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.