say my name

sitting at the bus station i was horribly nervous & anxious about the fact that i'd forgotten my telephone. it had the phone numbers of the wonderful family i was staying with in haifa, & i didn't have their address because i had always been driven to their home by one of the sons or the dad. how was i going to get back to their house? i tried to breath normally i sat & waited for the bus to zefat, to tell myself all would be well, to let air & oxygen release my tension.


air.

zefat is one of 4 holy cities in israel that are each associated with an element. jerusalem is fire, tiberias water, hebron earth, & zefat is air air air.

the bus ride to zefat was winding & lushly green. i had two seats to myself until a large dark man came & sat heavily next to me, touching his thighs to my legs & staring at the points of my breasts underneath two shirts on either side of a large wool scarf. i stood & excused myself, to squeeze between some cookie eating cell phone jabbering soldiers & their big guns @ the back of the bus & read my book of short stories. i rarely get motion/car sick, but i was feeling quite uncomfortable, heady, & off balance during this journey.

upon arriving in zefat i called katya on one of the soldier's phones. she is a friend of a friend lives there & had agreed to host my visit when i called her earlier that week. as she answered she was just waking up & had forgotten about our agreement. "no worries! i will meet you in the center square! 10 minutes!" i walked down the stone streets that are simular but much smaller than those in the old city of jerusalem. zefat is home to a gorgeous & thriving artist colony. it is also the center, if not birth place, of kabbalah.

i was freezing. the weather in haifa had been at least 10 degrees warmer, & without wind. katya came & met me in the square & brought me to her apartment. i was struck by the plethora of huge panes of colored glass in homes along the way. we also walked past many open stalls of artists selling jewelry, paintings, & other crafts. she asked me about myself with an ernest & sensitive interest that warmed my heart. i told her that i had left home young, traveled, lived on farms, & that my main passions were music & midwifery.

in discussing my doula work the conversation moved fluidly into the spiritual aspect of zefat. most of the people who live there are artists, &/or extremely religious. of all the cities in israel, zefat in particular has been waiting for the messiah to come with real sentiment of expectation & devotion. jews are only one group of religious people among many who believe that the heightened state of turmoil, suffering, & pain the earth & its people are experiencing right now is not for nothing & not a coincidence. the pains are the labor pains of a world laboring to give birth to a new one, like a mother to her child. with this in mind my being a doula, intending to someday become a midwife, & my fascination with & respect for the birthing process takes on new meaning & light. i have always loved & appreciated birth as a metaphore for any painful, transitional, or profound creative happening in our lives. understanding the physical process of birth & how best to cope with (& learn from, & work with) the pain of labor can serve us all throughout our life experience.

i can relate to religous ritual as a pain coping mechanism. mantras & ritual are an important part of what i have learned in my education & experience as a doula...

we discussed this as we walked to her place, which is the upstairs of a home that sits on the edge of a garden that is called "the magic garden". her door is of blue glass & features a hamsa: a hand symbol of good luck & life, along with some writing i cannot understand. on either side is yellow glass with green stemmed orange flowers. inside is warm & dark & her huge table is piled with books books books! the walls as well are lined. she offers me not only tea or coffee to warm up, but some vitamin C, & a fleece to borrow! her voice is high & musical. she clears her throat frequently, it is an adorable quirk. her face is smooth & joyful & looks younger than mine, though she is 37. katya was born in germany, grew up in the ukraine, & went to school for financial something or other in new york & then had a spiritual awakening & decided to become a rabbi. she went to harvard school of divinity & then came to zefat for a summer of study. she never went back to harvard or the states......she fell in love with zefat & its people & culture, & began working on a film about the jews & their relationship with god & the promised land.

she told me about a recent time where she was feeling overwhelmed & scattered about how much it was that she wished to communicate in her film, so she went to the head rabbi of zefat for advice. "what should i focus on in my film? what is the most important messege to convey?" she asked him. "the spiritual is physical" he told her.

upon hearing this i once again felt the need to focus on my breathing. last spring i experienced a profound spiritual phenomena that came through my body. i almost bled to death (western medicine calls it 'dysfunctional uterine bleeding') & needed 6 blood transfusions & surgery to keep me alive. i have been to many doctors & systematically examined many avenues of science & rational thought to attempt to understand what happened logically, & there is no answer to be derived from logic. what i experienced was a happening.

the emotional & spiritual aspects of what happened are much easier to grasp & take literally than are the physical facts.

to hear that "the spiritual is physical" was the messege the head rabbi wanted to communicate to the people of the world, & that this had been the most clear, tangible, & beautiful realization i myself had experienced was validating & uplifting. so uplifting i felt a bit high.

"you have a buddha smile!" katya told me as she talked more about her film, "& such an old soul!" i beamed & sipped my tea, letting it sooth & warm me fully & deeply. what a blessing to behold such passion & conviction, regardless of if i agreed with or fully grasped her views.

before leaving katya's apartment i e-mailed & face book messeged my hosts in haifa requesting their phone numbers & addresses, we drank more tea, & katya did her morning prayers.

the sights were plenty & impressive. there were ancient graveyards full of holy people ("tzaddikim" or living angels), synagogues with intracate artwork that survived generations of bullets & bombs, stunning views, roman ruins, gorgeous artwork (candles, ceramics, painting, jewelery, paitnings) but it was the people of zefat that were the most impressive. katya ran into perhaps about a dozen of her friends as we walked around the city. she assured me this was not exactly normal, & insisted that zefat was giving me a gracious welcome, & the city itself loved me. as katya's friend's spoke to her in hebrew each one used the word "simcha" at least once if not more. i eavesdropped on several conversations around us & heard the word dozens of times! simcha is my hebrew name, given to me at birth. it means joy, & is used in particular to describe joyful music. i heard my name spoken during this one day in zefat more times than in my entire life before then. it was very special.

the feeling of being high did not subsist.

the light was miraculous too. all day long, the sky changed dramatically, & there were distinctive & plentiful defined rays & shafts of sunshine 360 degrees around us. other worldly. but. it was. real.


late in the afternoon i checked my e-mail & facebook to find all the phone numbers i needed, & called & arranged to be picked up at the bus station by the 25 yr old sound engineer hardcore punk playing 3rd son....a sweetie who was going to record some of my music the next evening...

katya insisted we stop by the head rabbi's home to see if i could get a special blessing from him. this is a rare & important gift. he was home. this was the man who wants to tell the world "the physical is spiritual". with warmth & a luxuriously crooked & quirky beard, he gave me a rambling bruchah (blessing) tailor made for me. it fit like a glove. he spoke of simcha, of roots & branches, of my strength & path.

in a series of experiences traveling in israel that have stimulated my intellectual & analytical self so thoroughly, this day was different. this day was full of feeling, full of breathing.

i have been so sure of my conviction that spirituality, to me, means respecting the divinity & sanctity of every living thing, human or not. i believed so surely that there was no book, no place, & no structure that could get you closer to god than each of us already is. & i still believe this, but i must admit, zefat got me high, it got me higher, it got me closer to simcha. closer to my name. closer to me.

golan: nature, litter, ruins, & children

smiles & scowls

last saturday morning i awoke at my friend's aunt's home in the jerusalem hills. the "aunt" is actually a 3rd cousin, but we can just call her maya. on a clear day you can see the dome of the rock & the rest of the city from maya's spacious balcony, but saturday morning i found the house & the hill it sits upon completely enveloped in clouds. i did some yoga on the balcony inside of a cloud before setting out on foot about 3 hours early to go meet my 2nd cousin gavi's wife & his children across the city. gavi & his family are hassidic jews.


i left early so i could enjoy the pleasure & luxury of getting slightly lost in JERUSALEM! along the way i walked through many desolate streets: everything was shut down for the sabbath. i found myself in the religous jewish quarter still in my jeans & hiking boots with nowhere to go change. i brought a long skirt & little ballet flats to change into once i arrived at their house because it was a windy day & my long skirt is a wrap skirt that would blow open as i wandered through the city, & my boots are so much more supportive & comfortable for my urban hike. the streets of the hassidic neighborhood were all blockaded for shabbat & filled with many groups of friends & families promenading about. some folks stared at me, but most quickly averted their eyes. many men even used their hands to shield their faces from my unholy visage. the most violent & intense reaction i got was from the hassidic children: the young boys with their curly paeses hanging down past their shoulders gave me the most vile & vehement scowls. the looks on their faces were of utter disgust & hate. at one point in my walk i sat down on a bench to write a few words in my journal about the intensity of this experience, the pounding of my heart, the quickness of my breath, the way i was looked at like a monster or freak....& as i scribbled these notes a woman walked by & literally hissed at me, & shortly after a man hurried his son past me so as not to gawk, but shouted back over his shoulder at me, "SHABBAS!!! SHABBAS!!!"


oops.


i had forgotten that it in hassidic & fundamental tradition one cannot write on the shabbas. & here i was writing & wearing blue jeans in THEIR territory.



so much for "my people".



when i arrived at gavi's his step-son nesim answered the door & gave me a look quite simular to that of his peers i had met along the way: narrowed eyes & furrowed brow. i quickly ducked into their bathroom to change before meeting his mother shalvi. shalvi is incredibly warm & talkative. she made me feel completely comfortable & welcome in their home. gavi himself was so much more communicative & kind than i had expected, having been told that because i am a woman he wouldn't be very interested in me.


both gavi & shalvi are guitar playing songwriting folks like me, & nesim plays the djembe (spelling?) with great seriousness, precision, & soul. it was a treat to hear the family all playing together, filling their little apartment with spiritual song. when gavi handed me the guitar to play his wife swiftly informed me that it was not appropriate for me to sing in front of my cousin because i am a beautiful woman & i am not his wife. never mind that i am his cousin & that before gavi was religious & before i hit puberty he would swing me around & give me piggy back rides, because in jewish law we are marriagable. so. gavi will never hear me sing. it is not even permissable for him to listen to a recording of me. women cannot perform for men, period, unless they are married.




shalvi & i went to a beautiful concert of religous music for just women that evening. such a pleasure. shalvi translated a lot of the hebrew in whispers. i was enchanted by the poetry & the meaning transcended the language barrier & left me feeling saturated with sweet strength of spirituality. shalvi promised to teach me some of the songs on the guitar when gavi was out of the apartment the following day. many of the songs were simply psalms set to music. there is enough poetry there for lyrics until the end of time....


i spent the night in their apartment. before going to sleep shalvi told me that before waking up in the morning i would need to ritualistically wash my fingertips to cleanse them of the residue of the impure spirits that possess a sleeping body. you see, when a person sleeps their sould flies up to heaven, & impure souls (not necessarily evil, just impure) occupy their body. this transaction takes place through the fingertips. upon waking one must be sure to wash their hands before touching anything like their face, food, door handles, etc.

i think this is an example of dogmatic justification for good hygiene.
never the less, before getting out of bed on sunday i did as she asked & poured water from the special cup over my hands, 4x on each hand starting with the right one.

after eating some delicious cold noodle kugel for breakfast i checked my facebook & recieved a messege from my friend sophie that she was going to the west bank with a friend of hers who lives in jerusalem, speaks some arabic, & has a hobby & habit of bringing jews into the west bank. most jewish tourists don't venture into the west bank. they think it's too dangerous, &/or think of palestinians as enemies.



sophie & jacob picked me up on a street corner & i changed back into my jeans in the backseat underneath my long skirt. we picked up 2 polish jewish boys jacob had met at a party the night before, & before long we were driving through a winding high cement wall that divides the west bank from the rest of israel/jerusalem.

this particular wall is less than a decade old & curves in through the border of israel & palestine to scoop up & surround the main jewish attraction to bethlehem: rachel's tomb. it's a bit strange & against my understanding of jewish belief & traditions to make any sort of shrine for the dead, but never the less this matriarch's burial place is a destination for religious tribe members from all over the country & the world. i was told it was "extremely powerful" & full of divine feminine energy. when shalvi heard i would be going she gave me a list of several family members complete hebrew names & asked me to pray for them. like most religious sights, the men & women have seperate designated prayer areas. the women's side was crowded with mostly orthodox & hassidic women packed in like sardines & reading from their prayer books. i got scolded by one woman for having about a half a centimeter of my stomach visible between my t-shirt & pants. i shoved my way into the center of the mass of prayerful women & recited the names of my family members & a little mantra i made up of "my mothers my sisters my self, my mothers my sisters my self" for a few moments with my eyes closed.

we left rachel's tomb & parked our borrowed car in a parking lot outside of the checkpoint between the west bank & israel. the cage like pathways leading into the checkpoint were pretty intense. it was noteworthy that the sign above the turnstile leading into palestine read "EXIT" which is one small bit of exemplary ethno/israel/centricity...we were EXITING israel, not ENTERING palestine.

i love cathedrals. they always fill me with feelings of smallness & reverence. i deeply enjoyed visiting the church of the nativity with its gorgeous ornate decor from so many different styles & centuries, & it's several sections of different divinations: catholic, christian, etc. lots of rich textured red & gold. ancient crazy cave tombs underneath with roman lettering...out in a courtyard jacob told us the story of the most recent major violent conflict in which israeli army inflicted a curfew upon this neighborhood of palestine. unfortunately i don't remember all the details, but there was some sort of violent showdown in which the palestinian resistance folks were hiding out in the church of the nativity, & the israeli army shot several rounds through the stone walls of the courtyard. the bullet holes are visible today: filled with white stucko....

after the church of the nativity we ate the best & cheapest falafel i have had on my trip. it was less than 1/2 the price of falafel in israel. we then went to a friend of jacob's souvenir shop & were served tea & arabic coffee...

from there we cought a cab to deheisheh, a refugee camp that was created in 1948 (w/the creation of the state of israel) for 6,000 displaced palestinians who lived in villages in what is now the state of israel. families of 10 lived in 4x4 rooms. there were less than 10 bathrooms for the entire camp, located in one spot. another huge population of refugees moved to deheisheh after the war in `67. today over 12,000 people live there. palestinians call the creation of the state of israel, "The Catastrophe" & those still living in refugee camps are free to leave now, but don't generally because they hold dear to the belief that the occupation of palestine & their former villages by the israeli army is a temporary situation. there was a lot of gorgeous & peace oriented graffitti in deheisheh, along with some more harsh political images. powerful stuff. there were dozens of stencils of the face of a 16 yr old boy recently murdered by israeli soldiers in the streets, mistaken for some criminal or other.

in stark contrast to my experience wandering around in the hassidic neighborhood the day before, all the palestinian refugees i came in contact with smiled, waved, & said hello. particularly the children. "hello! hello! hi!" some even wanted high fives & to make sure that we took pictures with them.

our tour guide in deheisheh was casual & kind. his name is shedi. he spent a lot of time with us discussing the geographic, ethnic, & political aspects of the israeli palestinian conflict. i am just barely begining to grasp all of this. it is incredibly complex, & i sympathize with several perspectives. shedi's most memorable quote from the afternoon was

"the only weapon we still have is our smile"

& smiles are a powerful weapon indeed. all the palestinian kids i met seemed to know who to wield there smiles with skillful agility.

they helped me to feel wholey & wonderfully welcome & human.

leaving bethlehem back through the checkpoint, the sign above the doorway read "ENTER"

75 degrees in tel aviv

thursday night i met guta's son yair @ the train station to go back to his home for the night. he is a commercial lawyer & lives in a suburb less than an hour outside of tel aviv. i mentioned to him briefly the work that my new friend emily does, defending palestinian civil rights, & he became noticably agitated. he stated they don't deserve those rights in the first place.

his home is large & full of beautiful art. his oldest daughter is a very succesful actress & model who graces the covers of israeli fashion magazines, looking very beautiful & angry, as is apparently internationally en vogue. his family's way of life is an extreme polar opposite of aliza & moshe's orthodox existance on the yishuv. at dinner i expressed my desire to go back into the city the next day, & that it would be ok to take a cab to the train station. yair insisted that his wife yael could take me, & we would leave at 1:30.
at 1:15 she stormed into the house in a furious hurry, exclaiming "go go go i am in a hurry! are you ready? i have only enough time to make schnitzel for gilad!" gilad is their eldest son, who i connected the most with. he was just discharged from the army due to an injury he incurred playing basketball. lucklily i was all packed & ready to go, & heaved my backback on & followed her out to the car.

it was 75 degrees outside & blindingly sunny.

yael drove anxiously & made no attempt at conversation. she dropped me off at a dubious bus stop, saying that she never takes the bus, but probably the #62 would get me where i wanted to go, ask the driver.

i had intended to meet up with a friend in about an hour on the other side of the city. i left the bus stop & settled myself on a picnic table at a nearby park to eat an orange & look at my map to orient myself. when i discovered i was only 10 or 15 blocks away from guta's i decided to call her up & see if it was a good time to come by & look at old pictures & hear stories. she was home & excited to see me. i walked about 5 blocks in the wrong direction & then caught a cab. the cab driver noticed that i was overheated from the sun & my large pack, & that my nature was rushed. "slow down!" he told me, "we are in no rush! life takes its time, even if you hurry!"

my time with guta was memorable & precious.

she & her late husband's names both translate roughly to mean "good". guta & tuvia. she had photos dating back to the early 20s from both sides of the family. guta & tuvia were each one of 7 children born in poland. in the school pictures children wear no shoes. there was no money, but everybody is immaculately dressed & groomed. beautiful & stylish people. my favorite photo that she let me keep is of tuvia's brothers weaving baskets. they are gorgeous & serious looking, the baskets are huge. tuvia escaped the camps by being a soldier in the soviet army. he literally jumped ship while his troops were on en route to italy in the late 30s & made his way to palestine.
guta told a few stories of the camps mostly focusing on the kindness of a few gentile girls she was friends with who were imprisoned close by & smuggled her food. she & 2 of her sisters survived, but everybody else was killed.

"they were murdered" guta repeated, more than once, with the only instance of harshness i encountered in my visit with her.

when she showed me the tattoo of numbers she recieved in auschwitz she told me, "it did not hurt my body. no. no pain on the body, pain on the heart, pain in the soul."

she showed me a picture of a blonde haired blue eyed german woman named barbara from the 80s. this woman found guta because she was writing a book about an obscure concentration camp that guta spent time in. "barbara wanted to know my story. i told her my story, & i asked in turn for hers. she had a hard childhood with no love. i had love, she needed love, so i gave her love. she became like a daughter to me."

do you love me?

i am not related to guta by blood.  her late husband was my grandfather's cousin.  still, she insists she loves me.  guta was 16 when she & her 6 siblings were put in concentration camps.  after the war she went briefly to switzerland, where she married a friend's brother so she could emigrate to palestine.  they never even kissed, "it was a fiction" she says of their marriage.

today she lives in an apartment in tel aviv.  last tuesday night i watched obama's inauguration on television with her.  she approves of our new president.

my favorite line from his speech was, "if you will unclench your fist, we will extend our hand"

after watching the inauguration i accompanied guta to her song group.  it is a group of elderly israelis who get together once a week to sing old yiddish, hebrew, & a sprinkling of other types of folk songs (italian, swedish, german).  guta, at 86 is the eldest member of the group, & obviously the darling.  she was the only member to have a solo with the microphone, singing one of the few yiddish songs i was familiar with.  the chorus goes "chiribiribiri bim bom bim" it is really quite fun...

i hope to learn a few of the other songs on my guitar; one about how we are either laughing or weeping, & another about a thousand kisses...

as we got out of the taxi on the way to her song group, guta grabbed my arm & asked me with wide eyes, "do you love me?"

"yes ofcourse guta!"

& she gave me several kisses & touched my face.  she likes to touch my face.

after the song group i went to a very well decorated inauguration party full of americans & hard liquor.  i had a few shots & danced a few dances before going back to a friend of a friend's apartment for the night.  to my delight, my friend's friend, emily, has an old classical guitar that used to belong to her mother.  i had been missing playing & singing terribly for the past few weeks of traveling.  concluding the night with chamomile tea drinking & lullaby song singing was heavenly.

emily is a human rights lawyer who defends palestinians.  the main case she worked on wednesday concerned 8 israeli soldiers who attacked & killed a palestinian man in front of his 6 year old son.  

  

the first woman

the first woman in the torah, in the hebrew, is named havah, not eve.

as my cousin translated over tea & cake last night, the genesis story tells that god created a 4 legged 4 armed 2 headed creature, attatched at the ribs.  it was capable of reproducing by itself.  man & woman were separated so that we could see the divinity in one another's faces, because we were created in god's image.  

there is also a greek myth that is simular & tells of humans originally being 4 legged 4 armed 2 headed...& that zeus was angry at us for some reason or other & split us apart.  love making is just us all trying frantically to get back together again.

please

this is the note i left in the crevices of the wailing wall...i wrote it without editing...& copied it twice so i could have one for always:

please let me love

make music

& give myself

in love

in music

let me learn

always

give me gratitude & humility 

to temper

strength & beauty

let me hold reverence & respect

for cycles & fertility

of all kinds

let me teach reverence & respect

for the miracles of life

may my life be always

hydrated & humorous

may i always share

often give

& gracefully

fully

recieve