Jake writes.

Update 7- What's Good

2008-05-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

(Last Week)

Sitting in a mud dome, it's easy to remember the good things about Israel.

Down on Kibbutz Lotan, I'm spending time, and not money; and my time is going to things that fill my soul to brimming with happiness. Making walls, human habitation, construction, out of waste products (busted tires, glass bottles, plastic jugs/containers) and the earth (mud/straw); taking short stints of working in the hot hot sun, and then taking important breaks to hang out in shaded habitations, to read, to write. We sing Beatles songs, and change a key word here or there to fit our surroundings: "All you need is mud," "We all live in a geodesic dome," "straw-bale: it yields forever."

We all eat together, such wonderful and healthy food; and it's just there, provided for us in such a way that our existence is cherished, affirmed, accepted. My shpilkes act up from time to time, and think: okay, I better hit the road, head on back to Jerusalem for my last week in the area. I still have a few things I'm wanting to do, including a couple of trips to Palestine. Friends to see.
But really, the reason that my shpilkes loves Jerusalem more than Kibbutz Lotan is the opportunity for consumerism. I remind myself that is something that I don't need!
I wrinkle my nose furiously at my shpilkes and decide to extend my time in Lotan, day by day. What started as, "I'll come down for a day," has now turned into three.

(A couple days ago)

An overture to my good friends who make me feel so welcome, who are my family in all places in the world.
Who are quick to hug, and quick to think and joke and laugh,
And who tell me when it's too much
and also when it's just right.

I'm waking up early these days, and now I'm back in Jerusalem after a nice stint of "recovery." And I find good things here too.

The sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel / The Naqba is just around the corner, and I don't know where I'm going to be that day. I'd love to be somewhere to commemorate both events, which sounds really great to me.

Yesterday, I spent practically the entire day at "Daila," hanging out with the "veggie bar" crowd there. We made *so much* good good food! Part of the inspiration for us to hole ourselves up in the performance space in downtown Jerusalem has to do with Yom HaZikaron/Hatzmaut; while the entire country is flipping out, we were flipping veggie burgers. I made a carrot-tofu cake and a veggie stir fry. Radiohead and HaDag Nachash are playing in the background.

They bought new plates for the veggie bar, and decorated them with fun slogans in English and Hebrew.

The next day, for the day-of Yom Hatzmaut, I am at Bat Shalom, a women's peace group, for a couple of movies (one about Palestinian refugees who come on a tour of Israel, and Bee Movie, the animated flick with Jerry Seinfeld) and more good vegan food. Afterwards, I go bowling with some Israeli activist friends.

I expected to do something Nakba-related, but then I realized that Nakba Day is a week after Yom Hatzmaut because Naqba day is based on the Gregorian Calendar while Israeli Independence Day is based on the Hebrew Calendar.

I made a final trip into Bethlehem on Friday, and brought with me four people: two Americans and two Israelis.
Israelis have a strange situation that they face in Bethlehem, because they need to choose an alternate identity. As a tourist in Bethlehem, one of the first questions that anyone is asked is where they are from, and given the situation (even moreso since it isn't even legal for them to be in Bethlehem). They can't speak Hebrew while inside, so one of the Israelis, who used the name Amar while inside, decided that he was going to be a New Zealander; no one knows what a New Zealand accent sounds like, he reasoned.

This time, we went to Bethlehem budget-tourist-style (no organized tour, therefore less Palestinian perspective for the group, unfortunately). But we had fun, and it's a pretty big deal for the Israelis to have gone. We went on a hike near the Greek Orthodox monastery called Mar Saba, dropped into the AIC and IMEMC offices for a quick look-around, got lunch, and went to the Church in Bethlehem, and my friend Adnan's souvenir shop. We walked along the streets back to where we catch a bus, and stopped into a sweets shop for a bit. After waiting for a half hour, we piled onto an overcrowded service heading back towards Jerusalem from Beit Jalla. The soldiers asked everyone to file out of the bus and hand over ID.

"Where did you go?" (Eyfo hayitem?)

As we had discussed, the Israelis said that they had gone into Beit Jalla (Area C) to buy some vegetables, no mention of Bethlehem. Bags of vegetables were in our hands.
And that was it. Everyone piled back on, and after waiting ten minutes for everyone's ID to be double-checked, we were on our way back to Jerusalem just in time for shabbat. Both of the Israelis who were with me have had plenty of experience with Palestinians, having gone to demonstrations in the West Bank in support of Palestinians who live there, but this was their first time inside of a Palestinian city.
They are excited to try to go to Ramallah sometime soon. Amar is a student, and talked about re-starting a solidarity committee between his university and Bir Zeit.

Today, for shabbat, I read Torah in Israel for the first time; at Kehillat Kedem. I studied for about two hours by the morning sun, and struggled through the reading, but made it!
A friend from Olympia came into town, and I got to spend a lot of shabbat with her, and have been telling her everything I know about Jerusalem, Israel, and anything else I can think of. That was fun.

I hope that you appreciate the sharp relief and contrast of one update that I write against the next; it's a small window into a world where seemingly exclusive ideas intermingle with wild abandon. Even as I write about standing guard at an orphanage in Hebron, life in Israel fills, compels and captivates me; equally as challenging as this place is, there is much that I love about it.

B'shalom wa salaam,
Jacob in Jerusalem

Update 6- The H in Apartheid

2008-04-30T02:40:00.001-07:00

Between 1 and 2 am on Tuesday, April 29, I stood guard at an orphanage run by the Islamic Charitable Society in Hebron. An order for closure was put on the orphanage, to go into effect yesterday; the military has visited the site three times already, and have said that anyone (Palestinian) still in the building starting April 28 could be arrested and held for five years in prison.

Standing guard consisted of sitting near the door with my laptop, playing a computer game, with music coming out of the the headphones around my neck; about four or five times, I paused what I was doing to mute the music, and listened more closely to the sounds of the Hebron night, which never amounted to anything much. There were plenty of night dangers to imagine in the wind which blew through the courtyard, islamic prayer flags flapping against the building.

Shortly after 6am I was awoken and surrounded by curious girls, mostly wearing hijab; residents of the orphanage, who were surprisingly immodest about being near me, while I slept shirtless. We were about eight men in in the corridor, sleeping on thin mattresses on the ground, having pulled one hour shifts each all night long. No military came.

We were from different backgrounds in many ways: mostly US-ers, although a Quebecois (also Jewish), and a couple of Germans were also among us. While the man in charge of the Sewing Workshop inside the orphanage showed us around, using the phrase "the Jewish" to refer to Israeli administration (as in, "we got a permit from the Jewish"), I jokingly wondered whether I was one of "the Jewish" who had invaded and threatened this orphanage in the past months. I considered correcting him, this professional who I was just meeting for the first time, and who was showing me around, but I let this language issue slide.

20 internationals in all ate breakfast together this morning, who had been organized by the CPT (Christian Peacemakers Team) to be able to be present, engage verbally with soldiers, and document what happens when the military comes in to close down the place. The back-story is something like this:
The Islamic Charitable Society runs a lot of ventures in and around Hebron; perhaps several dozen businesses, including bakeries, and a mall. I was inspired hearing about businesses they have set up to support their projects, so that it's a mix of for-profit, and benefit organizations that are run by the society; it's a model I would like to pursue further myself. In recent years, the military has started leaning on the ICS: confiscating computers, stealing files, in the last couple of years going so far as to destroy access to their offices, so that they can't administer properly (welding shut the doors). More recently, it has stepped up to a point that the Israeli military are destroying, stealing and damaging machines and infrastructure (stealing sewing machines, setting bakery ovens on fire), making any part of any project connected to ICS completely non-viable.
Why? Sewing machines? Orphanages? The claim put forth by the military administration is that ICS has been taking money from, has connections to, perhaps is giving money to, Hamas. The man who showed me around presented matter-of-factly that, as a nonprofit, their finances were an open book, that you can see where their donations are coming from (mostly Europe and North America), and that they don't receive or send any money from/to Hamas.
This is still kind of besides the point: an orphanage, even one partially funded by Hamas, is still an orphanage. A sewing machine is not a weapon. And it's important to note, this orphanage is in H1*.
And so they anticipate the military entering the building, having scoped it several times already, to destroy a good amount of the infrastructure, and welding the doors shut to prevent the use of the space. The CPT wants to make sure that the kids who are sleeping there stay safe, and that, whatever happens, it gets documented.

After breakfast, we split up, and I head with some folks to Bethlehem, and then along with the Germans back to Jerusalem, where I'm back around 9am. As far as anyone knows, the status of the Orphanage is no different now than it was yesterday: slated for closure. I could sleep there the next two weeks solid until I leave the country, and the military might still not have acted; then again, tonight might be the night. It's a strange calculus that your brain unfolds in a situation like this. As I think about it now on a couch in Jerusalem, I'm thinking: "well, if we just took over a classroom there, and brought in some couches, some reading material, got an internet connection going there, I might stay there a week straight." "Ah well," my brain shrugs off the organizing challenge, and I figure I might stay there another night or two at some point. I was never much for commutes.

Before Shabbat
On Thursday night, hanging out at Shai's apartment, I asked him, "Hey what are you up to tomorrow?"
"Going on a solidarity visit to Hebron," he tells me. These tours are organized by Bnei Avraham, I wrote about one last year [http://www.redsolid.com/writings/ip/2007/u2.html]. I don't have any plans, I think to myself, and make up my mind to go along with.

The next morning, I walk with Shai and his roommate to Gan HaPa'amon to catch the bus, leaving at 9:30am. We eventually load in and ship out, the bus about 2/3 full. I recognize a couple of people from the progressive Jerusalem Anglo community there, and introduce myself to a few people I don't know. I sit in back with Shai, who is looking out the back window to make sure there are no undercover cops tailing us. He doesn't think there are.

Bnei Avraham refers to a common ancestral heritage, with both Jews and Muslims claiming descendancy from Abraham. Jews follow the line of Isaac and Jacob, while the Muslim story tells of Abraham choosing Ishmael for his lineage. The battalion that serves in Hebron-- fully 500 soldiers, nearly as many as the number of Jewish settlers in Hebron-- gets swapped out every six months, because it is hard and dangerous to serve there, and also so that soldiers don't get too cozy with any of the local residents. Bnei Avraham was started by soldiers who served in Hebron several years ago, members of a socialist youth group, who were moved by their witnessing injustice to create a relationship with Palestinians living under occupation in H2.
Although we weren't confident that we would be admitted into Hebron, we got in no problem, as a tour bus filled with Israelis and internationals. We parked near the Cave of the Patriarchs, (where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Leah were buried-- a holy place for Jews, Christians, and Muslims) and filed off the bus. We walked through the streets of H2-- Jewish-controlled Hebron-- and talked about the significance of certain places, many of them places where someone had been killed at some point in the last 80 years. The road, although designed for heavy use, is pretty much deserted; military orders prevent Palestinians from using this main road in H2, so we only need to scoot out of the way of a small number of settlers' cars, who blare their horns at us as they pass. Eventually we make it past Beit Hadassah, one of the more prominent Jewish settlements inside H2, and to an area where Palestinians are once more allowed on the street. We follow our host and guide up the hill to Tel Rumeida, where we trudge off to visit a family and drink tea.

Like many Palestinian homes in Tel Rumeida, they need to use a back entrance to enter, due to the closure placed on the main road. In this case, it meant ducking below a 5-foot high thatched trellis for grapevines, and walking carefully through a yard. With frustration, the mother of a house tells us how, last week, when her son had an asthma attack, he needed to be carried along this route; the ambulance wasn't allowed past the checkpoint up the main road. Our host points out to us that, in medical emergencies, delays like this can easily mean the loss of life.

They told us the stories of their day-to-day struggles; the soldiers and settlers throwing garbage down upon them, shouting curses at them, attacking and harassing their children on the way to school, property destruction. I know these stories. I still don't know what it's like, or how this can continue, but I've heard the stories. Whatever compassion I feel for these people, I wonder that they don't just leave, move to H1. "And who could we sell our house to?" comes the response. Now I get it. It's an economic thing.
People here are living in a crappy situation for the same reason anyone anywhere would decide to: they don't feel they can afford another option, quite literally.

Our particular visit was set up as a "solidarity visit," as distinct from some other tours that Bnei Avraham offers, introducing people to the situation there. Our group was composed of people who would like to express solidarity with the Palestinians of Hebron, and so a fitting action was planned. Black t-shirts were distributed, on which was written in white block letters: "I have a dream." Our visit, taking place over Passover, also marked 40 years after the original occupation of a Hebron hotel by Rabbi Levinger and a group of Jewish settlers in 1968. A few signs were distributed, reading in Arabic and English things like "Stop settler violence." Highly controversial, I know. We walked down the street, chanting slogans intermittently, but mostly just walking down the street.

It was over in just a few minutes, and it went the same way as the last time I came here last year: the Palestinians walked with us on 200 feet of road that they are typically prevented from walking on, as a symbolic protest, and then they split off from the group behind the barriers and back to their neighborhood on the hill. A couple of settlers got in our faces... one man holding a video camera grabbed a sign out of an Israeli's hands, and threw it on the ground. Meanwhile, the police and soldiers stood beside, and tried "talking him down." This is the tactic of the law enforcement of the area: like the parent of an extremely angry child, just talk them down. It's going to be okay, sweetheart.

We arrived at the first bus as planned, and as far as we could tell, the day was pretty much over. Some people filed into the bus, and I continued walking with others continued walking to get to the second bus, which had come from Tel Aviv. Then, in a predetermined fashion, several soldiers and border police surrounded Amos, a key organizer, and brought him into their police jeep.

A group of Anarchists Against the Wall, perhaps twelve Israelis in all, sat down in front of the jeep, and linked arms, typical nonviolent disobedience style. I sat down on the edge of the group. Soldiers started hauling the young men off to the side, and physically restrained them from re-entering the road. I stuck around to make sure my friends were okay. By this time, the bus we had come on arrived, and most of us piled on, but between the settlers confronting us, and people who just didn't know what to do, the bus ended up unable to move for probably another 20 minutes, while settlers and Palestine support activists swapped insults. The bus finally headed out, and to the police station at Kiryat Arba (the settlement next-door to Hebron), to pick up Amos.

At this point the local authority decides to detain all of us, and demands to see identification documents before letting us go. It's worth mentioning at this point that, besides for those who interfered with police action, we didn't do anything illegal. It is perfectly legal for both Israelis and internationals to be in H2, the Israeli controlled side of Hebron. The basis for our detainment was basically that the settlers didn't like us being there. And the settlers control the situation on the ground.

Perhaps an hour later, anyone who offered their ID information was allowed onto the first bus, which made its way through the gate of the Kiryat Arba police station, only to be met by a volley of things thrown at it-- mostly eggs. With a clouded windshield, and an 8-year old standing in the road with his dog in order to block us, we backed up into the police station, and ended up waiting another couple of hours for police/soldier backup. This was one of the first times I got a sense of what it was like for people who went to register black voters in the south: the "people" are all against you, willing to use violence against you, and the authorities will protect them. It's as if the schoolyard bully has been given tacit support and protection from the administration of the school.

They were obviously not going to detain, arrest, or indeed give any consequences to the settlers who were assaulting us, despite the fact that we were predominantly a group of Israelis that the army was ostensibly in charge of protecting. The soldiers did, however, fan out on the sides of the bus, and run alongside it, physically allowing it to pass through the settlement relatively unharmed, and back to the main roads, which took us back to Jerusalem barely in time for Shabbat.

I often don't like the term Apartheid to be used when talking about Israel, or the Wall, or the situation here; the situation here is complex, and isn't South Africa. I can't say worse, or better, I can say different. But there is a great similarity in terms of the creation of different sets of rules for the people living in the same place. The US functions in some of the same ways for migrant workers that live there. I don't want to point it out as unique: just a clear example of injustice.

And what do we do when we notice injustice anywhere?
Well, we write about it.

Alright, I gotta head out for the day, stop haunting my friend's apartment for awhile.

B'shalom wa salaam,
Jacob in J-Town

For pictures of our "solidarity visit" to Hebron [http://www.flickr.com/photos/activestills/tags/hebron/]
For more backstory on the orphanage: [http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42151]

H1, H2 explanation (from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebron])

Since early 1997, following the Hebron Agreement, the city has been divided into two sectors: H1 and H2. The H1 sector, home to around 120,000 Palestinians, came under the control of the Palestinian Authority, in accordance with Hebron Protocol. H2, which was inhabited by around 30,000 Palestinians, remained under Israeli military control in order to protect some 600-800 Jewish residents living in the old Jewish quarter, now an enclave near the center of the town. During the years since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the Palestinian population in H2 has decreased greatly, the drop in large part having been identified with extended curfews and movement restrictions placed on Palestinian residents of the sector by the IDF for what it says are security needs, including the closing of Palestinian shops in certain areas. Settler harassment of their Palestinian neighbours in H2 was a reason for several dozen Palestinian families to depart the areas adjacent to the Israeli population.

Update 5- Egypt, Uganda

2008-04-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

Writing is hard, and an idea confronts me: perhaps I don't know what to say anymore. I know that this happens. Somehow, after foreign-language immersion, and new situations, the words don't flow quite as simply. So, for now, it's work.

I'm going to start by talking about my life right now. Being in Jerusalem this Passover has been a very hard experience, and it's not because matzah is hard to find. In the neighborhood that I'm in currently, it's actually rather difficult to find chametz, even if you're looking for it.
In a curious inversion, my friend who I'm staying with here has a strong secular identity, told me that this Passover he has been trying to fast from matzah, but that he ended up getting matzah when eating out somewhere. Last night, when my belly was grumbling, he assured me that my problems derive from too much matzah.

Last you heard from me, I accompanied a couple of folks into Tulkarem. That night, I caught a bus to Be'er Sheva, where I stayed with a friend and met up with another. The next day I meandered my way down to the Arava, and stayed at Kibbutz Lotan, where there was an 80's dance party. I hope I'll track down some pictures to share. I learned that day, a Wednesday, that you need to pre-arrange a visa in order to enter Egypt beyond the Sinai, and in the morning I caught a ride down to Eilat, and then a taxi to the Egyptian embassy. About two hours and 110 shekels later, I had a multi-entry visa for the next three months into Egypt.

I shared a ride with some fellow journeyers to the border, and walked across into Taba with very little difficulty. After waiting for a couple of hours, I made it to Cairo, where I've got two friends independently studying Arabic, for two years, and three months, respectively.

I spent two nights there, including all of shabbat. My friends were great, but Cairo is a lot to take in. It is perhaps the most densely populated city in the world (nearly four times that of NYC). Crossing the street is terrifying at first: the cars actually turn towards you, because they anticipate that you will continue crossing the street. I feel for the clumsy people of Cairo, tripping could be deadly.

I took a taxi to the airport Saturday night for a 10 pm flight to Uganda. Everything went smoothly, air travel was a lot more relaxed on Egypt Air than I'm used to. Five hours in the air, and I land in Entebbe, and make it through customs after paying $60. My friend Amanda is there to meet and greet me. We make it back to a hostel in Entebbe to finish the night's sleep, and I get my first experience with mosquito netting.

The next day, on the way to the botanical gardens in Entebbe, we pick up some bananas and peanuts to feed to the monkeys. The botanical gardens felt like a city park in Portland, a nice patch of land to hang out in nature, with picnic tables in certain areas for noshing (only this place had a restaurant there too, which I'm sure was
playing some music). They educated me about the local plants and animals, many of which were unbelievably large, like from a Dr. Suess book.

After a good long while attempting to track down the monkeys in order to feed them, we eventually came upon them, and they rushed us at once noticing the bananas we had with us. One greedy little monkey jumped on Amanda, scratching her hand, and pulled a banana out of her purse. They were less feistily passionate about the peanuts we gave them later, although they competed somewhat among each other, and came right next to us, sticking their little hands in ours. One monkey had no feet; it might have been born that way. Although it would scurry the same way as the other monkies, when inspired, it would flip itself over into a handstand and walk over a distance on its hands.

Eventually we made it into Kampala, the capital city, which is not so big actually, about the size of Portland perhaps, and eventually on to the village where Amanda stays near Bulenga. Once outside the most central part of the city, all the roads are dirt. And this doesn't seem to be a huge problem, for the most part; it's a little sketchy when it's raining, especially when riding a motorbike.

As we pass by children on the road, we are greeted by "Bye Nakalema!" (Nakalema is Amanda's 'Ugandan' name), or "Bye Mzungu!" (Mzungu=white person), or even "Bye Aaron-ee!" (Aaron is another peace corps
volunteer whose name the kids have learned at some point.) They figure I am Aaron because, well, we are both not Ugandan. And we have glasses. Besides that, he's an extra six inches taller than me, possibly skinnier, and a bit darker-skinned-- his father is African American. Growing up in Florida, many people thought of him as black, but here in Uganda, he's just another whitey, because he's lighter-skinned than most of the black Ugandan folks who live around there. They add "ee" at the end of "Aaron" because it's fairly inconceivable to them that a word would end with a consonant; I didn't mind being called that, since it's my middle name anyways. But when I introduced myself to people, it was as "Yakobo," the luganda translation of my name.

One day I rode on bodas (motorbikes) to a number of different schools in a particular region, to encourage them to send teachers for an HIV/AIDS curriculum training for secondary and vocational school teachers. My second day in Uganda, and I was already acting as if I were an official representative of Amanda's organization. They bestowed a great deal of respect upon me as I visited each school and explained the program to them. In Uganda, there is a high level of English fluency; if I want to speak with someone, I need to slow down a whole lot, and change my emphasis and word choice a little to reflect "Uganglish," but I can still make myself understood more or less.

One funny moment from this experience was when one particular headmaster asked me what would be covered in the curriculum. I can't be certain, but I considered that he might be concerned about the perspective. I explained that my organization was a Christian organization, and that he could expect everything covered to be appropriate. This, while I was wearing my kipa.

A number of people would ask me, when wearing my American-style kipa, what religion I was. Often, after I would try to explain what Jewish was, the closest people came to is "something like Catholic." This was an interesting contrast: for better or worse, everyone in the middle east knows what Jewish is.

Amanda and I went for a trip to the eastern part of Uganda, centered around a town called Mbale. The first time I passed through Mbale, I met up with Israel, a man from the Uganda Jewish Community known as Abayudaya, at his simple hardware store. He explained to me how to get the Jewish community when I returned for shabbat.
Then we went to Sipi Falls for two nights, whose geography and climate was slightly reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest during summer, with a few nice waterfalls to hike to. On our way to each falls, we would walk through mountain villages; towards the end, a group of children followed along with us until the falls. Our tour guide picked some aloe vera to take home, and wrapped it in a bundle with a banana leaf, and one of the children carried the package for him.
The hostel we stayed at was very nice, I could imagine happily living there for a month. The man who ran the place was quite accommodating, a German ex-pat who appreciated the things that life brought him in Sipi Falls: drinking a beer and watching the sunset, having a chat with those who passed through. Some people worked at the hostel whose sole job was heating water for showering; they would light a fire and heat a vat of water, and an hour later it would be ready for showering. This didn't work very well. Sometimes it would take hours to get the fire going. Sometimes they would heat the water too much and it would come out scalding hot. It mostly was just a funny social interaction to negotiate, it didn't bother me much.

Two days later, on Friday, we caught a minibus back to Mbale, and caught motorbike-taxis to the village of Nabugoye. Nabugoye is the "headquarters" of Abayudaya, and we checked into the guesthouse there, and I met with the spiritual leader of the community, Aaron Kintu Moses. Several days before we arrived, the power and water connections to the village were severed, so we got the real village experience, using water that had been hauled from the well nearby.

He gave me an aliyah to read the next day, which meant that I had to learn 12 lines by the last hour of daylight that day, and to wake up with the sun to complete learning it. We walked up together with Isaac, who runs the guesthouse, to the synagogue for Kabbalat shabbat services. It was similar to many kabbalat shabat services I have been to, only many of the psalms we read were in luganda, and because it was dark I couldn't really follow along. They tended to use fairly simple tunes that repeated often. There was separate seating, but no
mechitza. During "lecha dodi," I, along with most of the men in the congregation, walked around the bima counter-clockwise chanting and marching together with the song.

That night we had dinner with Israel's family, and ironically talked about money in Uganda: about work, about the economy, about jobs, that sort of thing. I had my first dinner that was typical Ugandan fare: rice, posho (a mashed root), matoke (boiled plantains), fish, perhaps lentils. Unfortunately, the new foods were a little hard on my system.
We got to sleep, and I succeeding in learning my reading just before synagogue, and I was really happy with how well I read. I was sad that I didn't get a single yasher koach (essentially, "you did the right thing"); because they often have visiting Jewish scholars or rabbinical students, I don't think they are all that impressed by Jews that Got Torah. The food caught up with me by the end of the torah service and I laid down and took it easy the rest of the day. After shabbat, a group of us bazungu walked into the local town, and bought some food. One thing I really liked in Uganda is that they have real ginger beer everywhere (unfortunately, it's a Coke product).

We left the next morning and spent my last few days near Kampala. I bought a couple of drums, a reed mat, and an amazing painting on cloth. I enjoyed my time, and took a regimen of antibiotics to fight off giardia. I went on a series of home-visits with Amanda, meet with people who have HIV/AIDS, and to be able to offer them support, or answer questions they might have. One of my checked bags to Uganda was entirely filled with clothing to give away (all of which I had gotten for free), and we gave each family four or five pieces of clothing, until it was all gone.

Overall, my time was idyllic, I got to live like a rich person, and focus on taking care of myself during the days. I learned a lot about the contextual nature of racism, and the construct of race. I thought a lot about the kinds of poverty people are facing there, and brainstorm about how to intervene in some small way. When flying back, I walked right onto the plane with my large drum, well over the size limit for carry-ons. The plane was only about half-full, and I strapped it into two seats of its own, using a seatbelt to hold it in place. Once in Cairo, I handed it off to a friend, who will enjoy my drum while in Cairo and get it back to me hopefully in the Pacific Northwest.

I got back to my friend's apartment in Cairo fairly early, and equipped with the key he had left me, chilled out the whole day, waiting for people to get home from work or school. I caught up with some friends for dinner, and then attempted to take the late bus from Cairo to the border. It was a trial for me: it took me much too long to find a taxi, because I headed the wrong direction, then I ended up with a driver who 1. didn't know where he was going and 2. didn't have a meter, even though I went a huge distance out of my way to try to
get one of the few taxis with a meter. In the end he charged me 3 times what he should have, and I ended up missing my bus. By the time I got back to my friend's apartment, I was on the verge of tears.

I made it back to the bus station for the 6 am bus, and crossed the border mid-day. After hitching for a couple hours I caught a ride to Be'er Sheva with an Argentinian man (with whom I spoke Spanish), and then took a bus back to J-Town, where I oriented myself, feeling every bit like I was "brought forth out of Egypt" for Passover.

Who knows? Maybe you'll hear again from me soon.

Chag Sameach, Shabbat Shalom,
Jacob in J-Town

Update 4- Tulkarem and back

2008-04-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

The day I left Jerusalem, I went to Tulkarem for the first time in four years. A couple of Olympia friends wanted to visit Flo, who was in Tulkarem for a little while, and the synapses fired in my mechancial brain: here's a Jew (one of them is Jewish) wanting to go to Palestine. That can only mean one thing: I gotta get them in!

Whenever I think this too loudly, a get some feedback, a sort of white noise, which goes something like this:

"Well, what if they weren't Jewish?" And I feel a little sheepish that I wouldn't be as driven to get them to Palestine, I might not have given my day to that effort, going through checkpoint after checkpoint to get them where they want to go; but whatever: I like bringing gentiles into Palestine too, it's just different. A less integrated experience. When there are gentiles who are friends and lovers of Jews, in the same group as them, it's not hard or confusing, because these people by-and-large give Jewish people the space to experience whatever comes up for them, and act as an anchor of safety in an otherwise confusing situation.

So I brought them into Tulkarem. We met up at 9:30 at Damascus Gate (after I overtured them about being on time, it was *I* who was 20 mins late). We caught a 'service' to Ramallah, and on the way, I briefed them on "Hello," "Thank you," and numbers 1 through 5 in Arabic. After being told contradictory information about where the 'service' to Tulkarem was, some especially helpful people drove us the several hundred meters to the parking lot.

Since this was my friends' first time into Palestine, I decided not to just put them in a 'service' and go back to J-town, I also decided that i wanted to go back to Tulkarem to see Flo again, and to hopefully see any Palestinians I had met four years previous.

We hung out waiting for the shuttle to fill up. I lay against a tree outside, munching on 'loos,' which I think are baby almonds, where you eat the whole fruit. It tastes like a cross between sugar-peas and a citrus fruit. I introduced myself to the driver: "Ana Yacoub," and shook his hand. He told me his name too. And then he told a rough-looking guy that my name was Yacoub.

He approached me. "Yacoub is a Jewish name," he says to me, not disguising contempt in his voice.

"Why?" I ask him. (Lesh?) Feigning ignorance seemed best at that time.

This is not a person I want to 'come out' to right now. He asks me where I'm from, and I tell him.
"America is no good," he tells me. "Bush is crazy," I echo back, hoping that this password will be good
enough. Fortunately, he leaves me alone, although I am now distinctly uncomfortable.

Despite the discomfort, I'm really glad that i went with them, because the first checkpoint out of Ramallah, the soldiers pulled us off the 'service' and questioned our intentions, knowledge, and sanity. This could be a bit much to negotiate for anyone's first time to Palestine.

"Listen, if you don't come back, it's us who has to clean it up," the Israeli soldiers tell us. "Haven't you heard of kidnappings? What do you think they'll do if they know you're Jewish?" And truthfully, this question sometimes tests my mind.

I convince the soldiers we know what we're doing, that we're innocuous enough to enter, and smart enough to keep ourselves safe.

We we re-enter the taxi, a distinguished professional in the back seat says he overhead the conversation. "I hope you know they are lying," he says. "You are most welcome. No one wil hurt you."
A stark reality faced me the rest of the way to Tulkarem. Getting to Tulkarem is way harder and more stressful than just going to Ramallah or Bethlehem from J-town, where I've mostly been in the last couple years. We went past no less than five checkpoints, each successively pointing out the ludicrousness of the type of Occupation and Control that is being maintained. Beyond the guise of security, Palestinians are being separated from Palestinians, West Bank from West Bank.
(Let's hope US pressure can change this somewhat, and soon)

I made it into town for a deep embrace from Abed, someone who used to be an ISM coordinator in Tulkarem. He's around 40 years old, a very sweet and safe man, who has spent perhaps five years in Israeli jails in the 80's. Flo acknowledges me minimally, in some ways by necessity (men & women can't hug in the street).
It was instructive to think about the needs of my friend I brought in:
my friend was born female, and now presents as male, and because of this, I was unsure of what gender rules he should follow: the "male rules" which would allow him to wear short sleeves, or the more restrictive "female" standard. He decides that he will not necessarily pass as male, and so adopts the stricter rules.
We visited a prisoners' support organization, which helps the families of prisoners navigate the bureaucracy of visiting prisoners in Israeli jails. All of the people working with the organization have been in jails for 1, 3, 5 years. It was very inspiring to hear their stories and see that they were organizing on behlaf of prisoners.
Later, we had a very lavish lunch- at 17 shekels per person, we may have set a record in the City of Tulkarem that day for the most spent on lunch. Stuffed to the gills, I sought out a 'service' to Ramallah.
While waiting for it to fill up with people, I stopped in the sweets shop across the way. A 10-shekel ($3) package of Palestinian sweets is often a great gift to give to anyone whose house I am staying at.

While talking over my purchase with the shop owner, he asks me,"Are you Muslim? Are you Jewish? Are you Christian?"
Not feeling certain whether this is a safe place to out myself, I tell him I have no religion.
This decision haunts me: here, I specifically came into Tulkarem as a Jew, and when someone asks me directly about my religious orientation, I lie. When I think more about it, this isn't a particualrly important relationship; I may never see this guy again in my life. Still, I don't like the hiding or dishonesty even in this passing exchange. I want him to know that there *are* Jews out there who are willing to gothrough six checkpoints to go to his sweets shop in Tulkarem, who want only the best for him and his people.

I realized that what is holding me back, where my hesitation comes from, is an in ability to communicate in Arabic. I would have felt a lot more comfortable telling him I am Jewish if I could have, immediately afterwards, effectively answered any questions he might have had about that. Instead, I would just be flinging a fact into his lap, and while I might hope that he would do something good with it, he might interpret it any number of ways, and there would be very little possibility for dialogue.

I add a little star next to "learn Arabic" on my mental list of How to End the Occupation.

Today I will be going to the Abayudaya Jewish Community in Uganda for Shabbat. This should be awesome! I hope everyone is well, and is blessed with health and joy this weekend.

Shabbat shalom y'all,
Yakobo in Mbale, Uganda

Update 3- Bethlehem et al

2008-04-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

I am in Egypt for the first time in my life. Indeed, sitting at a bus station, waiting for the first bus to Cairo- which the man who works here reports to me, has broken down. So I'm here another four hours until the next one comes. I buy a ticket from the vendor, and he fishes the change out of his wallet. He charges me 10 Egyptian Pounds more than he should, but I'm not going to argue about it. I can take advantage of my newfound wealth of time to write about taking my first group of 'Jews et al' into Bethlehem.

On Thursday after Purim, I found myself in the Encounter office, where I introduced Cindy & Craig Corrie to the work done by Encounter. It was an interesting shidduch, to the extent that they have a large amount of respect for each other, yet in a lot of ways speak different languages to different communities. Rachel's story is such that she has become an icon for Palestinians, and for the movement for (Palestinian) human rights. A stark reminder that the occupation, at least in a few cases, also kills without regard to race or national origin.

Encounter is a very targeted project for religious Jews. It must address particularism as much as the Corries address universal values.
So anyways, after their interesting meeting, I ask Encounter staff if they know anyone who can a tour for me and 'Jews et al.' They give me a name and number, and I call him a couple of times until I get him on the phone. I talk over the design for an alternative tour for 7-- no, make that 9-- people.

"Is anyone in your group Israeli?" he asks me. Yes, I reply, after a moment's hesitation. "That's great," he replies. "Israelis definitely need to see what it's like here."

Friends, in case you are not familiar with the situation in Palestine, right around the time of Oslo*, part of a "peace process" was to "hand over" partial control of the West Bank to Palestinian administration and security. Palestine is a checkboard map of these three areas, starting with the most urban, progressing to the most rural: Area A (Palestinian administration/security), Area B (Palestinian administration, Israeli security), and Area C (Israeli administration/security). Note that you can read the word "security" also as "military control." Israelis are not allowed into Areas A or B; if they are caught entering, there is perhaps a 5000 shekel fine ($1500 US). Regardless of the intentions behind this law, which has been in effect only since around 2000 or so, is that Israelis can't go to Palestinian communities, safety aside. With the status quo, there is no chance of it "going back" to the way it was: in 1990, someone who lived in Kfar Saba could just drive into Qalqilya to buy vegetables.

So the way this affects us is that for the Israeli in our group, we have to be a little strategic, and take checkpoints from Area C back into Israel, and he has to have a story for the soldiers about where he was, and cannot say that he went to Bethlehem.

Onward, Jacob! This update is taking forever to get out. Here's the gist. On Thursday, everything got arranged, our host knew that most of us are Jewish, and since he is an activist, and a pragamtist, and thoughtful about how to create change for the people of Palestine, he knows that he needs to have good alliances with, and change the opinions of, Jews. He is perfectly happy that we are Jews. I'm just being a little redundant on this point because people ask about it so much.

On the other hand, the status quo of Palestine demands that we not publicize our Jewishness to people on the streets of Bethlehem, which was pretty much a non-issue for everyone; for more religious, or outwardly-identified people, they would have to put their necklace inside their shirt, or tuck in their peyos, or wear a hat to cover their yamika, you get the idea.

At 11 pm the night before we rendezvous'd and left for the Bethlehem area, I realized that daylight savings time was changing that evening... in Israel, at least. So, instead of meeting at 9:30 as I had intended, we moved the meeting time to 10:30 am, which would give people the same amount of sleep. After researching on the internet about whether or not Palestine was changing times when Israel was, I still was not sure about it, and read contradicting information. It turned out that they did switch times at the same time; I believe that in the Fall, Palestine Time* switches one week off from Israel, as a vestige of distinction.

We finally started meeting up at 10:30 am outside Damascus gate, and I ate hummous while waiting on everyone to show up. At 10:55, we headed out to find the 'service' which would bring us into Beit Jalla, a town in the Bethlehem area. We didn't get to our destination until noon; we filed out of the 'service' and met up with George, our fearless, funny, and quite opinionated guide.

First stop: Church of the Nativity. It was my third time there, and definitely the most crowded with other tourists. George spoke passionately about the negative effects of this type of Bethlehem tourism: no one even stays over night, people drive into Palestine, go see the church, then jump back on their buses heading for Israel. All people bring is their trash. They have a negative impact on the Palestinian Economy. He was upset that we, his guests, were being cut out from seeing the "grotto" at the Church by these long lines of people who don't help out the Palestinians: since he lives here, he should have priority in bringing friends to see the church.
George also indicated something that I hadn't noticed before: the bullet-holes through the stained glass in the upper reaches of the Church, as viewed from the courtyard in the middle of the church. From Israeli fire during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. (the event that launched ISM from obscurity)

Next, we went to see the Wall. Over near Rachel's Tomb, in the northern area of Bethlehem, 26 ft. concrete wall snakes and travels in order to capture Rachel's Tomb on the Israeli side, so that Jewish visitors are able to see their holy site without the trouble of seeing Bethlehem, or any Palestine Palestinians for that matter. It's a
pretty ugly wall, as you might imagine, but there is cool graffiti on it and nearby, including works by the famed "Banksy," a British tagger.

At this point, we headed to Palestinian homes for lunch, split into two groups: vegan and otherwise. I told George that there were three vegans among us, but I didn't tell him that almost no one in our group would eat meat, so that caused a little bit of an issue. People worked it out. I ate with the vegans and wannabes in George's house, it was really sweet to meet his family, and eat with them. They were very nice to us, and welcoming. The carni-philes and associated people ate down the block at George's uncle's house.

After lunch, we heard a different George (with the same last name) speak about nonviolent resistance in the Bethlehem area in the past 20 years or so. I really liked this part of it. Some of us were succumbing to food-coma at this point, but most of us were alive-alert-awake & attentive. We asked some good, and hard, questions. Back in '04, I worked for a week or two in the same office as this George and another guy who works at the IMEMC (International Middle East Media Center, check out http://www.imemc.org)

Last on the tour, we went to 'Aida Camp (a refugee camp of around 10,000 people), and some young guys there told us about the place, and about some arts and cultural programs that they have for giving a positive outlet for the youth of the community.

Around 4 pm, George was heading for Ramallah to hear the Corries speak, and Mikey and Melissa went with him. The rest of us took another hour plus to go into a trinket store where I saw my friend Adnan who runs the place, and then walk through the streets of Bethlehem, where the fruit/vegetable market was closing up the last of its wares. We made it back to Beit Jalla, and caught a 'service' with barely enough time to make it back to J-Town for Shabbat. But we did.
And it was good.

My folks flew out the next morning, and I wandered around Jerusalem in a shabbat-inspired daze. What. a. world. I thought I was going to meet a friend for lunch, but I went to the wrong place, and some nice Brooklyn Jews took me in. We sang a lot of rounds, which was fun. I didn't talk about Palestine at all.

Perhaps for the next update, I'll write something about people's reactions to the trip, if I can compile some of them. I think that would be a useful thing for me.

I'm working on a song about Area C,
here's the chorus:

Area C, Area C
Everybody's Welcome in Area C
Area C, Area C
You Can Be From Anywhere in Area C

The tune is similar to the "Kit Kat bar" commercial.

Okay, yeah, and I'm in Uganda. That's right. As I speed by on the back of a motorbike, the children call out to me: "bye muzungu!" (muzungu=white person). The ones who don't run away screaming, which a couple do.
It's a little funny writing about Palestine, but still important. Actually, I've been talking about it with people here, including Ugandans, who are quite interested to learn about the situation.

I was also in Cairo for a few days en route to Uganda. It's really easy to find a copy of Mein Kampf there, in Arabic. If anyone needs a copy, let me know, they're like $3. Shabbat was interesting there... interesting like non-existent. I went to the Pyramids on shabbat. I've got friends living there, studying Arabic who were amazingly welcoming and great to spend time with, and while they like to talk shit about Egyptian food, I actually was pretty happy with what was available to me. I guess it's different if you live somewhere for two years, you don't get sick of it after two days. I'll write more about Cairo later.

Bye friends, hope to talk to you soon!
-Yakobo in Bulenga

Oslo- The Oslo Accords, back in the 90's
Palestine Time- There was a Darwin Awards story about some Palestinians who accidentally blew themselves up with a bomb intended for Israelis, because they got confused between Palestine Time and Israel time, and thought that they had an hour more than they actually did.

Update 2- Short and Overdue

2008-03-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

Chevre,

Last you heard from me, I was getting ready to shear the tzitzit off my keppe.

Thursday, March 20-- Ta'anit Esther
I arranged to meet with fellow Palestine-travelers at 11am at Damascus gate, and I arrived at the Techana Merkazit (central bus station) around 10 am, and started walking. I walked through the shuuk (market), and by chance, passed a barber shop, who was willing to cut my hair but slightly incredulous that I wanted to cut my peyos off.
"Why?" he asks me. "It's Purim," I tell him. "Time for a chidush chadash," a new transition.
I didn't tell him: "because I'm going to Ramallah in an hour, and I really don't want want to walk down the street there with peyos." The off-chance that he wouldn't be willing to cut them off for me wasn't worth it, I was on a time-schedule.

So here I am, freshly hair-cut and wait just five minutes (although I'm ten minutes late) for the first two contestants of the game show, "Who Wants to Go to Palestine?"

I thought another friend was coming too, but no, it's just the three of us. We grab a shuttle from the Palestinian bus station, and are in Ramallah around noon, after an extensive display of how far Palestinians are redirected thanks the to the Wall around Ramallah. I decide not to fast, so I walk around searching for my favorite falafel place, but was unable to find it after twenty minutes or so, and settled for a different restaurant.
Ow! My first meal in Palestine, and I was already injured! I got something spicy in my eye and had to wash it out. It hurt a lot. Maybe I should have fasted.

We found the ISM office, talked to the folks there for a little bit, then picked a village to head out and see. We picked Bil'in, where there have been weekly protests every Friday for three years. We found our way to a shuttle heading that-a-way, found the "international house" (Abdullah's house), and sat in the yard hanging out with some Palestinian kids for half an hour or so. Inside, many members of the household were teaming up to clean the place up, that's why we were in the yard.

Abdullah took us in his car, along with another friend, to see the Wall, which at this particular location consisted of a series of fences, razor wire, roads, and sensors. The story goes something like this:

During the time when they were initially building the barrier, Palestinians were prevented from accessing the olive groves on the grounds that no one lived over there, despite the fact that the land historically belonged to the village of Bil'in. The settlement of Modi'in Illit, to the West of Bil'in, was illegally building additions to their settlement, stretching eastwards towards Bil'in. Since there didn't seem to be any authority willing to stop Israelis from building without a permit, some folks thought of a creative resistance they could employ.
One night, Israelis and Palestinians together built a one-room "house" on Bil'in land out beyond the olive groves, and beyond the path of th wall, nearby to where Modi'in Illit was building their Matityahu East expansion. The idea was this: if the courts upheld that Israeli settlers were allowed to remain in their illegally built structures, then by extension "Bil'in West" had to stand as well.

Without the specifics of exactly what happened, the current situation is this: the route of the wall got moved somewhat, so Bil'in had access to a bit more land on their side of the wall, and a gate was installed so that a villager from Bil'in can, with a bit of hassle, access the olive groves on the far side of the barrier, facilitated by the Israeli military.

Our host Abdullah explained to us that we, as internationals, would not be allowed to cross through the gate, but that they, as villagers from Bil'in, would be allowed to. He asks for permission for us to all go through. The soldiers talk amongst each other and up the command, and ten minutes later, the decision is made known that we aren't allowed through. It was a pretty surreal manifestation of bureaucracy, that no less than six personnel were being used to watch and man this gate, and to maintain a presence at the barrier, which is the traditional site of protest.

We made our way back to Ramallah, and then to Jerusalem, where we walked through the Border Terminal (nee military checkpoint) known as Qalandia. A new thing is that they checked the date on our visas. I had rarely, if ever, seen those checked. Back to Jerusalem, a night at Benj/Emma's and the anticipation of hitching through the West Bank the following day to Kibbutz Sasa for the Purim weekend.

Shavua tov!
Ya'akov

About Modi'in Illit and the placement of the Wall near Bil'in:
[http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2005/12/29/bilin-land-grab-thanks-to-the-wall-2/]

A reason to be happy that my phone doesn't work that well:
[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-802602.html]

a shabbos thought

2008-03-30T07:31:00.001-07:00

The point is to be able to communicate well. It's not to *appear* as
if you know how to communicate well. It can often be a hindrance to
appear to communicate well, while in fact not being able to. At the
same time, it is nice, and useful, for people to feel comfortable, and
the simple communication, and the joy in being able to communicate
simply, is not to be overlooked. I want to know five languages by the
time I'm 30, not because I want to then kick back and pat myself on
the back, but because then I will be ready to really get down to
business. With English, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Japanese, I
should have communication access to about 1/3 of the world, and it
will then be time for some pretty serious organizing.

Recently, I've been having a lot of good conversations with myself, in
my head. Remembering that people like to read what I write, I think to
myself: I should write down some of these conversations. The
conversations happen while I'm *doing*; either praying, or walking--
when I'm engaged. Writing does not feel like doing to me. It feels
like attempting to transmit the insights gained by doing. Perhaps
writing in itself can become a *doing* for me, and then I will be able
to marry the inspiration to the ability to write.

I write on shabbat. Right now, I'm writing on a computer on shabbat.
In some version of the future, I don't want to write, or use
computers, on shabbat, but because I don't write as much as I'd like
during the week, I feel okay about allowing myself this leisure on
shabbat. As I was saving the file, I considered specifically not
saving it, like creating a rule for myself that I can write on
shabbat, but I can't save it. My writing will be like smoke. But
because I love reading my writing later, and because I have the
feeling that *it could be important*, and actually writing for me on
shabbat might make a lot of sense, because my head is quite clear, I'm
going to keep it for now. Perhaps in a future I will dedicate my
Saturday nights to writing, after I've already had a full day of
shabbat, and then I will have a night of writing. It is so hard for me
to resist the temptation of spending time with others! But I bet that
I can do it.

Maybe I need to just write for myself more, then I will have more to
give to other people. Sometimes it's hard that everything I write I
send out, because I end up censoring myself somewhat, or at least
tailoring to an audience. I don't write audacious things. I write
perceptions. And I try to be, true to my Pacific Northwest white
Jewish upper-class upbringing, politically correct.

I want to write a story, with amazing characters. A character that I
thought of recently is "Rabotai Tzvi." I don't know who that is yet. I
need to learn more about what "Rabotai" means, and what "Tzvi" means.
Then I might know who Rabotai Tzvi is.

Today when I was praying, my voice echoed in my head, as I bowed right
and left: strife, joy. strife, joy. strife, joy. When I pray around
here, I usually think about Palestine. I often try to think about
other things, I feel like a cliche unto myself, but it is the case
that Palestine is what I have in mind. It's hard for me to form other
things to pray about. All kinds of other things enter my thoughts, but
only tangentially. I often pray for understanding. (not "to be
understood", but rather "the ability to understand")

Today, when I bowed right and left, and prayed strife and joy, I was
engaging to hold both of those ideas in my mind at the same time. For
me, that is so much about Palestine. In Palestine, they give you
coffee and tea, and push food on you incessantly, they treat you with
the greatest respect. They have real, connected relationships; in a
town like Bethlehem, I can tell the taxi driver the name of the man I
am meeting, and most likely he knows him. Some people's houses are
really nice, and they do so much to make you comfortable. In many ways
it is idyllic.
And it also makes me cringe. Like a dull pain, slow arthritis. The
checkpoints, economic depression, the dusty roads, the nothing-to-do
that hangs in the air, which to my Western sensibilities feels like
impotence. That I'm not openly Jewish there. That I sometimes can't,
and more often think I can't, talk openly about spending time in
Palestine, which creates for me a divided life.

You are an insignificant speck of dust.
You are made in the image of G-d.

Shavua tov,
Jacob

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Update 1- Dis: Comfort

2008-03-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! It's me.

In some ways I don't even want to write an update, because I don't feel like anything overly significant has happened yet, but I want to at least let folks know generally what I've been up to. It's probably a good thing if I can get out of the mindset that I need to be shot at by soldiers for it to be worth reporting. In any case, be forewarned: this might not be the most exciting thing you've read this week. Then again, it might.

JNF ASB Trip

I arrived at the airport in New York City on March 8 three hours early, signed the JNF waiver, checked my bags, then took a bus to Lefferts, and got some roti for dinner. I got back to the airport about an hour before my flight, which left at midnight. The girl I sat next to started screaming because of some eye pain as we descended 10.5 hours later; it turned out to be intense sinus pressure, and other than that the flight was uneventful.

My entry into Israel was amazingly easy; it took less than a minute to get into the country (about 1/1000 of the time it took last year). Coming with a JNF trip has some advantages in that department.

I was met at the airport by my sweetheart Lior, which was really cool, and caused me to have a small amount of reputation just as the trip was starting out. All the JNF ASB (Jewish National Fund "Alternative Spring Break") kids (who would later be referred to as "AS Breakers"), gathered together in a big circle, with our arms together, and chanted: "Achim! Achim! Achim Achim Achim! Simcha! Simcha! Simcha Simcha Simcha!" (Achim = Brothers/Sisters, Simcha = Joy), while at the same time the circle jumped counter-clockwise. I appreciated our sillingness (willingness to be silly).

We were quickly heralded onto two buses (there were 80 of us altogether), given snacks and water, and driven to a kibbutz where we had dinner. The first night, we were asked to share our expectations for the trip; everyone recounted their hopes and goals. My personal expectations were not hopes: I expected us to be rather ineffective, to be doing a lot of PR-related work (as in, it looks good in the photo shoot, but we didn't really do much), but because no one else was sharing these feelings, I didn't want to be a downer.

You see, the reason that I came on the trip was for a subsidized trip to Israel. I go with JNF ASB, do a little bit of community service work, and I'm in Israel. Cool. The only catch is that I have to raise $1050 for a JNF Project called "Blueprint Negev" (I ended up raising $1600 [thanks for helping me get to Israel those who contributed!]). And because almost all of these American Jews came *just for the ASB trip*, I didn't want my pessimism to ruin their spring break vacation. They are all saying that we'll build important relationships and make a difference in the lives of people, who am I to say that we won't? I'll just sit in the corner with my subversive thoughts, and wonder how many people out there are sharing them internally.

Within the first couple of days, I was able to check in with some leaders of the group, enough to realize that if I say the word "Palestine" I won't be immediately expelled from the group. The trip leaders tended to be leftists, if anything. It's a strange juxtaposition: the JNF as an organization, a quintessentially Zionist group, and then the trip leaders, who have a very complex view of the world, of Israel, of the "situation." I was pretty excited that a couple of people on the trip expressed interest in going to Palestine.

What did we do on the trip? Contrary to what I expected, we actually did a good amount of manual labor. We pretty much worked half-days; not impressive for paid workers, but not bad for a bunch of American Jewish law students and biology majors. I helped level an area outside a children's clubhouse, that had broken tiles and small piles of dirt in an area that they would ostensibly be able to play in. We replaced broken tiles. We cleared brush at a public park in Be'er Sheva. We cleared a path in a park in the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood of Jerusalem. I sat in on a class with "special needs" elementary schoolers (whose Hebrew was better than mine), and later played basketball with them.

We also heard from a bunch of people, including Amram Mitzna, the mayor of Yerucham, and a man named Kher, who is on a Bedouin leadership council in the Negev.
The Q & A section with Kher was rather painful, and I felt quite embarrassed for my people; we asked him questions like: why should Israelis give Bedouins any services at all? What are your people contributing to Israel? What do you say to people who say that you are thieves? (The original question actually had the term "value-added" involved, as in, "How are the Bedouin a "value-added" participant in Israel)
The resonance between this discourse and the idea of a person asking me "why are Jews so cheap?" was a little challenging.

We also went on several hikes, including a night hike. We ate pretty good, I'm not finding it hard to remain vegan-ish.

In the end, I made a number of good connections (including a new crush), people that I probably will never see again, but who knows, maybe. I wish the people on the trip were more challenging to me: I often hear from people that I am challenging to them, that they appreciate the wisdom that I have to offer, and really great compliments like that.

I sat on this for awhile. I don't actually feel like people in general were sharing their wisdom with me; is it because I don't see it clearly? Is it because I'm not open to it? The relationship can't be just that I offer and they receive. They must be offering me something too, because I appreciate our relationship.
And eventually I discovered it, but didn't quite figure out how to frame it: they are good at complimenting me. They are good at helping me feel good about myself.
And there it is: they are good at recognizing the good in people. That is a really important quality, something that I struggle with at times.

Throughout the trip, I had a nagging persistent thought: what about Palestine?
And a new one, related to this trip: what about the Bedouin? Some people that I've talked to about Blueprint Negev oppose it, because it isn't considering the needs of the Bedouin community. Besides planting trees, the JNF has a long history of planning really important development in Israel, but making it Jewish-only.

I'm realizing that a lot of the ways that I felt marginalized in the past don't hold true for me anymore. People really are interested in what I have to say, even if it's unpopular. People won't always do what I say, but that's not particularly surprising. Once I just let it be okay that people have very different politics than I do, it's a lot easier. If I go into a group like this, with a pretty doable goal of "I'm going to talk about Palestine with people" or "I'm going to find a couple of people who are interested in going to Palestine with me", it's a lot easier than creating a huge amount of conflict within the group.

The trip ended on Saturday night, and I crashed at Benj/Emma's apartment, who absolutely astounded me with their hospitality. I will likely be crashing there a lot of the time when I'm in Jerusalem in the future; and to top off their wonderful personalities, they also have a phone that can call the USA for free (and vice-versa, it's a US number).

To the South

My Dad and Holly flew in Saturday, and I met up with them Sunday morning, rented a car, then drove together down to Be'er Sheva for lunch, Mitzpe Ramon for a short walkabout, then got to Kibbutz Ketura for dinner. There I saw Anat and Eden, two great friends of mine. While my parents crossed into Jordan and went to Petra, I hung out at Lotan and Ketura. Kibbutz Lotan's "Green Apprentice" participants live in, and eventually get to build cob huts, which are nice and cool to hang out in. There was a strange dust cloud over the entire region, which made it less nice to go outside.

Last night, I picked my parents back up from the border, and we went out for dinner in Eilat.

It's been kind of surreal to travel comfortably, traveling the way that my parents do: their taste for comfort rubs against my commitment to ending the Occupation of Palestine specifically, and political change, more broadly.
HOW CAN YOU ENJOY THIS? HOW CAN YOU WANT TO GO TO A SPA? shouts some part of myself. I don't understand why they don't want to see Palestine right away, as if that's all that there is in the world. Somehow, they are able to set it down, in a way that I can't.
This has brought up all sorts of internal conflict within myself; I feel really dissatisfied with myself that I haven't learned Hebrew better than I have already. It makes me think that I need to stay longer than I have planned, (maybe 'til early July instead of mid-May?) so that I can learn some more Hebrew. I feel incredibly uncomfortable knowing that I haven't even spent a day in Palestine yet.
Later, I remember that this is par for the course, this feeling of instability. That's sometimes just what it's like here.

For now, I'm staying the course. We'll see what Passover brings, perhaps I will change my schedule, but for now I've only been here a week and a half, there is still plenty of time to do plenty of things. I'm organizing a trip into Ramallah for tomorrow, which means that I have to get rid of my peyos by the morning. I was hoping to come up with some sort of good ritual for that occasion, but nothing particularly has hit me yet. Maybe it will just be quick and dirty.

Besides that, I'm frustrated that the Olmert guv'ment caved to Shas' demand that settlement construction continue. I thought maybe we were seeing some real progress there.

All the best to everyone! You'll hear from me in another week, hopefully.

B'shalom wa salaam,
Ya'akov

Pre-trip Update! Featuring The Encounter Program

2008-02-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

You may or may not know it, but I'm flying to Israel/Palestine on March 8. Also to Uganda via Egypt.

I wanted to write an email to tell you about a project that I like a lot, whose conference I just went to.

The project is called Encounter [http://www.encounterprograms.org], and their focus is bringing Jewish leaders to visit Palestine over a couple of days, fully loaded with opportunity for people to process and reflect on their experiences. At the moment, they run trips to Bethlehem and Hebron, either one day or overnight trips, and they visit different people in the communities and hear their stories, and meet with community leaders and politicians, and work in tandem with the Holy Land Trust out of Bethlehem to organize their trips.

This project is currently extraordinarily successful within the Jewish community; over 400 people have gone on 17 trips. It's a very inspiring thing how much this project affects Jewish leaders, and by connection the American Jewish community. A friend of mine anticipated that within two years, fully 1/3 of all rabbinical students will go on an Encounter trip to Palestine. It's amazing to consider what sort of impact this will have on the organized Jewish community.

I had the opportunity to go on an Encounter trip to Bethlehem last year, and what was most impressive about it was their use of dialogue, small groups, and dyads for the sake of processing. Since I have been to Palestine many times before, that aspect of the trip was not so striking to me; to me, what was new and exciting and moving was seeing a whole bunch of Jewish, not to mention future rabbis, making the same journey that my activist paths had brought me on several years before.

Many people on the trip were hugely moved by their experiences in Bethlehem, people from across the Jewish spectrum. These people are taking their work forward in hugely varied ways; one Yeshiva student, who is now at U Penn, is starting a microlending program based out of Ramallah [http://www.lendforpeace.com]. Others are starting Jewish-Arab dialogue groups throughout the United States. (There are major efforts right now in Boston and LA)

My hope is to help people who have taken that step: to connect with Palestinian people, and really hear their narratives, create a deeper connection by spending larger amounts of time in Palestine (like two weeks, instead of overnight). And for people who haven't before, I hope to help bridge people into Palestinian life, introduce them to my friends, give them a cultural crash-course.

With so much hope,
Jacob Rosenblum
from a house in West Philly

A quick outline of my trip:
today - March 8 USA
March 8-15 flying to Israel with the JNF's Alternative Spring Break--
doing Economic Development work in the Negev. Some interesting
projects.
March 16-29 My father and stepmom will be in Israel. I'll be
travelling with them, and taking friends to meet Palestinians in the
Bethlehem and Ramallah districts, and hanging out with people I love,
and such. Purim!
March 30-Apr 5 Israel/Palestine, then to Egypt for Shabbat, before
flying to Uganda
April 5-16 Uganda!! Visiting a friend in the peace corps there.
April 17-May 12? Back to Egypt, then Israel (fittingly) for Passover.
I plan to leave around May 12, although I don't have the return flight
set yet.

U8 Behar Dvar

2007-05-14T19:07:00.001-07:00

Hey folks, so this isn't exactly about my time there, and I promised
long ago more details about my trip there, but they didn't ever come
exactly. I think they will in the next month or two.

In the meantime, here's "Dvar Torah" (Commentary on the Torah) that I
read to a synagogue in Olympia on Friday night. Feel free to ask
questions! For the non-Jews among you, change the word "Jew" to
"human" and it should still make sense for you.

Love,
Jacob

Shabbat Behar- May 11, 2007, Ya'akov Rosenblum

Shabbat Shalom Chevre-

From Tu B'Shvat until Pesach, I was in Israel/Palestine. I bring good
news from the Middle East- some people there still like Jews. I even
found a few Israelis who like Jews, amazingly enough.
The important message that I have to bring you is that you no longer
need to choose: between your humanism, your compassion, your values
you've been brought up with, and being Jewish.
One of this week's parshiyot is Behar, and it expounds upon the
notion of yovel, or Jubilee, as well as shemitta, or "Sabbatical
Year." The core message is a radical approach to poverty and inequity,
a way of re-balancing human societies- every seven years, all debts
are erased, and every 50 years, people are brought back to the land of
their ancestors, and all land is re-distributed.
Zionism could be interpreted this way: our people were finally
returned to our ancestral lands. We missed a few dozen Jubilees in the
middle there, but now we're back on track. We are renewing the
practice.
What a blessing! What a mitzvah!
For many of us, this joy has worn off. There is a great defeat that
lingers over Israel, and it's because the Jews have been tricked. We
were tricked into aligning ourselves with the most powerful in our
midst, who wanted the Jews out of Europe. Ashkenazi Jews came in
droves, first before, and later in huge numbers, immediately
surrounding the Holocaust. And these Ashkenazim could notice that
there was land; they could notice how important it was for their
identity, but what they could not notice is that they had come to an
Arab land. While being absolutely certain of their right to this place
that our many-thousand-year heritage avows so distinctly, we could not
notice that there was another people living there for whom the land
was just as important, sacred, and promised, and whose entire lives
were intertwined with the land.

We see clearly that we had ancestors there 3000 years ago, we do not
see so clearly that Palestinians had ancestors there 50 years ago.
There are also Jews who have always been in that land, there are also
Sephardic, Mizrachi, and other Jews that did not have a stake in
attempting a European-style takeover, informed by white racism. But
the society that set itself up in Israel has brought in our Mizrachim
and Sephardim, and demands that we prove ourselves to be distinct from
Arabs, even though many of us are Arabs, Arabic is our first language.
While we enforce this, we blind ourselves to the fact that Israel is
in the Middle East.
We, as Pacific Northwest American Jews, can benefit from noticing
that we claim this land for our own, once solely inhabited by
indigenous people, and now ruled by white Protestants. What does it
mean to recognize natives and their full right to this place?
I get to support my Israeli friends at being Middle Eastern- speaking
Hebrew and Arabic, appreciating Arab culture, befriending Arabs. And
for myself, I can learn how to honor this land, and everyone whose
ancestors have walked this part of the Earth, including the Nisqually,
Squaxin, Skokomish & Chehalis peoples. The second chapter of Genesis
teaches us that the Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the
Earth.
I want to invite you to go to Israel/Palestine- as a Jew- to struggle
with and struggle for what you believe in. To make the Holy Land a
place that is welcoming to everyone with an Ancestral History there.

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U7 What's Left

2007-03-31T14:17:00.000-07:00

-And they come, and they go, *so* far away, and we believe they can
make a difference. We don't know exactly to whom, or when exactly, but
this is our hope. Because people are not listening to us, they need to
hear our story.-

After about the hundredth demolished home that you've seen, the
seventh story of a man who watched his own cousin die right in front
of his eyes, in fact to have his cousin's blood stain his clothing, we
engage in a slow, subtle detachment. It's not that we don't care
anymore. It's that we don't know how to use the information. Believe
me, if I thought that there was someone important who would listen to
this, and change the situation, I would devote my entirety to making
that change. I just don't know who that person is.

I actually don't need to hear these stories anymore,
yanni, I want to keep listening because I think that it's important
for the teller to tell it.
But not because I want to know.

Rides with taxi drivers are interesting. I find myself always trying
to figure out if my taxi driver is Palestinian or not. Often it's very
difficult to tell. People who speak Arabic as a first language have a
different accent in English, which is often a telltale sign for me.
Although not everyone in this region whose first language is Arabic is
Palestinian. These negotiations are often affected by racism; a
non-Palestinian Israeli will be insulted if I think he is Palestinian,
and it's more likely that I will think an Iraqi Jew is Palestinian
than a Romanian Jew. Here, there is no longer Polish or Morroccan,
there is just Israeli. And this cultural conformity, the erasing of
histories, has been a violence upon the people who came here, just as
the assimilation of immigrants to the United States has sought to
destroy their identities. "SPEAK ENGLISH," we say.

Although the situation is a bit more complicated here, the English
language is still the foremost language of oppression, even among the
Israeli Occupation, when I insist that the soldier who is confronting
me speak to me IN ENGLISH because I haven't learned his language, I am
reinforcing this language oppression. On the other hand, if I insisted
that he speak to me in Arabic, because I am in an Arab village, and
surrounded by Arabic-speaking people, this would be a step to resist
this language oppression.

"DABER ARAVIT!" Speak Arabic!

After I shout this at my imagined soldier, I feel good about my
strides against language oppression. Moments later, the warm feeling
in my soul is replaced by confusion: the imaginary soldier starts
speaking in Arabic, and I can't understand a word. I grab a friend
(maybe an international who knows Arabic, maybe an Arab who knows
English), and ask her to whisper an English translation into my ear.

This is what democracy looks like.

But what my North American friends really do is insist that you speak
to us in English, to include us, because we're feeling excluded. This
is the way we know how to tap into our national, socio-political
privilege.

**
I finally finished reading Tanya Reinhart's "Road Map To Nowhere,"
covering the political and human developments in the conflict between
2003 and April 2006, including a fun section on international and
Israeli-Palestinian resistance. Man, she knows her stuff; chock-full
of quotes explaining why policies have been carried out the way they
have, from the Gaza Disengagement, to the military actions within
Palestine. She died just a couple weeks ago in NYC in her early 60's;
even though I never met her, I miss her still.

Two more days to kick around this holy land, and I'm dropping
everything; yesterday I left my wallet on the bus. I hope someone
somewhere made good use of it. Again, a contradiction: as a fortunate
son, I notice my blessings when I lose my shirt. $200 gone, cancelling
the credit cards, get a new license when I get back home; that's all
this means for me. "How will I eat now?" doesn't play a role. Really,
street urchins, you might be doing us a favor when you steal our
money.

Let me offer a counter-proof. I rock climbed the whole day in Wadi
Ram, in southern Jordan. My brother and I were being guided by a
French-Israeli named Joel, we climbed up about nine pitches of 5'6
through 5'8 rock... something like 600 or 800 feet vertically up a
cliffside. The rock at Wadi Ram is pretty similar to that at Smith
Rock, in my home state of Oregon, so it was a curious experience to be
climbing my familiar rock with a French-Israeli and my brother. After
we had climbed all but two pitches, we commenced our rappel down to
the bottom, so that I could make it back to camp for a 5:30pm taxi to
the border. I got to the border a little before seven, so that I
wouldn't be held for over an hour: the border crossing at Aqaba closes
at 8pm. As my luck would have it, I was held just 40 minutes, even
less time than they held me going out! But because I had become
friendly with some Italians that got held up, I waited for them to get
pushed through, at 7:56 pm.

I was told that I could hitch from the road near the Aqaba crossing,
there's a place where all the soldiers stand, underneath a
streetlight, so even in the dark it's okay. Instead I threw my lot in
with these swanky Italians, because they were considering driving to
Tel Aviv that night. In the end, the two hours this businessman got
held at the border ended up changing the plan; I rode with them in
their car to Eilat, where they decided they would stay over. His
partner was very happy about his decision.

But now, I'm in Eilat, it's 8:30 pm, and I don't see a good place to
hitchhike. I start walking north, with my fingers out. About seven
minutes later, I run into a couple of Israelis; an Indian (Itai) and a
Russian (Dudu). Itai tells me that the are just walking back from the
hitchhiking point, and that it's another 10 km north of there, and
that they waited there for a ride for four hours. I later established
both of this figures to be gross exaggerations, in any case it was
enough to dissuade me from attempting the same game they had been
failing at for so long, as native Israelis. Instead I just sort of
started following them around, relying on my backup plan: a midnight
bus to Tel Aviv.
They are both 21, recently got out of the army. Friends forever.
"Where do you work?" I just, how do you say, ended. "You quit?" He
shakes his head. "Fired?" Yes, fired he tells me. We are walking
through the lights and the fanfare of the Eilat evening, a boardwalk
with plenty of people buying plenty of things for plenty of money.
They were both fired actually, this morning. Until now they had been
working as waiters here, although they live a full three hours away in
Beer Sheva. "Why were you fired?" They came late to work today... my
sense was 'came late to work again' is more accurate. The were
partying last night, fell asleep in the hotel attached to the
restaurant where they work, and when they woke up:
1. They were late to work
2. Their money was gone
So it eventually came out that they were more-or-less stranded,
without money or access to money, and hadn't eaten since yesterday. I
shared my Jordanian pita and halvah with them, which they ate
hungrily, and a short while later I bought us a round of falafel. We
played cards together, Dudu taught us a Russian game.
I asked them about the army. Dudu pushed papers; Itai saw combat. In
both Hebron and Lebanon II. He talked about it proudly, that he saw
really intense stuff, said he really liked combat. A bit later, I was
able to dig a little deeper on him; in reality this kid was a gentle
soul, and when I was asking him what he wants to change, he tells me,
"I want peace. Everyone wants peace." All this killing is shit. The
army is shit. This country is shit.
His pride and steadfastness is a cover for actually hating the
situations he has been put in.
These kids are very warm and grateful that I've bought them food, and
I offered to buy them tickets on the bus I'm taking, that could let
them off in Beer Sheva. But Itai's sister was on a bus from Beer Sheva
to Eilat, and would arrive at 2am, and would give them money for the
bus north. "Why is he buying you food?" she asked. "What's wrong with
this kid?"
"He's just nice," Itai insisted. People in Israel won't just buy you
food, he tells me. He tells me what a nice guy I am, not like
Israelis. I would say the same thing about US-ers. I wonder if in
Palestine they say the same thing; it's hard to believe, but just
maybe.
Itai's sister tells him that she will kill him if he takes me up on
the offer of a ticket north. Given that, I'm glad he waited for his
sister.

The midnight bus ended up being a 1am bus, completely packed, but I
made it on. Tel Aviv by 5:30, sherut to Jerusalem, Jerusalem by 7am.
Wandering around the shuuk (open market) in West Jerusalem, buying
hummous and other salatim. The shuuk seemed like a very holy place
early in the morning. A few people wandered around unselfconsciously,
one lighting a cigarette, sitting on a stand that will hold cucumbers
in about an hour. A man slowly, methodically, stacking his fruit.
Children on tip-toes to see what's on the stacked baking sheets, fresh
from the oven. Soldiers murmuring to each other and huddling around
plastic cups of coffee. A yeshiva boy's peyos and tzitzit trail after
him as he marches through the alley, clutching his siddur
(prayerbook).

I wasn't travelling through the night because it was particularly
convenient; I sought to catch the Encounter bus the following morning
to Bethlehem. "Encounter"(1) brings those studying to be
professionally Jewish people, such as rabbis, cantors, and Jewish
educators, on trips to the West Bank; currently to Hebron and
Bethlehem. I tagged along, coming up with excuses for what roles I
have in terms of conventional Jewish leadership; mostly I was there to
experience how the group was organized. Maybe I will tell you about it
sometime.

Chag Sameach L'kulam! This is my last email from Israel/Palestine, but
not my last email about Israel/Palestine.
I wish for all of us personal liberation during these times.

Shalom y'all,
Jacob in J-Town

(1) Encounter http://www.encounterprograms.org/home.html

U6 Dvarim Tfutzim

2007-03-28T02:58:00.001-07:00

Scattered Words

A new day, a new page. Here, even my writing has taken on imminence,
where everything is imminent. I can't seem to let the words flow, the
way they have in the past, I have thoughts, mostly secret, mostly
censored, that I won't remember to write out, even with my purest
intentions.
As I eat my pita, dipped in hummous, and cough like a "pack-a-day"
smoker, I think that passover will treat me well: I've been eating too
much wheat here. In the last few weeks, there's been Purim, my mother
and brother have come (and my brother has left), I've left and
re-entered Israel successfully by way of Jordan, I've been staying
busy, as you might imagine. My writings are here, but the order may be
awkward or arbitrary. There it is.

part 1- Stuperb

Well folks, I've done it once again, engaged in debauchery along with
a bunch of other adherents of our little tradition of Purim, when
nothing is as it seems. Today, for the first time in months I:

*hitchhiked from a Palestinian town to Jerusalem -- with Settlers!
*consumed a substantial quantity of alcohol
*danced my pants off
*Offered a toast: "To death!"

And so much more.

Today, I was in Beit Ommar, because reports indicated a high
likelihood that settlers in the Gush Etzion settlement of Bat Ayin
would be having the Purim march through nearby Palestinian villages.
Because Erez Levanon, a settler from Bat Ayin, was killed recently,
and because the two 17-year-olds that confessed upon interrogation are
from Beit Ommar, it seemed possible that today would see some
violence. It is also the anniversary of Baruch Goldstein's massacre of
Arabs praying in a mosque, and it's also a day when our weekly parsha
indicates that we are commanded to "blot out the memory of Amalek from
under the heavens," and many ideological settlers equate Amaleq with
basically anyone who doesn't like us.

As it turned out, there was no parade, I had an enjoyable day, and
lunch in the sun, at the apartment of the Palestine Solidarity Project
in Beit Ommar. The were four of us Jews there, and we just chatted in
this village, mostly about dynamics between activists.
We caught a two-shekel taxi to the settler crossroads, and hitched
there for approximately six minutes before getting a ride straight to
Jerusalem, a journey that was an hour quicker than negotiating the
return via Palestinian transit. (and free) It just meant being in a
car with settlers for forty minutes, which was actually fine, because
Aviva and I just chatted the whole time, about Palestine, about
boundary-crossing, mostly oblivious to our English-speaking company.
Later, there was me wearing a purple dress typical of Pakistan, and
much raucousness in Jerusalem. There was Michael Jackson in the CD
Player. And connecting with Jewy Jews. Chag Sameach!
part 2- Loose Ends
Whenever I go to Israel/Palestine, I try to learn one big thing.
Recently, the aspect of society and occupation that impresses me most
is how much it relies on aesthetics.
I'm currently visiting friends at Kibbutz Sasa, about 3 hours from
Jerusalem, if you cut straight south through the eastern edge of the
West Bank, along the Jordanian border, and then West from the Dead
Sea. On Thursday night, I had an event I wanted to get to in the Holy
City, so, both in an effort to save money, and because it's more fun,
I decided to "tremp", or hitchhike.
Now friends, it is much easier to hitch here than in the United
States. It's entirely culturally acceptable, many police cars always
pass me and I never worry about them stopping me, unlike my experience
near the freeway in Washington state. Here, they would only stop to
give me a ride (the good kind.) In this double-society, it's important
to appear Jewish in order to get rides from Jews, and to look
not-Jewish in order to get rides from Arabs.
Because I didn't have my passport on me (oops), I decided to just get
rides with Israelis; when going through checkpoints, Israeli cars just
get waved through. If I were riding with Palestinians, it's likely
that my documents would be checked; no passport might mean that I
would have an unexpectedly long stay in Palestine that day. Which
could be fine sometimes, but not when I'm trying to get to a class in
Jerusalem.
I got a ride from a man who lives in a very small settlement in the
Shomron (territories), who is a beekeeper, and had all his beekeeping
gear in the car with him, as well as several jars of honey. He told me
his sob-story: that because he's from the Shomron he has to pay
exorbitant taxes which prohibits him from being able to sell his goods
to the United States. He's wondering if I can help him with any
solutions to this problem. It's also interesting to note the
connection between hilltop settlers and the hippie community: he
markets his produce as organic. (Organics.co.il is the website for
Kfar Tapuach's produce) While he talked business on the cell phone, he
drove away from the Jordan valley road, and up into the mountains of
the central West Bank. I would be fine, he assured me, I would be able
to get a ride from the Tapuach junction; my sense of where I was, and
where I was going, wasn't good enough for me to insist on jumping out
at the right place.
At Tapuach junction, several things became clear. The first thing
wasn't the sky; it was raining a lot. I was not getting a ride from an
Israeli anytime soon. Perhaps one Israeli vehicle (distinct from its
license plate) passed every minute or two, and for the most part they
were just heading to the settlement of Ariel, which was not
particularly a place that I wanted to go. This is the place that, if I
had my passport on me, I would have taken my kipa off and jumped in a
Palestinian service to Ramallah, and just been a little late to
Jerusalem. As it turned out, I ended up waiting with a couple of
settler kids, maybe 16 or 17, also waiting for a tremp, but who
assured me that a bus would come sooner than later. In my broken
Hebrew I tried to converse with them.
An Arab man walked up to the bus stop, smiling, hoping to get some
shelter from the rain. One of the boys I was with inflated his height,
and worked towards intimidating the man into standing outside the
shelter, in the rain. I attempted to protest, to block off a section
of the shelter for him, but the aforementioned boy was not going to
let him stand under the shelter, if he could do something about it. I
attempted to reason with him in my small amount of Hebrew.
"Hu ben adam," I told him. "He's a human being, like me or like you."
My argument didn't sway Settler Boy. The Arab man tentatively started
in towards the shelter, then thought better of it and decided to stand
in the rain, after which I walked out to join him in the rain. He
shook my hand and thanked me for saying that he was a human being, and
that I didn't need to stand out there with him. He told me he was
headed to Ramallah.
The settler boys didn't hold it against me that I had attempted to
defy one of them, and had been conversing and openly friendly with a
Palestinian in their midst. They tried to explain their racism: it's
not like in the United States, where you stand together. Here, it's
different, we don't stand together.

part 3- Cumulation

Two days ago, my mother and I went to Budrus, to meet up with Abu
Ahmed; I lost my passport and cell phone in the taxi on the way there.
That didn't stop me from having a truly lovely visit, Abu Ahmed's
family was tremendously hospitable of us, and as a seasoned host of
internationals, I didn't even need to explain vegetarianism even once.
Small things like this mean a lot.

My head is a jumble. I'm in Jerusalem right now, but I'd rather be in
a Palestinian village nearby visiting a friend. So I think I will wrap
this up quickly and attempt my departure. I have so many ideas, so
many feelings, thoughts, frustrations, and above all- I'm leaving
incredibly soon. Sunday, actually. I will do my best to get writings
out to you before I head back to the States.

Shalom y'all,
Jacob in J-Town

ps oh right so I got my passport back, but not my cell phone, if you
want to call me in the next few days, the number is 050-579-4086

U5 I Bleed For Palestine

2007-03-05T21:19:00.000-08:00

On Friday, I caught a bus from Gan Ha-Pa'amon in Jerusalem to Bil'in.
People notice me, because I wear a kipa. The bus was filled to the
very last seat. I sat next to Maja, and wrote, and talked. It was the
two-year anniversary of the weekly protests that have been held at
Bil'in; many of the activists come week after week to support the
resistance.
Our bus stopped at a roadblock, and we crossed on foot to wait under
olive trees, until Palestinian service-taxis arrived. The Tel Aviv
crew showed up shortly thereafter. We started walking up the road, and
eventually a military jeep showed up; it was clear that the soldiers
weren't happy that there were Israelis walking towards Bil'in, but
they didn't seem prepared to do anything about it. Several of us
linked arms across the road, therefore keeping the jeep behind us (for
whatever reason). Eventually, one of the services doing laps to and
from Bil'in had space for our gang, and we piled in for a ten minute
drive.

We arrived into the village of Bil'in, a village like any other
Palestinian village in the Western reaches of the Ramallah district.
Same story as Budrus: the wall built on their land effectively
prevented Palestinians from accessing, much less farming, half of
their land. For an agricultural economy, this is devastating. I went
to the store, bought halvah, pita, and hummous. Then, like so many
internationals and Palestinians, I just hung around on the main road.
It looked like Bil'in was having a big fair; there was hot food
offered up, small children selling overpriced bags of popcorn to the
azj-nabi community.

After about the first half-hour there, I tired of the special
attention I was getting for wearing a kipa ("Ze lo tov," a Palestinian
young man tells me, pointing to my yamika. "That's not good.") In the
current state of things, the best I can hope for is to expose the
Israeli left to the idea that some people both like to davven (pray)
AND resist injustice. So I took it off, and put it into my back
pocket.

A procession was formed; we marched down from the village to the
outlying farmlands where the fence/wall-thingy (that's a technical
term) is. We chanted in Arabic, Hebrew, English about how we don't
like walls, and especially this particular one. There were border
police, jeeps, etc., on the horizon, waiting for us. Given how many
people they employ as security, I wonder if it wouldn't be more
cost-effective if they just let protestors damage the fence, and then
pay people to repair it, rather than preventing the damage in the
first place. I'm not a military contractor (at the moment), so I don't
really know.

Four or six of us formed an ad-hoc affinity group, basically knowing
to look out for each other, checking in with each other about our
wishes for this particular protest. We were more or less all in the
"hangers-back" category. So after the group arrived at the thingy,
there was some yelling, some posturing, and a few Palestinians climbed
on top of the gate connected to the thingy. One way or another they
fell off- either the gate was shaken, or they just fell, or they were
pushed off gently. One, holding a Palestinian flag with a wooden stick
breaks the stick over the head of a border-policeman (in full riot
gear, I would doubt that it hurt), and those of us lounging around
thinking, Hmm when's this thing really gonna start anyway?, started
heading quickly up the hill. We didn't wait for the response, we knew
it was coming. As I turned around I scraped my knees on a big rock
(hence the bleeding.)

Then, the usual: sound grenades (one of which hit the back of my
friend's leg, right next to me) rang in my ears, tear gas wafted from
the olive groves behind, in front of, and beside me. In a couple
minutes I was out of the "conflict zone", far enough away that any
tear gas was easily spotted lobbing towards us, and easily avoided
(paying attention to which way the wind was blowing). The shebab did
their thing: throwing rocks. They pretty much stuck to their own area,
under cover of olive groves, out of easy range by the military, which
also meant that incidentally they weren't going to be hitting anything
with the rocks besides the olive trees.

The "hardcore" group of anarchists (awalls.org) stayed right next to
the fence, amid chants of chayyelim babayita (soldiers go home), and
many other things I couldn't catch, and got soaked repeatedly with
water cannons (like the 60's in the US!) The soldiers couldn't very
well tear-gas them because they were right next to them. Many of these
folks come week after week, and get their heads bashed in, and get
arrested; what a way to end the week!
There's a strange dynamic here: unlike the United States, these
protesters generally don't get held for any period of time at all, and
don't get charged with anything. Recently, a prominent anarchist,
having been arrested dozens of times, was sentenced to a 3-month
deferred sentence, instead of the usual community service. He publicly
requested that his sentence not be deferred.
[In conclusion, Pollack addressed the judge and said "If your honor
thinks that a prison sentence is befitting the crime that I have
committed, your honor will take the liberty and personally send me to
prison right here and now."(1)]

I hung around on the hill watching the action down below for a couple
hours, and chatted with Israelis and internationals. It's kind of
surreal, but if you can avoid focusing on the crazy shit happening all
around you, it's as good a time as any to make friends :) It's fun to
act joyfully when there's teargas in the air. A few hours later
shabbat was coming, and I had to get back to Jerusalem. I rode with
Arik Ascherman, the paid staff of Rabbis for Human Rights(2), in order
to get back for shabbat.

I was supposed to bring "chunky" salad, and I apologized profusely as
I entered my friend's home who was hosting shabbat, that I hadn't made
arrangements to be able to bring it, and by now stores were closing,
and I still needed to change out of my tear-gas clothing. They
graciously welcomed me without salad, and I was able to help them
prepare the space before going to synagogue with my friends.

Who would I see at synagogue, except for Rabbi Joey! My very own rabbi
that I grew up with, who performed my Bar Mitzvah.
And then shabbat! Who can say anything bad about shabbat.
Reconstructionist minyan in the morning, where I saw an old friend who
used to live in Olympia! She's hanging out in Deheisha Refugee Camp
these days. Later, a picnic lunch, carrying mattresses on our heads
the fifteen minute walk to the little park. Played a little frisbee
until it broke. Found another Josh who wants to check out Ramallah;
We'll go together next week.

Purim update coming sooner than you expect.

Peace y'all,
Jacob in J-Town

p.s. I'm really in favor of the two "sides" at a protest
choreographing the event beforehand, so that they are able to have the
magnificent processions that they would like to have, but no one has
to get hurt.
First come the Palestinians, dressed as militants, keffiyehs wrapped
around all parts of their bodies, armed to the teeth, shooting in the
air, and blaring slogans through overpowered megaphones. A huge
contingency just sets up mats and starts praying (and prays for the
duration).
The Internationals come forward, hiding behind the Palestinians,
wearing T-shirts that read proudly, "I'm with Mohammed." We are
equipped with every kind of media capturing device imaginable, and
hold signs ragging on Israel, the USA, and/or our home country.
The Israeli anarchists come in, dressed in various shades of black (in
reality the anarchists here are a very diverse group of young folks,
moreso than in the US), piercings gleaming and all kinds of home-made
anti-soldier weapons and protection gear hanging off their torn
clothing. They lead the charge, and smash through a huge chunk of
concrete wall, and then clear away for the shebab to launch rocks with
slingshots that have a battery-powered sling-action. A huge volley of
rocks destroy the first several jeeps, before the batteries run out.
The IDF comes swooping through with F14's and shoot tear-gas missiles
into the crowd (not real tear-gas), and then a staged fight takes
place between humongous Border Police and Israeli anarchists. Those
who wanted to be arrested give a good fight, but in the end are
subdued by legions of soldiers. Those arrested get to decide what, if
anything, they want to be convicted of, and how long they want to be
held. All sides meet up later in Qalandia for some knafe (sweet cheese
dessert) and to critique the performance.

There's potential here for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. It would
increase tourism. Palestinians, Israelis, and especially
Internationals would come from all over to see these legendary
show-downs. It's better than the operahouses, whose conflicts are
quite passe.

(1) http://www.awalls.org/leftist_asks_court_for_jail_time_after_convicte...
(2) http://www.rhr.israel.net
(3) Video from the demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WOQWxMXGdU

U4 Tradition & Traición of the Ivri

2007-02-25T23:04:00.000-08:00

Yarr! Off to battle, feathered friends. Bil'in, a village in the Western Ramallah district, has been holding weekly protests against the nature of the "Separation Barrier" for two years now. I'm currently in a bus filled with Israelis coming from Jerusalem, and topped off with Internationals.

Rest well, friends, because I can tell you now that if you're reading this, I have survived this highest-risk jaunt that I have undergone into the Palestinian territories. In the last two years over 600 people have been injured at the weekly protests in Bil'in. (about 6 per demo). This is going to be an especially large demo, 50 from Jerusalem, 150 from Tel Aviv.

Now, on to recount my favorite parts of last week. For Rosh Chodesh, Sunday night, I studied Rambam with my friend Jitzchak (pronounced like Yitzchak), and some longbeard from Croatia (whose name I don't remember) in a room full of Chassidish men. We read Chapter 18 of something or other from Mishneh Torah. It was about how you determine, for ritual reasons, that it's a new month. After reading for maybe 20 minutes, Jitz breaks out a bottle of Vodka, and pours it around, and has us offer a br'acha (blessing) for the other two people. Then the next morning I woke up early (6:45ish) and met up with Jitz to study Chasidut with Rav Brat at Simchat Shlomo. It was a great morning, it was really sweet to be among these Jewish learners, and eating hamentaschen and drinking tea with this Rabbi. The learning isn't compartmentalized: human needs are addressed as an equivalent important aspect of learning.

On Wednesday after Ulpan, I brought Maja and Josh into Ramallah. I met Josh the week before at a lunch with some friends of mine, and he mentioned something about wanting to go into the West Bank with civilian clothing. I offered to bring him in if he wanted, and he took me up on it. We got a later start, and didn't get to the service taxis' station until 2:30 or so. We ended up waiting a while, but eventually got one.
Maja had never been to Ramallah before, but Josh had. He was in the Israeli military in 2002, driving tanks down the road, as part of Operation Defensive Shield. I can't quote you the Rambam on it, I know the mitzvah of bringing someone who used to be a soldier somewhere back as a "regular" (foreign) person, and "rehumanizing" that space for them has got to be in the Top 613.
What courage, to confront the fear that has been driven into you of the people around you; and equally, to give up your positionalism and just to accept what is offered.
We met with a Palestinian friend of mine in Ramallah, and sat for a short while at a nargila bar, the same place where I had watched a demonstration the week before. We went walking through Ramallah, what a trip! Seeing places I remembered from three years ago. Like: there used to be a falafel stand right there! And: that's where I used to catch a service to Budrus! Mansour told us that the place where the service taxis brought us initially into Ramallah used to not be there; it used to be a police station.(1)

But today in Ramallah, it was a beautiful day out, and I could eat as much falafel as I wanted. Josh, on the other hand is strictly kosher, and for some reason there aren't too many kosher restaurants in Ramallah. Maja asked a lot of questions. Mansour knew lots of people on the street, and seemed to have lots of brothers and uncles and such, who he would shake hands. I wanted to see Biddu, where I had protested three years ago, the town where Mansour is from, Northwest of Jerusalem, so the four of us piled into a service.

A couple of checkpoints later, we cruised into the little town where our host grew up. Many Palestinian homes have a totally decked out home with art and nice couches and nice tables, as a sort of visitor hosting room. It's quite incredible, and sometimes a little difficult to feel comfortable in, because it's kind of over-the-top. But it really demonstrates Palestinian commitment to being good hosts! I kind of remember my grandparents having a room like this, it was the room that I never went into!

We had an interesting discussion, that ranged from religion (kosher vs. halal), to visa issues, to effective/ineffective protesting. Josh made a good connection with Mansour and his wife, and I hope they are able to keep in touch.

One interesting facet of the dynamics of protests in the OPT is that the Israelis who are most willing to come are anarchists, often with ripped clothing, dyed hair, and dietary restrictions, all of which are completely backwards within a Palestinian cultural framework. And as committed as these anarchists become their extreme social liberalism may prevent them from understanding these communities that they are in solidarity with; at the end of the day, there will be a high level of distancing.
On the other hand, a black-hatter, while typically politically disconnected from, if not opposed to the political stances of their Palestinian neighbors, would be able to relate much more in terms of living a traditional lifestyle, and therefore having similar customs, joys, and struggles, internally. So my progressive religious friends here in Jerusalem, they are high quality candidates for creating meaningful relationships with Palestinians, hopefully able to transcend both political and religious differences elegantly.

Another thing that I've learned (and re-learned) in the last month or two is how important it is for this journey to be owned by the journey-goer. While I may help to facilitate someone crossing a border, I may offer some advice, a key perspective, this journey is not mine. Josh thanked me over and over again, smiling wide, for helping him make this journey across. This is a broader principle than just this context in which I'm writing; it's a basic issue of empowerment. If I say that I *brought* him into the West Bank (like I wrote above), I'm missing a major point. I helped guide him into the West Bank; he brought himself. This also helps relieve the extreme responsibility attached to doing *anything* contrary to societal standards.

The I-told-you-so's would quite clearly point out that there were three Americans, not too different from our little group, that got kidnapped just the day before, in Nablus.(2)

Forgive them, chevre, for they do not realize what violence it is to uphold a social standard of people not being able to experience others' lives, fully. This is holy work we do here, we cannot let it be guided by the conventional wisdom of the masses.

These very same social standards tricked my mother into struggling with the fact that I dropped out of high school. "You've chosen a different path, I don't know how to help you with it." I beg of you, friend: cross these boundaries. The world needs it. Learn to use your mind, and be able to do those things that systems of oppression would have you feel safer not knowing about. When you stand out, you give the rest of us permission to do the same.

B'ahavah,
Ya'akov m'oly
Jacob in J-Town

(1) Mansour filled us in on a version of the story: at the inception of the current Intifada, two Israelis were held at the police station there, before a mob of Palestinians killed them, and mutilated their bodies. Commentary: an Italian camera crew captured the frenzied masses celebrating their kill. This was in the aftermath of Israeli forces killing over 100 Palestinians in the first week of the Intifada in October 2000. Josh later filled us in that this moment is etched into the memory of most Israelis alive today, and known as The Lynch (Ha-Lynch). Before this, Israeli forces expected Palestinian police to cooperate with them on some level.
The police station got turned into rubble, as well as many other places throughout the West Bank, as a take-home lesson.

(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6428500,00.html

U3 Three For Free

2007-02-18T02:12:00.000-08:00

--Motzei Shabbat--
1.

I'm on a train from Nahariyya to Tel Aviv, where I will grab a connection to Jerusalem. Total cost around 13 dollars. The people across the aisle from me are speaking English, which is distracting. There's a kid speaking Hebrew shrilly aways down. I'm on my way back from Kibbutz Sasa in the North, to Jerusalem, in the center-east of the country. Total travel time, perhaps 3.5 hours the way that I'm going. I don't find a conversation nearly as distracting as a monologue. If I had headphones I'd put them on. I guess it's worth investigating if I have any...

Can't find any. But I found some halvah, almost as good. I put my hood up. That doesn't help almost at all. With my hat on too, it still doesn't help much. Okay, Jacob, concentrate. You are bigger than this. You can tune them out, you can focus yourself and say what it is you want to say.

Good.

Last week I went to Ramallah. I think it was on... a Tuesday. Anyways, it wasn't long after the construction-type work that was happening at Haram Al-Sharif (Dome of the Rock, Al-Aqsa Mosque), and there were huge protests in the street. I watched from a third storey narguila bar. Mansour was hosting me graciously; he wouldn't let me, the American Jew, pick up the tab (probably a total of 4 dollars for soft drinks and nargila).

The loudspeaker tells me that we are reaching Central Haifa (Chaifa Merkaz). Across the aisle they are talking about books about love.

I like the train.

So, I went to Ramallah, but one of the Arabs in my Ulpan said I should wear a hat or something so that I didn't look like a Jewy Jew travelling through Palestine. I get it. It sucks, but I get it. I like the way my hair looks, I like my funktified peyos. It's a minor death to hide your identity, at all, ever. I wore a bandana on my head, I think it helped.

Mansour greeted me well, we talked about ISM a little, about why he wasn't involved, about where it is today, and the ways he's involved now. And we watched, as perhaps 10, or 15 thousand men walked solemnly through the street, hands folded in front, dressed pretty nicely. And they were shouting too: a lot of religious sloganing. About God, and how great he is, for example.

A new friend's analysis of the situation is thus: this is a non-issue. The temporary path was cutting through the women's side for praying at the Kotel. There wasn't enough room for them to pray. Finally, the Israeli authority agreed to fix it. Because it was within 100 feet of Al-Aqsa, it created a stir, but there was no real issue in terms of damage to the Mosque. Their leaders are lying and misinforming their people in order to galvanize their ranks, and these protests are happening as far away as Kashmir.
Okay, so it's a non-issue, so it's bullshit. But this is symptomatic of a different problem; Muslims should be included in decisions related to Al-Aqsa, even if it's 50 feet away. There's an Israeli saying: it's better to be smart than to be right.

Back in Ramallah, a falafel sandwich is 75 cents, so I got two of them. I walked around the town a little, marvelling at the spectacle. The protest had great security; they paced themselves well; the slogans were clear and able to be followed (if you understood Arabic); it was formidible in every sense. Content with my short adventure, I grabbed a 'service taxi' back to Jerusalem for a dollar. On the way back, we went through Qalandia checkpoint, which looks way different now; rather than standing in a 20 person line, handing my passport to the soldier, and crossing into Israel after answering a couple questions about where I had been, this looks now like any international border, where the vehicles can drive through, and talk to a beaurocrat in a booth who decides whether you pass or not.

All the Palestinians had to load off, but myself, the driver, and a couple of other people stayed in the vehicle. I don't know what their status was that they didn't have to walk through the checkpoint. Nobody even spoke to me, much less checked my passport, I stayed in the service taxi the whole time. On the other side of the checkpoint, the Palestinians that had loaded off before filed back in.

2.
One night, I went to hear Tali speak about her experience. She's Israeli, and she spent time in Jenin, and was hanging out with the wrong crowd (ie Palestinian militants). She was arrested, interrogated; they asked her if she would work for them, and spy on Jihad Islami. She refused, and went to jail for two years. I caught a ride in the same car as her back towards Tel Aviv; our driver wasn't an ace on the roads, and we had a hard time finding the right road to Tel Aviv. Finally, we found some Tel Aviv signs to follow, and ten minutes later ran into a checkpoint; the road goes through the West Bank for part of the way. Because Tali was strictly forbidden from going to the West Bank, we turned around, and drove back ten minutes to a place where we could hook up with a road to Tel Aviv that *didn't* go through the West Bank. It's kind of a difficult thing, when you don't even properly know how to avoid the West Bank if you wanted to.

While I was in Tel Aviv, I was hanging out with Callie (Berman's friend), who used to be roommates with Alexis (in Cairo), who used to be my roommate (in Oly). Anyways, Callie is working with an organization called "Chalonot." ("Windows") They're super-cool; they develop cross-cultural curricula, events, gatherings for Israelis and Palestinian youth, and they publish their work as journalists (print and video). They put out an Arabic-Hebrew magazine together. They also offer humanitarian support.

Hung out on the beach with a family friend (Yardena); Dropped in on an infoshop, because I heard that I'm in a movie (called Bi'lin Habibti); went on a long trek to track down my grandfather's first cousin (left a note on her door).

3.
Kibbutz Sasa looks pretty much the same as I remember it; a little quaint people-sized village. It's very practical, very personable. Getting there was a trip; I took a religious bus up, on which they segregate by gender. When I was looking for information about the bus online, all I could find were references to a woman who rode on the bus and wouldn't move to the back (sound familiar?). She was assaulted by men on the bus, so she's suing the public bus company, that they let this happen.

In any case, I benefited from the discounts offered this religious bus, although I did experience a bit of anxiety after I boarded and didn't see any seats available in the men's section. I mean, I think I would have been okay to sit in the women's section (if not just a little out-of-place), but I really didn't want to draw any extra attention to myself. As it was, I was the only guy who wasn't wearing black-and-white, with a black velvet kipah. And it got me very close to my destination.

So I hung out on the kibbutz for shabbat, which was a funny experience because nobody I know there does any shabbat ritual, besides not working. But my home-away-from-home was gracious enough to support me to light candles, bless wine, challah, and sing some songs (by myself). I got to be the only person in the dining hall wearing a kipah.

I kind of got a glimpse that I would personally enjoy living at a place like Sasa. Which is a good thing, because I keep talking like I want to start a kibbutz near Olympia. I better like what a kibbutz is, if I'm going to make it a huge part of my life!

Right after shabbat, I got my hair cut, for the express purpose of making myself more beautiful. Okay, really I got my hair cut because now I feel more comfortable traveling in the West Bank. Here's to the day when I can travel in the West Bank with Peyos and long hair and a kippah, and every Palestinian who sees me will know that I am there to support him and her.

Well, I suppose that's enough for now. To Bed, To Bed, L'Chayim!

Shavua Tov! Shalom y'all,
Jacob in J-Town

1 Article about Al-Aqsa Shenanigans:
http://jewschool.com/2007/02/08/dont-believe-the-hype-mughrabi-path-r...
2 Windows- http://www.win-peace.org/
3 Religious Action Center's article about the bus thing:
http://rac.org/advocacy/irac/enewsletters/january_monthly_2006/egged_...

U2 Stepping

2007-02-13T17:15:00.000-08:00

A few days later, I'm in a very different place. Not physically: I'm sitting in the same chair typing on the same computer that I did before. But my mood has changed; my matzav ruach (the situation with my soul) is much better.

I've gone to two days of ulpan, I've seen my lovely vegan anarchist friends, and I feel a lot more at home in general. And I've skipped in Jerusalem. It was to cross the street quickly, but it counts nonetheless. In fact it may even count extra, because I skipped without even thinking about it.

I'm becoming friends with some of the Arabs in my Ulpan (Hebrew language) class. The class keeps me focused on something concrete, which can be very useful out here! This place can take you so many
different directions.

My plan tomorrow is to go to Tel Rumeida (in Hebron) to hear the stories of various families. I'm going with a group called "Bnei Avraham", Israeli activists focusing on Hebron, and the difficult situation there. They'll get me back to Jerusalem before shabbat.

--Monday; Yom Sheni
I think Friday was the first day I defied my "agreement" with the Defense Ministry; I went to Hebron with Bnei Avraham. We met up at a park about a twenty minute walk from the place I've been staying. They put the number at around 70; between Bnei Avraham and Ta'ayush, and random internationals, we ended up with maybe 50 Israelis and 20 or so internationals. One bus left from Tel Aviv, and I was with the J'lem
crew.
Met some lovely folks, including other rad Jews (wait, I forget, am I a rad Jew?), and including other Ulpan-students. People from Germany, Canada, random people from the United States that looked like they
would be more at home in Miami Beach, somehow coming on this "alternative tourism" view of Hebron.

Hebron is the 2nd largest Palestinian city clocking in at around 400,000 people. Jews had historically lived there in small numbers until 1929, when several 67 people were killed in that city (The Hebron Massacre). Following the 1967 war, there was a movement to "re-settle" Hebron, and on Passover a group led by Rabbi Levinger checked into the main hotel in Hebron, and then refused to leave. Life really only started getting difficult with respect to the settlers in1986, according to one of the Palestinians I met in Hebron.

Anyways, I don't know exactly what to tell. Along the main roads, shops that belonged to Arab shopkeepers have been desecrated by Jewish holy symbols. The gates to the shop are welded shut, and just about every gate either has a "magen david" (Star of David) spray-painted on it, or else a Hebrew phrase along the lines of "Death to the Arabs." The situation there that we were there to witness, and lend our support in their changing their situation for the better.

The main road over by Tel Rumeida is called Shuhada street, and Palestinians haven't been allowed to walk on it since 2000. The issue was caught in legal beaurocracy for 5 1/2 years, before a decision was issued: legally, Palestinians were allowed to walk on the street, they just weren't being allowed to in practice. This is the situation today: the high court has ruled that Palestinians can walk on the road. Unfortunately, the military chief in charge of Hebron is defying the law by continuing to instruct the soldiers to prevent Palestinians from the road.

So anyways, we came and we went, but when we went, we held a few signs and banners, walking down Shuhada street, and as a point of success, we had Palestinians walking with us along the entirety of the street that they have been prevented from. So this is an important, yet symbolic resistance, especially in Hebron where tensions are so thick you can cut them.

Tensions between whom? Soldiers and Palestinians? Nope. The current batch of soldiers administering Hebron are actually decently respectful, as compared with the usual. A large group of them are kibbutzniks who were all part of a socialist Zionist youth movement, which means that they have more "liberal" or feeling, tendencies. The issue is with the Settlers' teenagers, and the unequal treatment by the law enforcement in the area.
The settlers currently live "above" the Palestinians on Tel Rumeida, which is to say that on the hillside there are houses built up from the valley below, and at the very top of the hill are the nice polished settler buildings. There are maybe four different little settlement enclaves throughout Hebron, and they command a strong presence within the city, despite only numbering several hundred. It's amazing the chutzpah that they display, it's an amazingly confusing situation. For scared people, they sure didn't put themselves in a situation to be well liked. They act aggressively towards the Palestinians, who live all around them, which for me was a testament of how quiet the Palestinian population there truly is, despite the wide perception of Palestinians as dangerous. What I'm saying is that 500 Jews are living amongst, on top of, in spite of, tens of thousands of Palestinians. And somehow this works out for them. The Palestinians must be incredibly tolerant, or subjugated, or both.

We watched home videos of the destruction of Palestinian property by settlers living in Hebron. Teenagers, approximately aged 14 to 19 or so, would go out in a big group, dressed like modern orthodox kids on shabbos (kippah, nice clothes, not like the "redneck" settlers I've seen in pictures before). they would go up to Palestinian homes, with Palestinians living in them, and attempt to break what they could.
Windows, gates, doors, flowerpots, whatever. The man holding the camera, a forty year old man, was trembling with fear, while his house was being ransacked. Settler girls would interpose themselves on the
path of Palestinian children walking to school with their mothers, and swing their bags at them, and kick their mothers. The videos are incredibly surreal.
These kids look like the good Yeshiva Jews that knew-- acting out all the hatred, anger, and fear that they had been brought up with. I consider it to be a serious crime to raise your children as settlers in Hebron. Their humanity has been buried by the age of 16. We escaped the Holocaust so that we can actively engage in hating the people who live around us? Okay, sure, plenty of Jews in the US are scared of all the goyim around us, but hopefully it plays a relatively minor part in our lives! These children have been traumatized by being put right over the flame.
In order for the law to intervene, Palestinians must produce evidence of who has done what. Our host told a story. After a raid on his home, he took a picture of the youth with his cell phone. He went to the police station in the nearby settlement. The officer said "do you have evidence?" He showed him the picture on his phone. The police officer copied the picture off of the phone, and onto his computer. Then he deleted the picture from the phone, and from the computer. "Now you don't have evidence. Case closed." What respect I feel for him, that he can withstand this sort of treatment.

The most amazing thing I experienced (as keeps happening when I spend time in Palestine) was the compassion of Palestinians. These mensches who talked about their plight had this to say about their experience living with Jewish settlers. We don't want them to leave; we only want equal treatment under the law. We welcome Jews to live here with us.

For the short demo walking down Shuhada street, another Palestinian led chants.
1, 2, 3, 4, Occupation No More.
1, 2, 3, Palestine Must be Free.
And then: 1, 2, 3, Israel Must be Free.
There were audible scoffs and eye-rolling from some Israelis and Internationals.

This is a tricky place: these Palestinians have become wordly enough, aware enough to know that this rhetoric is important and correct in relationship to Israelis. But many Israelis and Internationals have given up hope of working with those Israelis, so for them this becomes an empty exercise, this "solidarity visit." It's a way for them to feel good about themselves and their alignment/involvement, without being able to help these Palestinians build alliances with Israelis.
It's still good that they come, because it's important to these Palestinians that their stories are heard. They just should have their mouths taped shut, because their experience of political frustration is not a tool with which to end the Occupation.

* My First Shabbat

Shabbat, friends, shabbat! Immediately upon returning from that "solidarity visit" I returned back to the apartment, that I fondly refer to as "Shapiros" (that's the name on the apartment door, even though there are no Shapiros currently living there). I prepared myself for shabbat. I invited a couple of people I had connected with on on the Hebron trip, and one accepted. A German girl named Maja (pronounced maya), who is here to study Hebrew. Back in Germany she's studying comparitive religion, so I thought she might like to see how we do shabbos around here (plus she's cute).

We went to Shira Chadasha, an amazing modern orthodox congregation (they use a mechitza there), and people sang, boy did they sing. The whole order of the service, right from the beginning to the end. Ever since I went there for the first time three years ago, Shira Chadasha has become my yardstick for how much ruach a service has. I've only been to a couple of shabbats that are as beautiful and fervent as Shira Chadasha. So Maja went and sat on the women's side, my new friend Tzvi stood in the back, and I sat among the men.

Afterwards, we carried a couple of chairs a fifteen minute walk to a friend of Tzvi/Ari's. She prepared an amazing dinner, and I was really happy with the way the evening went. Ari tipped me off that the host's rules were "no politics." Oh well, I thought to myself. As it turned out, all anyone seemed to talk about was politics; not specifically Israel/Palestine, I mean I did my best to avoid the topic while getting very pressing questions pointed in my direction. Later I learned that it was because someone brought up the issue of gay/lesbian ordination within the conservative movement, which has been a hot issue over the last year. I said "why not just say no bigots allowed?"
After saying it I realized that what I meant to say was "no bigotry allowed" but I was too late-- our host removed herself from the table (as a joke). We all laughed.
Maja got the real deal, which was exciting for me; amazing prayer should have no ethnic/religous/identity limitations. I want everyone to be able to experience at the very least *what it seems like*, even if they aren't able to experience the prayer directly.

Off to meet a friend, this will have to do for now, I've got more things to write about, so expect another one in the next couple days.
I moved into a room of my own in downtown J'lem, only 4 blocks from my ulpan. I'm happy about this (although I'm sure I will continue haunting "Shapiros", I love the people who live there!)

Shalom y'all,
Ya'akov m'oly
Jacob in J-Town

U1 Baruch Haba!

2007-02-06T23:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I made it into Israel, in one piece, about 36 hours ago. The
flight from Newark airport to Israel takes a little over ten hours,
and the sky was dark for much of it, which helped to facilitate the
hour or two of sleep that I ended up getting. I was mostly curled up,
as much as one can in an airplane seat, reading books and things. The
flight was uneventful; when we landed a few faithful applauded, myself
among them.

Got off the plane, said the shechiyanu, and proceeded down to passport
control, lined up behind "foreign passports," behind just one other
person. I was feeling thankful that the line wasn't too long, coming
back into the United States sometimes it has taken me over an hour
just to get through the line to customs.

"L'eyfo-"
"Lo m'daber ivrit," I interrupt her. I don't speak Hebrew.
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm visiting friends and travelling."
"Just a moment."
A couple of women come out from the side of my view, and indicate that
I should follow them. "Please leave your things, we'll get them," they
offer, referring to my grey satchel and my guitar in it's case beside
me. "Do you have a cell phone on you?" No, not an Israeli one.

They bring me into a little waiting room, with standard airport
chairs. The only thing different about this place than a terminal is
that it's its own enclosed cubicle, and there seems to be someone
standing guard at the door. The rest of the people, without exception
are not Jewish, which doesn't seem to be a coincidince. I myself am
wearing a kippah, and am very tired, not having slept much on the
flight. I decide not to engage anyone else in conversation.

Perhaps in twenty minutes, they retrieve me, and bring my things as
well, to be checked (again) for security reasons. They scan my guitar
in its case, then take the guitar out of it's case and scan that, then
scan the case, then look inside the guitar, then inside the case. They
pull everything out of my bags, swabbing them with explosive-detection
tools. I felt special: I had about six security personnel just for me!
The woman in charge seemed quite kind, and I actually didn't mind this
part, it seemed very routine, and straightforward; they were just
doing their jobs.

They had me take my money out of my wallet, and then took my wallet
from me. They had me empty my pockets. They brought me to a room with
a couple of men to check me thoroughly: metal-detection, pat-down
search, then "Please bring you pants down to your knees." To make sure
I'm not keeping anything between my legs that shouldn't be there.
Fortunately they never asked me to remove my boxers; I'm glad I can
keep that experience isolated to American jail, for now.

After my belongings had been checked twice, a man named Sami came in,
starting going through my wallet, and asking me questions about
things: about the books I was carrying, about names in my wallet, and
email addresses. Why was I carrying a minidisc recorder? What kind of
recordings was I planning on making? Do I have an example of these
recordings that I could show him? No, I didn't. This CD that says
Stevie Wonder-- is it just music? What if I find some pictures on
there? I just laughed.
I was feeling fortunate that my luggage was 100% kosher-- I didn't
even bring Arabic language study materials that I was considering
bringing.

I felt a slow, tired impatience growing; they had kept me for over an
hour at this point. I had a twinge of empathy for Arabs who experience
this resentment regularly. Sami told me I was going to visit with him
in his office. I looked around, I wasn't sure if he was being
metaphorical; I didn't see any offices nearby. When all of the
security personnel had gone, we left too. Down the hall where the
bathrooms were, and through an unmarked door. We climbed a metal
staircase, chatting lightly. "You know what the Defense Ministry is?"
"Like the IDF?" I asked. "Not exactly," he clarified. "They're
standard military. I'm an intelligence officer. I work for
headquarters." At the top of the staircase, we entered another hall,
turned right and walked up a few steps to his office. He invited me to
sit down there. Besides the fact that I didn't have my stuff with me,
and I was ready to get going in Israel already, I was at least getting
to seem something at least slightly interesting.

He told me that he was going to ask me some simple questions, and that
if I was truthful with him, it would make my life easier. And that I
wasn't, well, you know. He could be a devil. He asked me where I had
been since the last time my passport was stamped for exit from Israel,
three years prior. He probed me for specific countries: Iraq, Iran,
Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt. I told him I'd like to go to
Egypt, but that I haven't been there. I told him the truth: Mexico.
"I TOLD YOU NOT TO LIE TO ME!" he screamed at me. It was true: he had
told me not to lie to him. Clearly he was emphatic on this point. My
mother would get along with him. She also liked to tell me not to lie
to her. I just looked back at him.
He went through everything in my wallet. I have a lot of things that
say "Olympia" on them in my wallet. Such as: Olympia Federal Savings.
The Olympia Film Society. The Olympia Food Co-op. He asked me about an
Olympia Film Society Volunteer Pass. I think he was confused by my
explanation of what OFS is (a nonprofit that runs a theater). There
was a business card in my wallet. Somebody "Khan" who worked for Arab
media, out of Dubai. I actually have no idea where I got that business
card, and told him so. "You are LYING TO ME!" he exclaimed. The long
and the short of it, he did a bit of yelling at me for various
reasons. Perhaps a half hour later, we hadn't gotten too far, and I
told him, "please, just ask me specific questions, and I'll answer
them."
And so he came to tell me that he had a file, and that really what he
wanted to know was, what had I done the last time I was in the area.
And I told him. "Yeah, I travelled to the Palestinian Territories. Is
that what you wanted to know?" And I dropped some names of
organizations that I knew he already knew about. I dropped some names
that I knew he already knew about. I didn't give him as much as he was
hoping though: I understated my travels. I said I had been to
Bethlehem, to Ramallah.
His assistant was bored, had nothing to do. So he set him to work
copying down every single phone number from my American cell phone.
That means that you, dear reader, most likely have your name and phone
number scrawled down on a piece of paper and tucking into a file,
filed under my name, in some military intelligence office near Tel
Aviv.

He stopped being mad at me. I appreciated this. I had a pretty strong
sense that he was fucking with me the whole time; that is it say, it
was a psychological game he was playing, to try to get me to play
along with what he wanted. I knew this. I wanted to get into Israel.
He told me that he didn't care if I took part in demonstrations, he
was here trying to make sure I wasn't caught up with any terrorists
that I didn't know about. My personal opinions, and what I liked to do
with them, were my business. He was trying to protect me. (I doubted
this privately, but appreciate the possibility that he was being
genuine) He told me that he had a file on me, and that he knew some of
the things I had done the last time I was here; some ISMer had talked
at their last "exit interview," and had apparently talked about me
rather extensively.
So I told him everything. Dropped several first names. Stopped just
short of saying that I had actually been in, and been "trained" by,
the ISM, because I know that the Israeli military considers them to be
next-to-terrorists. He asked me if I had ever been arrested, and I
hadn't. How about detained at a checkpoint... well, yes in fact I
have; I told him where. He told me he had a record of that too.

Funny enough, Sami recognized one of the names that I dropped. He
brought up her picture on the screen (very impressive!). She sitting
in the same place that I was sitting in that very moment. He told me
the story of putting her on a plane in handcuffs, that he said was
notorious within ISM. He told me about a Jewish ISMer who he had
helped to kick out of the country. Her father is Jewish. She is never
allowed in Israel again. He told me about beating up a very large man
who tried to fight him. Showed a picture of him hog-tied on the floor,
the broken glass, the broken corner of the wall.

He had his assistant buy me a sandwich, while I waited downstairs for
him to talk to HQ.

He apparently decided I was a good sort (or at least that's the role
he was playing in this psychological game), and said that he needed to
report to HQ, and they would decide what to do with me. He didn't
think I was a security threat.

Waiting, waiting, waiting... I started talking up the other people in
the security-cubicle. One guy was a UK Businessman who vowed never to
come to Israel again; he was here on business, for just two days. He
had been waiting two hours. I fell asleep for maybe a half hour.

Sami came and got me, brought me back up to the super-secret room. He
told me that HQ wasn't happy with me, didn't want me in the country.
And that, contrary to what he said earlier, it mattered to him that i
had been to demonstrations. That when I demonstrated against the
activities of Israel, I was demonstrating against him. He showed me a
piece of paper that had a typed out agreement on it, and told me to
look at it, not to do anything, just to look at it.

The paper said (among other things)

AGREEMENT

"I agree not to go into Judea/Samaria" (Israeli governmental language
for the West Bank)
"I agree not to go to demonstrations."

And it also said that if I break my agreement, it could have an effect
on my continued stay in Israel. He then asked me to sign it. So I did.

In the security-cubicle, I met some other nice young ladies from
Istanbul. A woman brought me my bags, and told me that I could leave.
It was after six pm. My flight landed at 9:15am. I chased her down and
asked her which way was out, then found a sherut to take me to
Jerusalem, then found Ari's apartment which was dark but open. The
cool thing about a sherut is that it will take you to right where you
are going in Israel.

Welcome to Israel, young Jew. Eretz HaKodesh. Land of Our Dreams.

Ari and his roommates have been great. It's mostly just confusing to
me how to talk about what happened; eight hours of interrogation
mostly just freaks everyone else out, which probably doesn't help me
out very much. I'm still pretty shaken up by the experience. It's the
experience of dealing with any military beaurocracy, whether Myanmar
or Israel, Indonesia or Columbia.

On further reflection, Sami is not a bad guy. He's doing a terrible
thing, though. He is an agent of oppression, and as a man, he's been
thoroughly hurt and conditioned into believing that he should scare
people into being separate from one another. This is very sad. He and
I talked wistfully about the time when any Israeli would happily walk
freely into Nablus to go shopping, no less. He said any family member
who cared enough to show their loved ones a good time, by necessity
would take them to the Territories! But that was ten years ago. Things
have changed, in the minds of so many.

Friends, I hope this will pass: I feel incredibly violated by the
State of Israel, which purports to support my Jewish values, my
experience of "ivri", my boundary-crossing. But this is exactly what I
was instructed not to do, by the State: cross any boundaries.

When, I ask. When will the intifada end in the minds of the Israeli
security forces? Who among Palestinians is even authorized to declare
an end to an intifada? The truth on the ground looks like people are
dragging their feet. The Palestinians are covered in mud; they have
enough internal problems not to be fighting Israel at the moment. I
don't see a resistance movement. I see discouragement, humiliation,
suicide. The IDF might do well to decide that the Second Intifada is
already over, and to attempt to normalize relations with West Bank
Palestine.

While my mother taught me not to lie, I only honor that with people,
people who are not representatives of systems of authority. Sami did
not want to forbid me from going into the Territories; while he
doesn't personally think it's a good idea, he has no reason to stop me
from doing it.

And I will keep crossing boundaries, while I have the ability.

And today I didn't yet feel up for skipping in Jerusalem, but soon I
will. Tomorrow I will start Ulpan (Hebrew study school), that goes
Sunday through Thursday 8:30 to 1pm. We'll see how that goes.

Thank you all so much for being there!
The phone number that you can reach me on while I'm here is
011-972-544-325102. I'm 10 hours ahead of the west coast, 7 hours
ahead of the east coast. Let me know if I can call you in the middle
of your night, because sometimes I might want to talk to a friend.

b'shalom v'salaam,
ya'akov m'oly-- jacob in Jerusalem

PreTrip Shakedown

2007-02-01T22:09:00.000-08:00

Hello friends, relatives, federal agents, etc:

I am going to Israel/Palestine. Heck ya. The first news is a slight
setback: I'm fighting a flu, and will be leaving three days later than
expected. I will arrive in Tel Aviv around 9:15am on Monday Feb 5.
Until then, I'm in NYC! I'm going to a Tu B'shvat seder hosted by Kol
Zimra (I don't know much about either Tu B'shvat [the birthday of the
trees] or Kol Zimra [a super-fab minyan in NYC, and also apparently in
J'lem])

The next piece of information is relevant if you want to talk to me in
real time (ie on the phone) while I'm in I/P. your key is a calling
card. And where will you get that calling card from, might you ask? I
recommend 1st-usa.com. For those of you who have already asked, I'll
send you a 20% off coupon (let me know if you want one). For those of
you who aren't wealthy, and want to split the cost of calling card(s)
with me, I'm totally into that.

I don't know what my cell phone number will be yet in Israel. It will
go out with my first Trip Update.

My general vague plan for my time in I/P is to End the Occupation; in
light of not knowing yet how to end the occupation (and not having
formed a large enough coalition to do so), I will defer to Learning
how to end the occupation. And I will spend my time-
a) studying Hebrew at the Ulpan known as Beit Ha-am
b) Travelling throughout Israel/Palestine
c) Enjoying Being Jewish among cool Jews
d) Enjoying Being Jewish Among cool Palestinians and
e) Showing my mother and brother around Israel/Palestine

I can't wait to go skipping through Jerusalem. In the next couple
days, I hope to get my hair cut with cool semi-traditional peyos.

All the Best!
Jacob, Ya'akov, Yacoub

*If you know people who would like to get updates from me, send me
their email address. If you are getting updates and would rather not
be (or if you're getting multiple copies), let me know that too.

My Munch is Back

2007-01-26T04:49:00.000-08:00

Whew! What a month. 4 Wisdom teeth removed. One of the worst hostel
"evictions" ever. Shared Route on the up and up and up.

My mouth is pretty much healed. I ate my first sandwich last night
(tuna with curry, like I used to eat when I was young), and my first
granola this morning. I used to look like a chipmunk (picture
attached), but now I look more or less as normal as I ever do. It's
notable that I was not *intentionally* cringing for that picture, nor
did I feel particularly bad when it was taken, but I guess my
expression betrays how I was actually feeling.

I'm feeling a little uninspired, which is okay, I suppose. I'm going
to Israel/Palestine in just a week's time, and I'm feeling all charged
and jumpy and wigged out. Tonight I go to Portland at around 1 am 'cus
that's when a ride is coming through town; given my current state, the
timing seems perfect.

Co-counseling has been going swimmingly, I'm figuring out how to
include my friends in this little adventure, in small and not-so-small
ways. It's a tricky task, let me tell you. To get the people you care
about most to be involved in the way of seeing the world you care
about most.

And I'm going to Israel/Palestine. I'm going to send another update
just about that.

The first few days after I got my wisdom teeth out, I did a really
good job of just *chillin*, watching movies, eating junk food (like
pudding), playing computer games even-- it felt like high school
without the school part. I remarkably was able to stay connected to
people throughout, to ask friends to spend time with me, even if it
was just to watch a movie, really I just wanted to be held. The movies
and computer games were just a standby for when I didn't have a friend
holding me. And in some ways, I still just want to be held, even
though my teeth/mouth don't hurt any more.

Day 6 post-op, my gum became lacerated and bled a lot through the
night. I went to the dentist first thing in the morning. I couldn't
identify a particular thing that had traumatized the wound, the main
suspects were a) ibuprofen b) toothbrushing (it was cool to hear my
dentist tell me *not* to brush my teeth) and c) trying to eat solid
food too quickly. I think ibuprofen had a lot to do with it, because
the bleeding started about an hour or two after I took some ibuprofen
before going to bed. It was really scary to be bleeding like that; I
told Eden, who shares my room, that I was bleeding a lot, and asked if
he could take me to the emergency room if I needed. In retrospect,
using a teabag to stop the bleeding might have been more effective
than the cotton gauze that I used, because teabags have tannin in them
that help to stop bleeding.

Yeah, and Shared Route is doing great, we have a new bus that we've
been running since about the second week of January. It's got Israeli
and Palestinian flags on the front of it, which is way cool. I call it
The Wolf because it's got twelve passenger seats in it, and twelve in
Swiss-German is Twolf.
[http://www.sharedroute.org/images/wolf/wolf-front.jpg]

Off to some more sessions.

Love y'all!
Jacob

done

2006-12-31T21:54:00.000-08:00

My friend Ari Moshe shows his love in almond butter. He leaves large
containers full of it at our house, sometimes without even telling us.
Do you know what it means to discover almond butter that magically
appears in your house? For those of you not from Olympia, it would be
like finding a hundred bucks under your pillow from the tooth fairy,
even though you're 38 years old and haven't recently lost any teeth.
I've got a sensitivity to almonds; I can only eat them about every
other day. It's too bad, because I like them a lot. Sometimes they
create sores in my mouth.

A free day! Libre! I have so much "to do" and it's nice for it to be
Sunday December 31 where so many people are doing something else, it
gives me time and space to de-compress, if I can figure out exactly
how one would do that. So, even though I've got two movies that I
could watch here, I look out the window, and decide that it's time to
drop in on a friend who isn't answering my calls ;) and lives
conveniently right near the co-op.

A nice, crisp day, and a walk to the co-op to invigorate my reality.
When I was younger, I communed with nature fairly reguarly, through
the time that I spent away from peopled areas. Now that I'm on my own,
I haven't made that happen for myself as regularly. Somehow I'm able
to channel god-ness through the people around me, which I have a
feeling is easier to do in Olympia than many other places. If I were
living in Omaha, I think I'd probably get away a lot more.
But that feeling! Actually experiencing weather, being among the
wilds. I need a week in the outdoors sometime soon.
My new year's resolution is this: From now on, I will spend Sukkot in
the wilderness (a sukkot backpacking trip, perhaps). I will make a
ramshackle structure from the materials lying around in the woods,
like I learned to do when I was a child. I will build myself a
wilderness-fort to sleep and eat in.

Recently I have started to stress out a little about Shared Route, but
I'm learning how to get support when that happens. I am just now
beginning to experience the roots of the workaholism that capitalism
has thrust so effectively upon the Jewish people (as well as so many
others!) I breathe, "Ah, this is why shabbat was created." For people
like me, who can't figure out how to chill out, what that would
entail, how to engage in a positive relaxing activity (ie meditation),
or even how to JUST WALK AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER.

In Portland, I get confronted more intensely with my stress than I do
in Olympia; in Olympia, I can bury myself in friends more easily, in
Portland I spend time with people I grew up with; this is its own form
of stress. Not to say that it can't be great because sometimes it is.
My parents take me out to eat *a lot*. But sometimes I feel shaky,
stressed-out, and I know that I dealt with that growing up by playing
computer games (ie detaching from the world), but my world is so
incredibly attached right now it's hard for me to rely on that
particular crutch. Or sugar, because I notice how it affects my
health.

I read over my last update-email; so polly-anna! I almost never
recognize my own writing. Catherine asked me a couple weeks ago if I
notice that I look different all the time. I told her that I notice,
but that other people tend not to mention it to me. I am a
shape-shifter, in so many ways! The astrological reading Ari Moshe
gave me a while back confirms this; my pluto and sun are conjunct (ie
my outward manifestation is transformation).

I tried convincing a friend to never criticize himself ever again,
last night. It's amazing how important it can seem to people (and it
did to me just a few short years ago) to criticize people, especially
themselves, as if that would actually achieve some functional goal as
lofty as "evaluation." Or, greater understanding. My experience is
that I still am really good at evaluating, without criticism. Probably
better.

In related news, I've become the president of my neighborhood
association, which I think is funny. I hope to hold a lot of potlucks
for the neighborhood, that's my main goal. A potluck with 200 people
at it. That would be so cool. Too bad I'll be gone for two months
(Israel/Palestine in Feb/March!), I'll have to leave things in the
hands of my trusty veep. I know she'll do great.

Let's see, also Chanuka was a lot of fun, had one party here, and went
to two other parties in Oly, and my mom's for last night of Chanuka,
I've driven the bus Portland-Seattle-Portland twice in the last 10
days, we had our most income yesterday while I was driving. Christmas
was awesome- I've been wearing my yamika a lot, we went out to Thai
food (I don't know any good Chinese restaurants in Oly) on Christmas
eve, and went to a Fiddler on the Roof sing-along at the independent
theater downtown on the 25th. Co-counseling remains good, and
challenging, and frustrating.

Okay, time to go for that walk to the co-op.

shalom y'all,
Jacob

hm

2006-12-07T10:59:00.000-08:00

Wow! I am in debt. To y'all, to the creator; I owe words! I owe writings!

And now I sit in my hostel, in Jonah's room actually, because my desk
is rarely clean enough to sit at, to type at, and all the time that I
spend sitting on my bed (on the ground) doesn't seem like the best
thing to do for my body. It's rather uncomfortable.

All by way of saying, I'm sitting at Jonah's desk, and typing. Here at
the hostel, there is something of a culture of shared space; our
living room, kitchen, common use computer, our breakfast nook and full
bathroom, they are all uncommonly common spaces.

So many emails! My latest venture, Shared Route, has taken off in a
number of ways, not the least of which is an article my friend Raymond
submitted to the Willamette Week:
http://www.wweek.com/editorial/3303/8256/

Life is settling down a little bit, after an east coast jaunt and a
cross-country journey. FIRST, I went to this thing called "Jews in the
Woods" that was held in Pittsfield, MA. It was a shabbat with a bunch
of college age kids; more Jews, and less woods than I was expecting.
Davening was very central; it was harder to organize a walk. One thing
that was great was to have a good co-counselor friend there with me.

Afterwards I spent some time in Boston, especially with Joseph Berman
who is studying at Hebrew College in a transdenominational rabbinical
program. And I spent a little time in Providence, where Anat,
Shulamit, and Maya live, who I met at Jews in the Woods. They are
really really awesome.

Then I bought a minibus. It was Monday, and I was supposed to fly back
Thursday. I canceled my ticket, made my way down to Philly (where the
minibus was that I bought), and stayed there for the next shabbos.
With Maya! Who's studying at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
And I ran into my old roommate Annah there, that was special.

New York for a few days, including time with my business partner
Benjamin's family (without Benjamin), right around Thanksgiving. For
the day of, I ate lunch at a vegan restaurant with a good friend down
on 4th and B in the City. I wasn't feeling up for negotiating my
dietary needs that day. I headed out, in a minibus, along with JT, who
was moving to Seattle from the lower east side. Two days prior, we had
filled up the minibus with all his crap- there was very little room
available.

First stop was to pick up Mike and Sully, styrofoam replicas of the
animated characters from Monsters, Inc. These guys clocked in at 2.5
feet and 7 feet tall respectively. It was all we could do to get them
on board, after detaching Sully's arms. They were going from Mays
Landing, NJ to Tacoma. Then stayed the night in Philly, with Annah's
brother Will who is SO gracious and SO nice and welcoming, a true
mensch, if not a Jewish Mother!

Then picked up some more boxes. going from Philly to Phillipsburg, KS.
We were only about to take about 1/3 of the boxes that I was hoping.
Next stop, State College area, to pick up 4 winter tires heading for
Pocatello, ID. That day, we went to an amazing burrito place with
vegan options in Harrisburg that I recommend highly. They even have
about 8 choices of type of tortilla (sundried tomato, spinach,
jalepeno cheese, whole wheat, etc.) which I thought was brilliant and
tasty. I am so thankful for the people in my life who had the patience
and ability to offer me ground support while I trekked westward- a few
hours before our next meal, I'd call Benjamin, or my mother, or
someone at the hostel, who would look up vegetarian restaurants for me
in that town. I did the same thing in order to procure biodiesel along
the way.

Second night, made it all the way to Bloomington, IN, where I had the
good fortune to spend a morning with Lucy Elizabeth! It seemed like
ages since I had seen her, and she seemed well indeed. After a stop
off at the posh co-op (from a dumpster-diver's point-of-view), we hit
the road and made lawrence, ks for dinnertime with joe carr and marta!
A lovely newish friend that I met last time I breezed through
Lawrence, and who I got to come to Jews in the Woods with me. Friends,
friends, everywhere. A wonderful night, and morning, complete with
Greg and Cory: old friends from Olympia. The next day we made the
drop-off in KS, and made it as far as Rock Springs, where we pulled in
to the motel sometime before 3 am. In conversations with my father I
heard about the "winter storm" that was going to cover the pacific
northwest the next morning.

Not a bad motel. We got up early, 8-ish, and hit the road to get to
Pocatello to drop the tires. Just inside Utah, there was some funny
white smoke that came in the interior vent; we stopped, took it to a
mechanic shop, and waited two hours to find out that there was nothing
wrong. Must've been some coolant that burned off or something.
We were negotiating snow all the way to Pocatello, and from Pocatello
to Boise it got thicker, the roads slicker. Between Boise (sundown)
and Pendleton (1:30 am?) there was a lot of ice on the roads, and we
could only go about 30 or 40 mph. We made it through, and to Portland,
to stay at my mother's house, around 5:20 am. Whew.

Got JT and the monsters to their appropriate home (although I think
maybe we lost a little piece of styrofoam that belonged to Sully;
oops). Got home, hung out for a second, then went to an "Owning Class"
Co-Counseling Workshop south of Portland. I expected it to be a very
difficult workshop, but it ended up being great!

The last great thing that I want to tell you about right now is that
my relationship with Catherine is really nice. We spend nights
together a couple times a week, and it's a really low-key, mutually
supportive relationship. Neither of have said we know what we want in
a longer-term sense. I certainly don't.

Here's to the sea! And here's to the me.

Shalom y'all,
Jacob

yeah, yeah, I'll start writing more often (rolls eyes)

Cloudy Vision

2005-12-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

Last time, dear reader, I left you near the story's climax; I got into a car wreck. The car got towed ($500), I got my license mailed back to me, along with a traffic infraction of "Negligent Driving in the 3rd Degree" ($600). I checked the "not guilty" box.

Fortunately, I'm covered by liability insurance, which should cover the root canal that I had last week ($800), as well as the orthodontic work and all the specialists I've seen: oral surgeon, two general dentists, endodontist, orthodontist. I don't know about the massage, that might not be covered.

Living in the Belly of the Beast is expensive!!! If you don't know what I mean, what I mean is: we here in the United States exploit a lot of people in the world. By exploit I mean profit off of their labor. So there's this whole wage discrepancy issue, and our relative wealth is so much higher! In East Timor, for example, the GDP- per capita (as expressed in purchasing power parity), is somewhere around $400 (the U.S. is a little over $40,000). So, Man From East Timor must work for two years to have a root canal at the Olympia Endodontic Group. How much would a root canal cost in East Timor? Perhaps it is impossible to get. I really don't know, I haven't been there, and if I ever get the opportunity, I hope I won't need a root canal.

So our services are pretty expensive. Olympia's a pretty cool place, because you can still live a pretty good life without much money. But teeth are very important.

Okay, that was a funny little trajectory. But on a note of power: if money is power, then the best way to exert influence is to make your money in a place of high GDP per capita, and to spend your money in a place of low GDP per capita. I work a 9 to 5 here in Chicago, and then I hire 100 people to work 9 to 5 for me in East Timor. But what would you hire them to do, exactly? Overthrow the government? No, that's pretty difficult, and it is like, so outplayed. That's what every invader tries to get the locals to do. Sure, it's entertaining, but it's pretty hard to overthrow the gov't with just 100 people. Also, if it's really dangerous work, then the East Timorese are certainly going to demand higher wages.

So, how about this: hire people to write you letters. We all like receiving letters. Don't you? I don't mean the junk mail that comes from the company trying to sell you mortgage insurance. I'm talking about a nice personal letter telling you all about their life, and asking, genuinely interested, how yours is going. Can you imagine receiving even 3 letters a week from East Timor? It would take a fairly small percentage of your income really. Pay three people a wage of two hours + postage each week to write you a letter.

So, you say, I don't want to pay people to write me letters! Well, then, good luck getting letters.

love, jake

"What's so bad about capitalism, anyway?" -Passerby

Crash

2005-11-22T23:07:00.000-08:00

Well, well, it's been a little while since I've written you, dear friend, but in any case, let us put those times behind us, because here is a missive, just for you!

I don't think I have changed very much since I wrote last, but my face has had some changes. That is to say, my teeth are in different places than they were a month ago. It all started with a craigslist posting...

I was in Portland, oh yes, for my Aunt Dori's fabulous 50th birthday party, with a Red theme. I disappointed my father by not dressing up as a Russian Communist, but I showed up wearing my red "Olympic National Park" T-Shirt. Everyone was wearing red, people wrote poems about red, songs about red, made red altars. You should always be suspicious when someone comes to an event wearing red; it's rather convenient that your blood-stains won't show up on your clothing.

In any case, I got a call Sat. night, or perhaps Sunday morning, and my traveler Annie Rose and I planned to convene at around ten in the morning. I got to her house around 10:30, as she was finishing up her chores, ready to leave the house. Annie Rose makes re-usable menstrual pads for a living, called "Moon Pads," and she was heading to a convention in Seattle to show them off at a co-op-style trade show of sorts.We drove to Olympia, a two hour drive, just in time for a shift I had cashiering at the Olympia Food Co-op, and I let her borrow my car so that she would make it to some of the convention. Since she was flying out of Seattle that night, there were two options on the table: either she drive my car back down to Olympia and I drive her to the airport, or I find a friend to drive my car down to Olympia from Seattle that evening. My Olympia-bound friend from Seattle didn't manifest themselves, so we defaulted to option (a), she drove back down to Oly.

My friend Lucy was moving from a house on the east side of town to one on the west side, and she had enlisted my help for her move. Since Annie Rose was hanging out with me for awhile, she willingly joined along, and we were able to move everything in just one trip, using two cars.

Her flight was a little after 1 am, so we left Olympia around 10:45 or so. It was dark out (of course!), and raining steadily when we left, and we set off towards the airport. It was difficult to see out the windshield because of how much rain was pelting us.

When we got to Tacoma, we talked about the Tacoma Dome, and as we came around the bend "LOOK OUT!"I slammed on the brakes, and the brake lights of the cars in front of me zoomed in until our car was contorting itself into a piece of twisted steel alongside another car. The windshield and everything else came just a little bit closer, and smashed. The next thing I remember is the blood dripping from my head, most notably my mouth, face, nose, chin, onto my clothing. "Cool," I thought. Not really. I counted my teeth. Again. Yep, they're all there. Not all in the right place, but all there."Are you okay?" "Yeah, I'm okay," Annie Rose and I echoed at each other a few times. What's wrong with you? "Mostly my mouth," I said. "My back hurts," she said. The EMTs were there within a minute or two. They were able to open her door, but not mine. They kept checking in with us, assessing our wounds, and eventually got her out on a stretcher. They tried to use a compression jack to take my door off, but I was like, "Dude, I can go out the other door." I wasn't particularly interested in having car shards fall on me. I gathered up the important stuff... Annie Rose's shoes, my jacket and hat, and I eventually found my cell phone and wallet. Outside the car, a police officer questioned me, asked me why I wasn't able to stop before hitting the car in front of me while the other cars were able to stop. I muttered something about not having good brakes.It wasn't until I was in the back of the ambulance that I realized I didn't have my glasses. I asked the EMTs and police officer to help me find them, but they were unwilling.

Okay, that's part one, I'll finish the story sometime soon.Peace y'all- Jake

Miss Iv (1 of 3)

2005-10-18T20:08:00.000-07:00

Hi there folks, I'm hopping on a train tomorrow morning to go to Portland via San Francisco. Will arrive in Portland on the 23rd, if all goes smoothly (Oly same day?).

AND NOW For Something Completely Different

I scrapped my scruples for a toupee in Brussels
I pumped my muscles for a groupie who drooples
I slept half the night 'neath a window-blind
And now all I've got is half a mind

Over Rosh Hashana, I had the wonderful opportunity to hang out with my friend Abby Weinberg, who let me crash at her place over months in Jerusalem. She helped lead services at Elat Chayyim, in Accord, New York. The services had a lot of personality; people used different names for G-d than just "Adonai", the standard Jewish interpretation of YHVH. A lot of "Yah"s in there (As in, Hallelu-yah).

My favorite parts of the entire festival were two: Danny, a six-year-old boy from Westchester county who absolutely attached himself to me (I did child care in order to pay less for staying there), and JEWISH HIP-HOP on the second evening. Elat Chayyim has a vibrant group of young people who live there in exchange for work on the Elat Chayyim project. Folks between 20 and 35. Very interested in their model, and thinking about how it's possible to sustain communities in this country that have a cultural focus.

I'm getting the feeling that this is an incredibly boring piece of writing, but hopefully someone has enjoyed this for some reason, even if it's just being distracted from paperwork or whatever.

Okay, enough for tonight. Calls always appreciated. So much happens in my life! Every day. Over the last couple weeks I've broken down, broken up, broken out, and broken in, in all kinds of ways, besides being just plain broke.

Okay, much love and peace to everyone in this time of transition to the colder, wetter season.

Peace,
jake

Fun fact of the day:
Nabisco was purchased by Phillip Morris from R.J. Reynolds a couple years back, which means that when you buy Ritz crackers, Altoids or Philadelphia cream cheese, you are supporting a company that sells cancer to children in India and China. Nabisco < Kraft < Pillip Morris < Altria. Altria is Phillip Morris' new super-name.

Promotion:
My favorite Jewish hip-hopper of Elat Chayyim is Shir Ya'akov, whose website is SixThirteen.org.