Update 2- Short and Overdue

Chevre,

Last you heard from me, I was getting ready to shear the tzitzit off my keppe.

Thursday, March 20-- Ta'anit Esther
I arranged to meet with fellow Palestine-travelers at 11am at Damascus gate, and I arrived at the Techana Merkazit (central bus station) around 10 am, and started walking. I walked through the shuuk (market), and by chance, passed a barber shop, who was willing to cut my hair but slightly incredulous that I wanted to cut my peyos off.
"Why?" he asks me. "It's Purim," I tell him. "Time for a chidush chadash," a new transition.
I didn't tell him: "because I'm going to Ramallah in an hour, and I really don't want want to walk down the street there with peyos." The off-chance that he wouldn't be willing to cut them off for me wasn't worth it, I was on a time-schedule.

So here I am, freshly hair-cut and wait just five minutes (although I'm ten minutes late) for the first two contestants of the game show, "Who Wants to Go to Palestine?"

I thought another friend was coming too, but no, it's just the three of us. We grab a shuttle from the Palestinian bus station, and are in Ramallah around noon, after an extensive display of how far Palestinians are redirected thanks the to the Wall around Ramallah. I decide not to fast, so I walk around searching for my favorite falafel place, but was unable to find it after twenty minutes or so, and settled for a different restaurant.
Ow! My first meal in Palestine, and I was already injured! I got something spicy in my eye and had to wash it out. It hurt a lot. Maybe I should have fasted.

We found the ISM office, talked to the folks there for a little bit, then picked a village to head out and see. We picked Bil'in, where there have been weekly protests every Friday for three years. We found our way to a shuttle heading that-a-way, found the "international house" (Abdullah's house), and sat in the yard hanging out with some Palestinian kids for half an hour or so. Inside, many members of the household were teaming up to clean the place up, that's why we were in the yard.

Abdullah took us in his car, along with another friend, to see the Wall, which at this particular location consisted of a series of fences, razor wire, roads, and sensors. The story goes something like this:

During the time when they were initially building the barrier, Palestinians were prevented from accessing the olive groves on the grounds that no one lived over there, despite the fact that the land historically belonged to the village of Bil'in. The settlement of Modi'in Illit, to the West of Bil'in, was illegally building additions to their settlement, stretching eastwards towards Bil'in. Since there didn't seem to be any authority willing to stop Israelis from building without a permit, some folks thought of a creative resistance they could employ.
One night, Israelis and Palestinians together built a one-room "house" on Bil'in land out beyond the olive groves, and beyond the path of th wall, nearby to where Modi'in Illit was building their Matityahu East expansion. The idea was this: if the courts upheld that Israeli settlers were allowed to remain in their illegally built structures, then by extension "Bil'in West" had to stand as well.

Without the specifics of exactly what happened, the current situation is this: the route of the wall got moved somewhat, so Bil'in had access to a bit more land on their side of the wall, and a gate was installed so that a villager from Bil'in can, with a bit of hassle, access the olive groves on the far side of the barrier, facilitated by the Israeli military.

Our host Abdullah explained to us that we, as internationals, would not be allowed to cross through the gate, but that they, as villagers from Bil'in, would be allowed to. He asks for permission for us to all go through. The soldiers talk amongst each other and up the command, and ten minutes later, the decision is made known that we aren't allowed through. It was a pretty surreal manifestation of bureaucracy, that no less than six personnel were being used to watch and man this gate, and to maintain a presence at the barrier, which is the traditional site of protest.

We made our way back to Ramallah, and then to Jerusalem, where we walked through the Border Terminal (nee military checkpoint) known as Qalandia. A new thing is that they checked the date on our visas. I had rarely, if ever, seen those checked. Back to Jerusalem, a night at Benj/Emma's and the anticipation of hitching through the West Bank the following day to Kibbutz Sasa for the Purim weekend.

Shavua tov!
Ya'akov

About Modi'in Illit and the placement of the Wall near Bil'in:
[http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2005/12/29/bilin-land-grab-thanks-to-the-wall-2/]

A reason to be happy that my phone doesn't work that well:
[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-802602.html]

a shabbos thought

The point is to be able to communicate well. It's not to *appear* as
if you know how to communicate well. It can often be a hindrance to
appear to communicate well, while in fact not being able to. At the
same time, it is nice, and useful, for people to feel comfortable, and
the simple communication, and the joy in being able to communicate
simply, is not to be overlooked. I want to know five languages by the
time I'm 30, not because I want to then kick back and pat myself on
the back, but because then I will be ready to really get down to
business. With English, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Japanese, I
should have communication access to about 1/3 of the world, and it
will then be time for some pretty serious organizing.

Recently, I've been having a lot of good conversations with myself, in
my head. Remembering that people like to read what I write, I think to
myself: I should write down some of these conversations. The
conversations happen while I'm *doing*; either praying, or walking--
when I'm engaged. Writing does not feel like doing to me. It feels
like attempting to transmit the insights gained by doing. Perhaps
writing in itself can become a *doing* for me, and then I will be able
to marry the inspiration to the ability to write.

I write on shabbat. Right now, I'm writing on a computer on shabbat.
In some version of the future, I don't want to write, or use
computers, on shabbat, but because I don't write as much as I'd like
during the week, I feel okay about allowing myself this leisure on
shabbat. As I was saving the file, I considered specifically not
saving it, like creating a rule for myself that I can write on
shabbat, but I can't save it. My writing will be like smoke. But
because I love reading my writing later, and because I have the
feeling that *it could be important*, and actually writing for me on
shabbat might make a lot of sense, because my head is quite clear, I'm
going to keep it for now. Perhaps in a future I will dedicate my
Saturday nights to writing, after I've already had a full day of
shabbat, and then I will have a night of writing. It is so hard for me
to resist the temptation of spending time with others! But I bet that
I can do it.

Maybe I need to just write for myself more, then I will have more to
give to other people. Sometimes it's hard that everything I write I
send out, because I end up censoring myself somewhat, or at least
tailoring to an audience. I don't write audacious things. I write
perceptions. And I try to be, true to my Pacific Northwest white
Jewish upper-class upbringing, politically correct.

I want to write a story, with amazing characters. A character that I
thought of recently is "Rabotai Tzvi." I don't know who that is yet. I
need to learn more about what "Rabotai" means, and what "Tzvi" means.
Then I might know who Rabotai Tzvi is.

Today when I was praying, my voice echoed in my head, as I bowed right
and left: strife, joy. strife, joy. strife, joy. When I pray around
here, I usually think about Palestine. I often try to think about
other things, I feel like a cliche unto myself, but it is the case
that Palestine is what I have in mind. It's hard for me to form other
things to pray about. All kinds of other things enter my thoughts, but
only tangentially. I often pray for understanding. (not "to be
understood", but rather "the ability to understand")

Today, when I bowed right and left, and prayed strife and joy, I was
engaging to hold both of those ideas in my mind at the same time. For
me, that is so much about Palestine. In Palestine, they give you
coffee and tea, and push food on you incessantly, they treat you with
the greatest respect. They have real, connected relationships; in a
town like Bethlehem, I can tell the taxi driver the name of the man I
am meeting, and most likely he knows him. Some people's houses are
really nice, and they do so much to make you comfortable. In many ways
it is idyllic.
And it also makes me cringe. Like a dull pain, slow arthritis. The
checkpoints, economic depression, the dusty roads, the nothing-to-do
that hangs in the air, which to my Western sensibilities feels like
impotence. That I'm not openly Jewish there. That I sometimes can't,
and more often think I can't, talk openly about spending time in
Palestine, which creates for me a divided life.

You are an insignificant speck of dust.
You are made in the image of G-d.

Shavua tov,
Jacob

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Update 1- Dis: Comfort

Hi everyone! It's me.

In some ways I don't even want to write an update, because I don't feel like anything overly significant has happened yet, but I want to at least let folks know generally what I've been up to. It's probably a good thing if I can get out of the mindset that I need to be shot at by soldiers for it to be worth reporting. In any case, be forewarned: this might not be the most exciting thing you've read this week. Then again, it might.

JNF ASB Trip

I arrived at the airport in New York City on March 8 three hours early, signed the JNF waiver, checked my bags, then took a bus to Lefferts, and got some roti for dinner. I got back to the airport about an hour before my flight, which left at midnight. The girl I sat next to started screaming because of some eye pain as we descended 10.5 hours later; it turned out to be intense sinus pressure, and other than that the flight was uneventful.

My entry into Israel was amazingly easy; it took less than a minute to get into the country (about 1/1000 of the time it took last year). Coming with a JNF trip has some advantages in that department.

I was met at the airport by my sweetheart Lior, which was really cool, and caused me to have a small amount of reputation just as the trip was starting out. All the JNF ASB (Jewish National Fund "Alternative Spring Break") kids (who would later be referred to as "AS Breakers"), gathered together in a big circle, with our arms together, and chanted: "Achim! Achim! Achim Achim Achim! Simcha! Simcha! Simcha Simcha Simcha!" (Achim = Brothers/Sisters, Simcha = Joy), while at the same time the circle jumped counter-clockwise. I appreciated our sillingness (willingness to be silly).

We were quickly heralded onto two buses (there were 80 of us altogether), given snacks and water, and driven to a kibbutz where we had dinner. The first night, we were asked to share our expectations for the trip; everyone recounted their hopes and goals. My personal expectations were not hopes: I expected us to be rather ineffective, to be doing a lot of PR-related work (as in, it looks good in the photo shoot, but we didn't really do much), but because no one else was sharing these feelings, I didn't want to be a downer.

You see, the reason that I came on the trip was for a subsidized trip to Israel. I go with JNF ASB, do a little bit of community service work, and I'm in Israel. Cool. The only catch is that I have to raise $1050 for a JNF Project called "Blueprint Negev" (I ended up raising $1600 [thanks for helping me get to Israel those who contributed!]). And because almost all of these American Jews came *just for the ASB trip*, I didn't want my pessimism to ruin their spring break vacation. They are all saying that we'll build important relationships and make a difference in the lives of people, who am I to say that we won't? I'll just sit in the corner with my subversive thoughts, and wonder how many people out there are sharing them internally.

Within the first couple of days, I was able to check in with some leaders of the group, enough to realize that if I say the word "Palestine" I won't be immediately expelled from the group. The trip leaders tended to be leftists, if anything. It's a strange juxtaposition: the JNF as an organization, a quintessentially Zionist group, and then the trip leaders, who have a very complex view of the world, of Israel, of the "situation." I was pretty excited that a couple of people on the trip expressed interest in going to Palestine.

What did we do on the trip? Contrary to what I expected, we actually did a good amount of manual labor. We pretty much worked half-days; not impressive for paid workers, but not bad for a bunch of American Jewish law students and biology majors. I helped level an area outside a children's clubhouse, that had broken tiles and small piles of dirt in an area that they would ostensibly be able to play in. We replaced broken tiles. We cleared brush at a public park in Be'er Sheva. We cleared a path in a park in the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood of Jerusalem. I sat in on a class with "special needs" elementary schoolers (whose Hebrew was better than mine), and later played basketball with them.

We also heard from a bunch of people, including Amram Mitzna, the mayor of Yerucham, and a man named Kher, who is on a Bedouin leadership council in the Negev.
The Q & A section with Kher was rather painful, and I felt quite embarrassed for my people; we asked him questions like: why should Israelis give Bedouins any services at all? What are your people contributing to Israel? What do you say to people who say that you are thieves? (The original question actually had the term "value-added" involved, as in, "How are the Bedouin a "value-added" participant in Israel)
The resonance between this discourse and the idea of a person asking me "why are Jews so cheap?" was a little challenging.

We also went on several hikes, including a night hike. We ate pretty good, I'm not finding it hard to remain vegan-ish.

In the end, I made a number of good connections (including a new crush), people that I probably will never see again, but who knows, maybe. I wish the people on the trip were more challenging to me: I often hear from people that I am challenging to them, that they appreciate the wisdom that I have to offer, and really great compliments like that.

I sat on this for awhile. I don't actually feel like people in general were sharing their wisdom with me; is it because I don't see it clearly? Is it because I'm not open to it? The relationship can't be just that I offer and they receive. They must be offering me something too, because I appreciate our relationship.
And eventually I discovered it, but didn't quite figure out how to frame it: they are good at complimenting me. They are good at helping me feel good about myself.
And there it is: they are good at recognizing the good in people. That is a really important quality, something that I struggle with at times.

Throughout the trip, I had a nagging persistent thought: what about Palestine?
And a new one, related to this trip: what about the Bedouin? Some people that I've talked to about Blueprint Negev oppose it, because it isn't considering the needs of the Bedouin community. Besides planting trees, the JNF has a long history of planning really important development in Israel, but making it Jewish-only.

I'm realizing that a lot of the ways that I felt marginalized in the past don't hold true for me anymore. People really are interested in what I have to say, even if it's unpopular. People won't always do what I say, but that's not particularly surprising. Once I just let it be okay that people have very different politics than I do, it's a lot easier. If I go into a group like this, with a pretty doable goal of "I'm going to talk about Palestine with people" or "I'm going to find a couple of people who are interested in going to Palestine with me", it's a lot easier than creating a huge amount of conflict within the group.

The trip ended on Saturday night, and I crashed at Benj/Emma's apartment, who absolutely astounded me with their hospitality. I will likely be crashing there a lot of the time when I'm in Jerusalem in the future; and to top off their wonderful personalities, they also have a phone that can call the USA for free (and vice-versa, it's a US number).

To the South

My Dad and Holly flew in Saturday, and I met up with them Sunday morning, rented a car, then drove together down to Be'er Sheva for lunch, Mitzpe Ramon for a short walkabout, then got to Kibbutz Ketura for dinner. There I saw Anat and Eden, two great friends of mine. While my parents crossed into Jordan and went to Petra, I hung out at Lotan and Ketura. Kibbutz Lotan's "Green Apprentice" participants live in, and eventually get to build cob huts, which are nice and cool to hang out in. There was a strange dust cloud over the entire region, which made it less nice to go outside.

Last night, I picked my parents back up from the border, and we went out for dinner in Eilat.

It's been kind of surreal to travel comfortably, traveling the way that my parents do: their taste for comfort rubs against my commitment to ending the Occupation of Palestine specifically, and political change, more broadly.
HOW CAN YOU ENJOY THIS? HOW CAN YOU WANT TO GO TO A SPA? shouts some part of myself. I don't understand why they don't want to see Palestine right away, as if that's all that there is in the world. Somehow, they are able to set it down, in a way that I can't.
This has brought up all sorts of internal conflict within myself; I feel really dissatisfied with myself that I haven't learned Hebrew better than I have already. It makes me think that I need to stay longer than I have planned, (maybe 'til early July instead of mid-May?) so that I can learn some more Hebrew. I feel incredibly uncomfortable knowing that I haven't even spent a day in Palestine yet.
Later, I remember that this is par for the course, this feeling of instability. That's sometimes just what it's like here.

For now, I'm staying the course. We'll see what Passover brings, perhaps I will change my schedule, but for now I've only been here a week and a half, there is still plenty of time to do plenty of things. I'm organizing a trip into Ramallah for tomorrow, which means that I have to get rid of my peyos by the morning. I was hoping to come up with some sort of good ritual for that occasion, but nothing particularly has hit me yet. Maybe it will just be quick and dirty.

Besides that, I'm frustrated that the Olmert guv'ment caved to Shas' demand that settlement construction continue. I thought maybe we were seeing some real progress there.

All the best to everyone! You'll hear from me in another week, hopefully.

B'shalom wa salaam,
Ya'akov