My People 2008

My People owes its existence to a girl I knew in high school. She, my brother Barry and I all rode the same Tri Met bus home from school. She was a very serious girl. I enjoyed stirring her up. I guess I was pretty obnoxious. Maybe it was that she was so naïve (or so pretentious) and I couldn't resist trying to burst the bubble she was blowing.

Barry once asked me if I ever wondered why we hooked up with her. I don't; we didn't have much of a choice being on the same bus and all. What I do wonder about is why out of all the people I knew back then, she is one of the few I still know 30 years later.

Just about this time last year I finally joined the internet community and discovered that girl from the back of the bus on her blog, Recollected Life. After close to a decade since I'd last heard from her, it was a pleasant surprise. She turned me on to blogging.

The name of my blog was almost obvious. Ami means "my people" in Hebrew, and I write about myself and the people in my life. In most cases they are people I know personally. My family, my friends, my army buddies … my people. Blogging at My People added more to that list, like Xiu at January Winds and Olivia who blogs Inspired By Grace.

So a year has passed (almost). Where did I go with My People?

I think I wrote more about Maayan that anyone else. She's at an interesting time in life, a lot of important choices. She's on my mind a lot and that's why she's featured so much in my blog. Some of my more pointed observations were 'Maayan: before and after' and 'Taking the Reins'.

How much I write about any one person doesn't reflect on my relationship with him/her. Directly or indirectly, that girl at the back of the bus shows up a lot at My People, but in fact she's played only a small part in my life. On the other hand, my wife Yael who has to contend with me every day, hardly appears at all.

'Footprints in the Snow' and 'Kissing the Mirror' were about the women in my past, and 'The Language of Romeo' about the woman I'm with.
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Maybe the 'Hands' project wasn't great, but hopefully it was original. I'm thinking about an 'eyes' project in 2009.

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I live in an interesting place, and hopefully My People has shed a different light on Israel that that presented by the media. Not the war zone you see in the news or Sacred ground – just a beautiful little corner of the world. In the course of my continuing education I have 66 required days in the field. It occurred to me that this would be an excellent source for a new blog. We'll see.

I probably wrote more about my faith than any other subject. I hope none of my readers took this to mean that I am an authority on religion. I'm not. I am still searching and struggling with God. I think 'Kissing the Mirror' and 'It's Just Grass' say most about where I am spiritually.

If it seems that I have an axe to grind with the Catholic religion in general and the Anglican Church in particular, I do and I don't. Nothing from my Protestant past and my Jewish present would endear me to the Catholic faith, but I don't have any personal accounts to settle. While getting my degree I researched the Anglican mission in Israel (then Palestine), so I am simply more familiar with that particular subspecies of Christianity.

Probably the most moving piece I blogged wasn't mine at all. I translated into English Karnit Goldwasser's eulogy to her husband Ehud in 'Time Stopped'.

I don't know what makes a blog successful. I get a lot of hits, but most are people mining pictures. The most popular posts are 'I am a Chameleon' (photo of the blue panther chameleon), 'Snake in the Synagogue' (the Talmud page), 1492 (painting of Queen Isabelle of Spain), 'On Blogging' (Xiu's naval piercing) and 'Being a Boot' (the picture of muddy boots). I don't know if you need to be a good writer to succeed in blogging; apparently people are more interested in muddy boots.

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It's been 30 years since I rode Tri Met home from school with Barry and that serious girl, but I still have that impulse to deflate what is puffed up, to poke people with reality. Maayan refers to it with the Hebrew expression "to sting". And some of my posts are sharp, but they only hurt when they touch the truth.

My People is about the people in my life. They are from all races and religions, from every corner of the world. Most of them I know personally and many of them I'm related to. Some are friends, some not, but in one way or another they are all a part of me. Even that girl that from high school.

So in the end, My People is no more than a personal journal that is open to the public. My People is about me.