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"