Solid Gold Dancing in the Holy Land: April 2007

dance like nobody is watching April 24, 2007 |

Last night I went to a Yom Ha'atzmaut BBQ in Jerusalem's German Colony. I actually saw a few people I knew, which always surprises me. I still assume being a relative newcomer to Jerusalem, I am unlikely to bump into anyone I know.

I started chatting with a nice Israeli guy who told me about this dance event that was happening around the corner. He was going along later and asked if I wanted to come. To be honest, I had nothing better to do and well to be really honest... I love a boogie (but that won't come as a surprise to those of you who really know me!).

I went along to this "thing" with a totally open mind. I had no idea what I was going to, or whether I would love it or hate it. I'll admit that when I had to pay 45 shekels to get in, I was really hoping I would love it!

Things were only just getting going when we arrived at around 11.30pm. In a large hall, there were about 50 or 60 people all dancing in their own little worlds. No one was dancing with each other; there was no 'couple dancing' in sight (yeah!) and everyone seemed totally unaware that anyone else was dancing around them.

I think I am gonna like this, I thought to myself. I scanned the room and marvelled at the diverse group around me. Young and old, religious and secular, hippies and super trendies... it was a come one, come all. I loved it!

Soon the hall was filled with literally hundreds of people. The DJ played a weird and wonderful mixture of contemporary (Israeli and Western) music, techno, hip hop, African and Indian beats, as well as good old fashioned "rikudei am" - traditional Israeli dancing songs. Whenever an old kibbutz favourite was played, large groups of men and women would instantaneously form and a frenzied circle of Israeli dancing would commence. It was dizzying and exciting and even when I was barely left with a breath in my body I couldn't help but think how unique this gathering of people was.

It was so unmistakably Israeli in its feel and flavour. Unlike the revolting nightclubs I remember being dragged to aeon's ago, this was something all together different. There were elderly men getting down and boogying hard to some seriously funky hip hop beats... and there were young teenagers screaming every word to classic Israeli folk songs.

People danced with passion and joy and utterly free of self consciousness. By 2.30am, I had danced my little bare feet off and I was most definitely ready to hobble home.

I found out from my new Israeli friend that this was not an unique occurrence. The organisation that put this event together (appropriately enough called "Boogie nights"!) run these dancing nights every two weeks. I think I have just found my new hobby!

Here are some photos I took last night. I only wish they could really capture the essence of such a magical night.
(You can click on the photos to see them at their full size)

The bitter sweet side of Israeli life April 23, 2007 |

Today is Yom HaZikaron (Israel's Memorial Day) which honours all those who have died not only in military conflict, but also all the innocent civilians killed in terror attacks. Over 22,000 people have died since Israel declared independence in 1948 - and of course, most of them since the 1967 war onwards. At 8pm last night and 11am this morning a siren rang out throughout Israel and everyone stopped what they were doing, stood up and was silent for two minutes.

The day has a heavy and oppressive air about it. The radio plays non-stop sad songs and people speak more quietly than usual.

The strangest thing about Yom HaZikaron is that at about 7pm tonight when it ends, Israeli Independence Day (Yom Ha'atzmaut) begins and people strip themselves of their sadness and mourning and go out and celebrate. There are huge parties, BBQ's, people in the streets, fireworks - the lot. The first time I witnessed this transformation I thought it was the weirdest - bordering on sick and bizarre - thing I had ever experienced. How can a country go from mourning to celebrating in a matter of minutes???

I came to realise slowly that the two holidays are deliberately sandwiched together. It's a fact, and a sad fact, that Israel's history is scarred by tragedy and continues to exist in a state of alert and fear because of our lovely, peace-loving neighbours.

Israel's hard-fought freedom in 1948 came at a heavy price, and it's a price we are still paying for. It's a bittersweet joy, a mixed blessing, but despite all the pain and suffering, there is still a lot to celebrate and be joyful for (believe it or not!). That Israel even exists is, in itself, a miracle.

People often refer to native-born Israelis as “Sabras.” The Sabra is a desert cactus – prickly on the outside and sweet on the inside. Israel is a cactus too. It needs to have a strong defensive exterior to protect itself. It needs to protect itself so that the inside – its people – can survive. And they do. Yom Ha’atzmaut is more than a celebration of independence. It is a celebration of survival. And that is every reason to celebrate.

A few weeks ago, I was asked by the Australian Jewish News to write an article for their Yom Ha'atzmaut supplement. For all of you that didn't see it (probably because you don't live in Australia!) this is the story I wrote:

For a long time, I was the only Jewish kid in my school. A thousand-something non-Jews, and me. That is, until Tali Zuilkowsky came along. Suddenly the Jewish population of Hong Kong’s decidedly colonial King George V School had doubled. To make matters even worse, Tali not only had a Jewish sounding name (unlike my very non-Jewish sounding name), she came from Israel. She was a REAL Jew. As Jewish as they come, I thought.

She spoke with this sing-songy accent that all the girls thought was cool and all the boys swooned at. With her long red curls and glowing olive skin, she looked like she had come right off the kibbutz. She was exotic, she was kind, she was popular and I hated her.

Of course, deep down I wanted to BE Tali Zuilkowsky. As much as it makes me cringe today, I distinctly remember having a conversation with her one day at school. You see, I had immediately introduced myself as the “other Jew” in school, some kind of territory-marking ritual probably. In order to bond with Tali as much as possible, I made up some story about all the relatives I had in Israel. With an excited edge in her voice she said “oh really? Where do they live?”

And that’s where I stumbled. “Uhh. Well I have so many relatives and well, they are all over the country really. Some live near Haifa, some near Netanya, oh and Tel Aviv of course.” (By now, I had practically run out of all the places in Israel I’d heard of). I was, of course, lying through my teeth. The great irony was that I did have a slew of relatives living in Israel, but it would take another fifteen years or so before I would discover them.

I look back now, all those years ago growing up in Hong Kong, and wonder how on earth someone like me would end up making aliyah and living in Israel. I came from a mixed marriage (Jewish mother, non-Jewish father), absolutely zero Jewish education – formal or otherwise, and long before my mother and I instituted our bagel brunch Sundays, bacon and eggs were more the order of the day.

For as long as I can recall, all I ever wanted was to “be Jewish”, to “do Jewish” – whatever that means. I yearned to cling to a culture, an identity and be able to point and say, “That’s my country, those are my people, this is my identity.” Even when I moved to Australia in my early twenties, I never managed to achieve a feeling of connection, of belonging. Even living in the heart of Melbourne’s Jewish community wasn’t enough for me.

I recall an emotional conversation with my mother a few years ago; “I go to a Reform shul and I don’t fit in. I go to an Orthodox shul and I don’t fit in. I feel like a gentile in my own community and I feel like a Jew outside it. I want to be in a country where everyone is Jewish, where no one will question my authenticity because I don’t look the part or because I don’t have a Jewish-sounding surname.”

And then it hit me.

Israel.

All this painful soul-searching had a very simple answer.

I made my first trip to Israel at the end of 2003, when I was accepted to be an artist-in-residence at the WUJS (World Union of Jewish Students) Institute in Arad. Crazy girl that I am, I also made aliyah without ever having been to Israel. Most people thought I was insane, a few thought I was brave and adventurous, but most people just thought I was plain insane.

I spent almost a year living and writing in the breathtaking expanse of the Negev desert. At the end of my program, I realised with painful admission that I had not prepared myself at all well for aliyah. I put almost no effort into job seeking, networking and although I studied hard in ulpan, my Hebrew after only a few months was not going to get me any further than buying fruit and veg in the local market. With a heavy heart and even heavier debt, I returned to Australia.

I may have been down, but I was not out. “Israel’s not going anywhere. It will be here when you get back” my well-meaning Israeli friend Galit told me in an attempt to cheer me up. I spent the next two and a half years working on my personal “Project Israel”. I was going to find a way back and I was going to succeed this time, I told myself.

Well, two and a half years on, here I am. I live in a surprisingly spacious apartment in a classic Jerusalem stone building in the historic neighbourhood of Talbieh. I am a stone’s throw from the infamous King David Hotel and on Saturday afternoons I can wander to Independence Park with a book and a rug and watch the world go by. In the space of a few hours I see Haredi families taking their Shabbos stroll, I hear a muezzin calling his fellow Muslims to prayer and the bells of a nearby monastery ring out.

For five days of the week, I get up and go to work. I have been incredibly fortunate in that I landed an exciting and challenging job with a leading Israeli research and educational institute. It’s not just a job. It’s a place where I feel that one day I will really be able to make a difference. Still, it’s amazing how normal my life is in such an extraordinary country.

It’s not always easy though and I would be a liar if I said it was. Israel is not an easy country to live in and it’s not for everyone. I have moments where I feel utterly overwhelmed, painfully lonely and when I question the massive move I have made.

I am often reminded of a line in Philip Roth’s seminal novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, and each time I read it, it makes me smile.

“What was incredible and strange to me… what gave my entire sojourn the air of the preposterous was one simple but wholly implausible fact: I am in a Jewish country. In this country, everybody is Jewish.”

In a nutshell, this is what Israel means to me; it means home.

Only in israel #2 April 07, 2007 |

Ok, so I decided to brave it and go back to IKEA again. My shipment is due in the next week or two (hallelujah!) and I really wanted to pick up a couple of pieces of furniture that I don't have coming (namely a kitchen table and chairs and a TV/DVD table unit).

My biggest mistake was going during chol ha'moed, which are the in-between days of Pesach.
The traffic on the roads was horrendous and it took half the day just to get there in the end.
When I finally did make it to IKEA, I realised that so had half of Israel. This, I thought, was not going to be fun.

Thankfully, I had pretty much worked out exactly what I was going to buy, so it was more a matter of just checking out the furniture in real life (catalogues can be so deceptive!) and then heading to the warehouse section of the store (no easy task in itself mind you) to haul the massive great hulks of flat-packed DIY bundles of joy onto my trolley.

I'd arranged for it to be delivered, so I only needed to carry a couple of light plastic bags containing the seat cushions for the kitchen chairs I had purchased.

I took the opportunity while I was near Netanya to visit my dear cousin Tammy who is currently in Israel on holiday with her Israeli husband and their two gorgeous children. Tammy's husband is from a moshav in Bet Yehoshua, which as it turns out, is a stone's throw from IKEA. How convenient!

I took a sherut (Israeli maxi-cab service) from IKEA to the Bet Yehoshua train station. The sherut drops you on one side of the station, and the moshav is on the other side. I told the security guard that I just wanted to get to the other side of the platform so I could get to the moshav. He told me that I would have to buy a train ticket first.

"No, no. You don't understand" I said. "I am not taking the train, I just need to get to the other side of the platform. I am going to the moshav."

"I understand. But you cannot go through without a ticket."

"But there must be a pedestrian crossing!" I implored. "A walkway, a bridge, a tunnel - something, surely!"

"I know. The train station must build one, but right now there is nothing. You have to buy a ticket. Sorry."

"This is crazy! Totally nuts!"

The security guard smiled, almost sympathetically. He leaned over and whispered to me that initially he told me (in Hebrew) to say that I had got off the train and come out at the wrong exit. That way he could have let me through (for nothing). Clearly, that bit of our exchange was lost on me and now, because his supervisor was looking on, he couldn't help me cheat my way across, like some desperate refugee trying to smuggle across the border into safe territory.

The guard escorted me to the ticket machine and showed me the cheapest ticket to buy (4 shekels).

Now I could react in several ways:

I could lose it and demand to speak to the station manager
I could continue my fruitless conversation with the security guard, and wax lyrical about the infuriating inefficiencies of our beloved little country
I could just suck it up, buy the bloody ticket and cross over the station

In case you were wondering, I chose option 3. Given I had zero choice in the matter - unless I wanted to walk several kilometres to the next crossing, if one actually exists, that is - I coughed up and bought a ticket TO CROSS A TRAIN LINE.

Ok, so maybe that means I am not a real Israeli yet, but I figured that for 4 measly shekels (about $1.50 Australian), I had better things to do with my time - like spend it with my cousin and her kids!

It's very easy to lose it over small, but utterly infuriating things like this in Israel, but as they say, "don't sweat the small things". I think I'll save my outbursts for much bigger things!

Labels: Only in Israel

Tales from the Big Apple April 04, 2007 |

It's been a while between blogs, I know - but it's been a pretty crazy couple of weeks.
I got back to Israel on Monday morning, which was Erev Pesach (note to self: don't do that again).

I wanted to write regularly while I was in New York, but well, yeah, that kinda didn't happen. I also thought I would also keep a journal, so I could remember everything when I got back, but well, yeah, that kinda didn't happen either. So, looks like we are left with my memory, which at times leaves a lot to be desired.

This was my second trip to New York, so I at least had a vague idea of where I was going and what I wanted to do. I had a few days before my conference started, so I made the most of it by hitting the streets and shopping (I confess! I am a latent shopaholic, but my addiction only seems to rear its ugly head in NY. Thank God I don't live there!).

I also managed to see a couple of wonderful Broadway shows; Talk Radio starring the very scrummy yummy Liev Schrieber and Moon for the Misbegotten starring one of my all time favourite actors, Kevin Spacey. Moon was one of those rare theatrical moments, the joy of which will stay with you even when you are old and senile and can only remember the name of your third grade teacher and your first telephone number. I somehow managed to get a ticket in the third row - it was off to the side a little (ok, a lot), but much of the action was down my side of the stage and I was close enough to be able to see the tiny rivulets of sweat pouring down Mr Spacey's face. Ok, now I am sounding like a lunatic stalker.

I also had the opportunity while I was in New York to catch up with a few dear friends, including my friend Lisa who I went to primary school with in Hong Kong like a gazillion years ago. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we have managed to stay in touch over the years, although it has been nine years since we last saw each other. Lisa was living in London and late last year, her company offered her a transfer to the United States. She is now living in Atlanta, Georgia and when I told her I was coming to NY, she booked a flight and a hotel for the weekend so we could catch up. It was wonderful to see her, and amazing how nearly a decade apart melted away and it seemed like it was only yesterday that we last saw each other.

In two days we managed to pack in some speed shopping, a lovely dinner and a trip to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

Here's a pic of two old friends (we've known each other for about 25 years...eeeekk!!!)

I also managed to catch up with my friend Hallie Leighton who was a fellow Writer-in-Residence in Arad, Israel a few years ago. Hallie was living in Jerusalem until late last year and left just a few months before I finally moved in December. It was great to see her and we did a bunch of great things together including seeing the show Talk Radio, going to a preview screening of a new film called The Lookout and on my last night, Hallie hosted the most divine dinner party at her to-die-for apartment on the Upper West Side.

The dinner party consisted of one of the most eclectic bunch of people ever assembled at one table. Hallie (who is a marvellous character all by herself) invited her father Jan - who is a dead ringer for Kirk Douglas by the way, and three of her friends, Daniel, Michael and Jonathan (who actually lives in Jerusalem and was just in NY visiting his family over Pesach).

Hallie whipped up a delicious and hearty minestrone soup with loads of fresh crusty bread, salad, plenty of vino and to top it all off, homemade brownies (courtesy of a family friend).

People are not just being clichéd when they talk about New York as "the city that never sleeps". They're right, it never does. It's a city on speed 24/7/365. You can walk through Times Square at any hour of the day or night and it will be filled with people and the trademark neon lights and now state-of-the-art LED displays blaring down on you so intensely you can actually feel the heat coming off them. With all the light, and all the people, it's like Times Square has it's very own internal clock.

They also say "anything goes" in New York and this is also a statement I would wholeheartedly have to agree with. New York is full of crazy characters, sometimes so stereotyped, they have to be seen to be believed. Take for example the two Amazonian African-American transvestites in the vintage clothing store I stumbled across, or (and this is my favourite NY story) the two perky sales girls in Henri Bendel (one of NY's most exclusive and expensive department stores) who were promoting a new range of beauty products called "Sexy Beast". I was with my friend Lisa at the time, and we went over to have a look.

The way-too-perky, super-friendly sales girls squirted the fragrance onto a little piece of card and Lisa and I whiffed appreciatively. "Hmmm. Very nice" we said.

"Isn't it?" they replied. "It's a wonderful new range for dogs."

WHOA.

Back up girls.

"For dogs?" I repeated with more than a dose of incredulity in my tone.
"Yes. For dogs." "Forgive me, I really don't want to sound rude, but you DO realise that outside of America, there is not a place on earth that you could sell that stuff."
(Ok, on reflection, that DID come across as rather agressive).

The girls giggled nervously, trying very hard on the one hand to maintain their sales integrity and at the same time convince me that they were normal human beings in full knowledge that what they were selling was insane.

"Well, you are probably right. Apart from here and L.A. it would probably be hard to sell this range."

Yeah. No shit Sherlock!

Cheeky little me asked the girls if they minded if I took a photo of them and they kindly agreed. One of them looked a little worried and said to me, "you're not like a writer or anything are you?"

Who, moi?

Say cheers girls, or should that be WOOF?

Ten days in New York was actually probably enough for me. As much as I love the city and all the crazy people in it, it seemed stragely devoid of soul. Bursting at the seams with personality for sure, but not a whole lot of soul going on. I found myself really missing Israel, and Jerusalem in particular. I realised all of a sudden, that my flight back to Israel would be the first time I was actually flying "home" to Israel and that was a truly wonderful feeling.

I landed in Israel on the morning of Erev Pesach and first made a mad dash to pick up my cat Syd (who I had tried to convince was going to go to an exclusive Club Med for kitty cats in Beit HaKerem - ok, actually my friend Tal's apartment, but hey, they say a change is as good as a holiday right!?).

I dropped Syd off at home, filled up her food and water bowls, pulled some clean clothes out of my suitcase and stuffed them into a small backback before heading back to Tel Aviv to my friend Elisabeth's house. Elisabeth was going to join me and my relatives for the seder that night in Kiron, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Somehow - surviving on approximately 4 hours sleep in 72 hours, I managed to stay conscious for the entire seder, although there were more than a few moments where my head dangled dangerously close to my matzah ball soup.

At last, I had made it. I was home, in Israel, for Pesach.

Chag Pesach sameach v'kosher everyone!