s important to me. Having information matters to me so don’t withhold, please. Do it out of love. I’ll return the love however you need it.

This one is about Dheisheh Refugee Camp...

With the help from our guide in Hebron, Abboud, we hopped a 9 shekel collective taxi ride (instead of a 40 shekel private ride) to Dheisheh Refugee Camp just outside of Bethlehem to stay with a family in their apartment’s AirBnb’d room. How’d we find this place, you may ask? A lil random. While planning the trip, I asked my sister if she had friends in/near Hebron or Bethlehem. She mentioned she had a friend in this specific camp and after a quick Google search, I found myself reading a blog about staying in Dheisheh in an AirBnb. Why the hell not? Fear? Irrational. Not today, Jewish Satan!

“Go to the Hyundai Company and I will meet you there,” instructed Ibrahim, our host family’s father. Cool. Our collaxi dropped us at the spot and at Ibrahim’s insistence that we’d get lost trying to find the house ourselves (he was certainly right), we sat on the curb and waited. We were confrised, half confused/half surprised. Our expectations shattered. When I used to think of refugee camps, I’d think of the NatGeo or BBC Instagram accounts showing tents and temporary structures. I’d like to call it naiveté but it was just ignorance. We were in the middle of a refugee camp that seemed to have the same infrastructure as Hebron and other cities I’d visited. Put plainly: Palestinians started to understand their reality and took steps to make life better for themselves. They built.

As we’d learn in our rooftop talks with Ibrahim, Dheisheh is as old as Israel (because … well…  of Israel…), 70 years old. The UN leased the land from Jordan just after Israel’s War of Indpendence and Palestine’s Nakba (roughly translated from Arabic as: The Catastrophe) for 99 years. Its 0.33 square mile area houses roughly 15,000 people. According to the UN’s website, the estimated population density is ~45,454 per square km. That’s a dense area. Part of the reason Ibrahim wanted us to wait for him was because the streets and houses remain unnamed and unnumbered due to the areas refugee status. There are just two schools, a boys’ school and a girls’ school. For a population of 15,000... just imagine class sizes. Each family was given a one story concrete hut, more or less, and after a while, decided it wasn’t enough. Ibrahim’s family “purchased” the plot of land on which he and his brothers (3 or 4 of them, not all 8 brothers… that’s right, 8 brothers… and 5 sisters in his family) built a 4-story apartment complex, each family with their own floor. I put purchased in quotes because the deed to the land moving forward isn’t necessarily a guarantee. Though even after 1967, when Israel pushed out Jordan and began its occupation of the West Bank, the UN still pays Jordan for the camp’s leased land. Yet no one knows what will happen in 29 years when the UN’s lease expires. Will it be renewed? Will the conflict be over and the refugees allowed to return to their homeland? Ibrahim wasn’t sure. But we do know, from Ibrahim, that buying the land from Jordan wasn’t cheap. We also know that there’s a history of discarding deeds legal in one society that don’t fit the asinine, often instantaneously decreed requirements imposed by another.* There was no certainty to be discussed.

*Side note: When we tried to get our yearlong student visas for the teaching program, we were randomly asked for a signed letter confirming we were Jewish from our rabbis back home. First of all, being Jewish can’t be a requirement for a student visa because there are plenty of exchange students enrolled in Ben Gurion University who are not. Secondly, the one woman on our trip who’d already received her visa through the same office had no such hoop through which to jump. And thirdly, after a phone call from our program administrator, the “requirement” was waived. Most of our bureaucratic interactions involved some sort of absurd tomfoolery and power play by the Israeli in charge. Most invoke a head-tilted, one eyebrow-raised look of incredulity, and most situations resolved without meeting the absurd condition. And that’s for American-born Jews. One can only imagine the absurdity faced by anyone who isn’t.

As we sat and waited for Ibrahim on the side of the road, we saw some… less than safe driving. It was the beginning of a rally. It started when someone did a donut in the middle of the street (a big street, the main road between Hebron and Jerusalem) right in front of us. Only part of me thought it was okay and it was the part that controls my motor functions. Only when the guy finished his sprinkled treat and sped off did I my cognitive center entertain the thought that maybe that could’ve gone … less than ideally and I should’ve moved.

Young adults and teenagers flew flags of Palestine and also militaristic flags, a yellow flag with a Palestinian flag in the middle and machine guns coming out of it, as they sped up and down the street, without regard for which side they drove on. These yellow flags (and the few thrown stones I saw in Hebron) were the only potentially aggressive and inflammatory things I saw on this trip of Palestinian origin. For me, including this little tidbit serves to question why these young adults feel a connection towards the symbol of machine guns. I’d see why throughout the rest of my 20-some hours in the camp. “A riot is the language of the unheard,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Violence is disgusting and unnecessary, but when an entire people, stripped from every other tool they might be able to use to tell their story, need to express themselves, one can understand their perspective of not seeing another option. As reprehensible as it is, violence gets media attention and brings a sense of relevance to the transgressor. The shitty outcome is that violence against oppression fuels the group’s image of danger and threat in others’ eyes and paves the trail for the spread of hatred and anti-them propaganda. It’s incredibly heartbreaking. These are people who feel let down by their own government amidst this occupation and are tired of being occupied and displaced. Their parents and grandparents were forcibly removed from their homes in present-day Israel and they just want to go back. So while my upbringing in a Pro-Israeli home/society made me cringe slightly as Ibrahim pointed out the graffiti portraits of Palestinian martyrs, it is so painfully obvious why that word “martyr” carries so much pride in their society.

**Another side note: I only read the abridged version without it back in middle school but apparently Victor Hugo’s full-length Les Miserables includes chapters of commentary on the time’s political situation. What I’m trying to say is… deal with it? kthanksloveyoubyebutactuallyIhopereadingmythoughtsondifferentsituationsis somehowrelevanttoyoualsoI’mnotactuallycomparingmyselftooneoftheworld’s greatestwriterslolz

Oy, this happened last post, too, right? As I told some of my readers in person, this train-of-thought writing style can scatter a bit. I’ve had to pee for like 20 minutes. BRB… … … Okay, I’m back. Back to the plot:

Winding through narrow streets, passing by graffiti celebrating the dead, the jailed, and the dream of return, we walked with Ibrahim up to his apartment on the third floor. On the walk, Ibrahim made sure to point out this piece of art (look for the red letters):

I don’t think many Palestinians would argue in the Oslo Accord’s favor.

His young boys and wife, Aya, greeted us as we entered, though the most adorable 5-month-old baby girl Alma and her big and beautiful brown eyes stole my attention immediately. She’s so cute. We exchanged pleasantries, dropped our bags in the room, and headed out to the balcony. What a view:

Sitting there, gazing out onto what felt like such a peaceful landscape, Ibrahim told us the story of the camp, from which of the 45 former villages represented in the camp his family originated, about the living conditions during both intifadas, and how life operates around the camp. He’s a nurse who works in Jerusalem on a special permit allowing him entrance to the Israel. Aya has a degree in accounting. Ibrahim’s permit allows him to travel freely and unimpeded anywhere in Israel, but in his immediate family, only he has the permit. No one can come with him to Jerusalem.

It was so quiet, so calm out on the balcony. Part of that was because the apartment was located away from the camp’s center and the other because it was Friday, but it was quiet. I remember feeling uncomfortable with the serenity.

After asking what felt like a million questions, only to receive answers evoking a million more, Ibrahim informed us of the night’s plan. We were to attend the wedding of a family friend! Well alrighty then.

Though first, around 6:30pm, we followed Ibrahim on a walk around the camp to the Ibdaa Community Center. It serves as a center of life and strength for the camp’s youth, with dance classes, sports teams, study groups, and other opportunities for expression. Trophies commemorating their basketball prowess against other Palestinian communities in the West Bank lined the walls of the first room; there were so many of them, like Globetrotters versus Washington Generals status. The center also served as a constant reminder of the community’s history, with pictures from Dheisheh’s past and gruesome photos of the occupation. I certainly felt the pride walking through the center, pride in the community’s perseverance.

Then we went to the wedding!!! Not what I expected it at all. Also, don’t forget: religious Muslim community = no booze at parties, not that I was expecting it, I know that law, but it’s just been a long time since I went to a party where the coveted drink of choice was Coke. Everyone from Al Jura (sp?) neighborhood came, a couple hundred people. Separated by gender, we sat and talked (well, my friend and I talked while everyone else around us talked to each other), shook lots of men’s hands, and waited for the wedding to begin. What at least I didn’t know at the time, it’d be learned later, was that today was day 2 of the wedding ceremony (which turned out to be a 5+ hour affair itself), so the wedding had already started. After a while drinking the tiniest cups of coffee I e’er did see and cola, we walked back down the street to the beating of drums, singing, and dancing. The groom, hoisted up on the shoulders of his friends/family, smiled ear to ear as he danced along to the music while being sprayed with what looked like silly string by the crowd. There was so much positive energy and lots of happiness. Friends and family carried the groom up the hill (not a small feat) to meet his bride waiting in a car adorned with ribbon and flowers. The couple entered the hall alone, did whatever newlywed couples in Palestinian societies do (to be honest, I didn’t ask), and after, the groom came out and greeted every single man in attendance. The greeting went as such: handshake, kiss on the left cheek, kiss on the right cheek (sometimes twice for the important peoples), ending with a hug. My friend and I’d had plenty of time to study how to it was done but were still a little gleefully nervous as our time in the spotlight (literally because of the giant camera with the bright-ass light that followed the groom’s every step) came. You could see our presence shocked the groom a bit but he didn’t miss a beat. He embraced us one at a time as if we’d belonged there all along. I shyly voiced the word I’d asked Ibrahim to teach me: ma-bruk, meaning congratulations. It was really cool, an incredibly warm encounter.

After the wedding, our night wasn’t over. A little after 10:00pm (over 14 hours since we’d started our trip), Ibrahim brought us to a brother’s home where we would help carry the food prepared for the wedding family to their house. First though, we met the extended family. We sat in a room full of women, including two very cool German graduate students researching entrepreneurship in refugee camps, and a few men. Pretty much everyone at least attempted to engage with us in English but surely everyone greeted us. The best part of this picture I didn’t take was of these women, all joyfully chatting with one another, sitting under a font size 7,000 “Love” painted word on the wall. I remember turning to my friend and saying: “This is supposed to be the enemy. These are the people we are told to fear.” It’s a simple fallacy. Just as my Republican friends don’t like to be roped in with the Alt-Right movement, and just as there are some wackos on the left with whom I disagree and with whom I don’t want to be associated, every group has bad apples. And unfortunately, bad apples tend to define groups to those who don’t know better. Frankly, we, most Reform Jews in the West, don’t know better, weren’t taught better. These are not the faces of people who want to harm others. These are not the faces of those who hate Jews. These are not the faces of an enemy. But we lump them in.

To the beating of drums, clapping, and singing, we ascended to the wedding family’s home with the groom’s party that hadn’t missed a beat. Seemed like they’d just been walking around the whole camp, announcing the celebration to everyone. The men of Ibrahim’s family carried a giant platter of lamb (3 or 4 people carrying it), rice, and vat of soup. We carried up the cans of soda… BUT we were still included and we still helped! They said we’d done them a great honor, which was a wonderful sentiment, though I regard the other food carriers as higher on the honor chain.

Outside the wedding family’s gorgeous house, we ate a little dessert, had a little more coffee, and were pretty sure it was bedtime. LOLOLOLOLZZZZ NOPE! It was apparently time to return to Ibrahim’s brother’s house for MORE FOOD (I neglected to mention we’d already eaten dinner with our host family). A table (yes, I said table because the tray was ~2 feet in diameter) of chicken laid on a bed of garlic rice with bowls of yogurts lay in front of us. Armed with spoons, we went in. I ate too much as it was very good but because every time any whitey put down his/her spoon, our hosts jovially hounded us to continue eating, insisting we’d not had enough. Finally after this 4^th meal (though please don’t read that as an endorsement for Taco Bell, I maintain the opinion that it’s a gross establishment because I decided that when I was 7-9 and I’m stubborn), we went home and passed out.

On our walk to Bethlehem the next morning, we passed the fenced-in, memorialized turnstile used as the camp’s only entrance/exit during the first intifada, pretty much restricting almost all movement. Over 10,000 people lived with a curfew for over 3 months, unable to leave their homes. They’ve since fenced in the turnstile, as it’s no longer in use, yet it serves as a constant reminder of the occupation.

My favorite word on this trip was “juxtaposition;” my friend grew a little tired of hearing it. Here’s one for you: I worry about where I’ll move to when I return to the States; they’ve worried about if they can move past their front door. Another: Western perceptions vs. Reality. Ibrahim listed his room on AirBnB in March of 2017 has since had over 112 different guests. In response to a question about his neighbors’/friends’/family’s response to his attempt to bring tourism to Dheisheh, he said simply: they love it because it gives people a chance to see our lives. Every guest of his has left this Palestinian refugee camp without incident, besides being included in a wedding… ooooofah.

Go see for yourself. Go talk to “the other.” For reasons we can only assume, it’s what the occupying leaders don’t want. Go see why.

Here’s the link to Ibrahim and Aya’s place; they’re wonderful people:

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/17350628?location=dheisheh

This one is about Hebron...

If we do not and cannot know the others, how can we trust them?

I spent this past weekend in the West Bank, first in Hebron, then Dheisheh Refugee Camp, and finally to Bethlehem, in the hopes of learning more about the perspective of “the other.” What I found was heavy yet encouraging, life existing, prevailing under the pressure of oppression, surviving through strangulation. And most people were smiling, living.

A friend and I started in Jerusalem, leaving Friday morning by bus to Bethlehem, transferring to a private taxi (don’t do this, find a collective taxi just up the road from the last stop at the intersection of Bab El-Zakak/Beit Jala Road; you’ll save lots o money), and arriving in Hebron. Our tour wouldn’t start for another 40 minutes so we walked around, lightly exploring side streets and the few open stores. A few minutes before 10:00, Abboud showed up in his little red car and we started seeing and learning.

Quick tip #2 (#1 is above about transportation): Try to visit Palestinian cities on a day other than Friday, it’s Islam’s holy day of the week and businesses were closed. Unfortunately, our (and the tour company, Hantourism’s, which = very solid, definitely recommend) schedule dictated the only day we could go.

Abboud brought us to a downtown Hebron hostel where he treated us to tea, coffee, and a brief history of Palestine and then of Hebron in further detail. Interestingly enough, in the Oslo Accords that delineated land in the West Bank as areas A, B, and C, they had trouble with Hebron and left it out of the agreements altogether.

*For quick reference, Palestinian authorities govern Area A (the Palestinian cities) supposedly completely (because though restricted in the Oslo Accords previously, since 2002, Israel has decided they can enter and patrol as they see fit), Israeli and Palestinian authorities allegedly co-govern Area B (Palestinians oversee civil law but there’s joint security control with Israel), and Israelis control Area C (which is Palestinian land on which they cannot build and is constantly being “bought” – read: confiscated – for the purpose of building settlements). Hebron, however, has settlements in the heart of its old city, presenting the secretive Oslo clan with a bit of an issue. Unable to reassign part of this Palestinian city as Area B or C, in the late 90s, the Hebron Protocol divided the Old City of Hebron into H1 and H2. All shops owned by Palestinians were forcibly closed in the Old City that fell into H2 without compensation. Even some ground floor level shops in H1 were closed because the upper floors were chosen for Israeli settlements. The main market of the Old City, too, closed, as it happened to find itself behind H2’s own iron curtain. The occupation also relegated the Old City’s main road of commerce and way to reach the mosque to a pedestrian walkway, but only for Palestinians; don’t worry, the Settlers can still drive it. Hebron is the West Bank’s largest city. There are ~850 Jewish settlers and, according to Abboud, around 2,000+ Israeli soldiers who patrol H2 and the area surrounding the Israeli-controlled Old City, to “keep settlers safe.” Not a bad per capita ratio for the settlers, who are also all allowed to carry guns, by the by, just in case someone who doesn’t look like them gives them the spooks.

**Another interesting piece of info to note is that Abboud asked my friend to remove his Star of David necklace. “Not for me,” Abboud said, “but because if a soldier sees that, they will take you and bring you back to Israel because it is forbidden for Jews to be here.” No, I didn’t record the sound bite for a perfectly dictated quote, but that’s the gist (always thought that word was spelled with a j). It is illegal, in the name of peace, for Israelis to go to any Area A. There are giant red signs on the roads leading into any Area A that in English read: “This Road Leads To Area ‘A’ Under The Palestinian Authority The Entrance For Israeli Citizens Is Forbidden, Dangerous To Your Lives And Is Against The Israeli Law.” It's a little blurry, but here's the sign seen on our way into Hebron:

We’ll come back to this sign because it’s incredibly important to the situation at hand.

Ok, onto the tour (jeez Than, pick up the pace). After some tea, we headed towards the Old City, passing checkpoints, walled-up former markets and passageways, and closed shops (one side of the street’s stores were closed because it was Friday in observance of the holy day, the other’s due to the occupation and settlements above). Abboud pointed out the security cameras, the watchtowers, the rooftop soldiers, and most dishearteningly, the metal fence built above the new main road to the Old City accessible for Palestinians. When I saw the fence overhead, I absolutely thought it was built by the Settlers to stop any potential street-born attacks on their newly built homes perched above. I was wrong. Palestinians built the fence to shield themselves from the trash and filth dropped from above. Abboud and one or two shop owners even claimed that liquids poured from above, as well, not excluding urine. The creation of H1/H2 all but strangled the Palestinian economy in the Old City of Hebron, forcing many into other parts in the surrounding area.

“Boycott Israel” and “Existence is Resistance” art greeted us at the now fenced-up, barbed-wired, and concrete-blocked former entrance to the Old City’s main street via the main road.

Things were bleak, to say the least.

We walked to and spent some extra time in two places of pain. One was the Old Jewish hospital, which in 1929 was stormed by Muslim terrorists who murdered almost 70 Jews after hearing rumors that Jews planned to take control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The prevailing story, as Abboud tells it, points to the British as the rumors origin. He spoke of the attack with remorse and disgust. By this point, he’s made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t take the side of anyone who is willing to take another’s life. Also that the word "terrorist" shouldn't be reserved for one side of this fight (YUP!). That horrific act ended the Jewish presence in Hebron. That is until Settlers decided on the Jewish Hospital's buidling for their new settlement, on the upper floors above Palestinian shops. Now, it serves as home to settlers and new rooftops for soldiers to patrol.

The second place was the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is known as the Cave of the Patriarchs. In 1994, a Jewish terrorist passed through the metal detectors at the Israeli-attended security checkpoint at the mosque’s entrance unimpeded, the same security checkpoint used for Palestinians, with a machine gun (ignorance, willful ignorance, incompetence, or encouragement?) and killed 28 Palestinian Muslims as they knelt in prayer, injuring 125 others. 30 people were killed that day in the mosque, including the Jewish terrorist, but also including the man who stopped the terrorist from continuing his slaughter, who was killed by Israeli security when they finally entered the mosque. The mosque subsequently closed for 6 months and upon its reopening, had some previously undiscussed and unbeknownst modifications. Without warning, a Jewish synagogue now occupied half of the mosque to be more inclusive to everyone who believes the place holy. Since they cared about being respectful and inclusive, Israeli architects designated two different entrances for the now separated holy place. The former entrance to the mosque serves now as the entrance to the synagogue and its former exit walkway now functions as the Palestinian entrance.

Right outside the mosque is a Palestinian neighborhood in the Old City separated from the Ibrhahimi Mosque complex by a green fence. To get to and from the Mosque and the neighborhood, there’s a singular electric, Israeli-controlled door (the neighborhood’s access to the city, through this door, can be allowed or prohibited with the touch of a button and on a whim). About 100 yards of road separate the neighborhood from the mosque. However, to get to the fence's door, Palestinians must walk the other way, around a set of buildings about a ¼ mile out of the way because of an Israeli-controlled bus stop was placed right there on that road in between. Think of H2’s property line as a formerly gerrymandered congressional district in Pennsylvania …

Here’s a map for reference. H2 is in pink, settlements are in blue, and H1 is the rest:

These last two examples just scratch the surface of the nonsensicalness of the living situation Palestinian’s face everyday.

But people smiled at us and said hello. Shopkeepers greeted us warmly, open to speaking with us like old friends. For our benefit, a local potter even left the keys to his shop with Abboud while he went to pray so we could go sit and drink coffee (I DRANK COFFEE ON THIS TRIP. WHAAAA? … it’s still gross, though). Hospitality runs very, very deep and is taken incredibly seriously here, but more on hospitality in my next post on Dheisheh.

To finish our Old City tour, Abboud directed us to the road through the settlements, the easiest way from the Old City to downtown. He only showed us the way because he wasn’t allowed to walk on the road. And because he’s a wonderful tour guide and simply a Palestinian citizen of Hebron, knew to make a contingency plan should a “clash” break out.

What we saw wasn’t a big clash, two soldiers perched on a rooftop responded to three to five thrown rocks by shooting three to five tear gas canisters. Abboud knew some of the press members readied nearby so we chatted with them for a little. They concluded with “Have a nice day!” the sarcasm of which seemed a bit trite, but certainly makes sense considering.

(2 soldiers - one crouching down and unseen in this photo - up top shooting tear gas down the road away from us) 

Abboud’s main argument against the occupation is simple: If Israelis aren’t allowed to visit and interact with Palestinians and vice versa, and each side is fed propaganda of the others’ alleged threat to their safety, how can there be peace? How can they know “their enemy?” How does adding checkpoints and restricting movement in one’s native city promote peace? How does segregation bring people together?

Even going to Jordan evoked questions of personal safety from Israelis. I didn’t tell very many people about my plans for this trip. People are very nervous about Palestinians because the media are really good at keeping themselves in business. The BRS (big red sign) leading into Area A I mentioned before furthers the “us versus them” narrative, that interacting with Palestinians on their turf, or rather what’s left of it, is life-threatening.

When people ask me whether or not I want to stay here and I respond in the negative, usually citing my disdain for an all-too pervasive apathy/encouragement towards oppressive behavior as gently/agreeably as I can muster, saying I want to return to the States, they comment on America’s issues and how it’s not much better there. First of all, terrible argument to say that one bad situation is acceptable because it’s similar to another bad situation. Neither is acceptable. It’s 2018 and we know better. I’ve said it a thousand times this year, how much I hate the misplaced obligatory feelings of so many people towards Israel because of their connection to Judaism. I’m not touching the idea of whether or not the country should exist or not. It exists now, it’s here, and it is here in the name of my religion, but it is not acceptable in its current state. My problem is in the active bastardization of Jewish values by Jews in the name of preserving Judaism. Jews love to quote Rabbi Hillel’s famous words: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” But the quote doesn’t stop there. The next line reads: “If I am not for others, what am I?” There’s a third sentence: “And if not now, when?” I feel strongly that when too many Jews regard Israel, they wholeheartedly embrace the first and third sentences and completely forget the second, or rather, severely limit their scope of its inclusion.

Bottom line, though, however you feel about this country, stop calling it a democracy. It’s not. Call it an ethnocracy. Case and point: The Jewish State Bill. Regardless of whether or not it will move further in the Israeli government, it passed the first of three rounds in the Knesset and has the full support of Trump’s BFF Netanyapoo (lolz poop joke). It unequivocally states support that Jewish law should always supersede civil law if the two are ever in contention. Democracy at its finest? … No.

Abboud’s thoughts are very f’in valid and true. It’s infuriating, actually. 

But we haven’t even gotten to the best part of the trip.

… stay tuned for the next blog post!

This one is about loss...

In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, the author discusses the importance of choosing which of our problems to give a fuck about, which pain to seek. To seek happiness is to live on a never-ending quest of constant disappointment: “Wanting a positive experience is a negative experience. Accepting a negative experience is a positive experience.” If problems never cease to exist, choose them wisely, then seek to be happy from the solving of those problems, those desired.

My great Aunt Ni, my grandma’s sister, is on her deathbed. I only knew one grandparent —she was a hell of a lady— and this her only sibling. This is something, someone, I give a fuck about, very many fucks, actually. If we indeed do choose the pain we seek to feel, this is at the top of the list. I take comfort in hurting so much right now with this loss to my family because of her immense importance to us. It’s a good thing tears fall on my bed sheets as I write because I am happy for what she means to me, to us. No, I didn’t call her or visit enough when I lived in Chicago, but I can’t change that now. Not an excuse, simply a fact. Though I can be happy for all the times she didn’t have to drive 40 minutes alone because she had my sister and me to take her to family gatherings. We’d gabble in the car, it was fun. But she could have driven if she needed to. She was so strong, so independent. I marveled at her ability to live, to see her family, to continue connections and seek new ones in her assisted living home (though I think for most of the time she lived there, it was without assistance). She’s a tough cookie, just like her sister. I miss them. Ooofah these tears are cathartic. I’m so grateful for them because they show me how truly lucky I am to have a family like mine.

I hope this is centering. This is a pain worth experiencing hard. Not to discredit or undermine the importance of other pain I’m experiencing but this is a good reminder of my priorities: Family first.

This one is about "Kindness eases Change" ...

It's a quote from Parable of the Talents, the sequel of Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I like it.

As part of his interim rabbi tour around the northeast and Midwest, Rabbi Dad has used the subject of transition and the difficulty of change as a call to action during High Holiday sermons. Definitive change demands redirection. The river will keep flowing. The river will always keep flowing. It will erode, diverge, and even topple to ensure its current. The river will flow. Time continues as our constant, changing reliably evermore. If I’m to lift my head skyward through the earth towards the clouds, I cannot plant my stake with the hopes of stopping the current. The current prevails; the river flows. Yet instead of simply riding it completely at its will, I can build a raft and, maybe in my naiveté, can optimistically control my comfort level as I ride. Maybe install a steering mechanism. I cannot go backwards and I cannot stand still. But can I take hold, focus my locus of control, to center my experience? I believe I can. I believe in happiness. It is not inevitable, as I’ve found. Happiness does not always beget happiness. It must be actively pursued and nurtured. I am not as happy now as I can be. I took an emotional risk and it did not go as I would have liked. And now I’m hurting. But the hurting is new and will not last. It acts to ground me to my experiences and will one day be quite the beautiful overcome mountain behind me.

Look up. Look out. Reach up. Reach out.