Hi Everybody!
I am back at the Internet Cafe. I had some laundry to do, so walked the extra distance to the laundromat near this cafe. While I waited for my laundry to run its course, I spoke English with a couple of guys, about my age, who explained some things to me about Israel and Israelis. The one guy has been in the military for five years, now, two years longer than the mandatory term. He is a demolitions expert and according to his room-mate, gets off on the soldier thing, carrying a gun, blowing stuff up. Needless to say, I played the role of tourist, bumbling through Israel, and kept silent about working at Zochrot. I didn't want any trouble (my sunburn is particularly bad today, and so I am not feeling very energized). In fact, I woke up this morning in excrutiating pain, burning and itching like crazy. I realised, after several hours of near-teary panic, that it hurts so bad because I must be dehydrated. I chugged a coule of litres of water and some glasses of juice. It was four hours until the burning and itching let up enough that I could put a shirt on to go to laundry.
AndyBoy called me today! It was so nice to talk with a friend and have a laugh and he was able to get my mind off my pain, even though I was nearly crying for some of our conversation. We managed to turn it into a big joke and laugh through my agony. He told me that he had been trying for half an hour to call me. I forgot to give the country code. I didn't even realise, so, it is 972. He also said that he only needed to put the "3" of the city code, not the "03." He does live in Denmark, so it might be different rules there for phoning here. Mom, Dad, family and friends, you can play around with the digits until they work, if you so desire!
The following is my journal and reflection of my time last night. Enjoy.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
I hung out with Eitan Reich tonight. He’s a really cool guy and smart as a whip. He’s the same age as my brother Michael, born in 1973. I was really moved by our conversations, ranging from the vision and scope of Zochrot to his nausea over the nationalization of a day in Israel to remember the Holocaust. I’m sitting here in my apartment, twenty minutes shy of midnight, listening to Welkin and I decided that I didn’t want to delay jotting my thoughts about our evening down on “paper.”
He came over to my apartment at about 6ish, bringing with him a wall clock for me. I am very grateful because I was getting annoyed at having to always get up and check my room, or find my cell phone to look at the time. Yes, cell phone; it is somehow necessary for me, both for security purposes and to get ahold of me. I was playing Welkin when he came in, and he was extremely impressed with my brother’s band. I also played him some Flaming Lips cuts and Wilco before heading out to his car.
He drove us to Jaffa, or Yaffo in Hebrew, where we found a nice little caf×™ on the beach to have a bite to eat and watch the sunset. We had a really good time, sitting there, for a couple of hours, or so. We talked about Zochrot; the various facets of Zionism; the transfer over from Zionism as a revolutionary ideology to Zionism as a Nationalistic force of oppression. I found it very interesting when he was talking about how he didn’t fit in in Israel. He is a secular Jew, born and raised secular, and was telling me that he doesn’t grasp what he has in common with all these Jews. He was telling me about how, to him, it seems kind of anti-semitic to have to round up all the Jews from all over the planet and get them to one place, some kind of a homeland. He even wondered why it is that Jews cannot just live mixed in with everyone else. “I’d almost rather be a Jew living amongst Gentiles,” he told me. “Why do we all have to live here, separate from the rest of the world?” He even made mention of the Nazi propaganda which stated that Jews couldn’t live with Gentiles; ironic, he noted. When I asked him what caused him to be different from most everyone else, he said that the 2000 intafada really shook him up that there was something wrong when the Israeli army killed several dozen Israeli Arab civilians. It broke him, he said, and he has been saved by Tai Chi and Zochrot.
We ate eggs baked in tomato sauce and toasted, seasoned flatbread, dipped in a seasoned yogurt. There are so many dipped foods here in Israel / Palestine, that no one is afraid of Seinfeld’s “double-dipping”! We had a really good time, and started to walk down the promenade, which runs from Tel Aviv to Jaffa, connecting both cities, in a move, which according to Eitan, is kind of cool, in effect, joining the cultures that Israel is attempting to separate. We sat at a strategic point, where Eitan says he likes to sit because there is the most diversity among people and cultures in all of Tel Aviv / Yaffo. You can see European and Oriental Jews (both secular and religious), Arabs, Muslims, Russian Jews and tourists all mixing and sharing the same walking path. Our conversation turned to the Holocaust, when I asked him about relations between Israel and Germany. He had mentioned that his sister married a German girl, and both of them found it strange but very ironic and interesting. I didn’t know how to ask about Germany and Israel and Eitan gently reminded me that Germany wasn’t responsible for the persecution of so many Jews, just the Nazis were. He even told me that the number of Jews who were part of the Holocaust were a definite minority in Israel because it only affected several European nations of Jews, and there are many countries represented in Israel, many people who don’t have relatives connected to the Holocaust. He also told me that he really struggles with how people say “the” holocaust. But, he said, if you only call it “a” holocaust, then people are offended. He told me that it offends him when commemorisation of the Holocaust became nationalized. He said that he feels it robs him and his fellow countrymen and women of their own personal responsibility to mourn and learn to deal with the pain. By nationalizing it, he said, it blankets over the whole nation and keeps people from dealing with the atrocities on a personal and real emotional level. I had no idea how to respond. I have not associated Remembrance Day, for example, with that kind of perspective. I always thought that for a country to recognise something as a nation was a good thing, a step in the right direction. But who am I to disagree with him? I just listened and told him I had never thought of things like that. He talked for sometime on the subject, articulating himself well, and I still don’t understand it enough to put it on paper correctly.
We talked about victim mentality, which he brought up. I was pretty amazed at his insight, which I can easily agree with. When I look back on my life and how I was victimized as a young kid, it really screwed me up. But I didn’t get any better when I constantly dwelt on how I was a victim. It was one of the hardest things for me to get “over”: the idea that I was no longer a victim and needed to respond to my own growth and health by taking initiative with myself and not simply blaming others for my problems. You see, a victim acts with impunity because, after all, they are only trying to survive. Eitan applied this same principle to Israel and told me that in his opinion Jews have never grieved over what happened at the hands of the Nazis. I found that statement astounding and asked what he meant.
He told me that Jews who had come to Palestine after WWII, with all the trauma and accompanying emotional and spiritual baggage were given guns and told that they had to fight for their freedom and that the new enemy was the Arab. He told me about the “transfer” of 40,000 Palestinians from the city of Lydd, over night, in 1948. The Jewish forces had set up roadblocks and were taking all the valuables off of the expelled people: watches, necklaces, jewelry, etc. He was telling me that he was told by someone who was there at the time that the Jews knew where to look for the hidden valuables because they, in Germany, had hidden valuables in clothing and various places, so knew where to find the hidden valuables in the clothes of the expelled Arabs. That is a classic example of the victim becoming the oppressor.
In a Bible college course, several years ago, Gerry, my teacher, was telling the class that looking throughout history, one could see a pattern of the victim becoming the oppressor when given the opportunity. I have never forgotten that statement. Maybe because I don’t want to become an oppressor, maybe because I find it so baffling that people who have seen so much heartache and pain could turn around and inflict it on others. That statement seems particularly cogent here and now.
We sat on the side of the promenade for another couple of hours, talking about our families and life, and I was able to tell him about the centrality of Jesus in my life. Weird, I thought, me telling a Jew about my devotion to a Jew. He was very respectful and polite and I got no hint of condescension or frustration regarding my relationship with (his peoples’) God. I told him about how I do not fit the mold of a typical evangelical Christian, that I never have felt like I really belonged; but that I love Jesus (no matter what) and His Church and am looking forward to attending one here. He asked me what I was looking for and I replied “kick-ass music.” He suggested I might want to go to an African church – he said he could show me where they worship and I could check it out.
We were talking about tourism and Judeo-Christian visions of Israel and how Zochrot is considering the notion of setting up alternative tours. For instance, there is what is called the Orange Tour, where tourists can walk to various destinations in Tel Aviv and see some sights. One of the sights, really horrific I think, he showed me as we walked the path to the car. It is a half-destroyed Arab household, from the original neighbourhood in Jaffa, which has been rebuilt on the top half in a modern style. The building is now a museum commemorating the “liberation of Jaffa.” I asked what that meant and he replied that there were various gangs or terrorist organizations that used to bomb British military vehicles and kill British officers, etc., and they also took Jaffa by storm, expelling 80,000 Palestinians from their homes, who now have lived in refugee camps in Gaza for the last sixty years. “It is interesting,” Eitan said, “that there are all these people around here and probably some family in Gaza wishing they could live again in this very home.” He made a very poignant comment to me regarding the symbolism of the half old, half new architecture of this “museum” – of how Israel moved into and destroyed a very old city (Jaffa is 5,000 years old!) and built their modern existence over top of the ruins.
I asked how tourists could enjoy such a place and he didn’t know either. He said the blatant in-their-face display of Israel over Palestine disgusts him and so he has never been to tour the museum. He told me that it is very fashionable for Jews to live in still-standing Arab houses, they will pay big money for it and flaunt that they are Occupiers! I have a really hard time hearing that kind of thing. Eitan Bronstein, the founder and director of Zochrot, went on a tour of the museum we were standing outside of, and spoke with the curator, who is a living member of this particular gang (some would call them “freedom fighters”). Apparently the man was rather amused at the work of Zochrot. I sighed a very big sigh of overwhelmence. My new friend apologized for telling me so much upsetting stuff and I assured him that I needed to know, that I wanted to know, that it is a responsibility given to me to be informed and to learn how to inform others, even if I’m no good at it. He agreed with me that the only way I can learn about my new home is to talk with many people and ask a lot of questions; then I can really find people’s perspectives.
That’s all Eitan Reich is, a person with a perspective. He told me about his parents’ journey to accepting what he does with regards to Zochrot. He told me about how his grandparents were close personal friends of David Ben Gurion, who, as you may or may not know, was one of the founders of the state of Israel and its first Prime Minister in 1948. He said Ben Gurion was a very powerful thinker with a lot of great things to offer the Jewish people; but who simply had no compassion for Arabs. Eitan has been working on his Master’s Degree for some years. He was nearly finished a Master’s in Religious Studies but two years ago switched it over and is now studying Zionism. He is done and only has two essays due in October. The topic he is pursuing is when Zionism (which he says is not always oppressive – only extreme elements of it) turned from being a revolutionary ideology to an oppressive extremist system. He was telling me about 1977 being very influential, where the Labour party (socialist leanings) was finally overcome by Likud party (still in power, rightist, nationalist). He also said that the major change in Zionism came about in the mid 1930’s, before the War, before the Holocaust. I am very eager to talk with him more. And I will; I get to work alongside him for the next three years – since he is now staff at Zochrot, Zochrot having just got another grant, which is able to pay Eitan to work there. He works part-time, which most of the six employees do, balancing his time with a job to do with education and curriculum planning in the school system. Eitan used to be the chairman of the volunteer board and now is looking forward to the two of us preparing a projected 2006 budget, and both of us learning more about fund-raising.
To comment about Zionism not being all-bad, he was telling me that the very fact that Hebrew is a resurrected language is the work of Zionists. The very fact that he was born in Israel had to do with Zionists. The fact that I could swim at the beach yesterday was because of Zionists. He did say that he never felt like he belonged; that he feels like he can’t really be himself in a Zionist setting. He had a difficult time trying to explain that to me, but I intrinsically understood: I’ve always felt like an outsider of organised, denominational Christianity. I’ve never felt like I could be or would be accepted for who I truly am in organised, denominational Christianity. Maybe that is something we have in common. Maybe I can feel solidarity with him over the feelings of being an outsider.
We had a very interesting discussion about the fears we both have about the institutionalization of Zochrot. It is a grass-roots, counter-current organisation that has never sought money from anyone. The six or seven financial supporters all approached Zochrot because they were so into what the organisation is doing (http://www.zochrot.org). But now, with money comes accountability and tracking and projection and all that. And with that kind of structure comes the temptation to be all systematic and formal and “stable.” How do you involve yourself in something that is rather lofty and improbable (i.e. the right of return for refugees), yet try to make it continuous and sustainable? And how do you do that without becoming institutionalized? These are big vision-type questions and I was greatly encouraged as we grappled with them. He told me that what Zochrot does is foster an environment for people to process their own emotions and experiences; Zochrot does not tell people how to react or how to “remember” (for that is what Zochrot means). As we continued to talk about concepts like “structure,” and “methods,” words that scare grass-roots lovers, he told me that MCC wanted a specific list from Zochrot about my duties and how I will be involved and how that was tough for them to come up with when they talked about it at meetings. Eitan said that it means so much to them that I am even here, giving of my life for three years, to a people that aren’t my own, to a struggle I don’t own, to a country and culture I know nothing about. That really encouraged me! I am honoured to be a part of something so important. I told him that it is I who am benefiting more than Zochrot, even though I am eager to offer anything I can. He did mention that they were rather nervous about the type of person that MCC would provide, but assured me that after spending some time with me I “will fit like gloves.”
I feel very happy about where God has allowed my feet to carry me on this path of life. I am happy about the people I will be learning from, growing with, and seeking to make a difference in an indifferent world. And I am really wanting to learn Hebrew. I am really bothered that I am illiterate and useless when it comes to anything to do with Hebrew. Eitan encouraged me that I should learn fast; after all, he noted, it’s not like I am shy or anything!
I am rather curious about my mother’s mother’s family. Are there Jewish roots? Or do I have to convert, just for the jokes?
That's all for now. The ADSL saga continues. I have to get my landlady to give permission to the phone company before they will procede. it is cheap, though, for even the highest speed, only 70 NIS a month. That is about $20 CDN.
BURRO D BLOCK OUT
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