Perspective

During my pre-Israel trip appointment with my most beloved hair guru, the one and only Paul Timlin--who buy virtue of the many Jewish women he's dated is definitely an honorary MOT--I mentioned this would be my very first to Israel. Paul nearly dropped his shears, exclaiming, "But you're a JEW!!!".

Therein lies the rub. Most people who are not Jewish, and even some who are, think that if you are a Jew, you've naturally made the journey to the Homeland at some point in your life, and probably when you were young, doing the summer kibbutz thing, or, at the very least, when you graduated college.

In reality, the statistic is something like less than 25-30% of American Jews have set foot on Israeli soil. Ever. And many have no plans to go. The folks who's job it is to worry about American Jewish support for Israel know this all too well. That's why programs like Taglit Birthright exist. http://www.birthrightisrael.com/site/PageServer

What was suddenly eye-opening to me having just returned, is that in conversations with some of my same-aged friends--some of them members of the vital organizations that raise awareness and funds--many of them have not been to Israel since their kid was a bar or bat mitzvah, and now their kids graduated law school, medical school and are years out of college.

Or some of my Orthodox friends went twenty-odd years ago to make the pilgrimage, almost, in one sense it seems, to get it over with and from now on go to Europe or the Caribbean. It's been years since they've seen Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, and when I describe my trip, with everyone in Tel Aviv having a tattoo, and the amount of religious tension in Jerusalem, they shake their heads and mutter, "I suppose I should go again", with all the enthusiasm of someone scheduling their colonoscopy.

And yet, these are the people who have opinions about pretty much anything and everything Israel does or does not do, from the war in Gaza to building settlments to dividing Jerusalem. These are the activists who weigh in with their petitions and their phone calls and e-mails to the media outlets they perceive as anti-Israel, to the White House, and who keep Israel as their escape hatch should Obama turn out to be what many of them fear he secretly is: an anti-Israel President that stokes the fires against the Jews here at home.

None of this makes any sense on the ground when you are there. This is part of the wake-up call for me now that I have been back a few weeks and friends are asking how my trip was. My answer now is the same one they gave me when they found out I had not ever been before: "You should go."

Thought provoking article on Israel

One of the most thought provoking articles I've read on Israel in a long long time.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/20/israel_turns_on_itself

Spiritual Jet Lag

It hit me hard around an hour ago: that lightheaded, slightly dizzy disoriented feeling. It scared the hell out of me, normally it means we are about to have an earthquake (yes, I am occasionally one of those seismic psychics) or that I am about to get the flu.

But just now I figured it out: I have Spiritual Jet Lag. Today is Shabbat, I just spent my two past Shabbat's in Israel: the first one in Jerusalem at the communal Orthodox dinner provided by the Dan Boutique Hotel, and the second one in Tel Aviv at a formerly lesbian now straight Persian restaurant and dive dyke bar--- but it was still Israel. Tonight I will go to my parents for dinner and light candles (using the new candelabra I bought for them in the Carmel Craft Faire in Tel Aviv) but it's not the same. I'm in LA, the place where spirituality is a commodity to be purchased along with great abs and pseudo-blessed red string around your wrist. I'm a million steps removed from the real deal.

I am born and raised in Los Angeles but it's never ever felt like home. I don't jive with the energy, never felt like I belong, I can't seem to really hit my stride to be fully, daily, passionately alive, and I can't relate to most of the people or priorities here and all of the time I have that deep cavernous ache inside of knowing these painful things.

I want to live where I just naturally know the streets and my way around even thought I've not been there before. I have that feeling of being finally at home intensely in Cape Town, South Africa, and to a bit lesser extent in Nairobi. The times I've been on the African continent calm my entire being down immediately upon landing. Everything just settles, even in the various just ended war/famine/genocide zones I've visited, Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda. Every time I leave Africa I can't wait to come back. I feel fully alive, all my senses are at once calm and on alert.

But in Israel, it's different. Everything doesn't settle: it's stirred up the way the Jerusalem winds coming in from the desert kicked into high gear every afternoon to coincide with the 4:30 call to prayer. There was no calming feeling the whole time I was in Israel, for me there was the complete opposite. This time all my senses were on high alert, so much so that I was on sensory overload and had to shut down some of my hearing just to maintain a sense of distance and to be able to hear my own thoughts and listen to the stirrings of my own soul. But even with all this internal Balaghan (Hebrew for Chaos) there was this overwhelming feeling that I was finally where I was supposed to be. I was in Israel, a descendant of the 600 people at Sinai, linked genetically and spiritually and everything in between. Going to Israel was my soul gone on safari, and as with any journey, ultimately the goal is to find your inner, spiritual, psychic home while wandering.

I've always been a religious tourist--calling myself a seeker would be way to intense for the truth, I bail as soon as any aspect of the practice threatens to seriously impact my comfort zone. So doing Yoga with the Sikhs here in LA--got those great abs---but give of coffee and meat? No way. I did the same thing with flirting with the Chabad form of Judaism...no great abs, but nearly a trashed liver, given the endless L'Chaims and drinking each Shabbat and celebration requires. But give up brewed coffee and driving? Not a chance. And don't even go there on the whole gay thing, seems all religons have issues with that, except maybe Wicca or Paganism...(more about my forays there later).

Earlier this afternoon, I had a lovely mixed ethnic lunch of Tikka Tacos with my BFF Paul, and he was excited to hear about my trip to Israel and Jordan. We were comparing notes and impressions, and I found I was almost unable to relate anything of mine. I'm still making sense of all the sensations, and I found it hard to describe all that I'd felt and seen in a mere two weeks in Israel and a couple of days in Jordan. I was enthralled by Paul's accounting of his journeys there, and his wrestling with the idea of making aliyah--to emigrate to Israel-- or not. I look forward to hearing more of the story soon. Sharing those stories are grounding because you looking into each other's eyes and try to make sense of the Israeli experience and then give a Middle Eastern shrug with the realization that you can't.

So I am still reeling. I was gone only two weeks, and it feels like I was gone at least a lifetime. Seriously. At least one lifetime. (One of the theories on my hearing loss is that it was part of a past life experience that kicked into high gear.)

Israel changed me in ways I cannot even begin to understand, and truthfully, when my rational mind tries to tell me that I am having a cliche reaction--not another one, gone native--it's just a place with an incredible bloody and miraculous history but still just sand and rock, my spiritual jet lag kicks into high gear and I've got to sit down before I fall down. It's that simple and that complex. It's that hard to fathom and that easy to get. Whereas before I felt a vague longing to go and experience the country I'd heard about for most of my adult life, now that I have been there, even for a short visit, there is a very tangible ache to return as soon as possible to soak up more of this incredible place.

After all, it's home.

Leaving Israel but not really.....

So I'm sitting in the lobby of Ben Gurion Airport waiting to check my bags and begin the long wait to the long flight back to LAX. Around 17 or 18 hours of flight time plus a few hours layover, just enough to go through customs in Atlanta. Hopefully the flight will be on time, because I am due to go to the Hollywood Bowl a few hours after arriving in LA.

I know on an intuitive level that I won't make sense of this trip to Israel, my first time here, for a long long time. Realizations are going to awaken me from a sound sleep, much as this trip has in all ways, and, truth be told, I resisted mightily. I'd thought I would cry my eyes out from arrival until departure, after all, this is my FIRST visit to the land I have heard so much about, especially this past decade.

You awaken to an Israeli consciousness whether you like it or not. For my entire photojournalist career, I avoided this place. I knew I would feel too much, photographing all that is Israel is something most pro-Israeli photographers don't like to do. Warts and all coverage doesn't cut it when you are a MOT. At least that is what I thought as I went to East Africa instead. I'm an American Jew, a Zionist by birth and belief.

But then coming here, the realization hits that this too is a media lie...a lie we tell to ourselves in the States. The thing about being HERE, whether it's in Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem, is that it is precisely the warts and all coverage Israelis are most comfortable with, and what they crave from the world's media. For them, showing their lives and how they face their issues is way closer to their reality than our skewed obsession of either/or. "Either you are with us or against us", that is the rallying American Jewish cry. Actually, as conversations with Israelis who actually live here attest, we've got it all wrong. Israelis don't take criticism of their policies to be anti-Israel nearly as much as American Jews do.

So, as I wait to go through the first leg of security to check my bags for the flight, I am eagerly awaiting my epiphanies.

I did not cry much at all during this trip, but my right ear did go deaf for most of my time here in Israel, the worst of it in Jerusalem. According to metaphysical website analysis of what the right ear represents----processing of information especially language and the ability to make sense of sensory experiences, I guess I went into sensory overload.

I'm not surprised.

Recent history vs ancient history

Everywhere in Israel you walk a history of amazing triumph and tragedy. Not just the ancient stories from the Bible, but current events, at least, ones that happened while I have been alive.

I am staying in central Tel Aviv, at a really modern hotel called The Savoy. It's all sleek lines and chrome and glass, a very sexy building literally steps from the beachfront. It just re-opened in January and is truly a cool place with amazing people running it, wonderful breakfast every morning, and lots of tourists--especially French--- hanging out in the lobby/restaurant planning their day. http://www.inisrael.com/savoy/

But the Savoy Hotel has a history: I've cut and pasted the following from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savoy_Operation

"On the night of 4 March 1975 at 11:00 PM, eight Palestinians in two teams landed by boat on the Tel Aviv beach. Shooting and throwing grenades, they captured the Savoy Hotel near the center of the city. The guests were taken hostage. The Palestinians threatened that if the Israelis did not release 20 Palestinian prisoners within four hours the hostages would be killed.

Early the next morning the Israeli counter-terrorist unit Sayeret Matkal stormed the hotel, killing seven of the perpetrators and capturing one. Five hostages were freed and eight were killed. Three soldiers, including the former Sayeret Matkal commander Uzi Yairi, were also killed. A few hours later the ship that transported the militants was captured and its crew were taken prisoner.

The Palestinian operation was planned by Abu Jihad in retaliation for a surgical raid that the Sayeret Matkal conducted in Beirut, Lebanon in April, 1973 (Operation Spring of Youth), where they killed three top PLO leaders."

Hanging with Lana in Amman and Petra with Jerusalem in the Room

Sunday morning I left most of my luggage but not my baggage at the Dan Boutique Hotel in Jerusalem and caught a taxi to the Muslim side of the Old City to catch a bus ride that would take me to the Jordanian Border. There long lines of Arabs returning to Jordan from Israel were processed through and soon enough I was bused through the Allenby Bridge (King Hussein Bridge on the Jordanian Side of the border), soon to hang out with the lovely and talented Lana Shamma. Lana's away for thirteen months on a Fulbright Scholarship in Amman. We've been best buds since the first day we met, which we think was way back even before orientation for the MPD program, on preview day.

Lana is Palestinian-American and we have worked at our friendship because geopolitics has a nasty habit of intruding. There has been a lot of Palestinian and Lebanese and Israeli blood shed during our friendship, and, it has felt sometimes like a challenge to hold on to each other.

I have never once doubted Lana--I know her belief that an eye for an eye makes the world go blind. It is me that has had to wrestle with some of the results of Israel's actions. My belief in Israel's right to exist and protect her citizens is in direct conflict with my belief that some of Israel's actions are questionable at best.

In any event, we started with the premise that both sides are bloody, both sides are tired, both sides are trapped and both sides need a better way. Lana and I also share the thought that there will never be a true peace, and it makes our friendship even more important to the both of us.

For the record, I believe both Israelis and Palestinians are desperately in need of making this a T shirt war, only to be fought with mostly lame and sometimes funny slogans hanging side by side in some cheesy souk shoppe. Chose your battles in Small, Medium and Large 100% Cotton with minimal --- or in this case, hopefully---maximum shrinkage.

Going to Amman was relatively easy because I did what I always do when I don't know my way around or the language. I found people who were kind enough to guide me to the right lines, the correct paperwork and made sure I got on the right bus. Plus, with this lack of hearing in my right ear, plus not knowing any of the language, trying to navigate around is tough. You HAVE to be fluent in Arabic (which Lana is) to make your way around here, when it really comes down to it. I hate being at that disadvantage.

I shared a ride with a couple of slightly older Americans---that is, because I still think I am a young student---who were fluent in Arabic. From the mountains of Georgia, they've been coming to the Middle East for years, and their cultural and language savvy shows. After dropping me off at the Abdoun Mall, where I continued to indulge my passion for the best coffee blends on the planet, Lana came to fetch me. She looks awesome, and very quickly it was as if no time had passed.

After an amazingly delicious late lunch of Lebanese food at this terrific restaurant---make hummus, not war---we took off late afternoon for Petra, Lana at the wheel of this slightly scary rent-a-car. Along the way we caught up on all that has been going on in our lives---G-CHAT can only cover so much--- these past few months---almost a year really---since Lana left LA. Lana has been touring around the Middle East as much as her time allows, going to Lebanon, and Syria. And, as always, she's found how wrong the American media is in their portrayal of all countries.

Arriving in Petra just after dusk, we checked into the Crown Plaza Petra and grabbed a light dinner before turning in for our big day hiking around.

We intended to get an earlier start than we did---thankfully neither of us are morning people, unless we pull all nighters--and so around ten or eleven or so we finally made it to the Petra gate. We hiked to the Treasury, this spectacular bank vault dug into the mountain, and a few miles further in until my ankle started to give way. So Lana and I bought a couple of rides on Bedouin Ferrari's--otherwise known as really stinky mules, and then hiked the rest of the way out to our hotel. This is where Indiana Jones # 4 was filmed, as many of the souvenir stands really let you know. We crashed by the hotel pool and grabbed a late lunch before heading out back to Amman.

Later that evening, after a serious shower (I am sure I have Petra dust on the brain) at Lana's we headed out to a Chinese acupuncture clinic to see what could be done about my still plugged up ear. The acupuncturist was convinced my neck is to blame. Could be. A few needles and massage and traction later, it did not give way, but the rest of me was relaxed. We had dinner at this home style Palestinian restaurant in downtown Amman, where the maitre'd proposed marriage to me. I love all this attention, really I do, but seriously, what's with the men??? Please, paging Ms Jordan.

Amman is the color of sand, with portraits and posters of King Abdullah everywhere. All the cabs have them tacked up on their windows, in various poses from family man to soldier. The women are either covered in hijab, or niqab. After dark, the women are no where to be seen, while on the streets the men are drinking coffee and playing backgammon.

Jordan is an incredibly poor society, with impossible to comprehend poverty. Its women are subservient and, for Jordan being touted as the more progressive of the Middle East Muslim states, in reality it's not even close to progressive in the ways it needs to be to uplift its people out of their poverty and stupor.

Lana and I talked a lot about Israel, or, in her case, Palestine. Her family's heritage goes back to Haifa and Safed. She wants to go to Jerusalem this weekend, and I am worried about her experience. I would love it if it were easy for her to come to Israel. I want to make sure that Israel does nothing to hurt my friend, and my heart sinks at that thought because I know that she will have to experience the checkpoints in all their hellish detail.

Since this visit to Israel, especially to Jerusalem and the Old City,I am even more convinced that nothing can be done to solve this conflict. To come here is to see how both sides do indeed live side by side, but with emotional and spiritual and psychic fences and walls more dense and impossible to dismantle than anything real either side can and has constructed.

This place needs a John Lennon transfusion. The whole region is neon proof of Karl Marx's statement that Religion is the opiate of the people and pretty much has overdosed into coma.

I believe both sides need to realize how fighting for the same grain of sand because of what was supposedly written thousands of years ago is going to destroy all chance of a future for them all.

I take all of this personally even more this time, with that ongoing schizophrenic response: I want for Israel to be able to live in peace, I want for Palestine to finally achieve statehood and for it and the rest of the Arab world to have the same amazing freedoms and quality of life most Israelis have. More than anything it breaks my heart that what I want most is for my Palestinian friend whom I love and value so much to have Palestine be the same amazing experience for her as Israel has for me on my first journey here, and I know it won't happen, at least this time.

Maybe new Tshirts need to be printed with new messages, ones that spell out exactly what the costs on all sides of this conflict truly add up to be: the body counts, the insane monies spent on weapons and security, years of each number of dead, lives wasted, you get the idea.