As you may know, yesterday was Yom Ha'Zikaron (Israel's Memorial Day) and today is Yom Ha'Atzmaut (Independence Day, i.e. Israel's 62nd Birthday). The placement of the two days one after the other has symbolic significance, and the idea is to commemorate all of Israel's fallen soldiers and civilians, and then celebrate what they were fighting for, that being the State of Israel.
I should probably start by explaining that Yom Ha'Zikaron is a deeply personal holiday for all Israelis. Virtually everyone in the country knows or served with someone who has died in the conflict. It's a very heavy day - not like American Memorial Day with its barbecues and parades. That said, it all started at eight o'clock Sunday night with a siren that went off to announce the beginning of Yom Ha'Zikaron. Produced by the dreaded air-raid siren, I wasn't sure what it was at first. Thinking that it might be another test, I called Lermie:
Me: Lermie?
Lermie: Yom Ha'Zikaron.
Me: Ahh
When the siren goes off, you're supposed to stop what you're doing and stand for a minute of silence, which we did.
The next morning, there was another siren scheduled to go off at eleven, so we walked to the excessively huge pedestrian bridge just next to our house and watched as everyone stopped what they were doing when the siren went off. People driving parked their cars in order to get out and stand for the minute. The men doing construction on the new train tracks got out of their vehicles and stood silently. Cyclists dismounted in order to pay their respects. In the newspaper the next day, there were pictures of people standing on the train in order to commemorate the fallen. Literally the entire country stood still for a minute. To be honest, it kind of gave me goose bumps. Then, when the sirens stopped, everyone got back into their cars and construction vehicles, mounted their bicycles, took their seats, and carried on their way.
Then, when the sun goes down on Yom Ha'Zikaron, it means that it's time to celebrate Israeli independence. For those of us trying to be critical of Israel and struggling with their Zionist identity, Yom Ha'Atzmaut can be a complicated holiday. However, we came to the conclusion that we are critical of Israel 364 days a year - we can take a day off to celebrate it. This means free concerts and carnivals in every corner of the country, barbecuing, parades, loud music, and, in general, partying in the way that only Israel can. For us, this meant Kobi Peretz: King of the Arsim.
We met our Golden God at the festival that was being held at Akko's City Hall. They closed off a bunch of streets around the City Hall, which is located pretty much in downtown Akko, and the streets were filled with vendors selling cotton candy, balloons, light-up toys, shawarma, hot corn, salted Ful beans, and big blowup hammers covered in Israeli flag motifs. There were kids walking around dressed in full costume as dogs and cows, and, of course, loads and loads of babies. The stage was a fenced off area located on the steps of the City Hall, and the show included lots of youth choirs and dance groups from Akko, as well as a speech from the mayor and the rabbi, before finally getting to the main event: Kobi Peretz.
The most famous mizrachi singer in the country, he regularly performs in Tel Aviv and the surrounding wealthy suburbs. None of us were really sure why he decided to come to Akko, and the other shows went on for so long that at one point we thought that maybe it was all a big scam and he wasn't actually coming. But then around 10:15, they started setting up for what seemed to be a big act. Having already sat through the opening acts for over two hours, we promised each other that we would leave if Kobi Peretz wasn't the next one on stage.
The setup crew was experiencing some technical difficulties, and around 10:45, the man himself finally took the stage. It was worth the wait (absolutely no irony here). Clad in white slacks, a half unbuttoned shirt, platinum blond hair and a goatee to match, he performed four or five numbers (which were all fairly long) in his smooth mizrachi voice. He was actually pretty good, and the population of Akko was very appreciative. Men and women, young and old alike, sang along with fervor. If you're interested in checking him out (which I would recommend) you can click here.
We left at about 11:15, a little before the conclusion of the show. Somehow we had managed to get spots pretty near to the front, and as we filed out, others flooded in to replace us. As we were walking across the pedestrian bridge that led back to our house, we saw fireworks go off above downtown Akko marking the end of the show.
As today is a national holiday and almost all Israeli schools are closed (except for Arab schools) we didn't have messima so instead we took the opportunity to have a massive barbecue, Fourth of July style. Some of the boys stripped an old shower, filled it with coals, and covered it with spare oven grates to make a makeshift grill, and we grilled up enough chicken, veggie dogs, and vegetables to eat for at least a few days. We bought loads of pickles and olives, and entertainment was provided by Simon and Leya alternately jamming on the guitar (Leya's really good at the Oregon Trail theme song, and Simon likes to perform covers of Tenacious D).
Around five o'clock, many people slipped into food comas, and, sitting on the coach alone eating chips, I decided that I would rather write a blog post than work on scholarship applications. (Do you think they award scholarships to people who write blogs? That could be two birds with one stone.)
Anyhow, that's the latest news from Akko. Happy Israeli Independence Day; tomorrow I'll go back to being critical.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Stakeouts, Flash Mobs, and a Workshop Spring Break
I feel like I need to offer some sort of explanation for my rather spotty posting, as I know my readership has been dying for a new one for quite some time. That excuse being the fact that I actually have a readership. You see, this whole thing started as a funny idea at two o'clock in the morning and I thought maybe, just maybe, my mother would read it. Now that I know that people who I have no blood relation to also read it, I can't just post any old crap. So not that I'm asking you to stop reading my blog, I'm simply offering this as a way of explanation. That and the fact that things have been a bit busy around here lately. What have we been up to on Workshop 59, you may ask? Well well, you'll just have to keep reading to find out.
Starting at the beginning, the excitement all began at about 11:00 on a Wednesday morning a few weeks ago. Our messima was canceled due to some rioting in the Arab villages - Habonim didn't really think it would be dangerous, just that no kids would come to the ken - so we were at home sleeping in. The sun was shining, the wind was whistling through the trees, and I was just debating whether or not to get out of bed and do something useful (like blog, perhaps) when an air raid warning began to sound. Have you ever heard an air raid warning? If the answer is no, you should hope to keep it that way. It's scary as hell. Anyhow, that made the question of whether or not to get out of bed much easier, and now the question I was grappling with was whether or not to put on pants before I ran outside and to the nearest bomb shelter. I ran out of my room, and met a few of my half-dressed housemates who were grappling with the very same question.
Pants on, we ran outside and... everyone was going about their business. Our neighbors were hanging their laundry on the lines, people were walking their dogs down the street, men were hard at work constructing a new set of tracks for the train that runs right past our house. Needless to say, we were confused. After some frantic phone calls to our madrichim, we were told that it was "just a test," and it had been announced on the radio a few days before. I guess it's a good thing that a) we have a radio, and b) we didn't run out of our house like morons ready to sprint to the nearest fall-out shelter. At least now we know that the thing works, I suppose.
But the excitement didn't end there. On the evening of the same action-packed Wednesday, I was hanging around the house with Dan and Simon waiting for everyone else to return from messima, when we hear a knock on the door and in walk three big Israeli men. Though they're wearing street clothes, they tell us they're cops, and they need to use our rooftop balcony in order to set up surveillance on the parking lot located just across the tracks from our house. Though the entire interaction was in Hebrew, they made some hand gestures which seemed to mean that some sketchy dealings were being made in that parking lot. The guys knew English, so Simon and I tried to communicate in Abu-Dubi (for those of you who used to watch Zoom, I hope that means something to you).
"Are these guys really cops?" He didn't know.
"Did they show you a badge when they came in?"
"Uh no... should we ask?"
"I guess so, I mean, what if they're here to case the house?"
"Uhh..."
We asked the guys to wait a few minutes while we called to check with our madrichim. The guys said that they had been in the house the previous year to set up surveillance, but they couldn't remember who they had spoken with. We called our Israeli madrich Tamir, who spoke on the phone with them for a few minutes and asked them to show us their police IDs. They complied, and then handed my phone back to me so I could tell Tamir that we had seen their IDs.
Tamir: "Do they look real?"
Me: "I mean, I've never seen an Israeli police ID before, but I guess so..."
Tamir: "Well just spread out and keep an eye on things while they're here. A few years ago the same thing happened to a Hanoar Haoved group in Haifa and they got robbed."
Me: "Well..."
Tamir: "And take some pictures. Discretely."
Me: "Are you serious?"
Tamir: "Yeah, don't you want souvenirs?"
Me: "No..."
As people started arriving home from messima, we stationed them around the house to keep an eye out, and we "read" or "watched movies" until the policemen finally left, some five hours later.
After the policemen left we were hanging out on the balcony, when we saw a car drive into the parking lot that the policemen were watching. It parked and flashed its lights. A second car, which had been parked for a little while, flashed its lights in a response. Then a man got out of the first car and transferred something from the trunk of the first car into the second car. Then both cars drove off. I wish I could make this stuff up. From our positions up on our darkened balcony, we remarked to each other that the cops must have been there just a little too early.
That was about all the excitement we got until the beginning of chofesh (break) when we were called upon to participate in a Hanoar Haoved Flash Mob in Tel Aviv to promote the Hanoar Haoved May Day rally. In case you haven't heard of the phenomenon, flash mobs are when a bunch of people go to a public place and, put simply, do something that you're not supposed to do. Not something illegal, just something that upsets the norms. This could mean staging a musical in a mall food court, having lots of people fall asleep on beds and chairs in a furniture store, freezing for five minutes in Grand Central Station, or having 200 people all bust out a dance together for no apparent reason, and then carry on their way. We chose the latter option, which we performed in the square in front of Shuk HaCarmel, on of the busiest spots in Tel Aviv. This involved meeting up about three hours beforehand at a school in Tel Aviv to learn the dance, and then finding our way to Shuk HaCarmel, and at 12:48 the whole thing began. We wore red (for the blood of the workers) and danced to a medley of songs about labor and freedom. Here's the link to the video if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfVlR6rmToQ.
Continuing on, from Tel Aviv I went down to Be'er Sheva with Noah and Alex on our way to the desert to hike, but to get there we took the craziest bus I've ever been on. Usually the 370 and 380 run direct service from Be'er Sheva to Tel Aviv, which is about a one hour and fifteen minute bus ride. However by the time we got to the bus station, the direct lines had stopped running hours ago, and instead we had to take the 369, aka NOT direct service. This two hour bus was Tel Aviv to Be'er Sheva by way of Lebanon (not actually but it seemed like it. If this doesn't make sense to you, refer to a map of Israel). We were on four separate highways, and zigzagged our way back and forth across the country until we finally arrived at our destination at roughly 1:00 in the morning. But that's not all. We also had the pleasure of spending those two beautiful hours with a gigantic (and loud) family of Haredi Jews. Baruch Hashem.
In Be'er Sheva we spent a little time cleaning Alex's house, and then packed up and headed out to Sde Boker, a kibbutz/field school/guest house/hiking spot in the desert and home of David Ben Gurion's grave (he was quite the desert enthusiast). Noah's mom met us there, and we stayed in the guest house for two nights and spent our days hiking to the beautiful springs that are scattered around that area of the desert. The first day we hiked to Ein Aqev, which has a nice swimming hole and lots of shade (and lots of Israelis and their babies), then back. Though the hike was probably about 14k total and included a monster hill, Noah's mom decided that she needed another 10k and a mountain to tire her out. So we went back and ate ice cream while she ascended another peak. The next day we hiked only a few kilometers to Ein Avedat and then up a series of steps that monks had carved into the cliff side. This brought us to another swimming hole (also full of babies) where we sat, ate lunch, made tea, and swam for a few hours, before finding our way back. Again, Noah's mom added significantly more mileage to her hike while we sat and got our tan on (don't worry Mom, I was wearing sunscreen).
After leaving the desert, we headed north back to Akko to celebrate Lauren and Tali's birthday (both born on April 3rd, though Lauren was born a few minutes earlier, as she pointed out many times) and then down to Haifa for a day. Here are my picks for my favorite city in Israel:
Bahai Gardens: Obviously first on the list as they're probably Haifa's largest tourist attraction. Located right above the German Colony, the second most holy site of the Bahai religion (the first and lesser known site is in Akko, thank you very much) is gorgeous lit up at night. However, since I'd already been in the gardens three times previously, we didn't bother on this trip.
Haifa Zoo: No on seems to know that there's a zoo in Haifa, but there is. And a pretty huge one at that. The entrance is hidden in Carmel Centre in Gan HaEm, and the zoo itself stretches across the top of the Carmel mountain. Though the camals, baboons, and otters (and of course lions, tigers, and bears) are all cool, the best is the snake exhibit. It's sort of hard to find, but you seriously shouldn't miss it. Though rather sad and disturbing, the exhibit is an extremely educational tool for those learning about the food chain, and we had the privilege of seeing several mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, and a rabbit meet their end in the snake exhibit. Another plus is that just adjacent to the snake exhibit is a petting zoo with lots of mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rabbits...
Wadi Nisnas: A well known Arab community located in the center of Haifa. The cobblestone roads and small winding streets feature many mosaics and other public works of art, in addition to some very good falafel and knaffe. The best falafel in Wadi Nisnas can be found at the very edge of the neighborhood if you walk down the main street. You'll know you've found the right place if, the minute you enter, the owner offers you a falafel ball to taste. (He does it every time without fail, so if you're not offered falafel the moment you step through the door, you haven't found it and you should keep looking.
Eli's Pub: A bit of a whole-in-the-wall located near the port on Derech Yaffo, this place sometimes has jam sessions (mostly jazz and blues) where musicians rotate after every song.
That was Haifa, then on to Olga then Tel Aviv for a night where I stayed with my friend's family friends. Unfortunately I caught a bit of a stomach virus there (yala balagan) and we spent most of our time watching a pirated version of "The Holiday" (the audio switched into Russion about every twenty minutes or so) and MTV.
The last weekend of chofesh I spent on Kibbutz Gezer, the best place on earth. This trip was sweetened by the opportunity to see a bilingual baseball game - you could alternately hear chants of "Od out echad!", "Yalla yalla! Play the field!", and "Yofi! Way to hustle!" Gezer obviously tore up Beit Shemesh (I could pitch better than their pitcher, and that's a very harsh criticism if you've ever seen me "play" baseball). We also had the pleasure of hearing all about Sue's trip to Egypt ("The place is fucking rife with pyramids!"), and the rest of the weekend was spent reveling in our inner old person. Then finally back to Akko, and business as usual, on Saturday night.
Only five more weeks left of this, so I'll do my best to post as much as possible until we leave. Coming up, we have a May Day seminar with the Euros as well as Habo Australia and Habo South Africa (these are new ones from last time since the southern hemisphere shnat goes February through November), a tour of the separation wall, and then lots and lots of sikkuming (concluding, pretty much) - Messima, Kaveret, and then all of Workshop.
One last update: Kvutsat TnT has chosen a new name and will henceforth be known as Kvutsat Ratzif (meaning platform, and also has lots of connotations of something that continues and builds upon itself). Kvutsat Ratzif has also adopted a dog! Unofficially of course. He's a cute little mutt who follows us everywhere; he even tried to come with us on the train. We're still trying to figure out what his name is, but the only thing he seems to respond to is "Fish." Which is weird.
Until next time! I promise that won't be too far off.
Starting at the beginning, the excitement all began at about 11:00 on a Wednesday morning a few weeks ago. Our messima was canceled due to some rioting in the Arab villages - Habonim didn't really think it would be dangerous, just that no kids would come to the ken - so we were at home sleeping in. The sun was shining, the wind was whistling through the trees, and I was just debating whether or not to get out of bed and do something useful (like blog, perhaps) when an air raid warning began to sound. Have you ever heard an air raid warning? If the answer is no, you should hope to keep it that way. It's scary as hell. Anyhow, that made the question of whether or not to get out of bed much easier, and now the question I was grappling with was whether or not to put on pants before I ran outside and to the nearest bomb shelter. I ran out of my room, and met a few of my half-dressed housemates who were grappling with the very same question.
Pants on, we ran outside and... everyone was going about their business. Our neighbors were hanging their laundry on the lines, people were walking their dogs down the street, men were hard at work constructing a new set of tracks for the train that runs right past our house. Needless to say, we were confused. After some frantic phone calls to our madrichim, we were told that it was "just a test," and it had been announced on the radio a few days before. I guess it's a good thing that a) we have a radio, and b) we didn't run out of our house like morons ready to sprint to the nearest fall-out shelter. At least now we know that the thing works, I suppose.
But the excitement didn't end there. On the evening of the same action-packed Wednesday, I was hanging around the house with Dan and Simon waiting for everyone else to return from messima, when we hear a knock on the door and in walk three big Israeli men. Though they're wearing street clothes, they tell us they're cops, and they need to use our rooftop balcony in order to set up surveillance on the parking lot located just across the tracks from our house. Though the entire interaction was in Hebrew, they made some hand gestures which seemed to mean that some sketchy dealings were being made in that parking lot. The guys knew English, so Simon and I tried to communicate in Abu-Dubi (for those of you who used to watch Zoom, I hope that means something to you).
"Are these guys really cops?" He didn't know.
"Did they show you a badge when they came in?"
"Uh no... should we ask?"
"I guess so, I mean, what if they're here to case the house?"
"Uhh..."
We asked the guys to wait a few minutes while we called to check with our madrichim. The guys said that they had been in the house the previous year to set up surveillance, but they couldn't remember who they had spoken with. We called our Israeli madrich Tamir, who spoke on the phone with them for a few minutes and asked them to show us their police IDs. They complied, and then handed my phone back to me so I could tell Tamir that we had seen their IDs.
Tamir: "Do they look real?"
Me: "I mean, I've never seen an Israeli police ID before, but I guess so..."
Tamir: "Well just spread out and keep an eye on things while they're here. A few years ago the same thing happened to a Hanoar Haoved group in Haifa and they got robbed."
Me: "Well..."
Tamir: "And take some pictures. Discretely."
Me: "Are you serious?"
Tamir: "Yeah, don't you want souvenirs?"
Me: "No..."
As people started arriving home from messima, we stationed them around the house to keep an eye out, and we "read" or "watched movies" until the policemen finally left, some five hours later.
After the policemen left we were hanging out on the balcony, when we saw a car drive into the parking lot that the policemen were watching. It parked and flashed its lights. A second car, which had been parked for a little while, flashed its lights in a response. Then a man got out of the first car and transferred something from the trunk of the first car into the second car. Then both cars drove off. I wish I could make this stuff up. From our positions up on our darkened balcony, we remarked to each other that the cops must have been there just a little too early.
That was about all the excitement we got until the beginning of chofesh (break) when we were called upon to participate in a Hanoar Haoved Flash Mob in Tel Aviv to promote the Hanoar Haoved May Day rally. In case you haven't heard of the phenomenon, flash mobs are when a bunch of people go to a public place and, put simply, do something that you're not supposed to do. Not something illegal, just something that upsets the norms. This could mean staging a musical in a mall food court, having lots of people fall asleep on beds and chairs in a furniture store, freezing for five minutes in Grand Central Station, or having 200 people all bust out a dance together for no apparent reason, and then carry on their way. We chose the latter option, which we performed in the square in front of Shuk HaCarmel, on of the busiest spots in Tel Aviv. This involved meeting up about three hours beforehand at a school in Tel Aviv to learn the dance, and then finding our way to Shuk HaCarmel, and at 12:48 the whole thing began. We wore red (for the blood of the workers) and danced to a medley of songs about labor and freedom. Here's the link to the video if you're interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfVlR6rmToQ.
Continuing on, from Tel Aviv I went down to Be'er Sheva with Noah and Alex on our way to the desert to hike, but to get there we took the craziest bus I've ever been on. Usually the 370 and 380 run direct service from Be'er Sheva to Tel Aviv, which is about a one hour and fifteen minute bus ride. However by the time we got to the bus station, the direct lines had stopped running hours ago, and instead we had to take the 369, aka NOT direct service. This two hour bus was Tel Aviv to Be'er Sheva by way of Lebanon (not actually but it seemed like it. If this doesn't make sense to you, refer to a map of Israel). We were on four separate highways, and zigzagged our way back and forth across the country until we finally arrived at our destination at roughly 1:00 in the morning. But that's not all. We also had the pleasure of spending those two beautiful hours with a gigantic (and loud) family of Haredi Jews. Baruch Hashem.
In Be'er Sheva we spent a little time cleaning Alex's house, and then packed up and headed out to Sde Boker, a kibbutz/field school/guest house/hiking spot in the desert and home of David Ben Gurion's grave (he was quite the desert enthusiast). Noah's mom met us there, and we stayed in the guest house for two nights and spent our days hiking to the beautiful springs that are scattered around that area of the desert. The first day we hiked to Ein Aqev, which has a nice swimming hole and lots of shade (and lots of Israelis and their babies), then back. Though the hike was probably about 14k total and included a monster hill, Noah's mom decided that she needed another 10k and a mountain to tire her out. So we went back and ate ice cream while she ascended another peak. The next day we hiked only a few kilometers to Ein Avedat and then up a series of steps that monks had carved into the cliff side. This brought us to another swimming hole (also full of babies) where we sat, ate lunch, made tea, and swam for a few hours, before finding our way back. Again, Noah's mom added significantly more mileage to her hike while we sat and got our tan on (don't worry Mom, I was wearing sunscreen).
After leaving the desert, we headed north back to Akko to celebrate Lauren and Tali's birthday (both born on April 3rd, though Lauren was born a few minutes earlier, as she pointed out many times) and then down to Haifa for a day. Here are my picks for my favorite city in Israel:
Bahai Gardens: Obviously first on the list as they're probably Haifa's largest tourist attraction. Located right above the German Colony, the second most holy site of the Bahai religion (the first and lesser known site is in Akko, thank you very much) is gorgeous lit up at night. However, since I'd already been in the gardens three times previously, we didn't bother on this trip.
Haifa Zoo: No on seems to know that there's a zoo in Haifa, but there is. And a pretty huge one at that. The entrance is hidden in Carmel Centre in Gan HaEm, and the zoo itself stretches across the top of the Carmel mountain. Though the camals, baboons, and otters (and of course lions, tigers, and bears) are all cool, the best is the snake exhibit. It's sort of hard to find, but you seriously shouldn't miss it. Though rather sad and disturbing, the exhibit is an extremely educational tool for those learning about the food chain, and we had the privilege of seeing several mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, and a rabbit meet their end in the snake exhibit. Another plus is that just adjacent to the snake exhibit is a petting zoo with lots of mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, and rabbits...
Wadi Nisnas: A well known Arab community located in the center of Haifa. The cobblestone roads and small winding streets feature many mosaics and other public works of art, in addition to some very good falafel and knaffe. The best falafel in Wadi Nisnas can be found at the very edge of the neighborhood if you walk down the main street. You'll know you've found the right place if, the minute you enter, the owner offers you a falafel ball to taste. (He does it every time without fail, so if you're not offered falafel the moment you step through the door, you haven't found it and you should keep looking.
Eli's Pub: A bit of a whole-in-the-wall located near the port on Derech Yaffo, this place sometimes has jam sessions (mostly jazz and blues) where musicians rotate after every song.
That was Haifa, then on to Olga then Tel Aviv for a night where I stayed with my friend's family friends. Unfortunately I caught a bit of a stomach virus there (yala balagan) and we spent most of our time watching a pirated version of "The Holiday" (the audio switched into Russion about every twenty minutes or so) and MTV.
The last weekend of chofesh I spent on Kibbutz Gezer, the best place on earth. This trip was sweetened by the opportunity to see a bilingual baseball game - you could alternately hear chants of "Od out echad!", "Yalla yalla! Play the field!", and "Yofi! Way to hustle!" Gezer obviously tore up Beit Shemesh (I could pitch better than their pitcher, and that's a very harsh criticism if you've ever seen me "play" baseball). We also had the pleasure of hearing all about Sue's trip to Egypt ("The place is fucking rife with pyramids!"), and the rest of the weekend was spent reveling in our inner old person. Then finally back to Akko, and business as usual, on Saturday night.
Only five more weeks left of this, so I'll do my best to post as much as possible until we leave. Coming up, we have a May Day seminar with the Euros as well as Habo Australia and Habo South Africa (these are new ones from last time since the southern hemisphere shnat goes February through November), a tour of the separation wall, and then lots and lots of sikkuming (concluding, pretty much) - Messima, Kaveret, and then all of Workshop.
One last update: Kvutsat TnT has chosen a new name and will henceforth be known as Kvutsat Ratzif (meaning platform, and also has lots of connotations of something that continues and builds upon itself). Kvutsat Ratzif has also adopted a dog! Unofficially of course. He's a cute little mutt who follows us everywhere; he even tried to come with us on the train. We're still trying to figure out what his name is, but the only thing he seems to respond to is "Fish." Which is weird.
Until next time! I promise that won't be too far off.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Life in the Beehive
Since returning from Poland, it's pretty much been life as usual around here. However, I realize that I haven't exactly elaborated on what that means, so I want to take this opportunity to explain a little but about life in Akko.
Beginning with Akko itself. It is a smallish city (population around 50,000) located in the north of Israel, right on the western coast of the country. Our house is exactly opposite the train station, so while it can sometimes be tedious to have 30 second breaks in your conversations in order to wait for the trains to pass, it's extremely easy to get out of here (despite the unnecessarily long bridge/ramp structure that allows pedestrians to cross the tracks).
Right past the train station is a small but completely sufficient, and dirt cheap, vegetable shuk. There are mounds of fresh produce piled up, as well as beans, lentils, eggs, meat, and lots of spices. There's something about buying vegetables with dirt on them that makes life here seem so appealing (while I'm usually sarcastic, right now I'm being completely serious). All the food we eat is extremely fresh, and the men working there usually throw in lots of free food as well, in addition to letting us use our broken Hebrew.
Continuing past the vegetable shuk, you get to the bus station (about 5 minutes walk from our house) and the main drag of Akko, which hosts a 24 hour, seven shekel falafel stand (that's a little less than two dollars). About another 10 minutes walk from here will find you in the Old City and port area. The Old City is bustling with a shuk as well as many shops and restaurants. The Old City is a predominantly Arab area, and so on Saturday, when everything else in Akko is closed due to Shabbat, you can find the entire Jewish population of Akko doing their shopping and walking around the Old City.
As I just mentioned, Akko is a city in which Jews and Arabs live together. Many people are skeptical about whether or not it's a sustainable setup, but living here I can tell you that Akko is a pretty nice place to be. Though it has a reputation for being a little sketchy after dark, and granted I would agree that you shouldn't walk around alone at night, I've made several trips to the 24 hour falafel shop in the middle of the night, accompanied by others, and we didn't run into any problems.
But what exactly do we do here, you may ask, besides eat falafel at odd hours and buy vegetables? Right now we're in the portion of the program called Kaveret, literally translating to "Beehive." This name makes a bit of sense if you consider the fact that 19 of us are now sharing a house and a separate apartment. We eat all our meals together, hang out together, and work together in our messima (I'll explain it in a bit). We do our laundry together (which we hang to dry, like most other Israelis), cook together, do dishes together, decide how we're going to spend our money together, and watch the Olympics together (which sometimes gets a little tense with one Canadian in the house... right now she's running around the neighborhood yelling about how the Canadian's took the gold medal in hockey, which won't be good for our already tense relationship with our neighbors). So yeah, beehive makes a bit of sense, though it doesn't inspire much hope.
One of the most important things we do together is messima (I told you I would get to it). Messima literally means "mission" (but try not to think of the Christian kind). It's the name for the volunteer work we do, except the connotation is a little different. For the next three months, our messima should not just be something we volunteer at, but literally our life mission, if you will. There are four separate tzvatim, or staffs, from my kvutsah who work within Akko and the surrounding neighborhoods. There is one tzevet (staff) working in both Jewish and Arab schools in Akko, as well as in after school programs run by Hanoar Haoved V'Halomed (literally meaning "the working and learning youth"; it's the Israeli sister youth movement of Habonim Dror). Another tzevet works in a high school called Deshanim, which is also run partly by Hanoar Haoved. It's a sort of last-stop school for kids with very bad disciplinary track records. Another group works in schools in the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa, a disadvantaged immigrant neighborhood. And the last group, my group, does "Kium Meshutaf", or shared existence. We work in schools and after school programs in Arab villages around the Galil.
Here's the breakdown of what I do. On Sunday mornings we go to a coexistence school located in Kibbutz Eshbal. Technically this means that both Jews from neighboring kibbutzim and moshavim as well as Arabs from nearby villages attend this school. It's a bilingual school, so the students study both Hebrew and Arabic, and all the signs and written materials are in both languages. Here we work with 5th through 9th graders. We're given a block of time to do pretty much whatever we want with the kids, so this ranges from playing games and doing other random stuff to running peulot on media bias and sharing, all in English. While it's a long morning, as we have four separate classes to teach, there tends to usually be cake in the staff lounge, so we make it through.
On Sunday afternoons we go to an "after-school program" in Sha'ab, an Arab village about 25 minutes from Akko. I put it in quotes because it's really just 20-30 9th grade girls gathered in a classroom in the high school in Sha'ab. The program is run by the Arab sector of Hanoar Haoved, and we have an hour and a half every Sunday afternoon to do whatever we want with the girls. We usually play games and run peulot. The energy in the after-school program is much higher than in the schools, as the girls have actually chosen to be there.
Tuesday mornings we tutor at an elementary school in Ba'ene. We join the school's young English teacher, Reem, and go into classes with her (we work in a 6th grade class, a 3rd grade class, and a 4th grade class) where we each work with a small group and guide them through whatever activity or worksheet Reem has arranged. With younger kids, their English isn't as good, so there's a lot more miming and drawing pictures. Also, the younger kids are convinced that we actually do speak Arabic, and we're just lying when we tell them we don't, so they insist on jabbering away to us in Arabic and become very frustrated when we don't respond.
On Tuesday afternoons and evenings we have Yom Tzevet, translating to something like "Staff Day." This is when all twelve of us (six of us from Akko along with six Europeans from Karmiel who are doing similar work) in addition to our melavim (coordinators, advisors, etc) meet up in order to discuss the week, have a quick Arabic lesson (so far my Arabic vocabulary consists of things like "My name is Morriah" and "pants"), spend a little time planning, eat dinner, and usually have a peulah on some aspect of the formation of Arab identity in Israel, or pertaining to educational methodologies.
Wednesdays find us in the Arab village of Sakhnin all day, first in the morning teaching at the Taha Hussein Junior High School, and then in the afternoons at a Hanoar Haoved after school program. Our main challenge in Sakhnin is that we usually only get a few kids after school, even though we recruit as much as we can from the Junior High School in the morning. But we still usually tend to have a lot of fun, as our regular members consist of Majde, who speaks not a word of English but that didn't stop him from introducing himself as 72 years old (for the record, he's 14), Salem, who speaks fluent English due to a year spent as an exchange student in Virginia, and Hala, a bubbly 15 year old girl who loves talking about Nick Jonas and asking us questions about "the emos" in America.
So that, technically, is what we do. However there are lots of anecdotes and experiences that have gone along with that basic rundown. Some experiences are extremely rewarding just as others are incredibly frustrating. Since the times of frustration pretty much boil down to blank looks and noncompliance from angsty adolescents, I'll only give you a story of an experience that was more rewarding.
Last week, Reem (the English teacher we work with at the elementary school on Tuesday mornings) invited us over to her house for lunch after we finished at the school. She drove us home and fed us an incredible traditional meal of hummus, vegetables, pita, rice, and meat. We also had the pleasure of meeting her three children (ages 3, 6, and 3 months) whom she all dresses up in identical outfits. I thought about making a comment about how they will all rebel once they realize that she dressed them in the exact same outfits for their entire childhood, but thought better of it. (The day we went, they were all wearing matching gray and green tracksuits). Nevertheless, they were three of the cutest children I've ever seen, especially the 3 month old.
During the meal, Reem asked us about our lives in America. We talked about how the culture surrounding living in your parents' house and getting married is much different, and she shared with us her thoughts on life in a traditional Arab village. A fairly modern woman, Reem shared that she didn't think women should marry so young and should instead take time to develop their careers. After eating, Reem served us coffee (the traditional kind in the tiny cups) and told us about her children and how she met her husband. Then she drove us back to the school where we got picked up and taken back to Akko.
That's pretty much that for messima. Today in Sha'ab we received a dinner invitation for next week from one of the girls who comes to our programs, and it's been rumored that in a few weeks we'll be going on a tiyul (hike) with all of our chanichim (translates loosely to students). So, until next time!
Beginning with Akko itself. It is a smallish city (population around 50,000) located in the north of Israel, right on the western coast of the country. Our house is exactly opposite the train station, so while it can sometimes be tedious to have 30 second breaks in your conversations in order to wait for the trains to pass, it's extremely easy to get out of here (despite the unnecessarily long bridge/ramp structure that allows pedestrians to cross the tracks).
Right past the train station is a small but completely sufficient, and dirt cheap, vegetable shuk. There are mounds of fresh produce piled up, as well as beans, lentils, eggs, meat, and lots of spices. There's something about buying vegetables with dirt on them that makes life here seem so appealing (while I'm usually sarcastic, right now I'm being completely serious). All the food we eat is extremely fresh, and the men working there usually throw in lots of free food as well, in addition to letting us use our broken Hebrew.
Continuing past the vegetable shuk, you get to the bus station (about 5 minutes walk from our house) and the main drag of Akko, which hosts a 24 hour, seven shekel falafel stand (that's a little less than two dollars). About another 10 minutes walk from here will find you in the Old City and port area. The Old City is bustling with a shuk as well as many shops and restaurants. The Old City is a predominantly Arab area, and so on Saturday, when everything else in Akko is closed due to Shabbat, you can find the entire Jewish population of Akko doing their shopping and walking around the Old City.
As I just mentioned, Akko is a city in which Jews and Arabs live together. Many people are skeptical about whether or not it's a sustainable setup, but living here I can tell you that Akko is a pretty nice place to be. Though it has a reputation for being a little sketchy after dark, and granted I would agree that you shouldn't walk around alone at night, I've made several trips to the 24 hour falafel shop in the middle of the night, accompanied by others, and we didn't run into any problems.
But what exactly do we do here, you may ask, besides eat falafel at odd hours and buy vegetables? Right now we're in the portion of the program called Kaveret, literally translating to "Beehive." This name makes a bit of sense if you consider the fact that 19 of us are now sharing a house and a separate apartment. We eat all our meals together, hang out together, and work together in our messima (I'll explain it in a bit). We do our laundry together (which we hang to dry, like most other Israelis), cook together, do dishes together, decide how we're going to spend our money together, and watch the Olympics together (which sometimes gets a little tense with one Canadian in the house... right now she's running around the neighborhood yelling about how the Canadian's took the gold medal in hockey, which won't be good for our already tense relationship with our neighbors). So yeah, beehive makes a bit of sense, though it doesn't inspire much hope.
One of the most important things we do together is messima (I told you I would get to it). Messima literally means "mission" (but try not to think of the Christian kind). It's the name for the volunteer work we do, except the connotation is a little different. For the next three months, our messima should not just be something we volunteer at, but literally our life mission, if you will. There are four separate tzvatim, or staffs, from my kvutsah who work within Akko and the surrounding neighborhoods. There is one tzevet (staff) working in both Jewish and Arab schools in Akko, as well as in after school programs run by Hanoar Haoved V'Halomed (literally meaning "the working and learning youth"; it's the Israeli sister youth movement of Habonim Dror). Another tzevet works in a high school called Deshanim, which is also run partly by Hanoar Haoved. It's a sort of last-stop school for kids with very bad disciplinary track records. Another group works in schools in the Hadar neighborhood of Haifa, a disadvantaged immigrant neighborhood. And the last group, my group, does "Kium Meshutaf", or shared existence. We work in schools and after school programs in Arab villages around the Galil.
Here's the breakdown of what I do. On Sunday mornings we go to a coexistence school located in Kibbutz Eshbal. Technically this means that both Jews from neighboring kibbutzim and moshavim as well as Arabs from nearby villages attend this school. It's a bilingual school, so the students study both Hebrew and Arabic, and all the signs and written materials are in both languages. Here we work with 5th through 9th graders. We're given a block of time to do pretty much whatever we want with the kids, so this ranges from playing games and doing other random stuff to running peulot on media bias and sharing, all in English. While it's a long morning, as we have four separate classes to teach, there tends to usually be cake in the staff lounge, so we make it through.
On Sunday afternoons we go to an "after-school program" in Sha'ab, an Arab village about 25 minutes from Akko. I put it in quotes because it's really just 20-30 9th grade girls gathered in a classroom in the high school in Sha'ab. The program is run by the Arab sector of Hanoar Haoved, and we have an hour and a half every Sunday afternoon to do whatever we want with the girls. We usually play games and run peulot. The energy in the after-school program is much higher than in the schools, as the girls have actually chosen to be there.
Tuesday mornings we tutor at an elementary school in Ba'ene. We join the school's young English teacher, Reem, and go into classes with her (we work in a 6th grade class, a 3rd grade class, and a 4th grade class) where we each work with a small group and guide them through whatever activity or worksheet Reem has arranged. With younger kids, their English isn't as good, so there's a lot more miming and drawing pictures. Also, the younger kids are convinced that we actually do speak Arabic, and we're just lying when we tell them we don't, so they insist on jabbering away to us in Arabic and become very frustrated when we don't respond.
On Tuesday afternoons and evenings we have Yom Tzevet, translating to something like "Staff Day." This is when all twelve of us (six of us from Akko along with six Europeans from Karmiel who are doing similar work) in addition to our melavim (coordinators, advisors, etc) meet up in order to discuss the week, have a quick Arabic lesson (so far my Arabic vocabulary consists of things like "My name is Morriah" and "pants"), spend a little time planning, eat dinner, and usually have a peulah on some aspect of the formation of Arab identity in Israel, or pertaining to educational methodologies.
Wednesdays find us in the Arab village of Sakhnin all day, first in the morning teaching at the Taha Hussein Junior High School, and then in the afternoons at a Hanoar Haoved after school program. Our main challenge in Sakhnin is that we usually only get a few kids after school, even though we recruit as much as we can from the Junior High School in the morning. But we still usually tend to have a lot of fun, as our regular members consist of Majde, who speaks not a word of English but that didn't stop him from introducing himself as 72 years old (for the record, he's 14), Salem, who speaks fluent English due to a year spent as an exchange student in Virginia, and Hala, a bubbly 15 year old girl who loves talking about Nick Jonas and asking us questions about "the emos" in America.
So that, technically, is what we do. However there are lots of anecdotes and experiences that have gone along with that basic rundown. Some experiences are extremely rewarding just as others are incredibly frustrating. Since the times of frustration pretty much boil down to blank looks and noncompliance from angsty adolescents, I'll only give you a story of an experience that was more rewarding.
Last week, Reem (the English teacher we work with at the elementary school on Tuesday mornings) invited us over to her house for lunch after we finished at the school. She drove us home and fed us an incredible traditional meal of hummus, vegetables, pita, rice, and meat. We also had the pleasure of meeting her three children (ages 3, 6, and 3 months) whom she all dresses up in identical outfits. I thought about making a comment about how they will all rebel once they realize that she dressed them in the exact same outfits for their entire childhood, but thought better of it. (The day we went, they were all wearing matching gray and green tracksuits). Nevertheless, they were three of the cutest children I've ever seen, especially the 3 month old.
During the meal, Reem asked us about our lives in America. We talked about how the culture surrounding living in your parents' house and getting married is much different, and she shared with us her thoughts on life in a traditional Arab village. A fairly modern woman, Reem shared that she didn't think women should marry so young and should instead take time to develop their careers. After eating, Reem served us coffee (the traditional kind in the tiny cups) and told us about her children and how she met her husband. Then she drove us back to the school where we got picked up and taken back to Akko.
That's pretty much that for messima. Today in Sha'ab we received a dinner invitation for next week from one of the girls who comes to our programs, and it's been rumored that in a few weeks we'll be going on a tiyul (hike) with all of our chanichim (translates loosely to students). So, until next time!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
The Question of Humanity (with a little Polish nonsense on the side)
It's a strange thing to be able to walk into Auschwitz. To walk through the barbed wire gates, under the sign bearing the infamous slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei", past the execution wall and the building where Dr. Mengele conducted his experiments. To peek into the gas chambers and see the tall chimney of the crematorium, and then to simply walk back out as easily as one came.
This was my reality the past week, when we traveled to Poland to see important sites from the Holocaust and discuss what the Holocaust says about the true nature of man. But before I get into anything, let's start with some (extremely) basic background:
Hitler took office in 1933 as the chancellor of an incredibly economically depressed Germany. Taking advantage of the already strong anti-semitic sentiments in the country, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for Germany's problems. Hitler introduced the idea of racial supremacy (which was not such a stretch from the concept of social Darwinism which was prevalent at the time), and began the slow process of stripping the Jews of their humanity. While millions of others were killed in the Holocaust, only Jews were marked for complete annihilation. After a few years of systematic humiliation and discrimination, Hitler introduced the Nuremburg laws in 1935, which defined what a Jew was (constituted of having three Jewish grandparents) and stripped the Jews of many rights, including the right to citizenship, the ability to own or operate a business, and the right to marry a non-Jew. Judaism was turned from a faith to a race, making it impossible to convert out of being a Jew. One was a Jew from birth, whether or not they were observant. Many say the point of no return came in 1938 with Kristallnacht, when non-Jews burned and looted Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues. On September 1 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and won within a week. Soon after, Jewish ghettos were established in major cities, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to inhabit areas where only a few thousand had lived previously. Food rations in the ghetto allowed for a diet of only a few hundred calories per person, and the population was slowly starved. For the smaller towns and villages, there was the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squad which followed behind the army and went from town to town, taking the Jewish inhabitants out to the forests, forcing them to dig mass graves, and then shooting them. The Einsatzgruppen could get rid of an entire community in two days. Death and labor camps were established around the end of 1941, and the deportations from the ghettos began. At the start of 1942, twenty-five percent of the those who would be murdered in the Holocaust had died, but by the end of 1943 the number rose to eighty percent. In 1944, the Russians took over Poland, incorporating the country into the Soviet Union and effectively ending the camps, but the official end of the war didn't come until May 1945 when they occupied Berlin and Germany surrendered.
Before the war, Jews made up a third of the Polish population. At present, there are only a few thousand Jews left in the country. But these numbers and figures are only a tiny fraction of the narrative. The real story lies in the accounts of towns like Tykocin, where Jews and Christians lived side by side for 400 years. The first day the Einsatzgruppen arrived, they rounded up the Jewish population and took them out to the Lopochova forest to be shot. The next day they searched each house in the village and found another 600-700 Jews who had been hidden by their neighbors. They took these Jews to be shot as well. Only three hours after the second round of killings was complete and the Jewish population of Tykocin was wiped out, the remaining population of the town looted the Jews' homes and businesses, as well as the synagogue. The people with whom the Jews had grown up with and coexisted with for many generations suddenly thought only of how they could personally gain from the brutal murder of their Jewish neighbors.
There are millions of stories of indifference from the Holocaust. When we visited Majdanek, and well-preserved death and labor camp, we saw how the city comes right up to the edge of the barbed wire fence. While there's been some urban growth since the 40's, the edge of the town was not that much farther off from the camp then. Indeed it was close enough that the people living near Majdanek found ashes on their laundry when they hung it out to dry, yet they still managed to happily turn a blind eye. Now how exactly does this happen? How does one grow up with a Jew, or anyone for that matter, and then become completely indifferent to their extermination? How do you say, "I really liked her, it's such a shame she's a Jew"? How does one manage to convince themself so completely that an entire population is subhuman and unworthy of life?
We all love to believe that humankind is innately good, and evil tendencies are drawn out by temptation and constructions such as the devil. But what does war say about human nature? Though there were instances of heroism during the Holocaust, there were millions more of cruelty and indifference. Is that an indication of who we are as people? Do war and other extreme situations pervert man's true nature, or is that when we truly reveal it? Are we always trying to do the right thing, or does cruelty and indifference come naturally to us? Are we simply naive for assuming that mankind is innately good? Are places like Auschwitz an expression of some kind of humanity that's in all of us?
If I call myself human, it is easy to say that the Nazis were inhuman, that what separates me from Hitler is too great to have any point of comparison. But saying that releases the Nazis from responsibility for what they did. Saying they are inhuman releases them from being judged by the standards of humanity; thus they must be human. According to Professor Emmanuel Bergman, what makes humans human is the freedom of morality. He says we have the power to chose our own nature, and in that choice we affirm the nature of humankind. For example, if one sins, they judge the entire world to be corrupt. If one does a good deed, he judges the entire world to be righteous. The Nazis, as well as countless bystanders, saw humans as animals and hence freed themselves from having to make a choice about their nature or morality. They saw Auschwitz as natural an instinct as a predator devouring its prey. Their choice was reflected in their ideology and practice. Therefore what connects me to Hitler as a human is not our actions but rather the ability to chose.
This leaves all of us with a choice to make. Will we judge mankind to be corrupt or will we judge it to be righteous? And how will we affirm this choice?
We must also realize that we always have a choice, even in the most hellish of places, where it seems nothing exists but despair. Let me share another story, one that affirms the goodness of the human spirit. Treblinka is a death camp in Poland. There are no factories for labor, no selection for the ones who are fit to work, just a gas chamber and a crematorium. It is a factory of death, able to process a train carrying 6000 people in just a few hours. To help put that in perspective, that's a college football stadium. That's everyone you've ever met. The only barracks that exist are for the German SS guards and for the Sonderkommando, the Jews chosen from the trains coming in to operate the camp. These are the ones who unload the trains, escort the people to the gas chambers, close the doors, and load the ovens. They shave the people's heads in order to sell their hair to textile companies. They search for gold teeth and sort through the suitcases of the deceased in order to send their goods back to Germany to finance the operation. The Sonderkommando are forced to work, as death is the alternative. And every few months, the Sonderkommando themselves are sent to the gas chambers in order to prevent an uprising.
When forced to work for fear of death, one is certain there is no other choice. But the Sonderkommando at Treblinka realized that without them, there is no operation. They are the workers of the factory. They unload the trains, fill the gas chambers, and load the ovens. This one group of Sonderkommando decided to stop helping the Germans to kill the Jews, and in short, they planned to escape. Though almost all of them were killed in the uprising, following this event, Treblinka was closed down, as there was no one left to run it.
The same choice existed for the secretaries who typed the reports on the progress of the extermination, the train conductor who ran the line to Treblinka, and the people who found ashes on their laundry when they hung it out to dry. By no means am I saying it was an easy choice. The secretary, the train conductor, and the housewife all had families to take care of, mouths to feed, and a will to live. It's also likely that anyone in their position would have reacted the same way and made the same choices. But they could have made a different choice that, if enough people made, would have changed the outcome of the Holocaust.
There's really no appropriate way to conclude this post, so I'll wrap up by telling you about the more ridiculous aspects of our pilgrimage to eastern Europe.
- On the bus between camps, ghettos, and museums, we watched Holocaust movies. I know it seems a little messed up but when it comes down to it there's not a lot else you can do on the way from Auschwitz to Birkenau, and we also had the opportunity to see some really good movies. And some really bad movies. As inspirational as "Escape from Sobibor" was (about an uprising by the Sonderkommando similar to the one at Treblinka I which I talked about earlier), you would think someone would think long and hard about releasing a film with acting that was that bad.
- The Polish language looks like someone fell asleep on a keyboard, and it was also the language of choice for Borat, making it pretty difficult to take seriously. Though we learned a few words of Polish, such as "gin dobray", meaning good morning, and "jankooyay", meaning thank you, I just couldn't bring myself to thank the waiters or bus-drivers in Polish for fear of sounding like I was mocking them. (Also please note that the spellings of the Polish words are my own phonetic interpretations and not the authentic Polish spelling because, as I said, Polish is not only a completely unreadable language to a Westerner, but the alphabet is also deceptively different. For example, W is pronounced as a V, and J is pronounced as a Y.)
- Our last night in Poland we went to a "Polish Folklore Dinner", which was a bit of a misnomer. They served falafel and pita, and had a Polish woman singing Hebrew karaoke. However, the entertainment did include one Polish element - a dance troupe performing traditional Polish dances and singing. While I understood none of what they were saying, one of the acts included someone dressed up a a cow and a good bit of yodeling, so it was obviously a great night.
And so concluded our trip Poland. "Interesting" doesn't really cut it. It was terrifying, inspirational, confusing, important, and, as always on Workshop 59, just a little bit ridiculous.
This was my reality the past week, when we traveled to Poland to see important sites from the Holocaust and discuss what the Holocaust says about the true nature of man. But before I get into anything, let's start with some (extremely) basic background:
Hitler took office in 1933 as the chancellor of an incredibly economically depressed Germany. Taking advantage of the already strong anti-semitic sentiments in the country, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for Germany's problems. Hitler introduced the idea of racial supremacy (which was not such a stretch from the concept of social Darwinism which was prevalent at the time), and began the slow process of stripping the Jews of their humanity. While millions of others were killed in the Holocaust, only Jews were marked for complete annihilation. After a few years of systematic humiliation and discrimination, Hitler introduced the Nuremburg laws in 1935, which defined what a Jew was (constituted of having three Jewish grandparents) and stripped the Jews of many rights, including the right to citizenship, the ability to own or operate a business, and the right to marry a non-Jew. Judaism was turned from a faith to a race, making it impossible to convert out of being a Jew. One was a Jew from birth, whether or not they were observant. Many say the point of no return came in 1938 with Kristallnacht, when non-Jews burned and looted Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues. On September 1 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and won within a week. Soon after, Jewish ghettos were established in major cities, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to inhabit areas where only a few thousand had lived previously. Food rations in the ghetto allowed for a diet of only a few hundred calories per person, and the population was slowly starved. For the smaller towns and villages, there was the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squad which followed behind the army and went from town to town, taking the Jewish inhabitants out to the forests, forcing them to dig mass graves, and then shooting them. The Einsatzgruppen could get rid of an entire community in two days. Death and labor camps were established around the end of 1941, and the deportations from the ghettos began. At the start of 1942, twenty-five percent of the those who would be murdered in the Holocaust had died, but by the end of 1943 the number rose to eighty percent. In 1944, the Russians took over Poland, incorporating the country into the Soviet Union and effectively ending the camps, but the official end of the war didn't come until May 1945 when they occupied Berlin and Germany surrendered.
Before the war, Jews made up a third of the Polish population. At present, there are only a few thousand Jews left in the country. But these numbers and figures are only a tiny fraction of the narrative. The real story lies in the accounts of towns like Tykocin, where Jews and Christians lived side by side for 400 years. The first day the Einsatzgruppen arrived, they rounded up the Jewish population and took them out to the Lopochova forest to be shot. The next day they searched each house in the village and found another 600-700 Jews who had been hidden by their neighbors. They took these Jews to be shot as well. Only three hours after the second round of killings was complete and the Jewish population of Tykocin was wiped out, the remaining population of the town looted the Jews' homes and businesses, as well as the synagogue. The people with whom the Jews had grown up with and coexisted with for many generations suddenly thought only of how they could personally gain from the brutal murder of their Jewish neighbors.
There are millions of stories of indifference from the Holocaust. When we visited Majdanek, and well-preserved death and labor camp, we saw how the city comes right up to the edge of the barbed wire fence. While there's been some urban growth since the 40's, the edge of the town was not that much farther off from the camp then. Indeed it was close enough that the people living near Majdanek found ashes on their laundry when they hung it out to dry, yet they still managed to happily turn a blind eye. Now how exactly does this happen? How does one grow up with a Jew, or anyone for that matter, and then become completely indifferent to their extermination? How do you say, "I really liked her, it's such a shame she's a Jew"? How does one manage to convince themself so completely that an entire population is subhuman and unworthy of life?
We all love to believe that humankind is innately good, and evil tendencies are drawn out by temptation and constructions such as the devil. But what does war say about human nature? Though there were instances of heroism during the Holocaust, there were millions more of cruelty and indifference. Is that an indication of who we are as people? Do war and other extreme situations pervert man's true nature, or is that when we truly reveal it? Are we always trying to do the right thing, or does cruelty and indifference come naturally to us? Are we simply naive for assuming that mankind is innately good? Are places like Auschwitz an expression of some kind of humanity that's in all of us?
If I call myself human, it is easy to say that the Nazis were inhuman, that what separates me from Hitler is too great to have any point of comparison. But saying that releases the Nazis from responsibility for what they did. Saying they are inhuman releases them from being judged by the standards of humanity; thus they must be human. According to Professor Emmanuel Bergman, what makes humans human is the freedom of morality. He says we have the power to chose our own nature, and in that choice we affirm the nature of humankind. For example, if one sins, they judge the entire world to be corrupt. If one does a good deed, he judges the entire world to be righteous. The Nazis, as well as countless bystanders, saw humans as animals and hence freed themselves from having to make a choice about their nature or morality. They saw Auschwitz as natural an instinct as a predator devouring its prey. Their choice was reflected in their ideology and practice. Therefore what connects me to Hitler as a human is not our actions but rather the ability to chose.
This leaves all of us with a choice to make. Will we judge mankind to be corrupt or will we judge it to be righteous? And how will we affirm this choice?
We must also realize that we always have a choice, even in the most hellish of places, where it seems nothing exists but despair. Let me share another story, one that affirms the goodness of the human spirit. Treblinka is a death camp in Poland. There are no factories for labor, no selection for the ones who are fit to work, just a gas chamber and a crematorium. It is a factory of death, able to process a train carrying 6000 people in just a few hours. To help put that in perspective, that's a college football stadium. That's everyone you've ever met. The only barracks that exist are for the German SS guards and for the Sonderkommando, the Jews chosen from the trains coming in to operate the camp. These are the ones who unload the trains, escort the people to the gas chambers, close the doors, and load the ovens. They shave the people's heads in order to sell their hair to textile companies. They search for gold teeth and sort through the suitcases of the deceased in order to send their goods back to Germany to finance the operation. The Sonderkommando are forced to work, as death is the alternative. And every few months, the Sonderkommando themselves are sent to the gas chambers in order to prevent an uprising.
When forced to work for fear of death, one is certain there is no other choice. But the Sonderkommando at Treblinka realized that without them, there is no operation. They are the workers of the factory. They unload the trains, fill the gas chambers, and load the ovens. This one group of Sonderkommando decided to stop helping the Germans to kill the Jews, and in short, they planned to escape. Though almost all of them were killed in the uprising, following this event, Treblinka was closed down, as there was no one left to run it.
The same choice existed for the secretaries who typed the reports on the progress of the extermination, the train conductor who ran the line to Treblinka, and the people who found ashes on their laundry when they hung it out to dry. By no means am I saying it was an easy choice. The secretary, the train conductor, and the housewife all had families to take care of, mouths to feed, and a will to live. It's also likely that anyone in their position would have reacted the same way and made the same choices. But they could have made a different choice that, if enough people made, would have changed the outcome of the Holocaust.
There's really no appropriate way to conclude this post, so I'll wrap up by telling you about the more ridiculous aspects of our pilgrimage to eastern Europe.
- On the bus between camps, ghettos, and museums, we watched Holocaust movies. I know it seems a little messed up but when it comes down to it there's not a lot else you can do on the way from Auschwitz to Birkenau, and we also had the opportunity to see some really good movies. And some really bad movies. As inspirational as "Escape from Sobibor" was (about an uprising by the Sonderkommando similar to the one at Treblinka I which I talked about earlier), you would think someone would think long and hard about releasing a film with acting that was that bad.
- The Polish language looks like someone fell asleep on a keyboard, and it was also the language of choice for Borat, making it pretty difficult to take seriously. Though we learned a few words of Polish, such as "gin dobray", meaning good morning, and "jankooyay", meaning thank you, I just couldn't bring myself to thank the waiters or bus-drivers in Polish for fear of sounding like I was mocking them. (Also please note that the spellings of the Polish words are my own phonetic interpretations and not the authentic Polish spelling because, as I said, Polish is not only a completely unreadable language to a Westerner, but the alphabet is also deceptively different. For example, W is pronounced as a V, and J is pronounced as a Y.)
- Our last night in Poland we went to a "Polish Folklore Dinner", which was a bit of a misnomer. They served falafel and pita, and had a Polish woman singing Hebrew karaoke. However, the entertainment did include one Polish element - a dance troupe performing traditional Polish dances and singing. While I understood none of what they were saying, one of the acts included someone dressed up a a cow and a good bit of yodeling, so it was obviously a great night.
And so concluded our trip Poland. "Interesting" doesn't really cut it. It was terrifying, inspirational, confusing, important, and, as always on Workshop 59, just a little bit ridiculous.
Monday, January 4, 2010
The History of Habonim Dror
Our last morning on Ein Dor also happened to be the first day of our seminar on the History of Habonim Dror, specifically the history of actualization (a.k.a. aliyah) in the movement. The seminar would last a little less than a week (from Sunday Dec 13th to Thursday Dec 17th). The structure of the seminar was that we would go to two or three places every day where we would hear someone speak. Then in the evenings we would return to our hostel and have a peulah. The week took us in chronological order from the earliest Habonim Dror kibbutzim founded in Israel, through the ideological crisis of the late 20th Century (where everybody realized that no one wanted to go live in kibbutz anymore, but more on that later), to the foundation of the first urban kibbutz and the new direction of the movement.
Before I go any further, let me give you a brief glossary of relevant terms.
Aliyah - Immigrating to Israel, literally translates to "going up"
Aliyoops - A colloquial term used to describe one who makes Aliyah, then 5-10 years later moves back, as in "oops". This term has a negative connotation in that it implies that this person realized that making Aliyah in the first place was a mistake. This negative connotation is problematic, as I will discuss later.
Garin - A group of people with whom you make Aliyah, with the intent of living with them, either on a kibbutz or in an urban kvutsah.
Kibbutz - Though I've already defined this term, I will be using it more specifically here. A kibbutz is not simply an agricultural village which used to include socialist values but has since been privatized. That is a gated community. A kibbutz is a collective environment which still operates on a specific ideology emphasizing community, labor zionism, and socialism.
Day 1
After saying our goodbyes to the Europeans (which was tearful for some, awkward for others), we made our way to Hatzer Kinneret, a kibbutz training facility used in the early 20th century. Here we ran into the Europeans, only about an hour after bidding them farewell. (And while the goodbye had only been awkward for some, this was awkward for everybody, especially for those who had shed tears.) After this we headed to the Kinneret Cemetery, where many famous zionist and socialist thinkers are buried, we went to a youth hostel on the shores of the Kinneret, which was our base for most of the seminar.
Day 2
We started Day Two by going to Kfar Hanassi, an early kibbutz founded by a Habonim Dror garin from the United Kingdom. Kfar Hanassi is no longer a kibbutz in the ideological sense; it has been privatized. At Kfar Hanassi we talked to Aryeh, who said that the kibbutz movement has become more relevant in becoming privatized. People weren't happy with their standard of life on the old kibbutz, and by privatizing it many people are much happier. Not only that, Aryeh said that the kibbutz movement still has an important, "relevant" place in Israeli society.
Next we went to talk to Doobie at Kfar Blum, another old kibbutz which has since been privatized and now resembles nothing more than a gated community. Doobie was the CEO of the hotel which Kfar Blum has built since being privatized, and Doobie admitted that Kfar Blum was "no longer a kibbutz." He said, "I like living here because of the lifestyle. It is a comfortable community." He acknowledged that he lives in a meaningless structure which has thrown out their ideology, but he's fine with it. He also said that he feels no responsibility to the rest of the state.
Third, and last on the hit parade of Day 1, we visited Mevoh Chama, a privatized kibbutz on the shored of the Kinneret. Here we met Joe, the most sympathetic of the day's figures. Joe moved to Mevoh Chama from Australia some 30 years ago, and the kibbutz was privatized about 15 years after. Coming across as a sad man, he explained that two things led to the death of the kibbutz movement: economic problems and ideological crisis. He was very upset about the privatization of the kibbutz, and, as opposed to the last two men who regarded us as naively ideological youngsters, he told us it was up to us to find meaning in the structure. He said he thought about leaving many times, but in the end, Mevoh Chama was home to him, and he still feels he is fulfilling his zionist ideals in other ways, such as working with delinquent youth in Tiberias.
The moral of the day, or at least something we heard from all three speakers, was that there was no other way; privatization was inevitable. But here were the major differences: Aryeh said that even though they threw out the structure, they still had the ideology. Doobie and Joe both acknowledged that the old kibbutzim had thrown out both the structure and the ideology. However, Doobie was was okay with it because he lived comfortably, whereas Joe was visibly upset. This balance between content and structure is the key, and it came up more and more as the week went on.
Day 3
We started out Day Three by visiting Beit Ha'emek, a kibbutz founded by a garin from Habonim Dror North America. Here we met with Gary and Judy. Before they joined Beit Ha'emek, however, they founded the first urban kibbutz, that is, a kvutsah living in an urban area doing social work rather than agriculture. This was in 1968, way before the idea of urban kibbutzim, or "irbutzim," was accepted, and they were almost kicked out of the movement for it. They wanted to establish an irbutz in order to abolish the "fortress mentality," or that of a gated community, that many of the rural kibbutzim that came before them had embraced. They wanted contact with the Israeli-Arab community, and they did all sorts of work in the area. Some of them were factory workers while others were professionals, but power dynamics weren't what broke up the irbutz. Rather, in 1972, the irbutz failed because it didn't grow.
So Gary and Judy picked up and joined Beit Ha'emek. Eventually, like almost all other rural kibbutzim, Beit Ha'emek began having problems, both economically and ideologically, and voted to privatize. The first vote was apparently very close, and privatization didn't pass until the second vote. In this case, Gary also has implied that there was no other way to solve the problems they were having but to privatize. Economically, the way the kibbutz operated wasn't profitable. Instead of giving everyone a salary according to what their work was, they put all the revenue into a large account, and from there each person was given according to their needs - for example, how big their family was, etc. This was economically inefficient, and no one knew what was profitable and what wasn't. So, Gary said, they simply separated the business from the community. This change of structure didn't change their ideology. However, at the same time he said that people wanted the change in order to be able to recognize their own potential. So it became evident to me that a change in structure did indeed reflect, if not cause, a change in the values of the kibbutz.
It wasn't clear whether or not Gary and Judy felt that they had abandoned their socialist zionist ideals or not, but they seemed happy enough and said that everyone in the community was doing quite well, was happy, and had more freedom. However, he also said there was less solidarity and social glue.
Next we visited Kvutsat Yovel, a kvutsah living in Migdal Ha'emek, an urban kibbutz with about 100 members. An urban kibbutz is a kibbutz whose industry is not agriculture but education and social justice work. The structure was different than that of the old kibbutzim - like they didn't live on a farm and eat in a dining hall, for instance - which raised an interesting question. What makes a kibbutz a kibbutz? Is it the structures like the fields, the laundry, and the kibbutz store? Or is it the content and values? What is the significance of the physical structures in expressing the content of the kibbutz? In any case, Kvutsat Yovel expressed that they thought they were "much more of a kibbutz than any of the old kibbutzim."
Day 4
The next day we visited Kibbutz Eshbal, a Hanoar Haoved (one of the Israeli youth movements) kibbutz which runs a boarding school for troubled kids and has a coexistence school on its property (which I'm now working at). Though set in a rural locations, Eshbal is also considered a sort of urban kibbutz as it caters to the area around it and does education as opposed to agriculture. At Eshbal, we also discussed how one of the fundamentals of a kibbutz is serving national interests. So in the early days of the state of Israel, kibbutzim served national interests by farming the land and settling land for security purposes. (Fun fact: kibbutzim were once the most efficient farms in Israel.) But now what the country needs is people to work in education and social justice in order to serve the large immigrant population, which is also becoming increasingly marginalized.
Day 5
On the last day of the seminar, we visited two Habonim Dror kvutsot living in Hadera. Each having formed only a few years ago, they talked about their experiences so far, and although they answered many of our questions, they left me with many more questions. Here are a few:
Is it possible to be a kvutsah in North America? What are the limitations living in North America?
What is the difference between a kvutsah-mate and simply a good friend?
Do I feel personally responsible to change Israeli society?
Did the old kibbutz movement fail? Or did it just do what it had to do and then they weren't needed anymore?
What makes a kibbutz a kibbutz?
And with that we left for a free weekend, with only five days left until the start of Kaveret. Though this post is rather late and we're already about a month into Kaveret, I'll be sure to give all the necessary updates on life in Akko when the next one goes up.
Before I go any further, let me give you a brief glossary of relevant terms.
Aliyah - Immigrating to Israel, literally translates to "going up"
Aliyoops - A colloquial term used to describe one who makes Aliyah, then 5-10 years later moves back, as in "oops". This term has a negative connotation in that it implies that this person realized that making Aliyah in the first place was a mistake. This negative connotation is problematic, as I will discuss later.
Garin - A group of people with whom you make Aliyah, with the intent of living with them, either on a kibbutz or in an urban kvutsah.
Kibbutz - Though I've already defined this term, I will be using it more specifically here. A kibbutz is not simply an agricultural village which used to include socialist values but has since been privatized. That is a gated community. A kibbutz is a collective environment which still operates on a specific ideology emphasizing community, labor zionism, and socialism.
Day 1
After saying our goodbyes to the Europeans (which was tearful for some, awkward for others), we made our way to Hatzer Kinneret, a kibbutz training facility used in the early 20th century. Here we ran into the Europeans, only about an hour after bidding them farewell. (And while the goodbye had only been awkward for some, this was awkward for everybody, especially for those who had shed tears.) After this we headed to the Kinneret Cemetery, where many famous zionist and socialist thinkers are buried, we went to a youth hostel on the shores of the Kinneret, which was our base for most of the seminar.
Day 2
We started Day Two by going to Kfar Hanassi, an early kibbutz founded by a Habonim Dror garin from the United Kingdom. Kfar Hanassi is no longer a kibbutz in the ideological sense; it has been privatized. At Kfar Hanassi we talked to Aryeh, who said that the kibbutz movement has become more relevant in becoming privatized. People weren't happy with their standard of life on the old kibbutz, and by privatizing it many people are much happier. Not only that, Aryeh said that the kibbutz movement still has an important, "relevant" place in Israeli society.
Next we went to talk to Doobie at Kfar Blum, another old kibbutz which has since been privatized and now resembles nothing more than a gated community. Doobie was the CEO of the hotel which Kfar Blum has built since being privatized, and Doobie admitted that Kfar Blum was "no longer a kibbutz." He said, "I like living here because of the lifestyle. It is a comfortable community." He acknowledged that he lives in a meaningless structure which has thrown out their ideology, but he's fine with it. He also said that he feels no responsibility to the rest of the state.
Third, and last on the hit parade of Day 1, we visited Mevoh Chama, a privatized kibbutz on the shored of the Kinneret. Here we met Joe, the most sympathetic of the day's figures. Joe moved to Mevoh Chama from Australia some 30 years ago, and the kibbutz was privatized about 15 years after. Coming across as a sad man, he explained that two things led to the death of the kibbutz movement: economic problems and ideological crisis. He was very upset about the privatization of the kibbutz, and, as opposed to the last two men who regarded us as naively ideological youngsters, he told us it was up to us to find meaning in the structure. He said he thought about leaving many times, but in the end, Mevoh Chama was home to him, and he still feels he is fulfilling his zionist ideals in other ways, such as working with delinquent youth in Tiberias.
The moral of the day, or at least something we heard from all three speakers, was that there was no other way; privatization was inevitable. But here were the major differences: Aryeh said that even though they threw out the structure, they still had the ideology. Doobie and Joe both acknowledged that the old kibbutzim had thrown out both the structure and the ideology. However, Doobie was was okay with it because he lived comfortably, whereas Joe was visibly upset. This balance between content and structure is the key, and it came up more and more as the week went on.
Day 3
We started out Day Three by visiting Beit Ha'emek, a kibbutz founded by a garin from Habonim Dror North America. Here we met with Gary and Judy. Before they joined Beit Ha'emek, however, they founded the first urban kibbutz, that is, a kvutsah living in an urban area doing social work rather than agriculture. This was in 1968, way before the idea of urban kibbutzim, or "irbutzim," was accepted, and they were almost kicked out of the movement for it. They wanted to establish an irbutz in order to abolish the "fortress mentality," or that of a gated community, that many of the rural kibbutzim that came before them had embraced. They wanted contact with the Israeli-Arab community, and they did all sorts of work in the area. Some of them were factory workers while others were professionals, but power dynamics weren't what broke up the irbutz. Rather, in 1972, the irbutz failed because it didn't grow.
So Gary and Judy picked up and joined Beit Ha'emek. Eventually, like almost all other rural kibbutzim, Beit Ha'emek began having problems, both economically and ideologically, and voted to privatize. The first vote was apparently very close, and privatization didn't pass until the second vote. In this case, Gary also has implied that there was no other way to solve the problems they were having but to privatize. Economically, the way the kibbutz operated wasn't profitable. Instead of giving everyone a salary according to what their work was, they put all the revenue into a large account, and from there each person was given according to their needs - for example, how big their family was, etc. This was economically inefficient, and no one knew what was profitable and what wasn't. So, Gary said, they simply separated the business from the community. This change of structure didn't change their ideology. However, at the same time he said that people wanted the change in order to be able to recognize their own potential. So it became evident to me that a change in structure did indeed reflect, if not cause, a change in the values of the kibbutz.
It wasn't clear whether or not Gary and Judy felt that they had abandoned their socialist zionist ideals or not, but they seemed happy enough and said that everyone in the community was doing quite well, was happy, and had more freedom. However, he also said there was less solidarity and social glue.
Next we visited Kvutsat Yovel, a kvutsah living in Migdal Ha'emek, an urban kibbutz with about 100 members. An urban kibbutz is a kibbutz whose industry is not agriculture but education and social justice work. The structure was different than that of the old kibbutzim - like they didn't live on a farm and eat in a dining hall, for instance - which raised an interesting question. What makes a kibbutz a kibbutz? Is it the structures like the fields, the laundry, and the kibbutz store? Or is it the content and values? What is the significance of the physical structures in expressing the content of the kibbutz? In any case, Kvutsat Yovel expressed that they thought they were "much more of a kibbutz than any of the old kibbutzim."
Day 4
The next day we visited Kibbutz Eshbal, a Hanoar Haoved (one of the Israeli youth movements) kibbutz which runs a boarding school for troubled kids and has a coexistence school on its property (which I'm now working at). Though set in a rural locations, Eshbal is also considered a sort of urban kibbutz as it caters to the area around it and does education as opposed to agriculture. At Eshbal, we also discussed how one of the fundamentals of a kibbutz is serving national interests. So in the early days of the state of Israel, kibbutzim served national interests by farming the land and settling land for security purposes. (Fun fact: kibbutzim were once the most efficient farms in Israel.) But now what the country needs is people to work in education and social justice in order to serve the large immigrant population, which is also becoming increasingly marginalized.
Day 5
On the last day of the seminar, we visited two Habonim Dror kvutsot living in Hadera. Each having formed only a few years ago, they talked about their experiences so far, and although they answered many of our questions, they left me with many more questions. Here are a few:
Is it possible to be a kvutsah in North America? What are the limitations living in North America?
What is the difference between a kvutsah-mate and simply a good friend?
Do I feel personally responsible to change Israeli society?
Did the old kibbutz movement fail? Or did it just do what it had to do and then they weren't needed anymore?
What makes a kibbutz a kibbutz?
And with that we left for a free weekend, with only five days left until the start of Kaveret. Though this post is rather late and we're already about a month into Kaveret, I'll be sure to give all the necessary updates on life in Akko when the next one goes up.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Ultrasound, Socialized Medicine, and Saying Goodbye to Kibbutz
A lot has happened since my last post. For starters, we no longer live on Kibbutz Ein Dor. About three weeks ago, we left angry kibbutzniks, scooters, and the kibbutz pub behind and headed up north to the Galilee for our History of Habonim Dror seminar. After that, we spent a few days preparing for our move to Akko and the beginning of Kaveret, and then we moved in. (Sort of. It's a work-in-progress.) My parents came, we rang in the New Year (or "Sylvester", as Israelis call it; I told you it was a strange country) in Tel Aviv, which brings us up to the present. Now for details.
The ending of Boneh (this is the portion of the year we spend on kibbutz) was bittersweet. On the one hand, no one could wait to be free of the dining hall, Minyan Man, and Chava, and able to live on our own, cook our own meals, and determine the extent of our own participation in religious Judaism (a.k.a. no more proselytizing Jews would be blowing shofars outside our windows). On the other, leaving kibbutz would mean leaving each other, and the three kvutsot would have to finally separate to our new respective residences - TnT in Akko, GnG in Olga, and the Schwartz Family in Be'er Sheva.
And so began a series of "final hurrahs". For Workshop as a whole, we took a trip to Ultrasound. Ultrasound is not, as you might reasonably think, something you have done when you're pregnant in order to determine the sex of your child. Rather, Ultrasound is a club located near Haifa, complete with slides, 1980's mashups, and loads of Arsim and Frechot (the Israeli equivalent of Guidos and Guidettes, for those of you who watch Jersey Shore, which should be all of you). With a closer look at the Israeli psyche, it's not difficult to derive the reason they named a club after something usually conducted with jelly and a little plastic wand. "Ultra" is a cool word to Israelis. (As is "Mega", which really isn't related at all to my story, but trust me, the word mega is totally overused in Israel. For example, one of the supermarkets we shop at in Akko is called "Megabool". What does that mean, you may ask? No idea. But it sounds cool, right?) The word "sound" is also relevant. It's a club, after all. Put them together, and you get Ultrasound. Whether or not the people who named the club knew of it's specific meaning in English, we will never know. But the name is only outdone by the stamp you get on your hand upon entering - "Balagan Shelanu". Translates to something like Our Chaos. Legit.
So I think the explanation of Ultrasound stands on its own. Simply put, it was a silly night. The 80 of us (North Americans and Europeans) were at the club from roughly 12-4am, and we were probably the first ones to leave. Then we boarded our buses and drove the 40 minutes back to our homely kibbutz, none the worse for wear.
Another last hurrah which I feel needs mention is my parting encounter with the town of Afula. Though I've mentioned the city in previous posts, I've never really given it the credit it deserves for cleanliness, accessibility, and outstanding medical care. It is the last which I wish to highlight now.
Afula - also affectionately referred to as Afufu, Afuna (get it? Fun), and Fu City by Workshoppers - is a small, poor, dirty city located about a half hour drive from Kibbutz Ein Dor. It also happened to be the closest metropolis to the kibbutz. Looking to leave the isolation of kibbutz life? Afuna is your most affordable bet. Want to get a piercing? Fu City. Need to do a little shopping? You guessed it, it's Afula. But that's not all Afula has. It also has a block of falafel shops, as well as a bus station. So if you want to go anywhere off the kibbutz, you have to begin your commute in Afula. Once while walking around Afula, a local asked us where we were from, and then asked us why we came to Afula. For somewhat obvious reasons, they were completely mystified at the fact that we traveled all the way from North America to visit humble Afula. (Subtext: it sucks.) This story somewhat sums up the place.
Needless to say, we spent a lot of time there. In addition to it's myriad falafel and piercing shops, Afula is also home to the bureaucracy of the bank (which I've written about before) and the health clinic, wherein begins my story. Enter socialized medicine. No need to make a doctor's appointment, just show up and take a number. The doctor will see you shortly (or at least after about an hour) and he may even speak English (though it's not likely). Overworked and underpaid, strange and often faulty diagnoses are common. For instance, a friend of mine who had a cyst on his back was given a topical ointment. Another friend of mine who was having breathing problems was prescribed a lower dose of the asthma medication she was already taking.
This particular trip (actually trips, as you'll soon see) wasn't to treat any particular illness, but rather to get a flu shot. I was accompanied by six other Workshoppers whose parents had complained enough that we were finally able to go get the shots. The first time we tried going, the clinic was closed by the time we got there (which was noon on Friday). The second time we were slightly more successful, and made it all the way in the door, up the stairs, and even had our numbers called in less than an hour. We proceeded to the receptionist's desk, and even though I had it all worked out how to say "flu shot" in Hebrew, the English-speaking receptionist beat me to the bunch. She not only knew why we had come, but carefully explained to us that we couldn't get a flu shot without a doctor's note. Because how can they give us flu shots without a doctor's note? It's not as if there were tens of doctors in that very building at the time. No, we would have to have the kibbutz nurse call the head nurse at the clinic. "She'll have the number," the receptionist reassured me.
I called my madricha, Tamar, to see if she could get in touch with the nurse on the kibbutz. The kibbutz clinic was closed, but she would go see what she could do. After locating the kibbutz nurse, it turned out that she actually didn't have the number for the head nurse at the Afula clinic. Shocker. To make a long and painful story short, after two hours of relentless phone calls, coordination, broken Hebrew, and waiting, we left the clinic, having finally been denied flu shots. Goodbye Afula, I thought to myself. Our final hurrah in Fu City could not have gone any more typically.
After saying goodbye to Afula, we had only a few more goodbyes to deliver. We said goodbye to the thousands of stray cats, the old people on their scooters, Minyan Man, and, of course, the kibbutz pub. All those things having been accomplished, we packed up, cleaned up (the house managed to reach it's very messiest during our last week), went to the kibbutz Hanukkah celebration, and left.
The ending of Boneh (this is the portion of the year we spend on kibbutz) was bittersweet. On the one hand, no one could wait to be free of the dining hall, Minyan Man, and Chava, and able to live on our own, cook our own meals, and determine the extent of our own participation in religious Judaism (a.k.a. no more proselytizing Jews would be blowing shofars outside our windows). On the other, leaving kibbutz would mean leaving each other, and the three kvutsot would have to finally separate to our new respective residences - TnT in Akko, GnG in Olga, and the Schwartz Family in Be'er Sheva.
And so began a series of "final hurrahs". For Workshop as a whole, we took a trip to Ultrasound. Ultrasound is not, as you might reasonably think, something you have done when you're pregnant in order to determine the sex of your child. Rather, Ultrasound is a club located near Haifa, complete with slides, 1980's mashups, and loads of Arsim and Frechot (the Israeli equivalent of Guidos and Guidettes, for those of you who watch Jersey Shore, which should be all of you). With a closer look at the Israeli psyche, it's not difficult to derive the reason they named a club after something usually conducted with jelly and a little plastic wand. "Ultra" is a cool word to Israelis. (As is "Mega", which really isn't related at all to my story, but trust me, the word mega is totally overused in Israel. For example, one of the supermarkets we shop at in Akko is called "Megabool". What does that mean, you may ask? No idea. But it sounds cool, right?) The word "sound" is also relevant. It's a club, after all. Put them together, and you get Ultrasound. Whether or not the people who named the club knew of it's specific meaning in English, we will never know. But the name is only outdone by the stamp you get on your hand upon entering - "Balagan Shelanu". Translates to something like Our Chaos. Legit.
So I think the explanation of Ultrasound stands on its own. Simply put, it was a silly night. The 80 of us (North Americans and Europeans) were at the club from roughly 12-4am, and we were probably the first ones to leave. Then we boarded our buses and drove the 40 minutes back to our homely kibbutz, none the worse for wear.
Another last hurrah which I feel needs mention is my parting encounter with the town of Afula. Though I've mentioned the city in previous posts, I've never really given it the credit it deserves for cleanliness, accessibility, and outstanding medical care. It is the last which I wish to highlight now.
Afula - also affectionately referred to as Afufu, Afuna (get it? Fun), and Fu City by Workshoppers - is a small, poor, dirty city located about a half hour drive from Kibbutz Ein Dor. It also happened to be the closest metropolis to the kibbutz. Looking to leave the isolation of kibbutz life? Afuna is your most affordable bet. Want to get a piercing? Fu City. Need to do a little shopping? You guessed it, it's Afula. But that's not all Afula has. It also has a block of falafel shops, as well as a bus station. So if you want to go anywhere off the kibbutz, you have to begin your commute in Afula. Once while walking around Afula, a local asked us where we were from, and then asked us why we came to Afula. For somewhat obvious reasons, they were completely mystified at the fact that we traveled all the way from North America to visit humble Afula. (Subtext: it sucks.) This story somewhat sums up the place.
Needless to say, we spent a lot of time there. In addition to it's myriad falafel and piercing shops, Afula is also home to the bureaucracy of the bank (which I've written about before) and the health clinic, wherein begins my story. Enter socialized medicine. No need to make a doctor's appointment, just show up and take a number. The doctor will see you shortly (or at least after about an hour) and he may even speak English (though it's not likely). Overworked and underpaid, strange and often faulty diagnoses are common. For instance, a friend of mine who had a cyst on his back was given a topical ointment. Another friend of mine who was having breathing problems was prescribed a lower dose of the asthma medication she was already taking.
This particular trip (actually trips, as you'll soon see) wasn't to treat any particular illness, but rather to get a flu shot. I was accompanied by six other Workshoppers whose parents had complained enough that we were finally able to go get the shots. The first time we tried going, the clinic was closed by the time we got there (which was noon on Friday). The second time we were slightly more successful, and made it all the way in the door, up the stairs, and even had our numbers called in less than an hour. We proceeded to the receptionist's desk, and even though I had it all worked out how to say "flu shot" in Hebrew, the English-speaking receptionist beat me to the bunch. She not only knew why we had come, but carefully explained to us that we couldn't get a flu shot without a doctor's note. Because how can they give us flu shots without a doctor's note? It's not as if there were tens of doctors in that very building at the time. No, we would have to have the kibbutz nurse call the head nurse at the clinic. "She'll have the number," the receptionist reassured me.
I called my madricha, Tamar, to see if she could get in touch with the nurse on the kibbutz. The kibbutz clinic was closed, but she would go see what she could do. After locating the kibbutz nurse, it turned out that she actually didn't have the number for the head nurse at the Afula clinic. Shocker. To make a long and painful story short, after two hours of relentless phone calls, coordination, broken Hebrew, and waiting, we left the clinic, having finally been denied flu shots. Goodbye Afula, I thought to myself. Our final hurrah in Fu City could not have gone any more typically.
After saying goodbye to Afula, we had only a few more goodbyes to deliver. We said goodbye to the thousands of stray cats, the old people on their scooters, Minyan Man, and, of course, the kibbutz pub. All those things having been accomplished, we packed up, cleaned up (the house managed to reach it's very messiest during our last week), went to the kibbutz Hanukkah celebration, and left.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Me Talk Pretty One Day
It has come to my attention that my readership has become anxious for a new post, but the truth is that nothing exciting has happened lately. In the past few weeks Workshop 59 has fallen into a bit of a routine. That's not to say that we're unhappy, just that we've become settled. Our weeks follow a predictable pattern punctuated by Yom Kvutsah, Hebrew class, and the occasional Friday night at the pub. And this settled feeling has come not a moment too soon, as in roughly two weeks we'll be leaving our comfortable little privatized village and moving to the city. My kvutsah discovered yesterday that we'll be moving to Akko, the hummus capital of Israel and home of Hapoal Akko soccer team, whose games are frequently interrupted by a chicken crossing the field. Located right on the beach, the city can be traversed by foot in 20 minutes, and is only a short hop north of Haifa, one of the largest and most important cities in Israel.
But taking a cue from David Sedaris, I'd like to now turn my focus to my struggle with the Hebrew language. Having given up the language at the age of thirteen upon graduation from the Portland Jewish Academy, I came to Israel with the goal of gaining back what I lost and really taking a crack at Hebrew. Progress has been slow, but I take my victories as they come, and in between the blank stares and awkward mix-ups I've actually had a few wonderful triumphs. Let me share those with you now.
Starting with my work in the Gan Yeladim (nursery). While being stumped by a four year old is rather frustrating, nothing makes you feel quite as helpless as when they come crying to you about some injustice that occurred on the playground while a) you don't know what they're talking about because you only catch a few pronouns and conjunctions between all the sobbing and foreign vocabulary, and b) even if you could understand them you were never given a crash course in Israeli disciplinary policy. Since four year olds are very impressionable, I usually try to simply convince them that they're fine, "ata beseder," which works in most situations. But when it doesn't, I steer them toward a more qualified Israeli educator to deal with the problem.
However, every once in a while there does arise a situation which requires a stricter assertion of my authority. This is difficult to do because I usually feel about as authoritative and as qualified to take care of these children as, say, a billy goat. As in not qualified at all, and usually downright useless. So keeping that in mind, what do you do when a kid is chewing on an eraser and the only reprimand you can think of in Hebrew is "This is not pleasant"? Not exactly ruling with an iron fist here. The best is when the women who work in the Gan leave me alone to watch over the 25 rugrats as they run around their playground (which is mostly comprised of old kitchen appliances and the like). Not only do I not know their disciplinary policy, first aid, or Hebrew, but I'm also not an employee at the Gan and therefore can't be held liable for any injuries if one of the kiddies chokes on a teapot because the only thing I can say to deter them is "This is not pleasant."
However, the upside to this constant feeling of isolation and helplessness is that the small triumphs seem like huge victories. Take, for example, a conversation I had with a woman at the sewing store in Afula a few weeks ago while buying buttons:
Saleswoman [while I'm poking around the cramped space behind the front desk in order to find the appropriate buttons for a sweater]: What can I help you find? It'll be impossible for you to find anything back there without my help.
Me: I'm looking for buttons for a coat [Lie. It was actually a sweater but that's not in my vocabulary.]
Saleswoman: This sweater? [Pointing to my gray cardigan.]
Me: No, but in the color... [Pointing to my cardigan.]
Saleswoman: Gray.
Me: Yes.
Saleswoman: Do you want buttons this size? [Points to small buttons.]
Me: No, bigger. How about those? [Pointing to large gray buttons on the wall behind the saleswoman].
Saleswoman: These? [She points to the buttons a row below the ones I want.]
Me: No. [Crap, how do I say "up"?] Those. No those. Oops, no those. [How do you say "left"? I used to know how to say it, right up until I went to buy buttons.]
Lacking my help, the saleswoman finally located the right ones, and together we counted out five. I payed, thanked her, and left the store, reveling in the glory of my first fully functional Hebrew conversation with a native speaker.
With each day comes more opportunities to sound like an idiot, but also to learn new words and boost my confidence. One advantage of working with three and four year olds is that they're very forgiving, and can even be very helpful. For example, last week I drew pictures with an adorable girl named Tamar, and she taught me the word "colorful" by telling me that black is not very colorful and neither is white. Instead, she insisted on filling her page by scribbling in bright shades of every color. I practiced my new vocabulary word by telling her that her drawing was very colorful, and, of course, "this is very pleasant."
But taking a cue from David Sedaris, I'd like to now turn my focus to my struggle with the Hebrew language. Having given up the language at the age of thirteen upon graduation from the Portland Jewish Academy, I came to Israel with the goal of gaining back what I lost and really taking a crack at Hebrew. Progress has been slow, but I take my victories as they come, and in between the blank stares and awkward mix-ups I've actually had a few wonderful triumphs. Let me share those with you now.
Starting with my work in the Gan Yeladim (nursery). While being stumped by a four year old is rather frustrating, nothing makes you feel quite as helpless as when they come crying to you about some injustice that occurred on the playground while a) you don't know what they're talking about because you only catch a few pronouns and conjunctions between all the sobbing and foreign vocabulary, and b) even if you could understand them you were never given a crash course in Israeli disciplinary policy. Since four year olds are very impressionable, I usually try to simply convince them that they're fine, "ata beseder," which works in most situations. But when it doesn't, I steer them toward a more qualified Israeli educator to deal with the problem.
However, every once in a while there does arise a situation which requires a stricter assertion of my authority. This is difficult to do because I usually feel about as authoritative and as qualified to take care of these children as, say, a billy goat. As in not qualified at all, and usually downright useless. So keeping that in mind, what do you do when a kid is chewing on an eraser and the only reprimand you can think of in Hebrew is "This is not pleasant"? Not exactly ruling with an iron fist here. The best is when the women who work in the Gan leave me alone to watch over the 25 rugrats as they run around their playground (which is mostly comprised of old kitchen appliances and the like). Not only do I not know their disciplinary policy, first aid, or Hebrew, but I'm also not an employee at the Gan and therefore can't be held liable for any injuries if one of the kiddies chokes on a teapot because the only thing I can say to deter them is "This is not pleasant."
However, the upside to this constant feeling of isolation and helplessness is that the small triumphs seem like huge victories. Take, for example, a conversation I had with a woman at the sewing store in Afula a few weeks ago while buying buttons:
Saleswoman [while I'm poking around the cramped space behind the front desk in order to find the appropriate buttons for a sweater]: What can I help you find? It'll be impossible for you to find anything back there without my help.
Me: I'm looking for buttons for a coat [Lie. It was actually a sweater but that's not in my vocabulary.]
Saleswoman: This sweater? [Pointing to my gray cardigan.]
Me: No, but in the color... [Pointing to my cardigan.]
Saleswoman: Gray.
Me: Yes.
Saleswoman: Do you want buttons this size? [Points to small buttons.]
Me: No, bigger. How about those? [Pointing to large gray buttons on the wall behind the saleswoman].
Saleswoman: These? [She points to the buttons a row below the ones I want.]
Me: No. [Crap, how do I say "up"?] Those. No those. Oops, no those. [How do you say "left"? I used to know how to say it, right up until I went to buy buttons.]
Lacking my help, the saleswoman finally located the right ones, and together we counted out five. I payed, thanked her, and left the store, reveling in the glory of my first fully functional Hebrew conversation with a native speaker.
With each day comes more opportunities to sound like an idiot, but also to learn new words and boost my confidence. One advantage of working with three and four year olds is that they're very forgiving, and can even be very helpful. For example, last week I drew pictures with an adorable girl named Tamar, and she taught me the word "colorful" by telling me that black is not very colorful and neither is white. Instead, she insisted on filling her page by scribbling in bright shades of every color. I practiced my new vocabulary word by telling her that her drawing was very colorful, and, of course, "this is very pleasant."
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