tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44906495502481474372024-03-08T06:00:33.783-08:00Shiksa in the Promised LandReflections of One American Woman on a Summer in IsraelAnnie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-44363569274156575822008-08-07T02:44:00.000-07:002008-08-07T02:46:23.792-07:00Holy Site SurpriseLast week I returned to Jerusalem for one last visit before I leave Israel. My family and I took a tour of the tunnels that lie under the Western Wall. During this fascinating tour, the guide explained how the retaining walls of the Temple Mount were built (all of the building that took place under Herod’s reign here is so impressive that I have to keep reminding myself that according to my Christian upbringing that “respect” is not something I’m supposed to be feeling toward Herod), how they withstood Roman attempts to demolish them during the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and why the Western Wall is holy to Jews.<br /><br />I did not know this would happen before I took the tour, but the tour passed by the “holy of holies,” the part of the wall that is believed to be the inner sanctum of the Second Temple and is the most sacred site in Judaism. The tour guide stopped the tour for a moment so that participants could take a moment to pray there if they so wished. And what do you know? In contrast to the Western Wall, access to the holy of holies is not segregated! It is accessible to everyone equally -- no separate sections for men and women! Everyone who comes can be present to pray to or think about God -- together!<br /><br />My family and I jumped at the chance. All together, we put our heads against the Wall. The boys put their hands on the Wall; my husband and I put our hands on the boys. We enjoyed a peaceful moment together, as a family. After the frustration of being separated from my family during our earlier visit to the Wall (see “Up Against the Wall,” July 11 post) this visit, which took place with the three people who matter most to me, was meaningful. My eyes filled. When we turned away from the Wall, a few tears spilled onto my cheeks. As I wiped them away, some people looked at me, perhaps assuming that visiting the “holiest of holies” was so important to me that it moved me to tears. (Funny, I could almost hear them think, she doesn’t look Jewish). But of course what really mattered was that I was finally able to experience the Western Wall with my family.<br /><br />Afterward I was so content that I could almost forgive the orthodox rabbis for segregating women and men at the Wall. I could almost forget that they give men at least twice the space at the Wall that they allocate to women. I could almost absolve them of giving the men wide wooden desks near the wall at which to spread out and study Torah, while the women get narrow little desks that provide barely enough space on which to spread a cheap paperback novel. I could do all this -- almost.<br /><br />As long as my holy site ship appeared to be in, I made one last attempt to visit the Dome of the Rock. Over the course of the summer, I’ve tried every possible way to get in: persuasion, money, connections. None if it worked. The guard at the door last week barely even looked at us non-Muslims begging for entry. “After seven years?” he asked rhetorically. “Not now.”Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-12415832557270870012008-08-04T06:48:00.001-07:002008-08-04T06:55:22.199-07:00OMG! Maybe I'm really Baha'i!<p>Why visit only the holy places of the world’s three major monotheistic religions? I had the chance recently to get to know one of the minor monotheistic groups a bit better as well by visiting the Baha’i Gardens in Haifa. Somewhat incongruously, given Israel’s identification as a Jewish state, Haifa and Akko, both on Israel’s uppermost northern coast, serve as the world center of the Baha’i faith. The Baha’i have a shrine in Haifa to one of their prophets; the remains of its other prophet are buried in Akko. The Haifa shrine is surrounded by a kilometerlong garden, which is made up of eighteen terraces running straight up the side of Mount Carmel, the mountain on which Haifa is built.<br /><br />I knew little of the Baha’i before going, so I found the Baha’i’s central principles on the web. Here they are:<br /><br />-- Abandonment of prejudice<br />-- Full equality between the sexes<br />-- Recognition of the oneness and commonality of the world’s religions<br />-- Elimination of extreme poverty and wealth<br />-- Universal compulsory education<br />-- The responsibility of the individual to search independently for truth<br />-- Establishing a world federal system<br />-- Recognizing that faith and reason should be in harmony.<br /><br />Hey! That sounds just like what I believe! Individuality, fairness, thoughtfulness, equity – those are my values too! (Well, to be fair, I’ve never really considered the idea of a world federal system, but I am for government-run universal health care, which would be a start, wouldn’t it?) And to top it off, there are no churches, synagogues, or mosques, and the Baha’i administrative structure is very limited. That all works out great, because I don’t deal well with bureaucracy and I’ve always hated going to church. Plus, the Baha’i have gardens. And I like to garden! This was starting to sound like a good match.<br /><br />(<em>Great</em>, my husband responded when I shared the revelation that I may, at root, be Baha’i. <em>You’ve managed to find the only religion on earth whose members have been persecuted almost as much as the Jews</em>.)<br /><br />But back to my trip to the Baha’i Gardens. I tried to get into the shrine, which is supposed to be stunning, but was turned away. (This was disappointing, especially since I was still residing in the mental penumbra of my failed Dome of the Rock visit. How many more religions, I wondered, will reject my attempts to honor their holy sites before I leave Israel?)<br /><br />So I took the garden tour instead. These gardens were unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Everything in them is exactly symmetrical and perfectly ordered. Red geraniums, orange marigolds, purple petunias, flowering cactuses, and white stone – every one impeccable, and offset by the greenest possible grass. They are also the most manicured gardens I have ever visited. There was not so much as a single blade of grass out of place. Even in the midday heat, I saw at least 20 people tending the gardens, a task that must take place around the clock. I got the sense that it must be one person’s job to stand near the bushes to catch any errant leaf that shows the temerity to fall – the gardens are that perfect. One of the jobs of the missionaries who come to Haifa, my non-Baha’i tour guide tells me, is to wash by hand the hundreds of lights that run the length of the gardens. (It’s hard for me to believe that that is true, but the gardens are so perfect that the claim is at least plausible.)<br /><br />There’s a fastidiousness about it all that seems at odds with my understanding of the Baha’i. They prize individuality of thought, yet the central showcase of their religion is managed in such an uptight manner? Not only are the gardens themselves impeccable, access to them is controlled carefully. The shrine itself is open very few hours of the day. And more than one guard stands at each gate to the shrine and its gardens, making sure that those who enter are wearing respectful clothing. No visible knees, shoulders, or anything remotely suggesting cleavage are permitted in the garden or shrine, which are for the Baha’i a holy place. Both men and women are asked to employ the top buttons on their shirts, and women with shirts that show even the area just below their necks seemed to wind up wearing shawls. I respect the need to maintain dignity at a holy place, but it strikes me that the Baha’i are much more fastidious about their holy place than other faiths have been about theirs when I’ve visited them here in Israel.<br /><br />There is definitely more for me to understand about this religion, about which I currently know so little. Its values – the emphasis on commonality, oneness, reason, and individual thought – sound so appealing. Yet the little bit of its world center to which I gain access could come across as the world’s single most visible monument to obsessive-compulsive disorder. At the end of the day, I’m just not sure what to make of it.<br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-91536726521337145072008-07-31T11:16:00.000-07:002008-07-31T11:20:15.256-07:00MySpaceIf there is one thing that clearly defines me as an American when I travel abroad, it is this: I like my space. <br /><br />I don’t mean that I need to travel through wide, open panoramas, or cavernous, echoing canyons. Purple mountain majesty and amber waves of grain are all nice and well, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean that wherever it is that I happen to me, I like for there to be a small, invisible cushion of space around me where other people are not. That’s all, just a little space between me and the next person. Especially if that person is a stranger.<br /><br />I know that this preference is not shared by people in many other places in the world. But knowing that this value is not shared and living the value difference are two entirely different things.<br /><br />So it bothers me here in Israel when, as I prepare to bag my groceries, a woman steps in front of me, grabs a plastic bag, and starts shoving her potatoes in. Technically, we could both do it at the same time, but it’s a pretty tight squeeze. Or when, as I wait in one of twenty chairs in the near-deserted post office, someone walks in and sits down in the chair right next to me. Or when, as I sit on a blanket on the grass in a park, a person getting ready to leave the park walks right along the edge of my blanket, instead of arcing around the blanket to avoid me, as most Americans would.<br /><br />An example: I was recently enjoying a late afternoon beach excursion with the kids. The beach was pretty empty. So I was able to plunk us down in one of the few shaded places on the beach. Perfect. The kids and I could play in the waves, then stretch out on our towels without the bother of the sun glaring in our eyes. <br /><br />And that is just what we did for a half hour or so, when out of the corner of my eye I spied a man standing nearby, beach towel draped over his arm. He was eyeing the three shaded spaces on the beach, trying to decide where to sit. The kids and I occupied one of those spaces. A couple lounged in the second space. The third was empty. <br /><br />A sudden sense of impending doom came over me. What if this guy came to sit right in our space? How could I relax at the beach with this guy right next to us? How would I comfortably read, shake the sand out of my suit, write in my journal, or discipline my children, with someone else sitting there too? <br /><br />I looked around in fear. Then I decided to deploy the only weapon at my disposal: my children.<br /><br />“Kids,” I whispered. “Can you start, like, yelling or something?”<br /><br />“Huh?” The boys looked up at me from their sand digging, surprised.<br /><br />“Shout. Yell.”<br /><br />“What are you talking about, Mom?” <br /><br />“Make some noise,” I told them under my breath. “Loud, obnoxious noise.”<br /><br />Their lips curled up in amused surprise. Was their mother actually asking them to misbehave? <br />“Uh, why?” one asked.<br /><br />“Because I told you to, that’s why.” <br /><br />The boys looked at each other, then raised their voices halfheartedly to call out a few nonsense words. The man with the beach towel scrutinized us. I started to get a bad feeling. This was not going well.<br /><br />“Louder!” I told the boys. They stared at me. Apparently my kids, so adept at disobedience, cannot misbehave on command.<br /><br />Beach towel man began his approach.<br /><br />“OK, kids. I’m serious. Start throwing sand!”<br /><br />“What?!” the boys jaws dropped, stunned, as though I’d just asked them to dismember each other.<br /><br />“Throw some sand,” I hissed. This was frustrating. Many afternoons at the beach they have sand fights so fierce that they create a virtual sandstorm. At some points the sand has been so thick in the air that the beach has looked like a scene from the bad 1980's movie Dune. But now that I needed them, the boys were just sitting there passively, like a pair of altar boys in church on Sunday.<br /><br />My younger son limply tossed a handful of sand in the air, then watched it land next to him. He looked up at me.<br /><br />“Not good enough.” I coached under my breath. “Don’t just toss it. Throw it. Really throw it. Come on, you can do it.”<br /><br />He stared at me again. Then, finally, he lifted his arm. “Ready! Aim! Fire!” he yelled. Sand flew everywhere. <br /><br />“Good one!” I said with glee.<br /><br />Too late. Mr. Beach Towel was already preparing to land in the square of shade with us. I dropped back on my towel, closed my eyes, and tried to pretend that he was not there.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-20199632136220966592008-07-28T08:55:00.000-07:002008-07-28T08:56:53.793-07:00PetraAt midday, Petra’s landscape is stunning. Even if there were not a lost ancient city built into its mountains, you would still go to see it. You would go simply to experience the geology of it. You would go to climb its red hills, gaze out over Jordan from its rocky cliffs and run your hands along its smooth, rounded rocks, worn away by wind over thousands of years. You would go to watch the shape and color and shadow of the rocks morph with the changing light at different times of day.<br /><br />But Petra is more than just geology. Its intricate façades of temples that combine elements of Roman, Greek and Egyptian architecture are carved into the crimson mountain. They make what would otherwise be merely one of the most breathtaking experiences of one’s life one of the most curious as well: how exactly did the Nabateans carve these buildings into the rock? The facades nearly put more well-known classical structures to shame. The Parthenon once impressed me. But it’s just a freestanding structure built from stone. Petra’s temples are somehow carved right into the sides of mountains. I may never be awed by a Corinthian column in Europe again now that I’ve seen one that is just as ornate, symmetrical and delicate scraped out of the side of a cliff.<br /><br />Yet once you step inside the temples you find yourself in a simple, hollowed-out cave: O Potemkin temple. The Nabateans built these impressive structures at Petra as places to worship their gods. The contrast between the exteriors and interiors of the temples and tombs is puzzling. Did the Nabateans think that their gods only cared about the facades of the buildings? Was the central tenet of their religion that it’s what’s outside, not what’s inside, that counts? Or is the startling contrast between an elaborately carved façade and the cave it fronts simply an acknowledgement of the limits of engineering? My understanding of the Nabateans is so embarrassingly small that I cannot begin to answer these questions.<br /><br />If Petra by day amazes, Petra by night enchants. Candles in simple luminarias light the path through the siq, the gorge that is the primary entrance to the city. My young son clings to my hand as we walk through the night. We imagine that we are a mother and son walking the same moonlit path thousands of years ago. The moon reflects off of the sides of the gorge, illuminating the siq to transform it once again. Its beauty makes the elaborate Nabatean temples seem unnecessary. Surely if divinity is present anywhere, it must be here in the reflection of moonlight on mountains.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-57108091535655403772008-07-25T01:31:00.000-07:002008-07-25T01:34:46.949-07:00All in All, it's Just Another Prayer in the Wall<p>My kids gave me permission to share the four prayers that they left at the Western Wall in Jerusalem (in accordance with Jewish tradition, they stuck them in the Wall). They are: </p><ul><li>“Homes for everyone”</li><li>“All peas”</li><li>“No illegal fishing”</li><li>“Make grandma better.” </li></ul><p>So to translate, they prayed to end homelessness, achieve world peace, preserve marine life and help a sick family member. I doubt that many adults’ Wall prayers have been more thoughtful. (Although to be fair, a modest degree of parental intervention was exercised to discourage “Make the Georgetown Hoyas the 2009 NCAA Champions!” from being added to the list.) <br /> </p>Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-71444127364291521612008-07-22T11:34:00.001-07:002008-07-22T11:35:52.265-07:00My Dome Dream, DeniedPersonally, I blame Kierkegaard. <br /><br />He’s the one responsible for my little obsession with the Dome of the Rock.<br /><br />The background: I’ve never been a very religious person. But my religious skepticism was at a high point in college. At that point, I’d gone through all the motions of a kid’s traditional Catholic religious education and determined the moment that I was confirmed at the ripe age of 13 that I had had enough. I went on to spend part of high school reading Tolstoy’s essays trashing organized religion, which had somehow found their way into my ignorant hands (not to mention a mind so limited that it enabled me to conveniently overlook Tolstoy’s broader point that Christian spirituality is the goal of an individual’s existence). Bottom line: like most teenagers, I thought I knew a lot, but in reality knew little.<br /><br />Then in college I signed up for a class on the Philosophy of Religion, for reasons having mostly to do with the reputation of the professor. The class was totally different from anything I’d taken before. Up until then, I had thrived on the hyperlogical parsing of my philosophy classes (Metaphysics: “If you eat a bowl of Corn Flakes in the morning, are you the same person you were when you got out of bed an hour earlier? OK, now what if you eat a bowl of Corn Flakes, then cut your toenails? Are you <em>still</em> the same person?”) and hyperanalytic examination of English lit (how many different possible meanings can the presence of a snake in a poem have?)<br /><br />But Philosophy of Religion was about the big, sweeping thinkers, people who were intensely involved in explaining matters of the soul and the meaning of life: Buber, Bertrand Russell, etc. And so I came to read “Fear and Trembling,” Soren Kierkegaard’s essay on faith, told through the story of Abraham and Isaac. (Briefly, God asks Abraham to kill his beloved son, Isaac. Abraham, without questioning God’s directive, thoroughly prepares to do the awful deed. At the last second, God stays Abraham’s knife, sparing Isaac.)<br /><br />Kierkegaard’s interpretation of this story is gripping. He describes the story as the ultimate expression of faith in God. God asks Abraham to make a terrible sacrifice, to commit an unthinkable act. Abraham submits to God’s will because his faith in God is complete. He is prepared to give God whatever he asks, no matter how dear. Kierkegaard retells the story to repudiate people who rely excessively on reason, dismissing passion out of hand. People like me.<br /><br />Frankly, the whole thing shook me up a bit. Here was Kierkegaard, illustrating the beauty and intelligence of faith with one of the most compelling stories of the Old Testament. The story did not turn me into a believer (nor did it transform Kierkegaard, who criticizes himself for not sharing Abraham’s faith), but it did give me newfound respect for the faithful. And it seared the story of Abraham and Issac into my mind, where it has remained for the past 20 years. I could never have made the choice that Abraham did, to sacrifice my own child because God asked me to. But like Kierkegaard, my own lack of faith only increased my awe of Abraham.<br /><br />So all this made the Dome of the Rock my must-see site in Israel this summer. The Dome is the Muslim shrine on Temple Mount in Jerusalem that contains the rock that Muslims, Jews and Christians all believe to be the site on which Abraham prepared to slay his son (though important elements of the Muslim version differ from the version accepted by Jews and Christians). Muslims also believe the rock to be the site on which Mohammad took his famous “night journey,” traveling from Arabia to Jerusalem before glimpsing heaven. I’d initially read that access to the Dome had been closed to non-Muslims, but heard through the tourist grapevine that the restrictions had been lifted: if I went early in the day, I would get in along with the other non-Muslims.<br /><br />So I awakened my family early one Sunday morning, ate a quick breakfast, and headed out. As we walked, my feet began to feel quick and light. I was, I realized, excited – and just not everyday excited. It was the kind of excitement I usually reserve for things that are for me important spiritual moments, like seeing U2 in concert. I started to walk more quickly, navigating the Old City and then the security surrounding the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. <br /><br />We reached the Temple Mount and stood looking at the outside of the Dome of the Rock. The shrine’s exterior was spectacular. Its golden dome gleamed in the early morning light. The colors of the sides of the shrine – topaz blue, emerald green, deep shades of red – boldly declared themselves against the pale Jerusalem stone that makes up most of the rest of the Temple Mount. White Arabic writing proclaiming the supremacy of Islam encircled the shrine in a bright blue border. <br /><br />I circumnavigated the Dome, looking for an open entrance. I found it, and it was guarded by several men dressed in plain clothes. No one was going in or out of the building: a bad sign. Surely, if they were allowing non-Muslims in, people would be lined up for blocks.<br /><br />“Can I go in?” I asked one of the Arab men standing there, hoping that he spoke English.<br /><br />“No. Closed,” he responded, turning away.<br /><br />“Will it be open later?” I asked optimistically, certain that I must have just gotten the timing wrong and missed the Dome’s few open hours. I’d just have to come back later, or another day.<br /><br />“No,” he turned back to look at me. “Always closed.”<br /><br />But I came all this way! I wanted to say. All this way, to think about Abraham, and God, and faith. How can you not let me in? Don’t we all share this site – Muslims, Jews, Christians? Isn’t this the one place we should all be able to come and experience God in our own way? The place we can acknowledge an element our religions share in common, instead of arguing about those that divide us?<br /><br />But I didn’t say anything. It would be futile. And, mindful of Temple Mount’s history --not to mention the presence of a number of armed men hovering nearby -- I didn’t want to make a scene. Instead, I walked around the building again. For a moment, I seemed to be in luck: a door at the back was propped open, and some European tourists had stuck their heads and cameras in and were clicking furiously. I stood behind them for a moment, and when they cleared out and I approached the door. Suddenly, the same man who told me that the Dome would always be closed appeared from the darkness inside and shut the door in my face.<br /><br />Undaunted, I found a window on the side of the shrine and pressed my face against its metal screen, squinting to see inside. It took my eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness, and I scanned the room to make out the image of the rock. But all I saw through the dim light was scaffolding. There was construction going on, and sheets seemed to be hung from the scaffolds, blocking any view of the rock.<br /><br />I pulled back from the window. Another woman was standing next to me, also American. I worried that she thought I was crazy for pressing myself against the window. All the other tourists were quietly wandering around the perimeter of the larger Temple Mount, apparently content to regard the Dome from a distance. So I told her how I’d always wanted to see the Dome, and that it was the one place in Jerusalem that I most wanted to see.<br /><br />“I get that,” she said. She paused.<br /><br />“There’s something about it,” she said, putting her hand to the window. “Just being in its presence you feel something, like it’s got some kind of power.”<br /><br />For a moment, I looked at her like she was the crazy one. <br /><br />Then it hit me: She was right. I actually did feel something there. Something deep, and powerful. Something that, crazy as it sounds, seemed to be coming from the rock inside.<br /><br />I looked around. There was something about the whole Temple Mount area that was, well, serene. Peaceful. The kind of place that even I might want to come to think about God.<br /><br />I nodded at the woman, and walked around the building again. I tried another window, peering in but seeing little. I gave up, and tried to satisfy myself with walking around the Temple Mount, looking out over the olive trees and thinking about all the people of different faiths who had come here over centuries to be with God. <br /><br />Slowly, I turned back to the Dome and prepared to leave. My husband and kids had endured my obsession long enough, waiting patiently in what little shade Temple Mount offers. But suddenly I saw that the Dome’s door was open again. A man was carrying in carpets piled on his shoulders. He propped the door open and came out again, lifting wood that sat outside the door. As he prepared to carry it in, I quietly approached the open door. I stopped about three feet away from the threshold and stared in to the darkness. The man with the wood examined me suspiciously, then went inside. <br /><br />A second later, a man in a blue uniform and more than one gun came to the door and looked at me. Even by Israeli standards, he was packing some serious heat. Had he been sent to intimidate me? If so, it worked: I’m not brave.<br /><br />The man looked tough. But he looked me in the eye and said “No entrance” gently, in a way that seemed to tell me that it was OK to stay where I was and look in. He left the door open.<br /><br />I scrutinized the darkness beyond the doorway for a minute. But it was no use. The scaffolding, the sheets, and the darkness kept me from getting any view of the rock. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to recapture the feeling I had had earlier by the window, the feeling of power and connection. It was gone.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-50265600238722817502008-07-19T23:47:00.001-07:002008-07-19T23:50:08.190-07:00My favorite Hebrew word (of those in my limited vocabulary)<strong>Melafafon.</strong> Isn’t that pretty? It sounds like “mellifluous,” one of my favorite English words. But“mellifluous” is almost onomatopoetic – the word sounds like what it is meant to convey. “Melafafon” is Hebrew for cucumber.<br /><br />My least favorite Hebrew word? It’s hard to choose just one. It might be “<em>shta’im</em>,” which means “two.” There are many Hebrew words that aren’t exactly music to my ears. This must be both because Hebrew sounds so different from English because my limited exposure to Hebrew hinders a fuller appreciation of the language. What sounds good to you depends on what you are accustomed to hearing: Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel laureate Russian poet, said that when he first heard English spoken it sounded like a dog barking.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-22714029512207159342008-07-17T21:53:00.000-07:002008-07-19T23:50:54.106-07:00HellatNearly every place I’ve visited in Israel has left me wanting more. No visit seems quite long enough, and I hate to leave any interesting sites unvisited. As I leave these places, I promise myself that I will return someday. But doubt nags: life is short, there are so many great places to see around the world, and who knows whether I will in fact ever return?<br /><br />What a relief it was, then, to find someplace that I will be happy to never visit again: Eilat.<br /><br />Eilat sounds great on paper. If you picture the Negev desert as an inverted triangle, like an arrow pointing down at the Red Sea, Eilat is at the very tip of the arrow. It is Israel’s sole access point to the Red Sea and a transition point to the Sinai. The waters nearby offer some of the best snorkeling on the planet. You can stand on the beach in Eilat and look across the Gulf of Aqaba to see three other countries: Jordan to your immediate East, Egypt to your West, and off in the distance, but just a few miles away, Saudi Arabia.<br /><br />In reality, Eilat is a seaside development nightmare. I got some hints of this before I came. More than one travel agent compared Eilat to Las Vegas, my least favorite American city. But it’s hard to imagine just how corrupted the edge of the Red Sea – perhaps the single body of water that has the greatest mythical prominence in the minds of most Westerners (with the possible exception of Loch Ness)–actually is until you get there. Huge modern hotels are piled on top of each other, some of them indeed appallingly Vegaslike in their dimensions. Eilat’s status as a tax-free zone has seeded shopping centers just a few steps from the water. They closely resemble the outlet malls that are right off of the exit ramps of American highways. And to top it off, Eilat is the hottest city in Israel. Temperatures were over 100 degrees the entire time we were there, adding significantly to my perception that I had just arrived in Hell (inspiring me to rename the city "Hellat"). Moses, were he alive today, would refuse to part the Red Sea knowing what awaited the Jews at the gateway to the promised land: better to lie in graves in Egypt than to spend your vacation time shopping tax free for Nike sneakers in a strip mall that stands where a beach should be.<br /><br />I might not have visited Eilat if it weren’t one of the few border crossings that provide access from Israel to Jordan. But while there, I wanted to swim in the Red Sea, so I could make good on my promise to myself that I would swim in each of Israel’s major seas – the Red, the Dead, and the Med – while I’m here. (Yes, I'll swim in the Galilee too, even though it does not rhyme.). So there I stood on the banks of the Red Sea, trying to ignore the Burger King and Sbarro behind me, looking out on the deep blue hue of the sea. Intent on submerging myself in the water, I waded through three feet of floating cigarette butts at the shore to reach the appropriate depth. The water was refreshingly cool (in contrast to the warm bath that the Mediterranean becomes this time of year), but the trash on the shore disgusted me, so I did not stay more than a moment once I’d gotten wet.<br /><br />I returned to my hotel to enjoy the relative clean of the hotel pool. It was crowded with twentysomething Israelis, smoking and ready to party. Eilat seems to be the place to go if you are young, Israeli, and looking to get lucky (though to judge from the number of men sleeping in the chairs in the hotel lobby the next morning, success is not guaranteed). My kids and I dove into the water, then emerged to inhale a low, transparent cloud of secondhand smoke. At the side of the pool, a young woman was licking the thighs of a man wearing a red bathing suit. I sat there for a moment wondering whether my Hebrew was good enough to thank her for introducing my young children to the concept of fellatio. It was not, so instead I left the pool.<br /><br />Eilat’s great strength is its coral reefs, tropical fish, and scuba diving. My kids are too young to scuba, but we all wanted to see the reefs. So we bought tickets for a glass bottomed boat to get a glimpse of it. After waiting around for hours in the 105 degree heat for our designated ticket time, we got on the boat and stared out its glass windows into the turquoise water. But instead of offering a breathtaking guide to the wonders of the reef, the tour was a funeral dirge for corals. The guide provided an honest description of the damage to the corals caused by boats, divers, and pollution. The lifeless corals underneath our boat spoke silently to the harm that has been done. There were more than a few colorful fish, and some of the corals were beautiful, but many of them were beige and lifeless. What a depressing sight. The guide encouraged tour participants to take measures like removing plastic bags found in the Red Sea from the water to keep dolphins from mistaking them for jellyfish and eating them. But he left the question of how on earth to save marine life when humans are building shopping malls on the beach unaddressed.<br /><br />I did manage to find two things to appreciate about Eilat. First, the restaurants are good by Israeli standards, and I could, at least temporarily, ignore my guilt at eating the beautiful creatures we saw on the boat tour for dinner. But curiously, my favorite part of Eilat was the border crossing with Jordan. The Israeli side of the crossing is named after Yitzhak Rabin, the late prime minister who worked hard for peace only to be assassinated by an Israeli who considered him a traitor (like many men of peace, the hatred he aroused among some of his own people matched the admiration bestowed by the outside world). Inside the building there were great photographs of Rabin. You saw him as a young man in his Army uniform, an older man walking through the streets of Israel, and, finally, at ceremonies sealing peace deals with the late King Hussein of Jordan as a young Bill Clinton stood by, looking like the kid who has been unexpectedly invited to eat at the grown-up table. Nothing about the border crossing was at all remarkable, but I loved the pictures. Despite Rabin’s tragic end, they reminded me that progress toward peace is possible when the timing is right and a few committed leaders are willing to work hard and invest some political capital. The relative ease of crossing the border was itself a testament to the relationship between Jordan and Israel that Rabin helped forge. It was easy to cross into Israel from Jordan, in contrast to my experience a few weeks earlier when I returned from a two hour visit to Bethlehem to cross “the barrier” that separates the rest of the West Bank from Jerusalem.<br /><br />During my last evening in Eilat, on a walk back to the hotel, I passed a construction site. Signs on the walls of the site proudly announced that a new “Ice Palace” was being built there. One set of pictures on the wall showed people inside a huge structure riding a ski lift over a mountain of fake snow. In another set of pictures, penguins were playing. I stood there sweating in the heat of the night and contemplated the irony of importing penguins to one of the hottest places on earth while tropical fish are dying a few feet away as a result of environmental degradation. It was a fitting moment on which to end my visit.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-252096692130921642008-07-17T00:40:00.000-07:002008-07-17T00:46:16.654-07:00Eight Unpleasant Israel Travel Surprises<strong>1) Whither fresh, tasty challah?</strong> Although the coffee is very good here, the baked goods disappoint. You can get an OK croissant, but I’ve found most of the pastries, cookies, danishes, rolls, etc that I’ve tried (and as a hard-core carbs addict, I’ve tried many) to be pretty tasteless. Even the challah I’ve had tastes stale. If you can’t get good challah here in Israel, then maybe it’s time to give up trying.<br /><br /><strong>2) Overly, uh, friendly older men at the beach.</strong> Is there a sign pinned to the back of my bathing suit that says “Easy American woman: Disregard wedding ring and nearby offspring”? For the first few weeks I was here at the beach, I attracted a surprising number of new senior friends. “Want to swim with me?” <em>No.</em> “Where is your hotel?” <em>The Gaza Hilton. I’ll meet you there. <br /></em><br /><strong>3) The Daytona Beach spring break I never had.</strong> With the advent of high tourist season on July 1, our otherwise innocuous beach resort community suddenly acquired the sound systems Madonna takes on tour. For at least two hours each afternoon and again starting at about 9 in the evening, the hotel across the street from us blasts deep-bass disco music at its outdoor pool for happy, dancing tourists. Many nights the poolside dance party competes with loud music from other nearby venues. Perhaps you’ve not really experienced Israel until you’ve watched a bunch of French tourists dance in their bathing suits to the Hebrew version of the “Hokey Pokey,” but that’s a risk I would have been willing to take.<br /><br /><strong>4) Clean up after your dogs, people.</strong> Enough said.<br /><br /><strong>5) Evil Knevil appears to be alive, well, and living in Tel Aviv.</strong> The drivers here are OK, but the motorcyclists seem to obtain special permits to be jerks. Weaving in and out of highway traffic, driving down the sidewalk -- nothing is off limits. Some bikers do that kind of stuff in the US too, but there I’d estimate that about one out of every ten motorcyclists lives by his/her own rules. Here it is in the inverse. And don’t even get me started on the Vespas…<br /><br /><strong>6) Is the Mediterranean the world’s garbage disposal?</strong> I’ve read that the Mediterranean Sea has become filled with trash, and when an occasional wave of garbage washes up on the beach, I believe it. Yesterday I found myself literally swimming through trash: the plastic bags, bottles and paper wrappers outnumbered the jellyfish that like to nibble on my kids’ legs. The Mediterranean is so beautiful – it we can’t keep it clean, I have little hope for the rest of the planet.<br /><br />7<strong>) Put on a happy face. </strong> What does it take to get an Israeli to smile? Maybe I just perceive a lack of smiliness because I am constantly trying to overcome my nonexistent Hebrew skills with niceness and smiles (although I suspect that my combination of poor language ability and vacant smiles is leading people who encounter me here to refer to me as “The Village Idiot.”) In any event, almost no one ever smiles back, at least not in the informal communications that constitute most of my interaction with Israelis. Finally, after I’d been here three weeks, the clerk at the bakery smiled at me after he figured out I was bluffing my way through my Hebrew. His smile was so welcome that I almost hugged him.<br /><br /><strong>8) Just get in line.</strong> When I told a friend in the U.S. that I planned to come to Israel this summer, he immediately spouted off an unfamiliar Hebrew phrase. “What does that mean?” I asked. “I was here first,” he responded. “It’s the only thing you really need to know to survive Israel.” At the time I thought he was kidding. Not so. Many Israelis seem to have an outsized sense of self-entitlement that obscures basic courtesies, including any idea of how to queue.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-48342661421556243302008-07-17T00:35:00.000-07:002008-07-17T00:48:51.530-07:00Eight Pleasant Israel Travel Surprises<strong>1) Café culture.</strong> The coffee here is great. And maybe it’s all the French tourists, but Israel has a pretty European approach to serving it: many people here sit in outdoor cafes, spend an hour or so sipping and talking, and then move on with their lives. For me, this is the perfect antidote to the Starbucks grab-n-go culture (Apparently, Starbucks tried to open stores in Israel and failed). After spending years wandering around the US doing errands, working, taking kids to school, all with cup firmly locked in my hand, it’s refreshing to be reminded: Coffee can be consumed sitting down, sometimes even while socializing with other people.<br /><br /><strong>2) Beaches.</strong> Yes, I’ve said it elsewhere on this blog, but it’s worth repeating: I loooove the beaches here. (Though there are some caveats, see next posting).<br /><br /><strong>3) Public endorsement of flatulence?</strong> “PazGas” is the name of the gas utility where we live. Even in places where there’s not a lot of English to be either read or heard, the utility stickers bear both Hebrew and English words, with “PazGas” spelled in large, friendly blue letters. I smile every time I see one.<br /><br /><strong>4) Alarmingly flavorful food.</strong> The food just tastes better here. In fact, it tastes better everywhere I travel than it does in the US. This, together with the fact that no one at the FDA seems to have left their desks long enough to perform a food safety inspection in the past ten years, worries me. What exactly is the US food industry putting in our food, anyhow? Why does something as basic as ground beef taste so much, well, beefier here in Israel?<br /><br /><strong>5) And good wine to go with it.</strong> I’m no expert and have not done a comprehensive survey – the heat here is too intense for me to even think about drinking much – but every time I buy wine here, it’s Israeli wine, and I’ve been a very satisfied customer. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Israeli beer.<br /><br /><strong>6) My verdict on Israeli drivers: Not so bad.</strong> I’d heard terrible things about Israeli drivers. And this is probably damning with faint praise, but the drivers here aren’t any worse than the ones in the three major East Coast cities I’ve lived in. I’d say that seventy-five percent of them stop for pedestrians in crosswalks, a big improvement over the 1 in 1,000 drivers who slow down for crosswalk pedestrians in my hometown.<br /><br /><strong>7) Perpendicular parking. </strong>Let’s just say that some street parkers here don’t feel obligated to get their car<em> all the way</em> into a space when they parallel park. It’s an exaggeration to say that the cars are perpendicular to the curb, but sometimes the whole front half of the car is left jutting out into the street. So why do I put this one on my list of pleasant surprises? I derive vicarious fulfillment from this selfish approach to parking: who among us hasn’t wanted, after driving around a city for 45 minutes looking for a right-sized on-street parking space, to just say “Screw it, this is going to have to be good enough,” back the car into a space that is 30 percent too small, and hope for the best? I love that someone, somewhere on this earth has the <em>cojones</em> to actually do it.<br /><br /><strong>8) Relief that I’m not a latent religious zealot.</strong> We’ve all heard those stories about people who come to the Holy Land and suddenly experience religious fervor so intense that they believe they are Bathsheeba or John the Baptist. I figured that it was pretty unlikely that that would happen to me. But still, I worried: what if all this time my religious skepticism and inability to commit to any particular religious orthodoxy masked some latent, deep-seeded desire for faith so intense that in Israel I ultimately experienced some kind of catharsis? What if I started walking around Jerusalem thinking I was Veronica, and that the Kleenex in my pocket was really the veil that carried the image of Christ?<br /><br />It’s not happened -- at least not so far -- and that’s a bit of a relief. [For the record, if forced me to be anyone from the Bible: New Testament: Mary (Magdelene, not the Virgin). Old Testament: Delilah. Koran: Aisha].Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-33568591091181850792008-07-11T03:38:00.000-07:002008-07-11T03:41:22.299-07:00Up Against the WallThe Western Wall, along with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock, make up what I consider to be the Big Three holy high points in my self-created interfaith tour of Jerusalem. The Western Wall is the world’s most important Jewish shrine. It’s a retaining wall of the structure Herod built to be the Temple Mount, and near where the remnants of the Second Temple, which was destroyed when the Romans wrecked Jerusalem in 70 A.D., are believed to be. <br /><br />My boys were so excited to pray at the Wall. It was the high point of our Jerusalem trip for them. They’d heard about the Wall from family, friends, and their teachers for years. They compiled a list of prayers and wrote them on white slips of paper to place in the Wall’s cracks, in accordance with tradition. Their excitement was contagious, and as we entered the plaza in front of the Wall for the first time I found myself a little in awe. To get to the Wall, my husband and two sons entered the men’s section while I found my way alone to the women’s, following along with everyone else the Orthodox rules set by the rabbis who govern the Wall, which require gender separation. I grabbed a shawl and looked around with something like admiration at the devout women around me, their heads bowed as they approached the Wall. <br /><br />I reached the Wall and stood before it. For a moment, just being in its presence moved me. I felt at peace and went with the feeling, praying for my family’s health and being thankful for the opportunity to be at this place and spend a whole summer in Israel. <br /><br />But the feeling lasted only a moment before a nagging loneliness shoved it aside. What are my sons doing right now? I wondered. Now that they are up close to the Wall, what are they feeling, praying, doing? Are they excited? Respectful? Moved? Are they holding my husband’s hands, placing their hands on the Wall, or standing with their hands at their sides? Have they stuffed their prayers in the Wall? Are they looking at the men praying around them, or are their heads bowed? <br /><br />And, more fundamentally, why was I standing there alone? Why wasn’t I instead enjoying a peaceful, maybe even prayerful moment with the three people who matter most to me? <br /><br />I turned my head to get a sidelong glance through the slats in the fence that separates men and boys from women and girls. I needed to know how my sons and husband were experiencing this holy place and what it meant to them. It was no use: I could not see a thing. There were neither enough slats in the fence nor space between them for me to get any view of my family at all. And not being able to see my own children experience the place that meant so much to them sucked both peace and pleasure out of the being at the Wall for me. Anger seemed like an emotion wholly inappropriate to the location. But it was what I was feeling. Silently, and following tradition, I backed away from the Wall without turning my back to it. I tossed the shawl aside and returned to the plaza to hear my sons’ visit to the Wall recounted for me.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-36783251661899080792008-07-09T11:05:00.000-07:002008-07-09T11:13:32.319-07:00Yad Vashem<em>This place is beautiful,</em> was my first, startling thought as I arrived at the grounds of Yad Vashem, Israels’s Holocaust museum. Then I felt guilty at the very thought and tried to retract it from my own mind.<br /><br />But it <em>is </em>beautiful. Calling Yad Vashem a museum seriously understates the scope of its endeavor: it is a 45-acre complex dedicated to memorializing and documenting the Holocaust. Its grounds are impeccably landscaped; its architecture, quite breathtaking. This is in keeping, my audioguide tells me, with the museum’s commitment to remembering that the Holocaust occurred not in some dark corner, but out in the open, in the broad light of day. Good point. (<em>See also</em>: Darfur).<br /><br />The main museum is what most people go to see, and with good reason. It is an incredibly thorough documentation of the Holocaust and the years that preceded and followed it. I’ve read a fair bit about the Holocaust and visited the impressive DC museum that also memorializes it. It has been quite a few years, but I don’t recall anything that documents as thoroughly the development of the policies of the 1930s that made the Holocaust possible, the mechanisms by which the murders occurred (the museum consistently refers to the slaughter not as “killing” but as “murder”) or the spread of the Holocaust from Germany through Eastern Europe. Yad Vashem also discusses the Holocaust from an entirely Jewish perspective, which makes its tone somewhat different from that of the U.S. museum.<br /><br />But as I walked through the museum, taking it all in and listening intently to my audioguide, I found myself wondering whether the museum packed the emotional wallop that I had felt after I experienced other treatments of the Holocaust. I teared up at the video testimonials of survivors who told their horrible stories: watching mothers, fathers, siblings, children, killed; or, climbing out of a pit of dead bodies, stunned to find that they were still alive after a mass shooting. It was of course moving, but I was not yet left as stunned by the horror as I had been at other museums, reading books, or seeing Holocaust documentaries. I started to wonder, even worry: is there some point at which the horrors of the Holocaust stop being completely chilling? Had I reached a saturation point where I was simply disgusted in a detached way instead of being completely sickened by it?<br /><br />As I approached the end of the museum’s exhibits, a few rooms documented the year 1945, when the Allies declared victory. Silent black and white footage broadcast on the wall showed bulldozers pushing piles of sick, emaciated bodies into mass graves. I tried not to watch – the demonstration of the brutality and scale of the murders was so intense – but I could not draw myself way. Finally, a sick pit began to rivet itself to the side of my stomach. So I walked to the next room, the one that documents some of the aftermath for survivors. If recollection serves, this is the point that a lot of Holocaust documentations neglect; many seem to end with the Allied victory, inadvertently leaving one with the sense “Yay, it was finally over!”<br /><br />Not Yad Vashem. The last rooms document some survivors’ experiences, and they were not pretty. It was a video here of one woman’s story that finally got me. To paraphrase: the only survivor in her family, she outlived the Holocaust and got married, I believe to another survivor. Like other woman survivors, she was malnourished and emaciated, so she had stopped menstruating. But after a time, she started to develop breasts. Surprised, she went to her doctor to find out what was going on.<br /><br />“You are pregnant,” he told her.<br /><br />“Pregnant? How can that be?” she asked. “I cannot be pregnant.”<br /><br />“You are,” the doctor said. <br /><br />She was horrified. She pled with the doctor for an abortion. I must have one, she insisted. <em>How can I listen to a baby scream?</em> she asked him. <em>All I will ever hear is the screaming I know already – the screaming of the babies of Auschwitz. <br /></em><br />But the doctor refused to end the pregnancy, because she could not pay him. In the video, her husband sat next to the woman, completely stonefaced as she told the story.<br /><br />The woman returned home from the doctor. Using a wet towel and a hot iron, she tried to abort the pregnancy herself. It did not work. <br /><br />She had the baby. She said that when the baby was small, she swore that she would share with him the stories of Auschwitz. But she never did, she tells the camera. She could not.<br /><br />Hearing her story -- for me, it captures something about the essence of the Holocaust, how it turned everything that should be normal and good in on itself -- I finally reached my emotional breaking point. Sickened, and ready to sob heaving, disgusted sobs, I left the museum and stood on a platform overlooking the Jerusalem forest. Back in the broad light of day, I contemplated the Holocaust, the nature of good and evil, the world, and my own role in it.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Yad Vashem Postscript<br /></span></strong><br />At Yad Vashem there was also a temporary exhibit on survivors who came to Israel after the war. I entered the exhibit, hoping that it would memorialize survivors’ experiences of Israel, ideally with them describing in their own words what Israel means to them. Instead, the exhibit documented the artistic and literary achievements of some of the survivors who came to live in Israel.<br /><br />But it turned out that one of the survivor’s life stories illustrates the meaning of Israel to survivors better than any testimonial could: <br /><br />Samuel Gogol (1924-1993) moved to Israel from Poland following the war. Gogol, according to the exhibit, was orphaned after his mother died and his father was deported from Poland. He lived in an orphanage for a time, where one year as a birthday gift he was given a harmonica. He took to it. In Auschwitz, he was assigned to the camp orchestra. As he witnessed the horrors around him, he swore that if he survived he would dedicate his life to teaching Jewish children the harmonica.<br /><br />And he did. He moved to Israel, played harmonica, taught children, and started a band in a town near Tel Aviv. A video in the exhibit showed a child, presumably one of Gogol’s students, on stage, playing his heart out on the harmonica. Watching a carefree child live Gogol’s legacy told me all I needed to know about how Israel helped those few who survived the Holocaust realize their dreams.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-14805307209873592252008-07-07T03:28:00.000-07:002008-07-07T03:32:52.939-07:00BulldozedA minute after I finished my little love note to Jerusalem (see July 2nd post), my phone rang. My husband was calling to share the news that a man in downtown Jerusalem had just used a bulldozer as a weapon and killed three people by attacking several vehicles before being shot. <br /><br />As we had planned our trip to Israel earlier this year, I had hoped that our timing would be right to somehow avoid the kind of terrorist incidents that have characterized Israeli security for so many years. That turned out to be too much to hope for, of course.<br /><br />I spent that afternoon watching the news, checking the web, and trying to decide whether to proceed with our planned return trip to Jerusalem the next day. After a few hours, it became clear, or at least appeared from the press accounts, that this was an isolated incident, one very angry or perhaps crazy man acting on his own. I began to feel like I was watching the news in America: This is kind of violent incident that happens all the time there. The difference to me is that in the US the violence is typically, but not always, not politically motivated. I decided that returning to Jerusalem with my family would not be so different from the decision that millions of American parents make to send their children to high school every day, knowing that there is nothing (least of all US gun laws) standing between the normalcy of everyday life and another Columbine. Or the decision federal employees make to go to work, visions of Oklahoma City pushed to the back of their minds. There is a difference, some say, between living in fear and living with fear.<br /><br />Maybe this is what living with fear feels like: We went back to Jerusalem the next day, and had another lovely visit. But I gave a small, involuntary start every time I saw a backhoe driving down the streets of the city.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-53151208016775212492008-07-02T11:23:00.000-07:002008-07-02T11:28:12.386-07:00Jerusalemitis<div align="left">May I never let go of the feeling of experiencing Jerusalem for the first time. The challenge of writing this blog is that now I have to try to find the words with which to describe it. I’m not sure I can, but here are four different ways of trying. <br /><br /> * * * * *<br /><br />It’s tempting to describe entering the Old City as “taking a step back in time,” but that would sell the experience short. What is special about the Old City is that you are at once in the present and very connected with the past, in a place where so many cultures mingle that Jerusalem seems at once foreign and familiar.<br /><br /> * * * * *<br /><br />Walk through Damascus Gate and enter the Old City through the Muslim Quarter. You are in the <em>suq</em>, the pale stone of the old city’s walls filled with shops and markets selling everything imaginable – jewelry, vegetables, knickknacks, radios. Different languages compete for your attention – Arabic, Hebrew, English, French – as you wander through the marketplace, trying to take it all in. The shopkeepers try to lure you in as you pass by (“I just want to take your money, that’s all,” one salesperson calls out with refreshing candor). Arab children help out in the shops, sorting fruit and ferrying brass trays that carry cups of tea and glassfuls of mint lemonade to and from friends in neighboring shops.<br /><br />The corner of your eye catches a gesture from a tour guide. He is speaking a language you can’t understand, but you follow his hand to a round, bronze disk that contains the Roman numeral IV. It is the fourth Station of the Cross. Without even looking for it, you’ve found the Way of the Cross, the route Christ is believed to have walked between his conviction and crucifixion, a path that is holy to millions. It is so totally intertwined with all of the commercial activity of tourism and Jerusalemites going about their daily business that you could have walked past it. But you are suddenly reminded that you are walking on streets that have been travelled for centuries, streets whose precursors were the paths worn by the prophets, religious and cultural leaders, of the millennia. You feel somehow connected with all of them.<br /><br /> * * * * *<br /><br />An hour later, you prepare to exit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site where many believe Christ lived his last hours, died, and been resurrected. The outside is unremarkable. The interior is dark and labyrinthine, and you’ve just finished wandering its many chapels, most of which are controlled by separate Christian groups (Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Coptic etc.) which gives the experience of the Church a sort of randomness. You start to leave the Church, passing by the stone of unction, where Christ’s body is said to have been prepared after his death. People walk into the church, kneel down before the stone, and place their foreheads on it. The piety of the gesture is deeply moving.</div><div align="left"> <br />From the dark you step out of the church into the full heat of the noontime sun. The sun reflects off of the pale stone of the walks of the church, pulling your eyes up to the blue sky. The air fills with the sound of the Muslim call to prayer, broadcast over speakers from nearby mosques. Tourists wearing shorts migrate to the few feet of shade at the sides of the square in front of the church, while women in full chador jostle past them on their way to mosque or market. The sentiment “Welcome to Jerusalem” could not be conveyed more meaningfully if the mayor of the city stood there welcoming you with open arms. <br /><br /> * * * * *<br /><br />Or, here’s another way of saying it: I can’t believe I have lived on this earth forty (okay, okay, <em>41</em>) years and not experienced this before.<br /><br />I’m hooked. And I am going back tomorrow.<br /><br /> </div>Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-46061151786006122782008-07-01T12:09:00.000-07:002008-07-01T12:11:54.558-07:00Come (to the beach) As You AreHere on the beaches of Israel attire seems to be an all or nothing proposition:<br /><br /><strong>All:</strong> I’ve seen some Orthodox women wading in to the Mediterranean with pants, long sleeves, and head covering. I can’t imagine that they swim very far. The weight of all that wet clothing must be unbearable for all but the strongest of swimmers. On the other hand, as a sun protection measure it can’t be beat. Someone recently suggested that I travel to Aqaba, Jordan, to get a close-up view of Arab culture. “You can see Muslim women swimming in the Red Sea fully clothed, while all the men wear Speedos,” this acquaintance urged. Turns out I don’t need to travel to Jordan to witness the women-swimming-fully-dressed phenomenon. Maybe it suggests that these two cultures, at least as they are carried out by some, have more in common than they like to acknowledge. (Or maybe not….)<br /><br /><strong>Nothing: </strong> At the other extreme, in my beach meanderings I’ve encountered a man climbing out of the Med au naturale (though as I returned to my beach blanket he was pulling on his trunks, to which I could only say <em>toda raba</em>) and seen many, many women sporting thong bikinis (the rare fashion trend that seems as uncomfortable as it is unattractive). <br /><br />In general, one-piece suits are rare here; women of all ages, shapes, and sizes wear bikinis. In theory, I should find it liberating that women don’t tie their choice of attire to preconceived notions of what is attractive. But I confess a nascent feeling that there are limits to who I want to see wearing a bikini (potbellied European women born prior to World War II who stand for prolonged periods on the beaches of Netanya scarfing down dates, take note).Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-61432309578662536102008-06-27T11:23:00.000-07:002008-07-01T02:51:10.703-07:00"Are You Jewish?"As I planned this trip to Israel, some well-meaning acquaintances, hearing of my plans and knowing little else about me, asked: “Are you Jewish?”<br /><br />This is an interesting question in terms of what it implies about who is likely to be interested in visiting Israel and who is not. So here’s the real question: Do you have to be Jewish to appreciate Israel?<br /><br />The answer to this question is: No, of course not. And I have come up with my top three reasons why. They aren’t in order and don’t work well together thematically, but here they are:<br /><br /><strong>1) Connect with many centuries of human history<br /></strong><br />There is so much that is here in Israel – from the Western Wall to the Dome of the Rock to the Church of the Nativity to the (Roman ruins) -- that is intimately connected not just to the history (meaning the events and the chronology) but the ideas that have shaped humanity, or more specifically that have shaped all of the ideas and history that we identify as Western. This region has either given birth to or played a major role in shaping all three of the major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). And because of that alone, Israel, as no other part of the world, has changed the course of human history.<br /><br />More than perhaps any other location on earth, Israel (and I mean not just Jerusalem, though it is especially true of Jerusalem) is a place to come to connect with the history, the people, the ideas, and the perspectives that have shaped the way each of us who lives today thinks, lives our lives, makes our own tiny contribution to human history. To understand the shape of the West, I think that we all should understand a bit about Abraham, a bit about Moses, a bit about Christ, a bit about Mohammed, and a bit about the civilizations that have come before and since. I can’t think of a better place to do that.<br /><br />My guess is that many people who visit Israel, and some people who call it home, visit only the sites that are connected with their own religion. (As I planned this trip, one travel agent asked me, “Do you want to visit the Jewish sites or the Christian sites?” Umm… do I have to choose one or the other? And aren’t we missing something here, like maybe Islam? It's kinda been in the news lately...)<br /><br />Not to get all Baha’i a bout it, but isn’t it more interesting to use the opportunity of a stay in Israel or a visit to Jerusalem to think about each of the three major religions? To consider their similarities and differences, their separate and joint contributions (both good and bad) and the ways in which their messages and missions have been interpreted and misinterpreted through the millennia? Even if you only subscribe to the beliefs of one religion, it seems to be possible and desirable to appreciate the contributions of the others.<br /><br /><strong>2) It is just plain beautiful here<br /><br /></strong>OK, so say you don’t really care about Moses, David and Goliath, Abraham and Isaac, Jesus or Mohammed. You don’t know the difference between the First Temple and the Second Coming. Walking the Stations of the Cross has no meaning to you unless the bus stops there. And you are still wondering who this Al Aksa guy is and why everyone is talking about him. You should come to Israel anyhow, because it is really beautiful here. Let’s start with its miles of coast along the Mediterranean. As I write this it is early morning. I am sitting on a cliff about 200 feet above some of the clearest blue water and softest sand I have ever encountered. A swimmer floats peacefully in the sea, letting its gentle waves push him back to shore to start his day. And all up and down the coast of Israel, people are doing the same. (In this the Israeli coast reminds me of southern California, plus clearer, more Caribbean-like water and minus the feeling that you are the only person on the beach who does not have the numbers of your colorist, Pilates trainer, and more than one plastic surgeon on speed dial.)<br /><br />Add to the beaches the lonely beauty of the Negev desert, the verdant Galilee and Golan, and the insane geology of the Dead Sea (which along with Old Faithful and Devil’s Rock persuade me that Mother Nature does in fact have a sense of humor). Whether your thing is ecotourism and getting out in the wild to live in it or driving by it all from the comfort of your air conditioned motor coach, I just can’t imagine that you would not find much of Israel breathtaking.<br /><br />This starting to sound like a cheesy, politically-incorrect tourism slogan -- <em>Israel: It’s not just for Jews anymore</em> -- so let’s move on.<br /><br /><strong>3) The Holocaust<br /></strong><br />Finally (and somewhat incongruously, given the tone of the rest of this entry) don’t we all have an interest in knowing that Israel, or a place like it, exists? Does one need to possess more than a thimbleful of knowledge about the Holocaust – not to mention all of the persecutions that have taken place over the centuries -- to be glad that there is a place where Jews are guaranteed to be able to live free? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if there were similar guarantees to other groups such as Armenians and Tutsis that have been victims of genocide?<br /><br />If the course of human history has taught us anything, it is that human beings will occasionally, even frequently, commit unspeakable acts of violence and horror against one another. Witness nations will stand by and find reasons to remain uninvolved, or to limit their involvement. If this is true, then having places that are firmly committed to the freedom of persecuted groups and to fostering their well-being and cultures may be the only means of providing true safety.<br /><br />So I’ll end where I began: Can only Jews appreciate Israel? No, of course not.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-6033255438670684522008-06-27T11:22:00.000-07:002008-06-27T11:23:47.322-07:00Cracking the codeBecause my exposure to Hebrew consisted largely of reading the letters on a dreidl (“Gimel! I win!”), during obligatory Hannukah games, I decided that before coming to Israel I should at least try to learn some Hebrew. I wanted to avoid being seen as another clueless American who travels the world expecting everyone else to speak English. I wanted to assimilate conversationally, at least a little bit. I could learn a little Hebrew, enough to get by in Israel for eight weeks, right? Sure the alphabet is completely different, and there is the whole reading right-to-left thing, but how hard could it be?<br /><br />My linguistic theory was shot down shortly after I sat down with a tutor for my first Hebrew lesson. Learning to read right to left turns out to be the easy part. I found the alphabet baffling. The near-absence of vowels, predicated on the expectation that one will, based almost solely on recognizing the consonants and their relationship to each other, know what vowels are implied, made learning Hebrew practically impossible for me. I have a hard time advancing beyond the toddler stage of Hebrew, in which the vowels, or absence thereof, are in many cases denoted by specific dots and dashes that appear underneath the consonants. I struggled. I developed newfound respect for every thirteen year old who has gone through bar or bat mitzvah.<br /><br />A month later, just as I was starting to getting used to the dots and dashes that denote some vowels, they were taken away. I was expected to read with consonants alone, aided only by the occasional yod or alef. Vowels are like oxygen or national security – you only pay attention to them when you start to lose them. I never knew just how fond of vowels I am until they were taken away. I tried not to give up, but my efforts lost steam. I decided to focus on what was most important to me: food. So I learn misada (restaurant), yayin (wine), eshkolit (grapefruit). But privately I begin to suspect that Hebrew is not, in fact, a language. Some of the sounds cannot be made without chain-smoking for 20 years first. It is a secret code, by its very design indecipherable to gentiles.<br /><br />Now that I am here in the country, I wish that I had applied myself more in my study of Hebrew. Sure, many people here do know some English, and are able to help me navigate ordering my daily shwarma and café. But I can’t read store signs or menus that don’t offer English translations, which many of them don’t. When my son accidentally got locked in the bathroom at an Israeli theme park, I had no idea how to convey the situation to the proper authorities. En route to the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv, I wonder whether the taxi driver is really dropping me off in front of the museum -- because he could pretty much let me out in front of any large building in Tel Aviv and I would not know the difference, because I can’t read the signs. And it sure would be nice to know what the lifeguards are calling during their periodic shout-outs while I’m swimming with my kids at the beach. Are they saying “The waters of the Mediterranean has never been so warm and beautiful! Enjoy it, lucky American tourists! When you are done, come by for a free facial and cherry Pez.” Or are they yelling, “A large school of starving, child-eating sharks is making its way swiftly to this shore, to be followed closely by a tsunami. Run for cover as fast as you can! And don’t forget to bring your trash with you.” <br /><br />It does not matter; I do not understand a word. I just smile and nod.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490649550248147437.post-91656829141131792032008-06-19T00:32:00.000-07:002008-06-19T00:40:47.266-07:00Israeli DriftwoodAt the beach today, a <em>kippa</em>h floated by me in the water as I waded toward shore. In the U.S., I typically spend significant parts of my summer on various beaches of the East Coast, but in my time there have never once spotted a yarmulke floating amid the North Atlantic flotsam. Inflated with air and turned into a round disk tossed gently on the waves of the Meditteranean, the <em>kippah</em> bore a startling resemblance to a whoopee cushion.Annie Whitbread, Shiksa at Largehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14987209116515663895noreply@blogger.com0