Free Write: Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

She’s just cut her hair. The thick mane used to reach the small of her back. She was a hair model and blames it on a bad dye job. But the truth is women cut their hair in crisis and she was glad for change, the possibility of rebirth. Now when she tucks her chin in, you can see a woven scar at the base of her skull—a surgeon’s handiwork from seven years ago.

She chooses her men based on their problems. The more incapable they are the more attractive her challenge. People born in a crucible can be addicted to dysfunction. Friends wonder if she enjoys being torn down for the sheer satisfaction of building herself back up.

But when he hit her it felt like her head would split open at the seam. And when he cheated on her she thought with shame and embarrassment about staying. “You see,” she says, “nothing happens in a vacuum.”

Sometimes we lose our freedom. We roam around with our throats closed up. The sun is hard to look at because it reminds us of our own darkness. Our brains hiccup over and over the same events.

            Everyone plays out their parents’ marriages or non-marriages.  I’ve seen women drawn to men like their fathers—self-righteous, neglectful, or abusive.  I’ve seen men push women away so as not to suffer the same pain as their mothers, and in the process, become their fathers.

The narrative flows ad infinitum.

            Who will you refuse to forgive?

The Imam and his Wife

      The Imam and his wife sit as a king and queen in folding metal chairs. The young leader has long slender fingers that open and flick as he speaks. He makes an L-shape with his thumb and pointer-finger that twists by his head to express an idea. In between questions, he reaches for his wife's hand. The woman is draped in a black robe, bird-like and still. But her stillness makes the entire room fidget. Her skin is white as the walls and her painted down-cast eyes belong in an illuminated manuscript

       The audience is not used to this kind of beauty. They’re unsure whether to regard this woman as princess or slave. The California boys stare at her intently, waiting for her to move, for small signs of suffering and oppression. They are lost in exotic mystery and their ears close up as if underwater. Suddenly the wife’s laughter crashes in. She crosses her legs and the hem of her robe rises to reveal a pair of blue jeans and white socks with red hearts on them. And with this flash of red, white, and blue the boys chuckle and breathe easy.

Two Twenty Minute Writing Exercises

 #1. Description of Abraham from Jordan:

     Abraham is one of five local Bedouins allowed entrance into the touristy “Cave Bar” located right outside the gates of Petra. His dress is part gangster, part Bedouin. His jeans are slung low on his thick hips and his head is wrapped with a thin white cloth. This man constantly moves. When he sits and talks, he rocks back and forth. He acts out his stories, occasionally gripping the armchair to show someone’s surprise. He lets his words gain momentum as he swings and the tourists glare when he laughs with his tongue stuck out. His dark arms are not inked with a tribal roadmap like the rest of the Bedouins that pinpoints their site-specific heritage, their blood tie to the land. His movements are Western. He mimes out gestures from movies and magazines, but he tells me he will never visit America and he tells me he is stilling waiting to be allowed back into Jerusalem.

 #2. S.Y Agnon was the author of “Fable of the Goat,” a symbolic short story that describes the connection between Jews living in the diaspora and in Israel. In the story, a son travels and finds the Land of Israel. He sends for his father by tucking a note inside a goat’s ear and directing him back home. When the father fails to find the note, he slaughters the animal and thinks his son is lost forever. The goat represents many things, including the “easy” pathway to Israel, which has been destroyed. Below is an imagined dialogue between S.Y. Agnon, who came to Israel in the early 1900s and Abraham about the story. (Btw, the goat is magical and its milk tastes like Eden.)

           “It was stupid to kill the goat with milk and honey flowing from the udders,” Abraham puts his hands up to his chest, pats, and gestures milking his nipples.

            Agnon smirks and nods, shifting in his seat.

            “I think this goat was my brother actually.” Abraham lifts a glass of frothy beer to his lips. “The son killed my brother, sent him to his death. My goat brother, used to live in the mountains, caves—a happy life.” Abraham sets the glass down and leans forward, elbows on his knees. “The Bedouin have a saying: strong as the desert, soft as the sand, move like the wind, always free. Now his blood is spilled all over,” Abraham claps his hands and spreads them out in the air. “The old man killed the messenger.”

            “It is not your messenger,” Agnon says and takes a sip of tea.

“You see honey and milk, I see blood and sand. I cannot visit where my family has been buried. My blood,” Abraham extends his arms to show his tree-root veins.

“Yes but every Jew is tied to Israel. Deep in the ground, every Jew that has ever or will ever exist, is connected. The internal Israel and the physical Israel. All their ghost souls, all the people, belong in Israel.”

“It is my home too. Rocks, sky, water,” Abraham shakes his opened hand.

“ I am talking of a promise.”

Abraham sits back, raises his eyebrows, and cocks his head to the side. He shrugs and looks away, drumming his fingers against the armchair. “Strong as the desert, soft as the sand, move like the wind, always free,” he murmurs in a sing-song voice.

            

The City of Lions

  Tonight there is a Medieval festival in the Christian quarter of the Old City. Dancers attached to pulleys run up and down one of the ancient walls at a ninety degree angle. Dressed up as knights, they mime out a literal war-dance in spotlight.  They kick off the wall and spin, entangled.  Below, two men fight, striking each other's shields with swinging balls of fire. Deeper into the quarter, a crowd gathers around a fire breather. The man is dressed in peasant rags and spins a torch lit at opposite ends. His dark face is slick with moisture as he blows out flames. Everything suddenly becomes alive--a scene straight out of 1,001 Arabian Nights.  The peasant drops his torch to climb a suspended rope that extends into the night sky. He twists the cord around his body, folding, spinning, balancing. As he dances above us, rain suddenly breaks and I'm forced to wrap my scarf around my head like a Muslim. The rain pours down harder and harder and I cannot help but throw my head back and smile with all my heart: I'm here, I'm here.

Protest Night

      Young hipsters and middle-aged couples are pressed together holding up printed signs of protest. A student shouts into her bullhorn at the top of her lungs, her neck tight and bulging. The crowd leaves the sidewalks to start marching into the middle of the street. Above us, people are taking pictures from their balconies.  Cars honk and children wave as they watch us pass by. Police lights flash and traffic stops. I am surrounded by singing, clapping, happy people and am suddenly struck by how beautiful my generation is. Drummers beat behind us and I can feel their sound rising in my chest. Suddenly we sit down in the middle of an intersection flooded in lamplight. I never cared enough to protest before and now that I'm here in Israel, I finally feel free. I wonder about what I've been missing all this time. Why didn't I have a community? Why did I feel alone? Why didn't I take a chance? Why did I continue to listen to my parents?  Why didn't I yell at the top of my lungs? Why did I ever let myself feel helpless?

Rome

            We weave our way through cramped underground tunnels hundreds of feet below the Muslim quarter. These tunnels follow the perimeter of the Western Wall that extends underneath the ground towards the Dome of the Rock. This is the closest Jews can get to the foundation stone, the stone where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac. The wall is soft and dimpled with age. It is made up of gigantic stones with the largest being forty-five feet long and weighing more than fifty-eight elephants. Somehow, they were all pushed and lifted to form one great partition around the Second Temple. We continue through a series of branching caves until we reach an ancient aqueduct. There the tour guide explains that King Herod built the Second Temple as an international holy space. Jerusalem, you see, was meant to be a true city of peace. Unfortunately, the Romans sacked the temple seventy years after it was built. “Today, we hope Jerusalem will become a city of peace again. Rome is no more,” he says, “You will not see any Roman soldiers when we go back out. On another note, we will be exiting through the Muslim quarter and will be escorted by two armed security personnel, this is no joke.”

Our group leaves the ancient ruins far below and walks out into the crisp night air. The cobblestones are slick with lamplight and there are few people on the street. All the Muslim minarets are lit up with glowing tubes of green neon lights. The walls are lined with Arabic graffiti and signs advertising Biblical treasures. The security guard walks in front of me in jeans and a sweatshirt.  I can see a hand gun peeking out between his belt and boxers. He swaggers and turns his head back and forth.  Old Arab women weighed down by plastic shopping bags limp past merchants closing up their shops. A few Hasidic men with long side-locks and dark coats rush past. And I realize that the guns are not really for my protection for I know that we must be ok, if these religious men can pass through unharmed. The guns are to send a warning.  A man drops a load of heavy boxes behind us and the woman in front of me quickly turns around with eyes strained and scared. I want to shake her and say snap out of it, I want to stop this guard and tell him to leave, but instead we all move in closer to one another and I cannot tell if we are sheep or a shield wall. 

Resistance: A journal entry

            We sit around the table in candle light after all the dishes have been cleared. A girl mentions prospering pharmaceutical companies and I soon find myself revealing the ghost tracks between various business heads in America. The conversation zones in on cancer, and I mention some information a biochemist friend told me. Cancer is not so much the result of trace toxins in your food, your deodorant, your makeup, or your toothpaste, but your DNA breaking five times in the same place. Odds are, when it binds again it’ll get the code wrong and a mutation will occur. My friend looks at me with big hazel eyes, “So they know what causes cancer. You mean they can cure my Grandpa who’s on Chemo?”
            Our conversation flitters from soldiers, to AIDS, to animal testing. I mention a radio piece that made me cry: In the 1950s the U.S. government developed vaccinations by giving prisoners and patients in insane asylums various diseases.  One girl hesitates before she talks. “Think about it though,” she says, “I’m happy I don’t have Polio or Mumps. We’ve come a long way.”

            “You have to look at the origins of things,” I answer. “We accept these diseases as our reality, but they didn’t always exist. You need to look at how they got here. Some diseases are the result of living too close to our own shit, eating the brains of another creature, or feeding an animal its parent. Look 100 years into the future and civilization will have created one more disease we accept as a reality and who pays?”

            Suddenly, I feel I’m getting close to a tangible definition of what sustainability means. As my speech intensifies, I can see people withdrawing. It’s a fine line between preaching and explaining. As we all fall silent, I stare down at the table and can see the fluid line between government subsidies, banks, malnourished children, and wealthy pharmaceutical companies so well I could trace it. I sense I’m near the heart of the beast here in Jerusalem. And as I stand next to this wet, hot, beating organ I feel the urge to puncture it with my pen, to let thousands of years of blood spill out until everyone can see what they’re bathing in. 

Gilad Shalit

One prisoner for one thousand: Gilad Shalit was released today.  He looks like a holocaust victim.  His face is pale and pointy, his eyes are black as soot. His broken, timid smile makes him look like a goblin. How can this woman, this interviewer, ask him questions? This man was maybe raped, certainly beaten and brainwashed. Sitting in Bagel Bite Delicatessen, watching him on screen, I try to keep the salty tear fluid from clouding my eyes. The waiters are smiling and turning up the volume. Their brother is home. Everyone stops what they’re doing to watch. How can I eat knowing this man was in captivity for five years? How can you eat? The possibilities of his experience make me want to vomit. Go ahead, let yourself imagine them. 

Why We Fight: An open letter

Dear Friend,

           

This morning I woke up and had a strange urge to watch my favorite scene from “Dances with Wolves,” which I think you said you’ve seen. It’s the one when Kevin Costner dances alone around the fire with his arms spread out to the night sky. He twirls under the stars to the sounds of American Indian chants and mimes out being a warrior. And it hit me that the fight’s in our blood. We all wait for a battle that we sometimes never get to fight. I’m not talking about the “human need” to go to war with one another, I think that assumption’s bullshit. I’m talking about the burning drive to push against an opposing force, even the desire to die in the process. I think people pervert this desire with their fascination of soldier’s “glory,” cold mechanized killings and domination. I know people demonize their enemies to create a dummy to fight against. But I see now that that phenomenon is just a desperate search for something to fight for. I’ve been waiting, ever since I was a little girl, for that ancient battle I think we all dream of, leading friends and family and rising like shadow-children of the earth.

          I don’t expect a response, I just for whatever reason thought to share this idea with you. I hope you’re doing well,

Catie

Honesty

Middle-Eastern music floats in through my window tonight, watery and hypnotic. Everything is different here in Israel, nothing is the same. I’ve been living in a dream world for way too long, keeping life at an arm’s distance. I know if I don’t turn that world into art there’s really no point. The music grows louder; the voices rise and harmonize in the streets. I regret that people missed my joy, I kept it so well hidden deep in my solar plexus. I would cave in my chest as if to hide my heart and conceal my smile with a smirk. It doesn’t matter now, because I’m in the center of things. With a vision of a shimmering coast, traveling truck-caravans, laughing and music I suddenly remember the person I wanted to be, the life I wanted to live. I remember what it’s like to touch, to smell, to breathe. The music is crashing in now and it forces me out of my apartment. There I see the source of the sound: the messiah-mobile. The black van has green, pink, and blue neon tubes and a net of flashing lights attached to its sides. On top of the roof sits two giant lit-up sculptures of crowns. Music is exploding out of the vehicle and the Orthodox Jews are jumping around with the Torah. A man’s voice cries out to God and I see that we’re all just people here, flesh and blood, dancing together in the streets, waiting for rebirth. 

The Christian Quarter

                As I walk through Jaffa Gate a man selling pita bread calls out to me. I attempt to ignore him, but as he persists I turn my head. He rushes up very close and says, “Hello, don’t be scared. Why are all of you always scared, always white people.” I try to look directly into his eyes that are hidden behind sunglasses and say in an even voice, “I’m not scared. I have some place to go.”

            I hurriedly make my way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the supposed burial place of Jesus. Entering the church, I’m hit by the scent of beeswax and frankincense. I wait in a line full of Russians with molded high cheek bones, painted eyes, and wet whispers that remind me of when I was a little girl. Only a few people are ushered in by the priest at a time. Inside, the stone tomb is dark and smoky. Dozens of golden lamps with long chains hang from the cave-ceiling. There’s a hobbit-sized arched doorway that leads to a second room. Bending down, I pass through into an amber glow of icons and candles. Tilting my head back, I look up into a cluster of lamps suspended in a dark void that extends into nothing. Suddenly, I feel deep down in the center of the Earth.

            Walking back to Jaffa Gate, an Arab shopkeeper asks me where I got my dress. This time I stop.

             “You’re beautiful and you’re wearing a beautiful dress, let me make you earrings to match.”

 I hesitate as he ducks inside his shop. “I’m not here to spend money.”

            “It is alright,” he waves me in. Small rectangles of woven rugs line the ceiling. All of the walls display strands of turquoise, carnelian, and tiger’s eye. A Muslim alarm clock that plays the call to prayer sits above the doorway. As he fiddles with two lapis beads and a pair of thin metal pliers I ask the man questions about his work.  When he’s finished, I try on one of the earrings.

            “Here, let me,” he picks up the other and before I know it he pushes my hair behind my ear to get the hook through the opening. I don’t know what to do and I know he won’t be able to do it without force. After a second, he gives up. I thank him for the gift. He says it’s good for business, that maybe I’ll come back to buy something and bring a friend. “I’ll make you a necklace next time.” Suddenly, he brushes open my button-down sweater and touches the skin below my neck. “You like them short or long?” I quickly close it and jerk my head back.

            “Yes, cover up if you’re more comfortable.” His brown eyes are wide and I cannot read his expression. I shake his hand and leave. Alone with eyes forward, I walk down the empty cobbled stone street past the leering men.

Nashim

            At 9pm we cross the checkpoint into the West Bank. Three of my friends and I are crunched into my Hebrew teacher’s little car on the way to see Kever Rachel: Rachel’s tomb. The holy site sits in a small bubble of Israeli territory on the other side of the partition wall. An Israeli soldier approaches us with a machine gun slung loosely across his hip and Odelya rolls down the window to speak to him in a fast riff of sing-song Hebrew. He quickly smiles and waves us on without questioning.  “I just kept blessing him so there would be no questions, he’ll think she’s one of those,” Odelya laughs. We drive down the short road guarded by high-wall security fences. This area used to be verdant groves and rolling hills. Now, busses transporting families from Jerusalem weave between police jeeps.

Rachel is a tragic matriarch in the Hebrew Bible who waited seven years to marry her true love Jacob. After seven years, she was then compelled to give him to her older sister. When they finally did marry, Rachel died giving birth to her second child. She bled to death and since it’s unholy to touch a corpse that has lost blood, Jacob was forced to bury her on the side of the road, isolated and far from her family. Rachel represents the person who is on the path, but is not getting to where they want to go because of obstacles. 

As we enter the site, we slowly submerge ourselves into a group of religious women. The cave-like room has white-washed walls that stretch up into a domed ceiling. The huge arched tomb rests at the very back and is covered with a white embroidered cloth. Women and whispers forcefully press in on all sides. We follow Odelya hand-in-hand as she expertly wades through the crowd. Reaching the front, she wraps a white knit scarf around her shoulders and prays into her small Siddur. When it’s my turn to touch the tomb, I press my left hand into the cloth and close my eyes. I feel a thin electric trickle down my vein and think:  your blood is my blood, bone of my bone, life of my life, death of my death. And then it stops, I feel nothing.

 I wander back through a sea of foreign faces: haggard, paunchy, sharp, strange. Outside, women are sifting flour in big plastic bowls. Odelya explains that in ancient times people brought bread sacrifices to the Temple. Today, women symbolically continue the tradition by preparing bread at the tomb and baking it at home. Baking Challah is one of the three things women are compelled to do in Judaism.  “When women come together to pray it is very powerful. We are not allowed to study Kabbalah,” Odelya says, “we are not required to study Torah. Why?” She looks at all of us in the eyes. “Women are more spiritual than men. Men have to work to get to a spiritual place. They need the book to help them get there,” she curls her hand into a fist and motions an imaginary line from her heart to the sky. “Women are always there, they just have to open their mouths and speak it. According to Torah, man is light that grows and spreads everywhere. Women are vessels, the containers. Some men resent being contained, but those borders make the light concentrated and exact, like a laser beam,” she puts her hands together and cuts a line of air in front of us. “Otherwise they are only light that does nothing. A man is compelled to marry a woman, but a woman is not compelled to marry a man in Judaism. They need women’s help you see.”

            “Then why do women have such a small part of the Western Wall?” my friend asks in a quiet voice.

            “Men do not know...they still do not know...people do not understand,” she answers.

            Odelya is beautiful and as she speaks other women turn to look at her in wonder. I know very little about her, only that she is Yemenite, not married, university educated, and religious. Mostly, I know that she inspires me.

            “Can we take a picture with you?” my friend asks.

              “Yes, yes,” she quickly walks over to the sign that says Nashim: Women.  She points and grins. “Here, this’ll be a feminist picture.”

          

Nationalism

Today we had a seminar on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. That year marked a real turning point in which the Palestinian Liberation Front finally acknowledged Israel’s right to exist and Israel finally acknowledged the PLO as an authoritative entity over a unified people.

            The teacher shows us film clip after bloody film clip of the First and Second Intifadas. I’m shocked by a room filled with a shallow lake of bright blood being swept up by an Israeli emergency response worker, two cowering Palestinian boys being shot point-blank, and lynch mobs on both sides. The seminar ends with footage of an Orthodox Jewish family being removed from their settlement homes in the Gaza Strip. In 2005, that narrow piece of land was transferred back to the Palestinians. The mother and children scream in rage and claw as they’re gently carried out.

            Tonight, I hear our Madricha talking in our dimly lit apartment. The girl I live with mentions that someone in class asked if the Palestinians must have felt the same way when forced to flee their homes in 1948. The counselor pauses before answering.

            “With my humanity glasses on, yes, I can see the similarities, but no, I don’t think so. At the end of the day, I see it from my side and I want to protect my country.”

            I slip into my bedroom. I scowl until my brain hurts and I feel like I’m going to suffocate from all the contradictions. There has not been peace in the Middle-East since the invention of writing. A state by its nature will fall and when borders turn to vapor we’ll maybe see each other as the herds we’ve become. So if you have them, why the fuck would you take your humanity glasses off.

I was just thinking

     The last time I drove Highway 1 I caught a glimpse of the sun peering like a giant eye through smoky clouds. I pulled over and parked on one of those raised sandy turnouts that overlook the ocean. The pearly light was spread over the grey-green water as it sloshed up on the sand. Suddenly, I saw the ancient golden statues I had glorified liquefy into the blood that built them and all of the stone temples crumble into the bones of our first ancestors laid open and unburied under the sun. And as civilization reversed its flow in one deafening inhale I sat in the burnt out fields of California. Even so, I still traveled over 7,000 miles from my home,  even if it's just to see really good magic.

Yemenite Rosh Hashanah

            Last night my friend Amber and I visited Danny, (one of the Israelis who lives in our apartment building,) and his Yemenite family for Rosh Hashanah. His family’s home was bright and elegant. Paintings of Jerusalem lined the walls and the dinner table was set with shiny plates atop a white cloth. When we arrived, Danny’s father immediately called us over to the kitchen sink where he was thwacking a pomegranate with a mallet.

            “This is the best way to get the seeds, you watch,” he said as he grinned and turned his head back and forth between us and the fruit. "Do you know the meaning? " We watch the juicy, ruby kernels strain through his fingers into a bowl. "Many seeds for many mitzvot," (commandments.)The mother and daughter, two beautiful women with thick, dark hair and glowing olive skin, criss-cross around the room. After he has extracted all the seeds, Danny’s father leads us to the couches where we share our backgrounds and interests.

Danny’s father’s beard is long, grey, and scraggily. His soft brown eyes have a subtle blue hue. Being modern Orthodox, he is nicely dressed for the holiday with a white button up shirt, kippa, and strings of knotted tzitzit hanging over his black pants. When Danny’s father wants you to understand something his chin goes down, his shoulders and right hand go up, and his eyelids droop a little over his eyes. He grins and says, “You see?” This man is a psychologist who also studied mathematical physics. At one point in his life he traveled to Texas to organize tours for non-Jews to come to Jerusalem. Now he teaches the secrets of Kabbalah to Hasidic students. As we sit down at the dinner table, he begins to explain the difference between Yemenite and Ashkenzi- traditions.

A Yemenite Rosh Hashanah platter has pomegranate seeds, dates, apples, pickled leaks, beets, bread, and honey and is therefore about twice as large as an Ashkenazi one. There is also a special green sauce made of hot peppers, garlic, cilantro, and other Yemenite spices. When I smear some on my challah Danny’s father laughs and says he’s never seen an American eat this. Each food represents a different wish for the new year, but most are about eliminating enemies and surviving death decrees. Ancient prayers to ensure survival. We proceed to have a full meal that includes fish with garlic, spices, and tomato, lamb in mushroom sauce, breaded chicken, rice pilaf, and baked sweet potatoes with pumpkin. As we spoon the delicious morsels into our mouths, I listen to Danny’s Aunt and two cousins speak Hebrew. Yemenite Hebrew is known for sounding like the original, biblical language from ancient times.

            At the end of the meal, a dessert banquet is laid out: slices of mango with dates, dried apricots and walnuts, a piece of chocolate mousse cake, fresh figs, and mint tea. As we fill our plates, Danny’s father gives a lesson. He explains the closed-system world we live in, the opportunity the Torah gives us to break out, and the factor of human will. The topic is about Teshuva. There are several things predetermined in an individual, such as whether they will be rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy. What is not determined in heaven is whether they will grow up to be righteous or evil. The difference is between what God says and knows.

            “Whatever God says will be created, it will be so,” Danny’s father claps his hands and opens them up. God knows whether an individual will be good or evil, but he desires them to be good. “He does not speak it. And so a person’s will is more powerful than God’s knowing, you see. A person’s will can change God’s knowing.”

            The warm Jerusalem air wafts in through the screen door and a warm glow of people fills the room. We’ve broken bread together and it feels like we could be in a tent in the middle of the desert. This is a family who truly loves and cares for one another. They are successful, intelligent, and beautiful; secure in their history and culture. The old man continues to talk into the night and all I can do is smile from ear to ear. How lucky to be here right now as a welcomed guest, how lucky to be home when so far away.

Shalom Palestin

Last night I was informed that Israel has announced while the UN deliberation is still going on that it will build one thousand new settlements in East Jerusalem. Today is the first day of Rosh Hashanah and since we have the next four days off, many people have left to visit Israeli families for the holidays. Walking outside, I notice that all the color has drained from the sky. The air is hot and tight. All of the high-rise, white-washed apartment buildings seem to blend together in this thick cloud. I sniff the air, but no one else seems bothered. The streets are sparsely populated. I walk up to the Promenade to see the Jerusalem skyline by myself, but it’s also cloaked in this ashen whiteness. The little apartments around the partition wall look like lines of skulls. The entire Old City is hidden and it occurs to me that the color of death is white, not black.

  I sit down to write on one of the stone benches that overlook Jerusalem when suddenly three boys, about ages 14 or 15, run in front of me. Two begin whipping each other with some kind of electrical wire and the sun starts to break through above.  They eye me and move closer. I can’t tell whether they’re speaking Hebrew or Arabic, my music is turned up loud. They’re  trying to get my attention. I think to go, but I refuse to give up my spot. I will not give in to my discomfort and be pushed out because I look like an outsider, because I am a woman. I’ve been told that this is my home. I’ve come here to write.  One boy takes a drink from the fountain less than two feet away from me. I keep my head down and continue writing. Another one walks up,    “Shalom,” he says.

                Glancing up, I read the black letters across his baby-blue shirt: Palestin. He has a closed-lip smile that somehow reveals two crooked teeth.

                “Hello,” I say, taking out my earbuds.

                “Beseder, okay” he says. The boy from the fountain is now standing right next to me.

                “Do you speak English?” I ask.

‘               “No,” the boy with the blue shirt says.

                “Well I don’t speak Hebrew.” I squint my eyes and don’t smile. I’m wearing a dress and the boy looks at my leg.

     “My name is Moshe,” says the boy to my right as he grins and eagerly sticks out his hand.

                I shake it. The boy in blue tells me his Arabic name.

                “Nice to meet you.  Ma nishma, how are you?” I ask.

                The boy looks confused and speaks in Arabic and Moshe repeats the Hebrew word with a different accent.

                “Beseder. Shalom.” the boy nods and begins to walk away.

                Moshe offers his hand again, and I make sure my handshake is strong and hard. They leave and I put my music back on.  After a couple of minutes I take out my earbuds.

Shem

The word shem means both “name” and “purpose” in Hebrew. It's a person’s obligation to live up to their name because it is their calling. My Yemenite Hebrew teacher has dark painted eyes and freckled olive skin. Her English ebbs and flows as she explains her meaning. “Your purpose,” she says, “is to reveal the gift of yourself, to let your true self become exposed.”

My name is not Hebrew but Greek, and means “pure.” I share the same name as St. Catherine of Egypt, the same saint that the monastery at the base of Mt. Sinai is dedicated to. I found this out this year and during my search two other things: that St. Catherine refused to marry unless she found someone who surpassed her in beauty, intelligence, wealth, and social status and that after she died her body was supposedly carried by angels to Mt. Sinai from Alexandria.

It is only recently that I have let people hear my vision of Mt. Sinai. When I was a little girl I kept it to myself, afraid to speak about something so important, afraid of jinxing it, afraid of making it as mundane as everyone else’s you see.

In the middle of class a girl mentions that she’ll never find the perfect man. “Yes you will, yes you will,” my teacher quickly walks up to her. “You must believe it.  Rav Cook said that when you have an image of something you truly want, of something you dream about and you know everything in it, you can describe every single little detail, it has no choice but to come down to earth. It’s not visualizing, this isn’t Buddhism,” she says shaking her head, “this is Judaism and you must speak it,” she puts her hand up to her lips, “speak your reality and it will be created.”

 “I see no difference in a dreamer who believes in God and a dreamer who doesn’t,” one boy says.

“The only difference is if you think there is something other than yourself. If it’s not just you, there’s God.”

Yesterday I met with our Madricha and I told her a little of my story. “This is very interesting,” she says in a quiet voice. “I would like to help you. I would like to help you go to Mt. Sinai. I think it’s possible.”

And I want to say “No, that’s okay. I’ll get there on my own, you’ll see.” But I’ve been thinking, and maybe I am not as great as my name and maybe the point of a dream is to share it.

Smooth Sailing

     The word for ship in Hebrew is made up of two parts: the word for "I" and the abbreviated name of God. Ideally, God guides the "I" through life like a propeller. In reality, people steer in their own direction. Our Hebrew teacher pointed out that ships and people are two things that are able to navigate without the use of lanes. A ship must negotiate between upper and lower streams.
      Last night I went to a class on "Teshuva," which literally means "turning around." It represents the repentance someone does before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The word first appears in reference to Ishmael after he has been abandoned by his father Abraham in the desert. It is in the desert that Ishmael reflects upon his evil deeds and  begins to "turn around."  And in that moment of true repentance he is forgiven by God. If a person genuinely repents for even a moment, he will be forgiven, though there is no guarantee  that it will last. So how does a person know when they have done good Teshuva? When they are put in the same situation again and act differently.
     In Hebrew, a righteous man is compared to a date tree whose trunk has husks that zig-zag up towards the fruit. The righteous man diverges and returns, diverges and returns, forming the same shape.
     I find this momentary forgiveness and the image of the righteous husks very beautiful. Beautiful knowing the moment cannot last the lifetime. Beautiful knowing that I am not righteous for I have neither stayed true nor strayed, but meandered in some ambiguous pattern to nowhere. Beautiful knowing people bolder than I who have. You cannot be good by avoiding situations that test you.
      And I almost want to run into the streets
      and pick a fight with everyone I meet
      to feel society's great lattice  framework lifted from my brain
      so I can know what it is I really believe in
      and what directs me after all.

To be Afraid

Our Hebrew teacher told us that the word for “place to live” is connected with the verb “to be afraid.” You build a house when you are afraid, when you cannot live in the vastness of the world and need to burrow inside a safe place.

I am not the hermit artist in the woods, the utopian dreamer, or the devoted scholar. At best, I am a dabbler who tries to combine all three. And by wanting it all and wanting to keep so much for myself, I do nothing. Seeing the fault in every path, I don’t go down any.

I am here because I look at everyone else’s life and become dissatisfied. I clench my image of the Bedouin tent with thick woven pillows at the base of the mountain. I work to be able to lie down and watch the billowing tent flap reveal a grove of palm trees against a crystalline sky. All I want is to close my eyes and listen to the thump of my own spirit. But then my thoughts return to my family, my site-specific childhood, and all the other ways I am bound to this time and place. Peace is not enough and so I force myself out of the tent to climb.

Jazz Night

On our way to the Jazz performance I see a man lying on Ben Yehuda Street in a white hospital gown. His body is curled in a tight fetal position with his hand wrapped around a cup for coins. Oblivious, the world bustles by. A gaggle of girls dressed like Urban Outfitters models laugh, a bald man wearing a kippa and smoking a cigarette plays the Oud, and a crowd beats their drums to Capoeira street dancers. When we  arrive at the outdoor concert, I watch the underage musicians from afar. Within minutes, an old woman with a cobalt blue head covering comes up to me holding a cup. I look down and shake my head.

Earlier that day, we listened to a seminar on the history of Zionism. One girl asked, “How many Arabs lived in the region during the first wave of Jewish immigrants?”

“Not many,” the speaker said, “Not many at all, and they were mostly where they are now—in Gaza and the West Bank.”

 Later, we walked to the Old City and I could see smoke rising from behind the partition wall. I asked our Israeli Madricha,

 “Where do the Arab villages begin?”

            “I don’t know, I really don’t know,” she shook her head. “They’re on the other side, but maybe here too. I went to a conservative school, we didn’t focus on that part.”

With the UN vote, tensions are high and security alerts have been sent. We have been warned to avoid the Old City. But for now, we walk the narrow streets that are choked with paraphernalia of all three Abrahamic religions. Silver menorahs lean against wooden icons on richly embroidered prayer rugs. One girl asks, “Why do Christians use the rugs?”

           “They don’t,” I say, “they’re for Muslims.”

           “Imagine what this would have looked like two thousand years ago,” she says.

           “Similar, there were always merchants outside the Temple,” I say.

            Walking back from the Jazz concert, I talk with a girl from Australia. “The English stole our country,” she says, “I suppose that’s why we have to follow their rules. The true bred Australians—

            “The Aborigines?” I interrupt.

            “Well, uh, yea I guess. I didn’t mean them. The Aborigines are really nobodies. They’re really poor and live in remote areas.”

            “Oh,” I say, “I see.”

When A Dream Ends, Living Begins.

            I only have one good memory of going to synagogue as a little girl and that was during the High Holy Days at Temple Emanu-El. I remember dancing with a group at night, hand-in-hand with heads thrown back. We bounced to Middle-Eastern melodies in the warm sweet air of their courtyard’s garden and I dreamed up the Holy Land. As amber lamplight reflected off the slick peach stones of their fountain, the walls of the ancient world expanded across a marbled desert. But as I grew up this image became entangled and pinned with symbols and history, enhancing the mystery but burying the joy until it was deeply lodged in the clay of the ancient world.

Walking back from the Kotel at night, I fall into conversation with a young woman from Venezuela. I tell her that I’ve stepped into my dream and want to run out of my skin. She tells me the story of a soldier who was caught with a grenade in-hand. In that moment, every instinct must have told him to throw it away, but he clenched and blew off his own arm instead of risking the lives of those around him. That soldier became a veteran who told her, When a dream ends, living begins. The dream will take you far, but the dream is only the drive and it cannot sustain my life forever.

First Visit to the Western Wall

At eight o’clock at night we reach the Kotel. The illuminated wall is smaller than I expected, with two-thirds of it designated for men and one third for women. I write a note to stuff between the sand-colored stones, but an attendant stops me, “Please, no writing on Shabbat.” So I move on and weave my way through a thicket of Heredi women. Some are dancing in serpentine circles, others shake forward and back with eyes tightly closed. As their singing gets louder and I get closer, I stare up at the drooping ferns that have pushed their way up and out of this ancient relic. Suddenly, I begin to cry. I am standing in the oldest land I have ever known, in one great suction cup of time. These are indigenous roots that have been ripped and transplanted back in. It is my people who worshipped this mysterious and awesome God who broods behind the wall as a still small voice, as a funnel of warm wind. And we have survived, I have survived through these thousands of generations. 

The Dead Sea

On the plane ride here I met a U.S. ambassador who had just been transferred from Iran to Israel. When I mentioned to him my apprehensions about culture shock he told me, “Israel is Europe with a bit of Middle-Eastern flavor.”

Today I saw Jordan, a faint fusion of blue and lavender mountains across the Dead Sea. I ask our Madricha, our counselor, “Is there a crossing point? Are there any bridges?”

            “You would walk that distance?” one girl asks.

“It’s Jordan,” I say, “look.”

“It is for vehicles only.”

Entranced, I wade into the sea that separates the two countries. The buoyancy is so high that my legs rise swiftly and I’m carried to the surface. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth, all weight floats. If it gets in, the dense salt stings your eyes, mouth, open wounds, and any other orifice of your body. I lie in the thick turquoise water, stare into the bullseye sun, and try to force myself into prayer. Doesn’t work. I listen for the faint sounds of goat bells and herders in the wind. Nothing but whispers come from a family of vacant faces as they bob on by. I see an anorexic woman in a red bikini cowering on the beach, tan leather hide pulled tight over bones.

Last night I walked by the exterior wall of the Old City. I try to crop out Mamilla, the outdoor trendy mall, shut out the rushing light rail crisscrossing along the streets, block out the 15^th century penguin men with their cascading ringlets. I walk along the perimeter of the ancient polis, head cocked back so I can only see the moon, palm leaves, and limestone slabs.

“Do you want to go in?” someone asks.

“Not now, I have to see it in the daylight.” Looking back down, I find a man pissing in a corner of the wall. I’ve come too late.

           I try to turn around in the sea, roll onto my stomach and do a dog paddle. I look across at Jordan, vast and melting into the sky and wait for the Holy Land.