How I Became a Time Zone

Sorry, I will not go into the history of the Israeli summer-time dispute. No time for it. I went to sleep one hour ahead of everyone else here and left some work undone which I should get to as soon as this rant is through.

I do remember there being some fuss over the time question when growing up in the eighties. The religious parties were altogether opposed to the implementing of a summer-time. My parents explained their worry that it would interfere with prayer schedules. I sided with them instantly. The whole concept of “moving the clock” seemed ridiculous.

It doesn’t seem ridiculous anymore. This year, when the government decided to end summer-time two months before the rest of the world, in order to ease the Yom-Kippur fast, which ends at sundown, I found myself confused. First of all, if you care so much for fasters, why not end summer-time early in August and be kind to fasting Muslims? Besides, people fast on Yom-Kippur in order to suffer, fulfilling the commendment “and ye shall afflict your souls” (Leviticus 23,27), so easing it up sort of defeats the purpose.

Even if we accept the merits of such move, assuming that the lives of several particularly pious older fasters may be saved, the Day of Atonement is only a single day. Could we not switch the clock only for that day? Even minister of Interior Eli Yishai proposed this as a compromise, when the debate heated up an the Knesset.

It died down since, all compromises were rejected and Israeli winter-time clocked in on the night of Saturday, September 11th. The religious parties hold Israeli coalition by the dials and I suspect that the entire summer-time fiasco is simply meant to prove this. I myself accepted the verdict with a grumble, as secular Israelis often do in such cases, as when we’re deprived of public transport on Saturdays or the right to import pork (a restriction that did wonders to the local pork industry).

Then this evening, when the suns last rays bid me farewell over the foam of nucturnal waves at 18:00, when that gloom of winter began settling into my heart still enveloped by a sweat-moistened shirt, I decided that I will not bow. My time will be that of our proper local time zone. I’ll arrive early to meetings, I’ll probably miss a few, never mind. I deserve to be a member of humanity and live according to its timeline. If I last on Yom-Kippur, the achievement will be greater and my bonding with the almighty firmer. It’s worth it.

My cellphone was resistant at first, but then I simply changed my timezone to Cairo (our proper time zone, from which we swayed!) My girlfriend, who actually deserves credit for this idea, having brought it up when hope for national sanity was still in the air, soon joined me. We are now autonomous of the rest of the country, which is pretty odd. We went to watch the late show last night and it was really screened rather late.

Upon returning home we learned that we are not alone. The city of Givatayim, a suburb of Tel-Aviv, is contemplating turning itself into a time zone. There’s a majority for it at the city council and it would take two weeks to pass the municipal law. That would still provide the mostly secular people of Givatayim with a month and a half of acceptable light management. It would also make Givatayim an environmental spearhead: the skewed time structure forces Israelis to waste one hour more of electricity each night than they would otherwise.

Do our legislators care for the environment? It doesn’t seem so. Do they like playing power games that cause damage to all communities (the secular one for obvious reasons, the religious – for being now the target of great animousity)? I’d say – yup. If only they could switch their clocks as I did and turn into earlybirds, that would benefit to us all. Such, after all, is the schedule that makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise, and they’re a tad short on the last count.

(This was also posted on +972, a new local web initiative. Visit it!)

Kadita

I spent my worst hair-day ever in Kadita.

Thankfully, I was not the only one with coiffure issues.

How do you dress up for a place like Kadita? That's a riddle. This secluded hilltop community looks like nothing else in Israel, to say nothing of the greater Middle East. It's peaceful in the deepest sense of the word.

Kadita should really require nothing in the way of attire. About thirty years ago, a few hippies came and built homes with their own hands on the foothills of Mt. Meron. Their cummnity was never recognized by the state. It is only due to the nearby tomb of Mishnaic sage Rabbi Tarfon that a road even leads there. It's not a very good road.

While driving on it we met a local Druze man who was picking wild dill in the pastures. I believe a secret garden of wild dill deserves for me to comb my hair and put on a nice shirt.

But what Kadita really requires today is a yarmoulka. Much of the community turned religious over the years. We were fortunate enough to be invited into the home of Eliran and Elinor, two devotees of hassidic rabbi Nachman of Breslau. They made us good coffee, gave us some homemade olive oil and boiled eggs from their henhouse for a picnic lunch we planned.


We got to play with their kids, Michael, Noya and Avinoam, in the pleasant winter air. We also heard two very special life stories, though seperately. In Religious Jewish society it would be inacceptible for a man to even speak with a woman not of his family. I stayed in with Eliran and flipped through the photo album of his secular days. Meanwhile, elinor took Itka out, showed her the chickens and introduced her to her nother in law.

Then we were out to roam the hillsides. Itka looks great in rural surroundings,

but she's an unrequited animal lover.


As for me, I felt a natural longing for the grassy knolls and stone fences of Scotland and Ireland. If not for Eliran's overgrown sideburns and timidness towards Itka, I could believe that we've been transported there. Turns out we haven't. Israel is Israel, for better or worse. It offers us gracious Celtic pastures on which to sit and enjoy glatt kosher eggs.

Dhammapada, Chapter XV

"O let's live in joy, in love among those who hate, among people who hate, let's live in love."

Tomorrow, Saturday night, at 18:30, a mass demonstration will be held in Tel-Aviv against the war in Gaza. The gathering will take place where Sderot Chen meet Rabin Sq. Afterwards, the muses will sing. Osnat Skoblinsky, who offers Israel's best underground literature, comix, kicking literary periodicals and music off of her traveling stand "Bastarbut", is hosting Israel's first spoken word event. It will feature the land's finest poets (certainly those with the most unique reading skills), each paired with a musician, ranging in style from rock to electronica. This will happen at the "Comfort" club in Florentine, at 21:00.

"O let's live in joy, in health among the ailing. Among people who are ailing let's live in health."

I composed the following for a new anthology of anti-war literature. The anthology ended up not featuring any prose so this was left out. It is the monologue of a father whose son is being hospitalized during an air raid. He is waiting in the corridor of the crowded, messy hospital's basement, trying to remain calm, then discovering to his horror that one of the walls is adorned with gory 16th century masterpiece "Triumph of Death". by Pieter Bruegel the elder.

אני מנסה לחשוב על ציורים אחרים, מה היה תלוי לאורך קירות הפרוזדור כשגילגלו את האלונקה אל הדלת? איך אני יכול לזכור? מה פתאום שאראה? רק אותו ראיתי ואת התחבושת שהאחות עוד היתה צריכה להחזיק שלא תישמט, כי הדביקו אותה בכזה חיפזון.
עכשיו הוא בפנים אבל גם אצלי בתוך האוזניים, אני שומע אותו מייבב מבעד לפורמאיקה של הדלת הנעולה. ממסד רפואי זה בטחון. אני חייב לבטוח שבכל רגע שעובר זה משתפר, אבל איך לבטוח באנשים שתולים דברים כאלה בפרוזדורים של בתי חולים? אני לא אידיוט. אני מורה בתיכון. אני יודע מה זה. זה “נצחון המוות" של ברויכל. וגם אם בחיים לא הייתי שומע על ברויכל, מי תולה תמונה של שלדים במקום כזה? מה זה? מדבר מלא גופות, אוניות עמוסות בשלדים, שלדים רוכבים על סוסים, אוספים גופות ברשתות דייגים, די! אני לא יכול להביט. אבל הספסל היחיד שמצאו לו מקום בין המיטות שממלאות את המסדרון פונה כלפי הזוועה ואני הרוס, חייב לשבת, והציור גדול כל כך, מטר על מטר וחצי לפחות. מה היה תלוי לאורך הפרוזדור שהוביל לכאן? ואזות, ואזות עם פרחים, צבעי מים, משהו נורמלי, אני בטוח.
מלמעלה, מרחוק כרגע, בא רעם של עוד הפגזה ומבפנים, מעבר לפורמאיקה, בכי של כאב נורא. ילד שלי! מתוק שלי! אל תדאג. תכף אסדר שיכניסו אותי. שלוש אחיות יושבות על הרצפה, שעונות כנגד הקיר שעליו תלוי הציור. הן ישנות בישיבה, כל כך עייפות, פקעת צוורים וראשים שמוטים, אבל זה הצוות הרפואי היחיד בטווח ראיה ואני מנער את כתפה של זאת שקרובה אלי: אולי מותר לי להכנס סוף סוף? הוא בוכה. אני שומע אותו, הוא צריך אותי איתו, כבר המון זמן. כמה זמן אנחנו כאן?
הרופא ייצא ויתן הוראה, היא ממלמלת. יש יותר מדי בלגן, הם פינו את שתי הקומות שמעל האדמה ליתר בטחון ומילאו את זאת בפצועים. עוד אלונקה נגררת עכשיו בקושי בין המיטות ומתחת לתקרה הנמוכה. “לזוז!" צועק הבחור שבחזית, לא ברור האם הוא רופא או קרוב משפחה. הוא לבוש בסוודר מוכתם בדם, אבל כבר כמה ימים אין זמן לכבס חלוקים. הסדינים שעל האלונקה מוכתמים גם כן, אולי בדם פצועים אחרים, מי שעליה שואג בכאב וזו השאגה הראשונה שאני מבחין בה שאינה של בני, אבל היא גוררת אחריה סערה של צופרים אנושיים המשתוללים בצחנת הפרוזדור. מסתבר שכל החדר מילל בכאב מאז שאני כאן ופשוט לא שמעתי. איך החושים משחקים בנו כשאנחנו מותשים ומודאגים, הנה אפילו דמיינתי שעל הקיר תלוי - אבל הוא באמת שם, הציור הנורא של הבלגי המסריח ההוא. האחיות החצי ישנות מקפלות רגליים כדי לאפשר מעבר והאלונקה חולפת מתחת ללפידים הבוערים, להמונים בתכריכים, לכלב המלחך פני אדם.
האיש בסוודר שולח יד ופותח בדיוק את דלת החדר שבו הוא שוכב. לא! החדר הזה שלו! אני מזנק אל האלונקה לעצור אותה, אבל מישהו תופס אותי ומרחיק אותי בכוח ובדיוק אז האורות שוב כבים. במזל אני נשמט על הספסל החשוף ולא על המרצפות או על אחד הפצועים אבל נוגח קצת במוט המתכת של מסגרת המיטה שליד ופתאום גם אני זועק. להתעשת. האורות חוזרים ושוב רק הבכי שלו ושוב נצחון המוות.
זהו. אני מוכרח להסיר את זה, מוכרח. מוכרח לקרוע את זה. ניגש אל הקיר, תופש את המסגרת, מניף אותה ומשליך אותה כנגד הדלת ששוב ננעלה, השטח היחיד שאף נפש חבולה לא מרוחה כנגדו. מאחורי הציור אין קיר, פעור שם חור ששוליו ריריים וחיים כמו שפתי אדם. אלפי עיניים תלויות בקורים זעירים התלויים מתוכו. השפתיים מתרחבות והזעקה שבוקעת מתוכן גוברת על כל זעקות הפרוזדור, על בכי בני ועל זעקתי שלי. כוח כהה בא ומפלח את מצחי. התקרה קורסת, השמים מצאו אותנו.

"O let's live in joy, free from greed among the greedy, among people who are greedy, let's live free from greed."

I'm only hungry for one thing these days, and that is better times. The new year began with a bit of difficult news, followed that same night by another piece of utterly horrifying news. Returning home from hospital corridors, I found pieces of mail telling me my financial situation worstened. I couldn't help but think about that mountain I once climbed in Switzerland. Going up, it was all pastures and gorgeous views of lake Lucern. I chose to climb down the other side, not realizing the slope there consisted mostly of a solid cliff. After being caught on that cliff face for several hours and nearly killing myself at least once, I made my way down, using physical strength I swear I do not posses. When I was back in the valley, I was the richest man alive.

"O let's live in joy, though we call nothing our own, we shall be luminescent, feeding on joy."

Tolerance, Love, Christmas

Pope Benedict the 16th said today in his pre-Christmas address that "protecting humanity from homosexual and transexual behaviour is as important as protecting the rain forests." He added that "The church must protect humanity from self-destruction."

Coservative Benedict is hardly an expert on saving humanity from self destruction. He is a poor choice of a pope, who is responsible to the deaths of millions by preaching against contreceptives at a time when the African continant is dying of AIDS. Due to his negligence and refusal to protect human lives, he may already be considered the greatest killer in human history. More harmful body-count-wise than Hitler (in whose youth organization Benedict was once a member), Stalin and Mao.

Furthermore, he is causing deadly harm to the glorious holy see. While speaking of "self destruction" Benedict is promoting the self destruction of the Catholic church. I, for one, have always been in love with Catholic peoples, from the Irish to the Poles, and yet such homophobic words stir strongly Protestant feelings in me (particularly Episcopalian ones). I'd like to wish a very merry Christmas to anyone who doesn't follow the path shown by that poor, disgusting bigot, (critical Catholics included), and a happy new year in which both rainforests and human dignity are protected.

Beautiful, like Prophecies

When I moved into my Jaffa home, I bought myself a mezuzah: that little box that is attached to the door frame at the entry to every Jewish home. My neighbors in the building and around are mostly Muslim and Christian. I came to live in peace among them and hence felt fully comfortable in showing some cultural uniqueness.

The neighbors treated the mezuzah with full respect, but the neighborhood kids acted as kids would, removed it somehow from the door frame, and vanished with its content. Inside each mezuzah is rolled a tiny scroll bearing a biblical inscription commending Jews to love God. Since loving is not an act that can be willingly performed, but rather a feeling that stems from the heart, Judaism developed the mezuzah - a little box of love - as a symbolic form of observing the commandment.

I went to town and bought a new ceramic mezuzah for 12 sheqels, then felt conflicted. Should I really put 90 sheqels more into the scroll? these scrolls are made by special traditional scribes, they can't be gotten for any less than that, and what if the kids tear it off again? will I just spend the rest of my Jaffa days Sysiphically traveling to Allenby to buy more and more tiny scrolls, investing all my money and time in something I don't honestly believe in except as some pretty tradition?

Then I had an idea. The previous day I found and purchased a used copy of Yehuda Amichai's book of poetry "Behind all of This, Great Happiness is Hiding". In it was my single favorite poem in the Hebrew language, the one caled "Royal Love song". It begins thus:

You are beautiful, like prophecies,
And sad, like those that are fulfilled.
Silent with the silence of the aftermath
Black in the white solitude of Jasmine
Sharp fangs in the mouth: a she-wolf and a queen.

It's really not much of a sacred text, unless you believe, as I do, that sex is truly holy, and that no beauty is complete without darkness. Here's another bit:

You are beautiful like prophecies that are not fulfilled,
and this is the royal scar:
With the tongue, to pass over it, with the sharpened hand
Over the sweet roughness.

With hard shoes you knock
back and forth bars over me
Your wild rings
Are sacred leprosy of your fingers.

I ripped out the page, rolled it into the mezuza, then glued it to the wall with the toughest industrial glue I could find.

Since them, whenever I became a bit unlucky, I'd always wonder whether that was a good idea. a Jewish superstition has it that if things go wrong around the house, the mezuzahs should be examined with a magnifying glass for flaws. perhaps the scribe slightly misspelled something and thus inflicted the house's dwellers with cancer, financial collapse, etc.

Thankfully, I suffer from neither, but the past few weeks have been difficult, especially financially. this Sunday morning I woke up dreading the morrow: the first day of the month, when both my credit card bill is charged to my account and my rent is due. I was dealing with several difficult matters, worried about myself and others, feeling rather out of love and lonely, in short, distressed.

This is just when the best day of my year began. I got an offer to write regularly for the nation's most powerful newspaper, saved a book deal that was about to tank and successfully fought against a bad deal that was to scam me out of royalties for another book. miraculously fixed an annoying flaw in my bike, realizing while doing so that I have lost weight: my pants kept slipping off at I bent, threatening a plumber's exposure to passersby on Salame St.

I got everything fixed just in time for a casual lunch with a profoundly attractive, intelligent and unique acquaintance of mine. It turned into a truly romantic date that lasted well into the night. We went to watch "Four Minutes", a random German film, picked by name. somehow it turned out to deal with everything we were talking about beforehand and be a monumental piece of cinema neither of us will ever forget.

On arriving home I found, on the mat before my door (there my neighbors bring my mail from the box as neighborly courtesy), an envelope containing a check some publication owed me. It was for 2425 sheqels. My rent, due on that same date, stands at 2300.

On the envelope lay the mezuzah. It fell from the doorframe despite the heavy duty glue. When I picked it up, "Royal Love Song" fell out of it. I read a verse:

Out of the ground emerges
all that I wished never to see again
column and windowframe, portico and jar, shatters of wine.

Make of my tale what you will, but this is not going back in.

Infinite Light

In room 310 there was a a party.

Behind the scenes at the hotel there was no party.

I skipped on both atmospheres and followed a dog into the dark streets of Safed. I was in town to perform a few of my old tunes, but Safed is not a gig-and-go kind of place. It is an ancient hilltop city (perched atop Israel's 3rd tallest mountain), was home to the great 16th century Kabbalist rabbi Isaac Luria and is famed as a hub of mystical enegry.



Safed at night is dominated by men, the opposite of Fellini's Citta Delle Donne.


but the further you venture into the labyrinth of it's old quarters, the more it is dominated by nobody. The alleyways were perfectly silent.




Rabbi Lurie's synagogue was locked and bolted.

Strangely, inside, a single kerosene lamp was alight.

I stuck my face to the glass, enchanted. This was a sight that would have made a Kabbalist out of Richard Dawkins, but maybe I'm a greater rationalist than he. Rather than spend the night praying in the small courtyard, I concluded my evening by buying shit to consume in front of the telly, and visiting Israel's most splendidly ugly public restroom.


I love Luria and his vision of infinite light - a delicate system of energies that controls the universe. Still, I'll forever be a deciple of Lao Tzu. "It appears as darkness." he wrote, "darkness within darkness, the gateway to all mystery."

Satori

On a street corner in this little town along the Rhein, a stone crucifiction sticks out over a house's fence. I look at Jesus, touch his knee. It's dark already and his face looks extra suffering in the light of the street lamps.

On a similar street corner in Sri Lanka, for example, there would have been a stone Buddha, a man in a state of total, calm bliss. I'm wondering, when will they establish the religion that places statues of man in his natural form: not being tortured, not reaching Nirvana, just having a simple sandwich, a sandwich as sacred as life.

Leon de Bnei Brak

A few posts ago I told you about Jeff, the foremost pig scholar in my life. Jeff's year in Israel, during which he researched the theme of Kashrut and the pork industry in Israeli society, is coming to an end. We will be losing him in two weeks or so.

His final project this time around was to interview Israelis on camera about their relationship with food and Judaism, and to do so in their kitchens, while they cook. When Jeff asked me to participate I asked him whether I was obliged to prepare pork. He said that I could prepare whatever I wanted. I chose seafood.

If anything changed in the Israeli menu over the past decade, it is the penetration of non-kosher shellfish into our diets, besides, the ban on seafood is more severe that the ban on pork. what is pork? another kind of meat, and we know meat. By forbidding us to eat seafood, the good lord almighty prevents us from tasting a very unique element of creation, one that resembles nothing else.

For me, the ban on seafood is an insult to sensuality. In my view, religion uses taboos mainly to weaken us, it makes sex look dirty so as to distance us from our bodies, once we are distanced - our lives become disharmonious and we end up relying on the religious powers that be to provide us with harmony. Shellfish, bottom feeders though they may be, are sexy (much sexier than pork, to be sure), and the ban on them calls for rebellion. So while Jeff set the camera

I went shopping for mussels, then showed them some love.

See, the first step in cooking a meal is usually uncorking a botlle of wine, then sauteeing an onion (you'll need sauteed onions no matter what you make), but when a mussel-deprived israeli gets his hands on a kilo of the forbidden black gold, he must commence with showing it effection.

Sari, Tel-Aviv's #1 coolest young curator and artist came to show the mussels some effection of her own. She couldn't believe I was having a guest over who keeps kosher (Jeff does) and chose to make him food of which he can't partake.

I pointed out that I also prepared glatt kosher "Pretty Girl Medallions", thus named since I invented them in hope of impressing a pretty girl (she was duely impressed, though why didn't I think of making her mussels?). Pretty Girl Medallions are made up of bucheron goat cheese, semi-molten over browned slices of eggplant and crowned with slices of fig. Sari, being pretty herself, presented them to the lens,

then removed the lid to allow our Belgian friends similar immortalization. This time i'll keep the recipe a secret, but it's very similar to classic Moules Marnieres.

The best part of the meal was of course the conversation around the table. It went to strange places (remember my comment on seafood being sexy?) and also involved some complex issues of life in a semi-theocracy. Judaism is all about how you interpert it and what empheses you choose to place. The Israeli establishment focuses on banning public transportation on the sabbath and the import of foreign salami. I prefer to focus on my beloved Song of Songs: "I have come into my garden / my sister, my bride / I have gathered my myrrh with my spice / I have drunk my wine with my milk / eat, my friends, drink and be intoxicated with love."

The Land of Grieving Poets

Passionate poet Mahmoud Darwish died last night. He couldn't have chosen a more symbolic date. 9 in the month of Av on the Jewish calender is a memorial day to the destruction of Jerusalem. So much of Darwish's poetry is dedicated to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Are those two seperate Jerusalems? Not really. The destruction comemorated on Tisha Be'av, which had occured on the year 70 A.D., is certainly so far back in history that we can relate to it only as a symbol. As such - it is a powerful poetic reflection of the losses suffered by the Palestinians during the 20th century. When Darwish's childhood town of Barwa, near Akko, was destroyed by Israel to make place for the Jewish community of Akhihud, that was Jerusalem being destroyed, and so is Tskhinvali, and so is Hiroshima, and so is my grandparents' Shtetls in Slovakia and Poland. We are indebted to Biblical and modern poets for putting our sorrows into words, and to Jerusalem - whether mythical or real - for giving them ashen wings.

"Remember, o lord, what is come upon us.
Consider and behold our reproach.
Our inheritence is turned to strangers,
our houses to aliens.
We are orphans and fatherless,
Our mothers are as widows.
We have drunken our water for money,
Our wood is sold onto us.
Our necks are under persecution,
We labour and have no rest."

- Lamentations, 5, 1-5

"In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die."

- Mahmoud Darwish, "In Jerusalem"

The Chariot

A friend (Yoram) lent me a book and exposed me to something I did not know existed: "chariot literature".

It turns out that between the second and sixth centuries, Jewish mystics mapped the heavens and wrote travel guides to the realm of angels and of God himself. These books, which read like something between Carlos Castaneda, "the Neverending Story" and Lonely Planet, are accepted by the Talmud, not to mention Kabbalist Judaism. This is Judaism proper and despite protests made by Mimonides and other party-poopers, is accepted as such to this day.

I never realized Judaism had a full on pantheist mythology, including such creatures as Metatron, the man-turned-angel who walks the visionaries through realms of burning rivers and splendiferous palaces, much like a-Yiddishe-Virgil. Metatron was second to God and allowed to sit on a throne in the grandest of the seven palaces of the most sublime realm. Jewish visionary Elisha Ben-Abuya saw him there and assumed that he was a second God. Both were punished: Elisha returned to earth and was declared an apostate, while Metatron had sixty torches of fire stuck between his seventy two wings and forced to stand upright like other angels.

What I read in this story is discomfort with the seeping of pantheist ideas into Judaism (which was at the time fighting to preserve its charecter twixt paganism, Christianity and Gnosticism). Judaism preserved its monotheistic core only on the surface. Underneath that, so long as the chariot literature is not decreed heretical, we are in fact the followers of a religion that believes in monsters with thousands of eyes and magical netherworlds into which people can disappear while in a state of trance.

The epitomy of the chariot literature is a book called "Shi'ur Koma", probably composed in the Holy Land during the second century, which supplies the reader with the exact measurments of God. Make no mistake, God is enormous, but he is nonetheless antropomorphic - a man with feet thousends of miles long, sitting on a levitating, chariot-like throne somewhere quite accesible (anybody said Bhagavad Gita?). The book was given a signature of authenticity by several prominant rabbies, among them the renowned Rabbi Akiva.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Rabbi Akiva and the rest of the ancient Castanedas. Their Judaism is so much more fun than that of my old, semi-religious elementary school in Jerusalem. There we were taught that God is an invisble, conservative, mundane figure, that he spends his time looking over us as we copy in tests (this is actually echoed in "Shiur Koma") and that we should wait nicely for the bell before going out to play football in the dusty, gravelly yard with our yarmulkas hanging off the clips in our hairs.

Add a little bit of imagination to that, and you would have had me praying much more loudly in the mornings. Fortunately they hadn't.

How God Composes Music

The whole "Jerusalem Syndrom" concept is bogus. People don't become convinced that they're Jeremiah or Jesus by hanging around Jerusalem. they come there already convinced of that. Jerusalem is a major attraction for people who acted like Jesus back on the Michigan peninsula.

You meet a lot of original people in Jerusalem, self proclaimed prophets, self certified theologians and archeologists, Mary Magdalene and Indiana jones dress-alikes. .. The common tendency is not to listen to them, to drift by them as you drift by the vendors who call after you: Yes my friend, how may I help you?

Yesterday, having too much time on my hands, I went to the hub of false messiahs in the city: the ramshackle Petra Hostel near Jaffa gate. This used to be a finer hotel back in the day, nowadays the wooden stairs screech perilously as I head to the roof for one of the most magnifiscent views on earth, that of the entire old city rolling underneath me towards the mouth of the Kidron canyon, crowned with the dome of the rock and presented against the backdrop of the Mount of Olives. (I've described this view once before )

Behind me was the family of the hostel's chief warden, Gabriel. The members of Gabriel's family are always dressed in long blue gowns. They are members of a religion that observes Wednesday as the holy day and regards Jesus as a Satanic entity. Usually I feel uncomfortable around their unmaskable esoteric lifestyle. This time, however, I was relaxed and found myself taking to them very strongly. One of the kids was crying and Gabriel and his wife took care of him in the kindest way imaginable. Blue or not, Gabriel's cross-racial family is sweet. Their use of English rather than Arabic, Hebrew or the mother's native Czech reminds me of the 1947 U.N. decree in which Jerusalem was designated to become international territory, and a less judgmental city, probably.

Later, on another corner of the roof, I bumped into a blond, middle aged man named Robert. He was hanging the laundry next to a tent full of faded books of scripture, clearly his current residence. I asked him of his life and was told that he was born in D.C., raised in the jungles of Peru, and later came to Jerusalem to compose a research on theology.

I then asked what his research was about and was presented with a pile of information, most of it criticism of modern Christianity and Judaism as compared to a more profound ancient model of Judaism. I also recieved this gem: "You know how all human music is made up of time. It's all got rhythm, it occupies a breadth of time, but God exists outside of time. So I was asking myself, how does God compose music?

"So here is what I realized: I realized God's music must be made up of the differentiations between high and low tones. Now, what are our lives made up of? of hights and depths, of good moments and bad ones. As long as this movement between the high and low persists, we are alive. As long as the line on you hospital monitor goes up and down, you're alive."

The ups and downs of my day are God's music? I loved that. I'd never have heard this had I not fueled on patience and tolerance and climbed to that roof. I'd make a joke here about having received my calling and feeling that I must wear a tarp cape and run through the Via Dolorosa bearing the good news, but this is no joke. Jerusalem's less listened-to visitors bring it both wisdom and tenderness. Who'd have thought.

In other news: tonight my favorite piece of art on earth is to be performed before mine very eyes and ears. The opera Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky is coming to the Tel-Aviv opera house. I love this opera so much, I'd write it a love letter, but I fear being rejected. Today is also my Sister Tamar's 24th birthday, to be celebrated with sunflowers and coctails into the night, once Yevgeny and Tanya are done driving each other mad.

Once

I'll be 32 this Sunday, and am currently looking through my more peculiar achievements: those experiences that were experienced only once.

So in 32 years I skydived once
went snowshoeing once
got married once and divorced once
got stranded on a small island once (for about 30 hours)
got my heart broken once
got my jaw broken once
tried hard drugs once
got arrested once (while protesting environmental issues)
published poetry once
earned my accomodation by reciting poetry once
visited Lichtenstein once (I crossed it on foot!)
Visited Lebanon once (long story)
biked from Holland to Prague once
spent a night at a parking lot once
spent a night inside a window display trailer once
spent a night with a married woman once
met with overt antisemitism once
got spat on once (same occasion)
frenched a tree once (a dare in a truth or dare game)
saved a man's life once
broadcast a radio show once
revealed to a man that his girlfriend was pregnant with another man's child once (don't try this at home)
saw a beaver in the wild once
saw a rattlesnake in the wild once
saw an elephant in the wild once
saw a humpback whale in the wild once
visited a rubber plantation once
touched a dead man once
spoke to a head of state once (Rabin)
saw the pope once
got massaged at a Turkish hamam once
sat in a "smoke sauna" once
sat at the waiting room of a brothel once (didn't use their services)
ate jellyfish salad once
ate blood pudding in blood sauce once
ate "thousend years old eggs" once
ate alligator once and turtle once
drank authentic moonshine once
explored the underground drainage system of a city with a flashlight once
got mugged once
painted a "trial of Paris" once
pretended to be American once
pretended to be French once
pretended to be South African once
pretended to be Macedonian once (traveling the Middle East isn't easy for Israelis)
wore a bindy once
wore fake eyelashes once
had a letter exchange with the governemnt of Saudi Arabia once
shook hands with a Serbian mafia head once
saw actors performing a play I wrote once
lectured at Harvard university once
got paid a live duck for my work once

The nice thing about this list is how difficult it was to assemble. most of the things that came to my mind I had done more than once and so they didn't get a mention. Many of the things that were mentioned, I would love to do again. It's being a great life so far, perfect for reruns.

БАЛКАН

Macedonia is nice and diverse. It's got Gypsies,

Muslims,

Orthodox monks

and tourists

Being at the heart of the Blakans, it's a mishmash of languages. Besides Macedonian one may hear Vlach, Albanian, Turkish and Romani. Not too long ago, Ladino and Hebrew were spoken here too. But the entire community of 7000 was carted off in 1943 by the Germans to Treblinka in northern Poland and massacered. The only Hebrew left is to be found on broken tombstones in the ancient city of Bitola.

The one thing that unites all of these groups can only be defined as Balkanness. It's in the mildness of manner, in the jug of kefir served with dinner. It's in the painful memory of wars, the ruggedness and simplicity of day to day life, the apple tree in the yard and the beat up post-communist state of most things. Today's little gallery is dedicated to this unique quality. Enjoy.

Holy Week

Lemme tell you a story. A couple of years ago an editor of mine suggested that I disguise myself as a foreign backpacker, check into a Tel-Aviv hostel, make friends with other guests and travel the country with them. The article, she anticipated, would give an interesting point of view on Israel. "For one week, go wherever they go," she proposed," Tiberias, Akko, The Dead Sea..."

The backpackers with whom I made friends never went to any of these places. Having left Tel-Aviv, they checked into a run down hostel in Old Jerusalem and stayed there for the entire week, doing very little besides playing cards in a messy room overlooking the dome of the rock. They were sweet, though, and I truly enjoyed being with them. They guessed me to be South African and I went with that.

Four days into the project I found myself on the rooftop of the hostel at sundown. Before me was a view unmatched: The dense rootops of the Old City bore the golden Dome of the Rock. The church and tombstone-dotted Mount of Olives rose pink and calm to recieve the sun's last rays. Clasping the dark domes of the Holy Sepulchre were so many towers: that of the Terra Santa institute, with its black pointy hat, that of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, romanesque and elegant, mosque minarets, slender and pculiar...

Flags were waving in the wind, speaking of a hushed war, of tense subterranean waters. The hum of the two new cities: Jewish West Jerusalem and Palestinian Musrara, coming from afar, spoke of life. I was at work, doing nothing. I was a tourist in my own city and a foreigner looking at the house where he grew up (It was indeed visible, atop French Hill). This was a very strange moment and I felt both calmed and moved by its beauty.

I'm not a religious man, rather, I'm a Tinkebell agnostic. I'll except that there may be a god, since I can't prove otherwise, so long as everyone else accepts that Tinkerbell may exist - they can't prove otherwise. I am mad at the religions of the world for promoting simplistic thinking, for being irresponsible and offering bad politics such readily available, dangerous fuel. Than again, I cannot deny: I had a true spiritual moment in Jerusalem, and isn't Jerusalem God's hometown?

This week, twixt palm and Eater Sundays, I went back to Jerusalem as guide for a small group of French tourists. We saw a big group of African pilgrims in flourescent green robes covered with images of Jesus and Mary. We saw a man bearing two crosses down an alleyway (why?). We saw children playing in Mea shearim courtyards who have never seen a television set and know nothing of the world outside. The light in their eyes is centuries old.

We saw stone. The British, while in control of the city after 1917, decreed that evey wall built in it must be covered in stone. Jerusalem, old and new, is consequently as heavy as stone. It is a city constantly on the verge of tears. It impacts the visitor ceaselessly, with every step, with every encounter. That moment on the rooftop never passed, it's still going on.

So Jerusalem isn't only God's hometown, it's also my hometown, which may account for my sentimentality, but the intensity of scores of African pilgrims wearing green altar pieces certainly contributed to my small epiphany. I thank St. Helen and the Umayyad Caliphate for building those domes, I thank those who kiss the stones for kissing them, I thank the possesed street musicians for singing American accented has-been Hebrew hits along Ben-Yehuda Street. Screw Tinkerbell, I believe in Jerusalem. Happy Easter, Happy Purim and a lovely springtime to all.

חג מולד שמח

Osnat opens the door in a sort of a sexy Santa dress. I don't know where she got her hands on such a piece of clothing, especially here. maybe she made it. Keren soon arrives in something even more exotic. She's dressed up as Santa's granddaughter - a figure in Ukrainian Christmas tradition, with which she is familiar by virtue of being Ukrainian. It's nice to see people bringing in personal content to a Christmas party, especially considering there's only one non-Jew around, Jonathan the Berliner, and he's half Jewish.

I brought ingredients for wassail, an American punch that Lin taught me how to make. In a large pot throw some wine, some cherry juice (we're short on cranberries here) some orange juice and apple juice. Add mulling spices, cinnamon, whole cloves, nutmeg, and some strange Thai leaf found at the market that seemed like it would fit, pour in a bit vodka, simmer slowly, drink quickly.

I see this party as being less about rebelling against our Jewish backgrounds than about finding yet another excuse to dance all night mid-week. In this sense, there's something very Jewish about this Christmas party. Since Zionism is a Jewish movement, Tel-Aviv was founded by Zionists, and what Tel-Avivians do is party wholeheartedly. This is, without doubt, an Israeli occasion: No group of diaspora Jews in their right minds would throw a Christmas party. Fact.

Inadvertently, though, we do rebel, since Judaism is so much about resisting such things. We are celebrating Christmas more as a joke on pop culture's influence on our lives than as a holiday, but we aren't really threatened by it, as Jewish tradition teaches us to be. So, are Israelis Jewish? Is Zionism causing Judaism to disintegrate slowly?

Sorry, no time to worry about such stuff. Gilly arrives all the way from Jerusalem, to make good use of the mistletoe. The "Maayan" crew is entering with much pomp, stirring the dance floor, then disappearing into the night. Dana and Adam dance like lunatics, as they did Saturday, in a Jaffa mansion with chessboard floors, and a few days previously, in an industrial workshop by Bloomfield Stadium, and probably in several places in between and since. Nimrod Flash the youngster sticks a cigarette in my mouth so I'll do my imitatation of poet Jacques Prévert (for some reason people find it very funny without ever having seen or heard Prévert himself read). A.B. Dan goes across the street, returns with two guitars, and those who didn't overdrink nor vanish into Florentine's many bedrooms stay to jam and watch the sun come over another workday.

What Would the Buddha Do?

Things in Myanmar are getting rougher. The police is currently shooting over the heads of the protesters. In 1988 they shot into the crowds and killed "thousands", you can always tell a murderous totalitarian state when "thousands" is the only figure available.

I'm going crazy in this room without any way to help the courageous Burmese people, and especially the Buddhist monks who are leading the protests. I'm a citizen of a nation that takes part in training the Myanmar army, the army that is killing them and enslaving them. I pay taxes that are used to fortify the junta in Myanmar, then again, so do the Burmese.

So many of us are exploited by violent factors without being aware of it and without doing much about it. Buddha is said to have taught: "Let us live in joy, in peace among people who wage war, among people who wage war, let us live in peace." (Dhamapadda, Chapter 15). This sounds like peacenik religion at its most passive, but in fact it is impossible to live in peace without being active, otherwise you end up becoming a tool of war.

The monks of Myanmar recognize this. This is why they are out on the streets, fighting tear gas. This is why they are in dungeons, experiencing torture. They know that sometimes Buddhism is exactly about breaking out of the lotus position and fighting for human rights and justice. I'll keep that in mind the next time I hear a call to action by my window.

A Broken Heart is Whole, A Slanted Ladder is Straight

Rabbi Menachem Mendl Morgenstern of Kotsk was born in the 1700s in Poland. He discovered Hasidism as a child, studied with great masters, formed his own court not far from Warsaw, and spent ten years teaching his controversial and extraordinary brand of existentialist Judaism.

He than fell into a state of incredibly severe depression and would not leave his room for 20 years. His granddaughter would bring him food and all other communication with him was done through a small hole in the door. He would be washed once yearly, before passover.

The Kotsker rebbe left no written records. A disciple of his burned all his writings at his demand. some of his sayings did survive, however. most notably: "A broken heart is whole, a slanted ladder is straight". He also said: "This world isn't worth even one small sigh."

I'm thinking of this man today after visiting the ultraorthodox city of Bnei Brak with my orthodox friend Michael. Bnei Brak is a somber city and a visit to its cemetery, to visit Michael's grandparents graves, was more somber still. There was no shade there, no mercy.

The cemetery is located among high walls of gray construction blocks. overlooking it is a school for girls that is equipped with only the narrowest windows. Posters commanding modest behaviour and dress are stuck everywhere, next to grafittied racist comments ("Kahane was right" etc.)

In order to be climbed, a ladder must be placed diagonally against a wall. If placed staight - it is useless. In order to develop, a heart must experience pain. This point of view sheds a softer light on a sunstruck afternoon in an austere environment. A difficult day is a good day. A glance at death is a glance at life.

The Kotsker Rebbe said: "Death is like moving from one room into another and then choosing to stay in the nicer room." Such words make sense today. That cemetery in Bnei Brak is best experienced from within one of the graves. It is there that our slanted ladders do lead.

Three Galilean Nights

Night the first -Death to the Arabs

"Where are you trying to get to?" asks the waiter at the small roadside diner.

"Dugit Beach."

"Ah, all right. You do know it's full of 'our cousins', though?"

We didn't and don't care, Arab company does not repel us. Despite the darkness, we get a quick lift directly to the beach, walk down to the shore and find a place to pitch our tent. Tiberius glistens across the sea of Galilee, the big dipper is suspended directly above us and a shower of meteorites is due to obscure it at any moment. I grab a flashlight and suddenly choke with repulsion. The gravelly soil is completely covered with dog feces, cigarette butts, bottle caps et al. The shores of my only country's only lake have become a pile of garbage. We comb the beach for a square yard of actual soil. There is none.

Behind us happy chatter is heard from a tent decorated with the inscription: "Death to the Arabs".

We return to the road and hitch back across the lake to the city.


Night the Second - Fuck Her Gently

On the way out of the ritual pool of the great 16th century mystic Rabbi Isaac Luria, a Hassidic man exclaims: "Mazal tov! did you know that Rabbi Luria said whoever dips in his mikve will not leave this world without returning to God and living a religious life"?

We didn't and don't care. I, for one, am very happy going through the narrow streets of Safed with an exposed, wet head and a free spirit. When another man at a cheesemaker's shop confronts us with a similar prophecy of rebirth, I ask to be left alone. He won't drop it and I leave the dairy. He follows me into the street and starts pushing me around.

Later that night we sit outside the shop of friends, playing guitar for a the masses attending this year's Klezmer festival. Adam dares me to treat them and their Yarmulkas with Tenacious D's "Fuck her Gently". I do so wholeheartedly.


Night the Third - Not Good

A hyrax climbs over the stone ramparts of Qala'at Namroud castle, staring at us as we take in an ultradramatic view of mountains covered with thick brush, steep canyon walls and a psychadelic sky at dusk.

We return to Tiberious and finish a good day of traveling with a pint of beer on its promenade. A man joins us, trying to sell us his self-published book of short stories. Once I purchase it he asks me whether I am religious.

"No" I say.

"Not good." he shakes his head.

"I'm very happy being secular", I add.

"Not good."

"Do you know that your behavior makes me feel unaccepted?"

He didn't and doesn't care. I get up and lean against the railing, looking across the dark water towards the eastern shore, towards a tent marked "Death to the Arabs" and a terrestrial sea of pollution. Can I call this glass of beer home? It's worth a shot. I'll down what's left and try squeezing my way in.

Susanna

It would be unjust and silly, in this blog dedicated largly to the experience of travel, to ignore the experience of exile. Fortunately, my teacher on Exile is now in town. She is from Finland, she's a doctor of history and her name is Susanna

There are no two people more different in their political opinions than Susanna and I, and no better friends. While I host pro-Palestinian volunteers at my home, she works in Brussels for a lobby promoting Israeli interests. While I squat outside houses in Hebron to prevent their takeover by settlers, she fondly remembers days in which she helped those settlers as a liaison to the foreign press.

Susanna's political activity is driven by her Christian religious faith and an intense love for Israel, in which she lived for eight years. Interestingly, this is what helps me feel comfortable with it. Nietzche wrote that "things that are done out of love are beyond good and evil". Susanna is not in any way racist or bigoted, she's in love, and is protective of her beloved's interests as she comprehends them.

How hard is it to be away from a beloved, even when all you do is work for that beloved? Migrant workers who build houses in San Diego suburbs and send the money to spouses and children in Oaxaca - they know. Susanna knows. She arrives in Israel both delighted and frustrated, throws a birthday party for herself at Cafe London, on the Tel-Aviv promenade, sits surrounded by friends she made during the years she had spent here, by the sea that she came to know so well, in the warm breeze... the warm breeze of irony.

Had Israeli immigration laws been more accomedating towards the non-Jewish, Susanna might not have had to go abroad. She was wronged by the very establishment for which she is fighting. I would liken her to a rejected lover who does not cease to love, but Susanna was only rejected by the cold laws, not by Israeli people. She is loved here. Everybody knows it, the birthday bunch came to show it and the cheesy singer doing Frank Sinatra tunes amidst the tables gives her special birthday attention.

As a few of us step away from the table to dance, the singer's playback carries a reggae rhythm. It's the start of a familiar song by Boney M.

"Oh my," I tell her, "This really is the song to which to dance with you."

And so we dance:

When the wicked
Carried us away in captivity
Requiering of us a song
Now how shall we sing the lord's song
in a strange land?

Let the words of our mouth
And the meditations of our heart
Be acceptable in thy sight
Here tonight.

By the river of Babylon (dark tears of Babylon)
Where we sat down (you gotta sing a song)
Yay we wept (sing a song of love)
When we remembered Zion (Yeah yeah yeah yeah).

Speaking in Tongues

Today was the first time I've heard a person speaking in tongues, and she was speaking in tongues about me.

We were standing at eventide, knee deep in the water of the Mediterranean, surrounded by Muslim families who frequent the beach at Givat Aliyah on Fridays. The sea was wonderfully calm. her hand was touching my shoulder and at this point it was pretty obvious that she was not going to be touching any other part of me. The "tongues" sounded a bit like Portuguese. It occured to me that she earlier mentioned having visited Portugal. Hmmm.

That beach is a very spiritual place. I nevertheless left it feeling rather secular. When, mid-tongues, she suddenly reverted to English, asking God to speak to me more clearly, I felt as though both God and I were being reprimanded: me for being and atheist, him for having made me that way. When she told me that her mind's eye sees an image of me as a peeled, boiled egg, I felt like a peeled, boiled egg, which is a peculiar way to feel.

Today was the first time anyone ever described me as an egg of any sort. All in all it was a sweet experience. She was being kind and generous with me. I guess each one of us has different gifts to give. Mine would be to say the amen at the right spot and a nice thank you as we head back to the parking lot.