Afloat on the briny blue

Today was Dead Sea day. Two of us, Julien, the guy I met in Damascus, and I, got up early and headed for Jerusalem's gargantuan bus station to catch the 421 to the lowest point on earth. It's the start of the weekend and the place was full of Israeli soldiers lugging their rucksacks and M16 rifles from hot dog stand to falafel counter as they waited for buses to take them home to their families. There's a way they wear their uniforms in a calculatedly scruffy way that gives them a cool, almost hippy look and it's easy to see how teenagers here can't wait to join up to be one of the gang. It's presumably less cool when you find yourself in Hebron patrolling the streets and keeping an eye out for snipers. And, of course, there's nothing hippy about the all-to-real guns.

When the bus came there was an unholy scramble to get aboard. Three American tourists had apparently politely queued for an earlier bus, only to find that it had filled up before they could get on board. So this time they were all elbows and shouting and pushing to the front almost before the doors had opened. It was pretty clear that there wouldn't be enough space for all of us, so Julien and I joined the ruckus only to be almost stymied at the last minute by a mother carrying a baby. Once she had secured a footing on the first step (hard to argue when there's a baby involved) she beckoned over six more members of her family to go in first which caused a barrage of loud complaints from the people behind her. We eventually got a seat but the aisle was packed with people standing.

The bus takes about an hour to get to Kalia, at the northern tip of the Dead Sea, passing through just one checkpoint on the way. (The whole area between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea is under Israeli control, even though it is technically the West Bank.) But then we made something of a strategic error. For travellers, the Torah, Mishna, Gemara and Talmud combined is of course the Lonely Planet and under Dead Sea, almost in big letters, it warns you to ask the driver to let you off at Kalia Beach rather than Kalia itself - which of course we didn't. So when we did finally get off the bus - our seats immediately grabbed by the nearest two people in the aisle - we found ourselves on a lonely stretch of road with the Dead Sea about 500 metres away and nothing but those plastic-sheeting greenhouse structures in between. Kalia Beach and its promised bars, restaurants and places to stay was, we thought, going to be a couple of kilometres in one direction or the other. We just didn't know which.

We decided to head towards the shore and see if we could see where we needed to be and we were about half way there when a group of agricutural labourers started shouting and waving at us. It was already very hot, the ground was made of hard-caked mud and stones and, uselessly, we were wearing flip-flops, so, looking like the dumbest couple of tourists in the the world, we headed towards them to ask directions.

As we approached we couldn't work out if they were Israeli or Palestinian and that kind of thing makes a difference in the West Bank, especially if, as I was, one of you is wearing a yarmulke. So, as soon as we were within talking distance, we fired off a volley of Arabic, Hebrew and English greetings, all sort of mish-mashed together, to reassure them that we were friends. ("Salam aleikum" worked wondered in Damascus, so it seemed a good bet here.) That seemed to do the trick and, when we asked where the beach was, they were polite enough only to laugh after they had given us directions. We were nearly 10km too far south.

There were no buses and hitchhiking turned out not to be the done thing (who's pick up a hitchhiker in a potential conflict zone?) so we ended up making an impromptu hike along the asphalt of Highway 90 back the way we had come. We had water but flip-flops weren't the ideal footwear for this kind of this, so the Bainkini and Siesta Beach Resort, when it finally came into sight, was like reaching Eldorado.

It was 40 shekels (£6) to get in to the resort and it is worth every penny. The whole place is done out in some sort of shabby Moroccan chic and you can sit in lovely gardens drinking mint tea and looking out over the water towards Jordan. But of course it's the Dead Sea itself that's the real attraction and so we found a spot on the beach and waded in.

ven if you have been to the Dead Sea before (I went in off the Jordan coast in 2000 ish), the bouyancy is wonderfully unexpected. It is a bit like being on a watery bouncy castle and it's totally impossible to stay upright. And, as it turns out, it's almost impossible to keep the stinging salt water out of your eyes, which sent us hurrying out again to the Bainkini's fresh water showers.

Once we had sorted that one out (head nicely above the water, wear sunglasses and take a bottle of fresh water in with you for those emergency rinsing moments) we were sorted and the day spun out alternately gently floating in (on?) the sea and catching the sun on the scraggy shore. (For golden sands you need to look elsewhere.) And, yes, we did cover ourselves with the lovely mineral-rich mud and now my skin is as soft as a baby's.

There was, apparently, maybe and possibly, a bus from the (correct) bus stop back to Jerusalem at 5pm. Or was it 4? No one seemed to know. So, in good time, we found ourselves walking another half hour along asphalt (flip-flops by now doing a sterling job) towards a garage/cafe where our bus had stopped on the way in and where, hopefully, someone would be able to tell us. Of course, no one could and there was a bit of concern that we would get stuck as Israeli buses stop for shabat. We sat down at one of the little tables on the forecourt and got talking to three Israeli guys who, wonderfully, offered us a lift back to town. And even better, the driver was a policeman, which meant we breezed through the checkpoint in air conditioned 4x4 luxury.

Now shabat is starting and the city has all but closed down. I am going again to my friends Gwen and Robin's house for a shabat dinner but I have bunked off shul for tonight (I did go every day this week) and am sitting here with a beer on the balcony as the sun sets over the rooftops. It's still delightful and I feel totally at home. And, even if you don't quite make it to shul, shabat in Jerusalem is something very special indeed.

Some thoughts on hate

I pass, every day on the way to college, a little cluster of anti-gay graffiti: Homo = sick; Homo = Danger to Children; Homo = ill; and so on. It is all obviously written by the same person and he (and I am guessing it is a he) has spent a fair amount of time covering the bus shelters, telephone wiring boxes and benches of Bethlehem Street with his marker pen musings. In the scheme of things, they are mostly obnoxious but harmless but one of them sticks in my craw when I see it and is harder to shake off.

It says "Homo = AntiSemite" and it's pointing to another graffiti (by the same person? by someone else?) of a Star of David with the words "Juif" and "Jude" in the middle.

What bothers me about this particular graffiti (graffito? surely not??) is not particularly its suggestion that being gay is somehow unJewish - something that would come as a surprise to a fair few people I know - nor really that it makes you anti-Jewish, though I do know many gay people whose attitude to any religion is pretty cold. But that, by linking homosexuality with the way the Nazis treated the Jews, the person who wrote this graffiti, ascribes to what is basically a loving desire the level of hatred that, even 60 years after the Holocaust, we still find hard to conceive. I have heard homosexuality called many things, but "hateful" is a new one on me and I don't like it. Thoughts on this very welcome.

I heard a related story this morning. We went, as a group, to pray at the Kotel, the Wailing Wall (left). Correction. We went, as a group, to pray at the Kotel but, as we are a group of men and women who pray together, we went, not to the bit of the wall that is in all the postcards, but to a part further to the south near Robinson's Arch. The setting was incredibly moving. Here is a place that has been sacred for 2,500 years, where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, where Jesus was crucified and where Mohammed began his Night Journey into heaven, and to pray there with my colleagues - men and women standing next to each other and two women leading the service - was an experience I will not forget.

Yet on the coach back to the yeshiva, we heard why we were praying there and not in the main part of the Kotel. And the story saddened me. It turns out that, in 1997, a group of Conservative Jews, men and women, had started to pray together at the Kotel to celebrate the festival of Shavuot. As they were a mixed congregation they placed themselves towards the back of the plaza and off to the side and got on with their own business. Then, according to two people who were there, things turned nasty.

"By the start of the Torah reading, several hundred Haredim [ultra-Orthodox Jews] had abandoned their own prayers to come and push, shove, and taunt. To their credit the police and the border patrol were quick to react. They did everything in their power to keep the now-growing and very angry mob at bay. As we made it through the reading of the Ten Commandments, the police were close to losing control. They beseeched us to leave, for they were no longer able to protect us. We were now surrounded by close to a thousand young men pushing, spitting, calling us Nazis and throwing stones... water and fecal matter were being tossed upon us and upon the Torah scroll. I, and not a few others, were hit.

"The crowd of hundreds had now become thousands, with crowds of people from the roofs of the Jewish Quarter homes cheering them on and pointing out where we were: 'Because of you six million Jews died'; 'Go back to Germany!' Some of our prayer shawls were being torn off our backs and stomped on... The mob was accusing the police of being Nazis for defending us."

Rabbi Andrew Sacks and David Fine - from Wailing at the Wall, by Phyllis Chesler

Spitting, throwing stones and accusations of being Nazis - all because men and women were praying together. It is hard to imagine hate so strong that it makes an Orthodox Jew to throw "fecal matter" on to the Torah scroll, something he would normally hold in total respect, let alone on other people. And "Because of you six million Jews died" leaves me speechless. Thoughts on this very welcome too.

And just a final example. Three of us - Robin, a friend from the yeshiva, Julien, an Australian who I met in Damascus (pics below), and I - were walking along the Haas Promenade last night at sunset - the place where I went on Saturday evening - looking down across (Arab) east Jersualem. It's right on the border between the Jewish and Arab parts of the city and there were plenty of Jewish and Palestinian families out for a stroll in the park and enjoying the early evening breeze. Everything is peaceful there. People aren't exactly mixing but you get a glimpse of what a post-peace Israel and Palestine could be like.

As we were taking pictures, three Palestinian teenagers walked by and, with the bravado of people who know you can't understand their language, said something in Arabic (we were obviously Jewish) and laughed. We thought nothing of it but then a couple of Israeli women came over and told us what they had said: 'You're father is dead." Teenage joking, maybe, but in this region jokes can lead to all sorts of ugly places. Maybe it's the heat, but there does seem to be a lot hate to go round.

I liked this van. It's probably deadly serious about something.

Week 2 - Ordinary life and a touch of magic

I didn't make it to the Dead Sea (buses there only leave at weird times) but I did make it to Tel Aviv for a little bit of sun and sea on Friday afternoon. After Jerusalem it felt noisy and hard-edged and for the first time this whole trip I had the feeling I was being ripped off - by a cab driver on the way back to the bus station. Of course I am not comparing like for like and Tel Aviv is in so many ways a great city but it was lovely to come back to the tranquility of Jerusalem.

Pedro, in a comment a while ago, posted a lovely passage from Margaret Atwood about travelling slowly, so I thought I would repost it here.

Walking was not fast enough, so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew.
Flying isn't fast enough, not fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.

from The Tent

I finally made it to the supermarket and at last I am cooking at home rather than scoffing yet another kebab/shwarma with chips (they're delicious though), washed down with a non-Diet Coke. And, in a related move, I went to Jerusalem's public swimming pool, which is five minutes from my flat. It's expensive (50 shekels, about £8) and pretty run down but fun to go to. There are two pools: an Olympic-sized lanes pool, half undercover and half in the open air, where people plod/power up and down; and a kids' pool out in the sun with a huge water slide, that I would love to have a go on. And then there's lots of grass and plastic chairs and people lounging around sunbathing, reading and chatting on their mobiles.

The changing rooms are pretty poor and there's no way you can get a locker (they are all padlocked), so you either you trust that no one will steal your clothes or you take everything with you. For some reason I did a bit of both, but it's actually it's actually quite safe. You're probably more at risk from athlete's foot than theft and I had my flip flops. The swim was nice and I'll go again despite the price. It's all very local authority but it's a slice of real Jerusalem life and the hotel (and YMCA) pools are even more expensive.

Someone I met in Damascus is now in town. He also came into Israel via the Allenby Bridge border and had a lot of trouble getting in. While my letter from the yeshiva (and the fact that I said I was Jewish) helped cancel out the fact that I had been to Syria in the eyes of the border guards, he had no such luck and was detained there for five or six hours in a freezing waiting area (the air con was on high) with nothing to eat or drink. When he finally got through, he complained to one of the border guards about the way they were treating people and in return got a tirade about the Palestinians: "You don't know what I know about these people. I hate Palestinians. I kill Palestinians." A horrible welcome to Israel and one this country should be ashamed of.

He was the last person to be cleared that day and when he finally made it out through customs the public transport to Jerusalem had gone all that was left was a single cab driver who charged him 300 shekels to take him there. The fair should probably have been about 100. "You're lucky I'm not charging you 600," said the driver.

On Friday evening I went to a great July 4/start of shabbat dinner at the house of some friends from my Hebrew class - after a particularly happy clappy Friday evening service at a synagogue nearby. And then on Saturday evening, I went for a walk through a park near my flat and bumped into them again, something that seems to happen quite a lot here. We walked for an hour or so along a long promenade that looks back to the Old City and down across the Valley of Hinnon (Gehenna, or hell, in the Bible) to the Garden of Gethsemane and the (mainly Arab) districts of east Jerusalem. It was sunset and the golden Dome of the Rock was glowing pink and orange and we had that magical moment when the sun is still on the horizon and the electric lights start to come on.

Dotted among the streetlamps where dots of green which marked the minarets of mosques (or maybe pharmacies, but I am pretty sure they were mosques) and after a while we could hear the muezzins' call to prayer. It was touching moment to realise that, for all the problems and privations caused by the conflict here, Muslims are still praying in Jerusalem. In Damascus, all the synagogues are closed.

People are strange

I like this video and I like the fact that it has nothing much to do with Israel, Judaism or anything else really. (However if you do want a little bit of linked-in Jewish thought, it's worth bearing in mind that the most repeated commandment in the Torah is

ואהבתם את הגר כי גרים הייתם בארץ מצרים *
Love the stranger, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt.)

Turn the sound up.

* I just put that bit in to show off that I've worked out how to write Hebrew on my Mac, though that sentence did take me about 10 minutes to do.


"People are Strange". Video by Remi Galliard. (Music, obviously, by The Doors)

The weekend is here (on a Friday)

I tend to wake up here at about 6am because it is light and it's nice to go out on to the balcony. But that means I am tired of course by the late afternoon. So I was hoping to have a lie-in this morning (it's Friday, so it's Saturday, if you see what I mean). However the dust cart came very noisily at 6.45 so I am up. Tonight I am going to a shabbat potluck dinner with some of my fellow students, all of whom are American and are celebrating July 4. We have to bring red white and blue food (I am taking lentil and tomato salad) and it should be fun, though they are all (semi seriously) concerned that it might be some sort of day of mourning for me as I am British.

As a European, I feel it would be lovely if some of my fellow Jews here had similar concerns towards the Palestinians living in Gaza. I am sure they do but so far I haven't really had that conversation. My colleagues here are liberal, compassionate and intelligent people but I suspect many would see the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as a necessary evil. The danger - and I am talking more about the general Israeli reaction to Wednesday's attack rather than specific conversations I have had with friends - is that anxiety can make people simplify the situation and it is easy here to imagine that it's a case of some sort of amorphous and homogenous group of enemy Arabs surrounding Israel and a lot of heroic IDF soldiers keeping them at bay. People are surprised that I spent time on the way here in Syria, for example, and found the place hospitable, even when I said I was Jewish and on my way to Jerusalem.

That said, I also see the world here through pretty cloudy lenses - I find liberal, post colonialism a powerful influence on the way I think; and I'm pretty caught up in romantic ideas about the underdog and freedom fighters, for instance. So maybe I am missing the point too. And I am having to face up to some questions that feel more academic when you are reading the Guardian in London over a cafe latte in Tinderbox. I would fight intellectually, for example, for almost everything Israel stands for. But would I (literally) fight Palestinians in Gaza? Or, as a colleague asked me yesterday when we were talking about the Israeli army, would I find Belgian forces who were invading Britain and threatening to push Britons into the sea? (It's a slightly arresting image and probably for all the wrong reasons.)

Yesterday, a group of us were talking about the safest ways (in terms of avoiding terrorist attacks) for us, as Jews, to get from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv - bus, shared minibus or taxi. It's like some bizarre sort of parlour game that I guess is just part of daily life here. Bus came top because there are metal detectors at the bus station but, then again, we felt the shared minibuses were pretty good because they tend to be driven by Arab Israelis so they might be more immune to attack. (I think both are pretty safe to be honest and anyway who would have thought the Circle Line would be at risk of attack?) I then asked, rather idly, whether we thought a group of Palestinians wanting to travel from, say, Hebron to Ramallah might be having the same conversation and what conclusion they might come to. I think they thought the question was just mad but I am allowed to have crazy ideas like this because I am European.

My Hebrew is coming along well. I am in class Aleph Plus, which means one up from total beginner level, and that's about right. Now I am in that babbling stage where everything is kind of right but the wrong tense, wrong pronunciation, wrong grammar. We did directions (right, left, straight ahead) in class the other day and, to my delight, in the evening someone pulled over and asked me the way to a nearby street. I confidently told him, "straight on, straight on, left then right", until, later, some friends pointed out that I had confused "yashar", straight ahead, with "yafe", beautiful, and so probably said something like, "Hey beautiful, you go left and then right." I thought he accelerated away pretty fast.

I am just about managing to persuade people to speak to me in Hebrew in shops and cafes - which is hard as everyone speaks perfect English and I guess it's frustrating for them when I can't understand what they say. The other day I was totally stymied when a shopkeeper asked me if I wanted my new coffee pot gift wrapped. But people indulge me, just like they indulge my crazy European views (see above).

Today I think I am going to go to the beach. We have a choice of the Med (about an hour west) or the Dead Sea (about 30 mins east). I haven't really got my head round how close things are but really you can pop to either place and easily be back (as I want to be) in time for the start of shabbat in the early evening. But first I am going to investigate Jerusalem's big public pool which is very near my flat. I haven't been swimming since I left London and there have been quite a few kebabs and beers since then.

Hope all's well. It's lovely to hear from you and hear your news. And I hope the sun is shining back in Blighty.

Dx

PS
I thought this looked interesting. I'll try to catch it, though I am going to need subtitles.

The earth is full of your creatures

I spent a while trying to write something about yesterday's incident in Jaffa Street but although I had a number of different starting points, nothing really gelled. I'll have another go soon. Instead, I am at a religious college so I thought I'd share this psalm with you. We said it in shul this morning because it is a new moon and the start of the new lunar month and I liked the way it pulled the camera back, letting us see the world as a whole again. Plus it also has the word hyrax in it, which can't be bad.

Psalm 104

1 Praise the LORD, my soul. LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

2 The LORD wraps himself in light as with a garment;
he stretches out the heavens like a tent

3 and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
and rides on the wings of the wind.

4 He makes winds his messengers,
flames of fire his servants.

5 He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.

6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.

7 But at your rebuke the waters fled,
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;

8 they flowed over the mountains,
they went down into the valleys,
to the place you assigned for them.

9 You set a boundary they cannot cross;
never again will they cover the earth.

10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
it flows between the mountains.

11 They give water to all the beasts of the field;
the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

12 The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
they sing among the branches.

13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.

14 He makes grass grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to cultivate—
bringing forth food from the earth:

15 wine that gladdens human hearts,
oil to make their faces shine,
and bread that sustains their hearts.

16 The trees of the LORD are well watered,
the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.

17 There the birds make their nests;
the stork has its home in the junipers.

18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.

19 He made the moon to mark the seasons,
and the sun knows when to go down.

20 You bring darkness, it becomes night,
and all the beasts of the forest prowl.

21 The lions roar for their prey
and seek their food from God.

22 The sun rises, and they steal away;
they return and lie down in their dens.

23 Then people go out to their work,
to their labor until evening.

24 How many are your works, LORD!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

25 There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number—
living things both large and small.

26 There the ships go to and fro,
and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

27 All creatures look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.

28 When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.

29 When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.

30 When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground.

31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
may the LORD rejoice in his works—

32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

33 I will sing to the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
as I rejoice in the LORD.

35 But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the LORD, my soul. Praise the LORD.

An attack in the city

There has been some sort of attack in Jerusalem in a road near college. We are all fine, though of course it is a little scary. It doesn't seem to have been a bomb and it's not clear if there is any link to terrorism. More news later, I guess.