Introducing Golan

Meet Golan. She's one of our 11th graders. She's the one with kind eyes and the good nature.

Golan is a photographer.

When they started high school, I was the one with the camera. "Paparazzi" they called me. They protested and ducked at the glint of the lens, but not so much anymore, 3 years on.

They are all every one beautiful even if they don't believe me, in the spring almost summer of life. I want to capture the season for them, bottle their memories in film and preserve them for the day they will be gold.



I discovered Golan's work by chance while posting mine. She has something, is something I will never be. She's unobtrusive, inconspicuous, observing, has an eye for opportunity – innate qualities no less essential than expensive gear.

She has an eye for color and beauty in the ordinary and mundane details we mortals see and overlook.

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She catches a pregnant moment, tells an entire story at shutter speed.

Golan is a photographer, but she has taken the leap from craft to art. She is able to translate what she sees into ideas, and to give ideas and feelings visual, almost tangible expression.

Like loneliness……….

……….and eternity.

Our11th graders went to Poland this last winter. I didn't go with them, but Golan says without words how it feels as a young modern Israeli to return to the shadow lands of the Holocaust.

She steps into the shoes of new arrivals on the platform in Auschwitz, and she, and you, experience just a shade of uncertainty and finality of the doomed.

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About a year ago I completed "kissing the mirror" and needed to give it visual expression. A cover. Golan agreed to help me. I outlined the idea and let her run with it.

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She came back with this....

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Good, lovely, but too 'sexy'.


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This one was perfect. It said it all. The innocent, egoistic kiss.

But I decided I want something more subtle.So I saved it for a back cover cameo,
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and took this one...

...and cut it to get this for the front cover:

 

Viola'! ("behold" in French)

Walla! ("Wow!" in Arabic)

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"kissing the mirror" has the honor of being Golan's first professional job. Not her last.

Golan's working, and going places. No surprise here; I knew it already last year. The day is coming soon and Golan will be introducing me.

I was one the of teachers at Golan Levyathan's high school.

Yes, that's right, the Golan Levyathan, the photographer.

And thanks to Jeni for lending her beauty to "kissing the mirror".

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You can catch more of Golan's work at:

http://golan-ha.deviantart.com/

A Journey Through Society

My tenth graders set off on a journey last week. It's not the first time they've been in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, but this time they visited places and people that perhaps they had heard of, but could barely imagine. They traveled to the farthest corners of Israeli society; dark places most of us Middle Israelis never see.

And the first step was a question: If on one side is equality and on the other is 'survival of the fittest', where are we Israelis? Part of the answer is a rundown neighborhood in south Tel Aviv ironically named Shikunat Hatikvah ('Neighborhood of Hope'). Our guides did their best to to explain what it's like to live in an island of poverty in a party town like Tel Aviv, but they weren't nearly as convincing as the locals we met by chance. "It's not as bad as they say it is", they explained, but the subtitles read otherwise.
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A few streets over is a slum that doesn't appear on the map, but has a name – 'Crate Town' (my translation). Not recognized by the authorities and therefore free of building codes and municipal services, people build their homes out of odds and ends. Pitch dark at night, flooded in winter and ruled by criminals, the people living here probably would have been left to their own devices except that to their misfortune they are sitting on some of the most valuable real estate in the country. Rich contractors buy up the ground from under their feet turning them into squatters on land they have lived on since the nation was founded. The rich getting richer use a combination of goons and city ordinances to force the poor getting poorer out of their homes.

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Our next stop was the 'slave market' near the Central Bus Station. The street is a kaleidoscope of human beings of all colors and races, foreign laborers living on a pittance and often just one step ahead of the law. Exploitation draws exploitation – a few blocks over is the red light district (We didn't go there of course.)

A 15 minute bus ride away is Kikar Hamedina. It's Tel Aviv's Central Park, a circle of watered parks surrounded by chic boutiques that only the very wealthy can afford to shop. Again it was the passersby that underlined the message, casually mentioning how much they invest in the manicured dogs they're walking – more than what an entire family lives on in the neighborhoods we had been only minutes ago.

Walking back to the buses, I asked Odedah what she made of what we had seen that today. She's 16 years old, so learning that she was shocked didn't surprise me. She thinks that social justice has to start with people with money.

"Because people follow people with money."
"Do you have money?"
"No."
"Neither do I."

Oh well………….

We spent the night in a hostel in Jerusalem. An overnight school trip where we don't sleep in tents in the desert and have showers and teachers too tired to know or care what they're up to all night (see 'The Lowest Place on Earth'). The kids were very excited.

The next morning we invaded an ultraorthodox stronghold called Mea Shearim. I use military terminology because that is how the people living there see us creatures of modern society – the enemy. They reject modern culture, modern kids and the modern state that spawned them. They say that only the Messiah can redeem the Jewish nation in the promised land. The state of Israel is an abomination. We were asked not politely to leave.

Something odd occurred to me. Our guides were obviously not religious. That's why they wanted us to see the nasty side of religious Jews. Yet, for two days they were preaching about equality and social injustice.

There are two explanations for everything in the world. The first is called evolution. By random chance and natural selection, things are what they are. Survival of the fittest. The other, less popular, notion is creation. God created stuff for a reason.

Now if you believe in evolution, then the strong survive. There's no way around it. And if you believe in equality, then it's because we are created beings. There is a God.

So I thought it was odd a bunch of people trying to show us that God is bunk, but talk equality – and a another bunch of people that think they are better than everyone not like them, but talk God. I know there's some rational explanation, but I just thought it was odd, that's all.

Nevertheless, after two days of seeing poverty and crime and exploitation, I was wondering if those snobs in Mea Shearim aren't right. Maybe Israel is an abomination.

The plan was for my tenth graders to finish the day on Mt. Herzl, where the dreamer who wrote the blueprint for modern Israel is buried. They are 16 or almost 16 now, and the idea was to give them their identity cards in a ceremony at a place symbolic of the society they will be joining before long.

But once again, something not on the program underlined why we need Israel, warts and all. Just before loading the buses taking us to the ceremony, one ambulance siren, then a second, then dozens. In Jerusalem, that can mean only one thing. Terror. Another Palestinian that hates Jews more than he loves his own life.

Israel hasn't succeeded any more than the rest of the family of man in establishing a just society. But time and again, the world has turned on Jews, and providing a haven, not social justice, is why Israel has to exist.

On the way back home I remarked to Odedah that our journey reminded me of the Gospels. I mean, Jesus was on a journey in society. He rubbed shoulders with the poor, broke bread with the rich, was rejected by religious hypocrites.

"You know, like, not much has changed here in 2000 years."

"And it won't until He comes back", she replied.

I doubt if human beings will ever be able to create a just society. I know that Jesus didn't even try. He didn't come with a social agenda; He didn't come to change mankind. He came to save men.

So in a way, as much as I hate to admit it, they're right in Mea Shearim.
Redemption will come with Messiah.

Planting Hope

Noa was one of the ninth grade girls that read Shakespeare with me in the library last year. (see 'Language of Romeo'). She's not bashful; straight-spoken but not-out spoken in flawless English. She was born in Jerusalem and from age two until second grade lived in the Philippines with her family.

Last year a teen counselor asked Noa if she wanted to go to a camp. What kind of camp? "A peace camp with kids from around the world."

"I always wanted to go to a camp outside of Israel. So even if it was a peace camp, why not?".
 
The 'peace camp' is the International Camp held by Seeds Of Peace every year for hundreds of kids from regions of conflict. The idea is to open up new possibilities for young people from opposing sides by giving them a time and place far from the combat zones where they can meet and get to know each other face to face.

Noa never had any contact with Israeli Arabs until she was interviewed during the selection process.

"Before I had this stigma about them, about how they were. Like they're all religious and can't be with boys and [boys] can't be with girls. I thought they were very closed within themselves, like they don't have their own thoughts. Like puppets on a string."

Noa was interviewed (in English) about current events in Israel, about her thoughts on politics and religion. Candidate 'seeds' attended classes and seminars during the year, and finally some were chosen for their ability to speak and interact with others, their opinions and their proficiency in English. As time grew short and the selections narrowed, she started getting excited about it.

"It really got me boosted up. It sounded like so much fun, getting to know people around the world and what they think of the conflict. People out of the country; people that don’t know exactly what's going on directly. Like telling them what I think and seeing their ideas and their thoughts about everything."

The Seeds Of Peace International Camp takes place every year by Pleasant Lake in Otisfield, Maine for three weeks during summer vacation. Besides other Israeli (Jewish and Arab) teenagers like Noa, there were Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians.


I asked Noa to tell me about one of the Palestinians she met at camp.

"The one that stands out the most was Haya. She's from the Palestian delegation, I think from Ramallah. She's a Christian. Even though she's very 'Palestinian', very against the conflict and believes that this is a Palestinian state and not an Israeli state, she still came to camp with an [open mind] and not with a script they gave her at home. She was open to our ideas and heard what we [Israelis] had to say in our dialog groups and what we think should happen with the Palestinians at the check points and the wall that is being built and everything. At the end of camp she came [went?] with the idea that there should be a united state called "Palestine/Israel". Both people should be in this land and both people deserve it."

"Do you think Haya is a typical Palestinian?"

"I think she's a bit different. In a good way. She listens to people and tries to understand the other's opinion, the other's situation."

"Are you a typical Israeli?"

"I don't think I'm unique in my opinions. I think there are many people that think like me, but I don't think I'm typical because, unlike my classmates, I point more to the left. I think we should try to get along, open the borders; try, like, an utopia and try to understand each other. If more people would try, and if we had a government that wanted to try, I think that the conflict would cool down a bit and more Israeli and Palestinian kids could get along better."

Less than half a year after the 'seeds' returned home from camp, war broke out between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza. Did that change the way the seeds look at things?

"Some kids were saying, "Save Gaza!", and pulling up pictures of little kids that were injured very badly. People were, like, 'Stop the war!' and 'F--- Israel.' Others were saying, 'This is a test for all the seeds, everywhere, from all the years. How are we going to react to what's going on? How should we act in a time of war?' Others were saying, 'Go IDF! [Israeli Defense Forces] After 8 years of Hamas throwing bombs over Israel, it's time to do something.' "

"Some were confused, like me. I didn't know where to go, what to say. On one hand I was pissed at the army for [killing] over 1000 people, a thousand people that didn't do anything. On the other hand I was angry at Hamas; 'Who do they think they are, throwing bombs at Israel. They have no right to do that, especially when we had this peace agreement or whatever it was. I didn't know how to react, express myself about all the different opinions. I didn't know what to say."

"Haya kinda disappointed me. She was like, 'F--- Israel, I hate everyone.' She got really mad, bad talked the Israeli girls that were with her, and Israeli friends, and it disappointed me to hear her talk like that. Afterwards I talked to her and she calmed down and said it was just out of anger and she does believe in peace – it's just harder now."

Noa's still in touch with other seeds.

"With most of the kids I talk to them on Facebook, sometimes I call. I talk to them on Messenger and keep in touch on how they're doing at school. And after everything going on in Israel and in the world, what do they think. Have their opinions changed, or are they still the same?"

"I talk to Haya. She doesn't get on the computer a lot, but when we get a chance we talk a lot. Personal and political. If it were possible, I would like [her to visit me], but she has a tough time getting out, the check points, and she'd rather not. It would be different for me [to visit Haya], a little bit scarier, because a lot of Palestinian people don't believe in peace. They would see it as 'treason' and say, 'Why is she [Haya] bringing an Israeli person.' "

"Are Palestinians the enemy?"

"No. They're a group of people, some do believe in peace, and there are others that are religious and anti-Israel and think Jerusalem should be theirs and Jewish people shouldn't be here at all. It's very complicated, but I don't see any [of the Palestinian people] as my enemy, not even the extremists."

I asked Noa if getting to know the other side will bring peace.

"I don't call them 'the other side'. They're just a group of people, and once you get to know them and get to know their opinions and what they've been through and how their life looks like, it gets to you. It tells you, look at what we're doing, it's ruining lives."

"And when we tell them about our families that get hurt by suicide bombings, and everything that’s going on hurts us. People we know. I think once you actually get to know both sides and what both think, you can start getting to peace. You have to put religions aside and think, "What would bring peace?"

What will the Seeds Of Peace camp be like this summer? After the war?

"I think it will be different in a way because of the war and what's happened, but all in all it will be the same dialog, almost the same conflicts, almost the same ideas. You'll [they will] still go camping and still have activities and have group challenge, still eat and sleep together. I doubt if Seeds Of Peace will change."

It looks like it will be another dry year here in Israel. Like lot of farmers, I'm wondering if there's any point in planting. But looking at last years crop of seeds, that have survived the heat of war and are still growing, I reckon we should keep on planting seeds of peace.

2 years

2 years since

you're gone. Absent,

not accounted for.

2 years now,

where are you?

We're still here

2 years later

The Lowest Place on Earth

The Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth and it's getting lower. A man made ecological disaster has and is taking place here in living memory. For centuries the Jordan River flowed from the Sea of Galilee and emptied into the Dead Sea, but now with Israel and Jordan pumping water out before it reaches the sea, it is drying up. Today the sea is actually two, separated at the waist by dry land that was still under water when I visited it for the first time the winter of 79-80.

Underground salt deposits along the shores melt when washed by fresh water until the soil covering them caves in. The ground under trees, cars, even people collapses without warning and they disappear into deep craters.

My 9th graders last year are now 10th graders. Last week we spent 3 days in the desert. We set up base camp between the Dead Sea and the Judean Desert and every morning we set out for one of the wadis that wind into the barren hills.

The Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth, so no matter which way you go its uphill from there. Of course there are rewards. Desert springs aren't as big or impressive as the ones I visited in Croatia last month, but at the end of a long trail on a hot day, they are refreshing. Maybe it’s the contrast between water and the wilderness.

These 3 to 6 day outings in nature every year are a standard part of Israeli education, but the concept is foreign to Americans. Why do we send our children out of school to trek the desert and sleep in tents when they could be in a classroom?

In three years these kids will be soldiers and it wouldn't hurt them to start getting used to life without creature comforts. But we aren't Spartans and its not our job to supply the Israeli Army with hardened warriors. The reason we take them out into the wild goes deeper. What is education?

I think that Americans see education as a means of shaping the individual. You take a child and give him the tools to function one day as an adult.

In Israel we are creating a society. Sure children need to learn the fundamentals like reading and writing and mathematics. But by the end of grade school they have hopefully reached a basic level of knowledge and from there each takes a different path and majors in the subjects that interest them. And while they no doubt are learning things that are valuable, lets not kid ourselves – in ten years chances are that they will be employed in fields totally unrelated to the subjects they study now.

School is a fabricated society we have created with rules and values and objectives in a sheltered environment. We still have enough control to mold and shape the members, and by the time they leave and become citizens we hope they will have learned to work together toward common goals, to respect each other, to contribute and for each to take responsibility for more than his/her little corner. So a camp in the middle of the nowhere where the essentials of survival – food and shelter - depend on group effort is the ultimate lesson.

Almost two years ago the ground collapsed from underneath these kids in a way unusual even in Israel. For some of them, perhaps all of them, starting each day means setting out and climbing an uphill path from the lowest place on earth. They are learning that they reach those good places at the end of the trail when they pull together.

And what amazes me and inspires me is how even after having hit bottom they still have fun, have a bright take on life and push on. How they can just be a bunch of kids.

Peppermint Americans

This last year I took a lot of pictures of our 9th graders. Hundreds of them. Every chance I had – in the hall, on breaks, on hikes and overnight trips – I captured them. They don’t get it yet, but when they graduate, they'll want these memories.

One kid asked me why I do it and I told him. "You're optimistic", He said, "who says we'll be alive in 4 years?"

He's referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad's promise to wipe the Jews off the map of the Middle East just as soon as he gets nuclear weapons. This year, or the next, Iran will start producing an atomic bomb. This generation's mad dictator, cross-eyed and dressed in cheap suits, is spelling out the next Holocaust every bit as plainly as the funny little man with the little mustache did in Mein Kampf. How much time is left? Will our 9th graders finish school before they graduate?

I don't know how most Americans respond to what's happening on my side of the world. It must be a little overwhelming.

Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Darfur, Tibet, Myanmar, Congo.

Terror, Poverty, Ethnic Cleansing, Starvation, Torture, Hatred, Rape, Death.

I can imagine that it can be too much in Safe, Sensitive, Sensible, United, States, of America.

Some Americans - not all, not even most, but a few - live in a Hollywood happy-end musical. Good wins over evil, and everyone is happy and perky. They are Julie-Andrews-Marias on a stunningly beautiful, but isolated, mountaintop and the hills are alive with the sound of music. And if things are nasty down there at the bottom of the hill, well, they just remember their favorite things and then they don't feel so bad.

......"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
......Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens,"

Like, if they concentrate on the good, if they take in the beauty around them and listen, yes, listen to the music, they can heal the world. Sure, there is pain, but there is beauty; listen, just listen to the sound of music.

How did Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) describe cheery Rodgers and Hammerstein Westerners?

Clean, white children, "like a packet of peppermints".

"The house they lived in had a lake and gardens, a wide staircase, white doors and windows, and curtains with flowers."

"…… Baron von Trapp's seven peppermint children had had their peppermint baths, and were standing in a peppermint line with their hair slicked down, singing in obedient peppermint voices ……."

What about the children on my side of the world? What about children that have dark skin and brown eyes? What if they're frightened and hungry and have grubby fingers? Peppermint Americans sound out of tune and their peppermint songs are off key on my side of the world. They are smug, snug and complacent. They can't heal anything, certainly not my least favorite things.

......Hunger and hatred and ethnic cleansing,
......Rape and starvation and nuclear testing,

This side of the world is a tough neighborhood, and bullies get away with murder around here. I don't know what will be this year, or the next; I don't know if our 9th graders will graduate from high school. I don't know what Americans are supposed to do about it, but somebody better do something and they better do it fast.

And I know this: peppermint Americans and their peppermint songs won't make evil go away. Don't tell us how much you care about the misery over here, and then in the next breath about listening to your pretty peppermint music and how then you don't feel so bad.

When the mad dictator's henchmen were one step behind the peppermint von Trapp kids, even Maria knew that it wasn't the time to sing about her favorite things.

Jerusalem Day

Last week was "Jerusalem Day" marking 40 years since the city was reunited. Whoever declared the day slept through his history class or Math in school, since to my reconning if the city was reunited in the Six Day War (1967) that works out to 41 years.

Children made the pilgrimage to the capital, from schools and youth movements from every corner of the nation.

Our 9th grade represented our school. We got off the bus at Jaffa Gate at the old city and quickly got organized by the walls, which in bygone days defended the inhabitants and today protect vistors from the sun.

We walked on the ramparts around to the Jewish Quarter.

On the wall that once divided the Jordanian east from the Israeli west you can see the contrast between the arid landscape to the east and the Mediteranean climate to the west that I blogged about last week.

Jerusalem adorned herself on her day with children like a matron decked in jewels. Hundreds, thousands explored the city and then converged on Independence Park downtown.

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Nothing excites children like other children. They screamed and broke away when they spotted kids from other groups they knew; hugs and kisses were exchanged, and then they had to be forced back lest they get left behind.

We regrouped and in the cool of the afternoon we set off by groups in a parade down boulevards closed for the occasion; a white river of flags and youth flowing through town and pouring into Teddy Stadium.

Our hosts, the children of Jerusalem, put on a show for us.

Every dance group and community center in the city must have been preparing for weeks. Acrobatics, songs and dancers complete with colorful floats and costumes treated the children.

I've learned from experience to look at the kids at events like these. They are the real entertainment. Pictures or even film can't capture the energy in a stadium packed with ecstatic youth.
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For some of our kids, this was the first time they had been in Jerusalem. I'm sure that they will never forget their first taste of the capital of our nation and center of our heritage.

Jerusalem Day is education at its finest.