My donkey muscles still hurt

dinner in the sukkah


the music festival, Beresheet








In Jordan













Loved ones,
Sitting here in Ra'nana Israel on my last night in this country I wonder exactly how to even begin to describe my last month here in this country. There are so many layers here, political, social, spiritual, cultural and they all intersect and affect one another in so many ways.
I arrived in Israel after some of the most intense questioning I'd ever experienced in my life at the airport to the warm embrace of Sarah's family in Ra'nana. The presence of Sarah's family and their home was a real blessing all throughout our trip here. David and Judy have four children, who have various friends and significant others that are always coming over and so seem to be used to a constant flow of young people coming and going, talking, yelling, eating, eating, eating. So, they welcomed me quite easily into all of this, treated me as one of their own, fed and housed me and looked after all my needs. I got to eat shabbat dinner with them, see how each friday they bless each one of their children before this special meal. I learned about kosher kitchens and feasted in the sukkah during sukkot. A big big thank you to them, it's nice to have a home in a foriegn land.
Yom Kippur was a few days after we arrived, and after an afternoon meal, we fasted from sunset until sunset and went to services. The entire country shuts down on Yom Kippur. No one drives. Really no one, not even people who are not religious because sometimes people will throw rocks at your car if you are caught driving. But, people might throw rocks at you just for being a woman wearing pants if you walk through the wrong neighborhood in Jerusalem, so things are a little different here. We were here during the high holidays, so numerous times throughout our trip we had to think about coordinating with the fact that buses stop running from sunset to sunset if it's a holiday, or if it's shabbat. Even though many people here are not religous, or if they are religious, they aren't Jewish, the country is run based on the Jewish calender and Jewish beliefs.
The army is also a huge presence here. Everyone goes into it after they graduate college. So, all over the country there are teenagers in army uniforms carrying around their M16s. Regulations dictate that they have to keep their fingers on the trigger as they walk around with their guns. And this mentality of fear, of the feeling of a potential need for violence and the threat of a constant enemy inflitrates the mood of this country and many people who live in it. People on the street, in shops, aren't very nice and are even downright rude. There is a lot of anger here, and it can be hard to escape. When you're raised to hate your neighbor, that has a pretty profound effect on your consciousness.
After Yom Kippur we spent a few days with our friend Nirah from Santa Cruz. She is working on an amazing film right now called Art and Apathy which is about artists from Palestine and Israel in relationship to the political situation here. Our time with Nirah was really special. We spent a night in the desert at the home of a friend of hers (the very first pictures you see), went to the Dead Sea and spent a night in Jerusalem. The dead sea was incredible. We were there around sunset which is just about the time that the mountains on the Jordan side begin to fade from your view into the pinkish dusty haze that is hanging over the desert. We paddled around dog paddle style with our butts sticking way up out of the water because you cant help but float. We packed sulphery mud on ourselves, admired huge chunks of salt we found in it and washed off in a fresh water stream. We tried our best to ignore the gigantic amounts of trash that people had left everywhere. Just because it's the holy land doesn't seem to mean people respect it much.
Throughout all these wanderings we also got a heightened political consciousness from Nirah and heard many of her stories. We saw the places where Beduoin tribes are being forced out into the margins of what used to be their lands. They are now surrounded by a virtual wall that consists of chemical plants and other factories that make the land toxic and inhospitable. They are forced to settle down after thousands of years of being nomadic but then not given any infrastructure such as trash pick up, electricity, sewage. So when their trash piles up and they live in shacks made of car doors and other materials they can scrape together they recieve the reputation of being dirty and lazy from the people who just whizz by these villages when they drive down the highway. If you want to learn more about an organization that is trying to improve this situation, google Bhustan l'Shalom.
Just when I was feeling totally disillusioned about this country, Sarah and I went to a music festival for three days. We had a fantastic time, met amazing people and danced till we couldn't dance no more. The whole experience was one where a picture would have been worth a thousand words, but we were having too much fun to really take many pictures.
From there we spent a few days in Jerusalem. The city is fascinating. Muslims, many different sects of Jews and Christians all live on top of eachother in the same city, but hardly interact with eachother at all. You can walk for five minutes and go from an area where everything is written in Arabic and everyone is Muslim, to an area where everyone is Jewish, all the women wearing skirts and the men wearing white shirts, black jackets and various forms of kipot and then to an area where you may as well be in the US besides the different architecture. And while you are in each of these places you will notice that there is hardly any mingling of Muslims in the Jewish areas or Jews in the Muslim areas. People live as neighbors, but keep themselves and the culture seperate. But, the old city is absolutely beautiful. You still enter through one of the numerous gates that lines the city, and there you wander down narrow streets, you can explore the Arab shouk, sift through beads, eat dates, and admire all the beautiful things that have been imported from India to sell to tourists. The Jewish quarter is nearby, where you can visit the wailing wall to say your prayers, stuffing small pieces of paper into the cracks in the rocks. The mosque is right next door.
The most powerful experience we had in Jerusalem was the day that we went to the wall that Israel is building to keep Palestinians out. I barely have words to describe the absolutely horrifying nature of this wall. It feels massive, permanent, unmoving, impermeable, it is at least 25ft high and made of thick concrete. One side is completey seperated from the other. Nothing and no one gets through unless they pass through a checkpoint where they are forced to show ID and be searched by young faces barely poking out of the various army gear they are wearing. You can't even do that if you don't have the right papers, so many people are permanently seperated from families, loved ones and their land.
In our last week in this area, we spent four days and three nights in Jordan. We crossed the border at She Hussain Bridge where we were forced to wait 45 minutes for a five minute bus ride across a distance we could have walked and pay various large sums of money on both sides of the border. Once across, our taxi wound its way up through the mountains that we had gazed at from the dead sea where there were pine trees sticking sideways out of the hills and the colors of the day were changing rapidly as the sun set. Right as it went down, our driver switched on the radio which then announced the end of the daily fast for Ramadan (so we think, it was in Arabic) and him and the other passanger immediately began to eat little packaged cakes, take sips of water and chain smoke.
We arrived in Aman to Sarah's sister's friend Ahab's house where he is staying right now with his mother. She had ready for us an incredible platter of cabbage leaves stuffed with spiced rice which was some of the best food I've eaten on this trip so far. In the evening we walked around down town Aman with Ahab, experienced all the bustle and bright lights of people shopping in preparation for the celebration at the end of Ramadan. The vast majority of the city was not there 15 years ago. When we returned to Ahab's house, we found that his mom had set out three nightgowns and little slippers for us to use. When we left the next day to go to Petra, she insisted that we take all three of the nightgowns, in addition to belly dancing paraphanalia that we had admired with us. This woman was not going to take no for an answer.
In Petra we wandered through wadis (washes) climbing on rocks and exploring all of the caves and huge facades that people began to carve on the rocks here thousands of years ago. It was amazing, not only the facades, but also the pink and purple rocks that jutted up everywhere. Until 20 years ago a Bedouin tribe lived in the caves here. They were asked to move by the government and the area turned into an expensive park for tourists. Now all the Bedouins work in the park, selling rides on donkeys, camels and horses. One young man from the village, Ahmed, befriended us and took us on a free donkey ride up to the highest point in the park where there is a huge carved monastary. We mounted our mighty steeds, Matteus and Suzanna, and plodded and leaped gracefully up the mountain trail past all those people huffing and puffing while we sang bob marley songs with Ahmed. At the top we drank tea made over a little fire of twigs and watched the sunset into the desert. Because of the dust haze, we were able to look directly at the sun, see it as the big firey ball that it really is, and when it finally went down it looked as though the earth was swallowing it. Our ride out of the park, was a race against darkness where darkness won, and we rode out through the canyon in near pitch blackness with the stars coming out bright above us.
Many of you have expressed your curiosity about my impressions on this country. All I can tell you is that they are slightly muddled. On the one hand I have never been so horrified by the actions a government has taken against it's people. It sickens me that they would spend thousands of dollars to move boulders into lands where they demolished the houses of Palestinians so the people cannot rebuild. It sickens me that they are systematically erradicating the culture of the indigenous people of the land and ignoring the multitude of cultures and beliefs that has existed in this area for thousands of years. On the other hand, my whole experience here has been incredible. Sarah and I have experienced a rhythm and flow to our travels that was not present before. We have been shown amazing amounts of kindness and strength, which are only magnified further by the contrasting negativity and hatred that hangs over the country. I understand why this land is called the holy land, I can feel that somewhere in my heart. Not at the wailing wall, not during the prayer calls, not at any specific moment or place, but there is something here moves me, subtley permeates my being. This place has been a great teacher for me, and I am thankful for that.
Tonight I fly to India...
So, what were you all for Halloween? I was sitting on a bus in Jordan, no costume for me.
So much love,
Liz