Meetingplace / Marketplace

The short flight had been uneventful.  As we disembark, Blondie Boy waves a casual Shalom to the two youngish ground crewmen assigned to monitor passenger progression from plane to gate.  I try to focus his awareness to the idea that from now on, for the next few weeks, he must speak English to those around him.  The next day, in the Brent Cross shopping mall, Elder Princeski wonders if we will encounter any Israelis here.   My response -- Just keep your ears open! -- is cut short by a mother speaking Hebrew to her two kids as they cross our path toward the escalator.

Brent Cross is a multicultural hub;  families from everywhere, kids of all skin tones.  Women in robes, dresses, headscarves in a spread of colors both bright and drab.   An endless flow of mother tongues, alongside English delivered in multiple cadences.  And so many Jews, they barely glance at one another in any attempt for recognition.   My own moderate headscarf does not register a perceptible glance from anyone, and I feel a sort of relativity effect, an at-oddness with both the bare-headed, spaghetti strap world on my left, and the thoroughly wrapped opacity on my right.  Neither covering, nor lack of one, exposes the ideas and beliefs within the minds around me.

If I were a white Christian male here, I would feel left out, slightly noteworthy, a minority. Perhaps this rainbow effect now means the white majority no longer feels comfortable coming here.  Perhaps it no longer exists, or never did.

At home I sometimes joke about retail therapy, the occasional -- and temporary -- pick-me-up for an emotional trying day at work.   Abroad, it has already become both a chore, albeit an enjoyable one, and an opportunity.  Elder P taking mental notes on the people around her, asking few questions while, I can assume, sitting tight on others which will surface eventually. She's an observant kid, she knows how to make comparisons, and one day soon knowing the answers will become more urgent.

Meanwhile, my headspace is still lingering back at home, ruminating over its own troubled comparisons.  If, here, those people wearing head coverings are drawing any suspicion, I cannot feel it, although they themselves might.  

The marketplace has always been a meeting place, and no less now than before, among our skylights and window dressings and vast air-conditioned spaces.  Retail as the great commons, or commonality.  I enjoy being here, and even knowing such a place exists, whether I come to purchase, or to find comfort and captivation in the purchasers.

Keep the balance,

ALN

Be'er Sheva: One Principal Rewriting the Status Quo

(Read this post first if you haven't yet caught my posts about last month's in-service in Be'er Sheva).

We are traveling by air-conditioned bus, having driven Road 60 out of Be'er Sheva and east onto Road 31, north of Be'er Sheva, toward Arad and the Dead Sea.  We have now turned right off the paved main road and I wish we were back on it, since all this bouncing along an exceptionally bumpy dirt road, even at 20 km/h, has made me completely car sick.  As I snap photos out the window, I am trying not to throw up all over the vehicle's well-preserved upholstery.

Welcome to the pezura.  The word pezura -- פזורה -- is Hebrew for dispersion and refers to approximately half a million dunam (equivalent to about 175,00 acres) of unrecognized land, containing 50,000 unlicensed houses, and many, many more people, spread throughout the desert.  Within the Negev there are seven recognized Beduin towns:  Rahat, Tel Sheva, Kseifa, Arara, Segev Shalom, Houra and Laqiyya, and half the southern Beduin population lives within these towns (reference here).  As for the the other half, they live throughout the Dispersion, where there are no electricity lines, no water pipes or central sewage systems, no garbage collection.  With very few exceptions, there are no official schools. 

In the middle of all this brown, dusty emptiness is one exception, a literal oasis of a school. Amal is Arabic for hope, and the Amal School is aptly named.  Kids from kindergarten through high school arrive here every morning by bus, from all over the pezura.  The long, dusty road is literally in the middle of nowhere, and if a child misses the bus, he misses school for the day.  

We are welcomed at the entranceway and led across the school's courtyard --  an expansive pebbled area containing trees and a paved central area -- and into the library, where drinks and cookies have been set out for us.  

The school principal enters and apologizes for not having met us at the gate. He introduces himself as Khalil Elkorm, now in his twelfth year as school principal, and his twentieth in the Israeli Education ministry.*  

His presence fills the room as he launches into an energetic talk about his educational philosophy, the main thrust of which is that schools must find a variety of ways to educate, beyond the traditional frontal teaching style, and that any new educational program, as good as it may sound at first, must be tested and adapted to the needs of the children in system, before it can be thrust upon them.  

Over the years, Khalil has helped to establish after-school enrichment programs, hot meal programs, and an on-site medical clinic so that the parents will be involved in their children's education, without compromising all that has been accomplished by the sectarian and tribal conflicts that would work in opposition to Khalil's educational priorities for his 650 pupils. When asked how he deals with the intergenerational conflict that must arise between these modern-educated children and their conservative parents, Khalil described in further detail how he learned the hard way, that the school must guide the parents, and not the opposite, or change will never happen.

Following our talk Khalil brings us to the kindergarten area, fenced off from the rest to give these youngest pupils a chance to have their own safe space before moving up to first grade.

Unlike the camera-savvy grade-school children who have already mobbed us, begging to be photographed, these little ones are still shy and wary of visitors, but after a few minutes their smiles break through and they are happy to have us watch them solve problems in small groups.

Back in the courtyard, Khalil explains that it is election day in the local towns.  In honor of this event, a group of older girls are conducting mock elections, standing in two straight lines as they wait to cast their vote the ballot box.

I'm pretty impressed by their ability to stand there patiently, and wonder how much of it has to do with the teachers observing along the sidelines, or whether, as girls, they have just gotten used to being told to wait their turn.  I think about the ramifications of what they are doing.  How many of these girls will actually get to vote in an election in their lifetimes? They face so many hurdles:  As women in a men-dominated society, and as an under-recognized minority living in unrecognized areas. 

Khalil is clearly very proud of his school and its accomplishments, and for him this means rejecting his society's status quo.  "His" girls are already voting, even if their votes will not influence this year's election.  

Keep the balance,

ALN

_____

*  Khalil gave me his full permission to be featured here.

Be'er Sheva, in Retrospect

It's been awhile.... all good things:  Family wedding coming up, work presentation last Sunday, and other details I won't bore you with.

If you're a regular reader here (kudos to you!) you're aware of my in-service training last month at Beit Yatziv, a continuing education center for teachers, located within a historical neighborhood of the southern desert city of Be'er Sheva.  It was my intention to blog live from down there, but they kept us so busy (classes from 8 am to 10 pm), with some rest and lots of food in between) that I couldn't keep up.  It was also very clear at the time that those moments between classes, lectures and workshops were digestion time for the brain.  The few posts I did managed from there are available here, here and here.

Meanwhile (yesterday afternoon, in fact) we met to kick off this year's series of bimonthly workshops on multiculturalism in the work place.  I and several others were pleased to learn that the emphasis of our discussions will not be limited to Jewish-Arab -- and other religion- and race- considered -- relations, but will also focus on organizational issues and the discrepancies between the hospital/medical organizational culture and our own educational culture within it.

Not all of the staff participants of the bimonthly meetings were present at Beit Yatziv, and the opposite, but as we begin this new series of meetings, the experience in Be'er Sheva remains at the forefront of my mind, with the field trip to the surrounding Beduin areas at the locus of that experience.

I'll begin with where we did not go.  We did not enter any private homes or tents.  With the exception of school children, we did not meet "ordinary" Beduins.  We met some of the exceptions;  the role models, the risk takers, the mould breakers.  All of them are well known in their respective communities, respected by some and resented by others, for daring to go against the grain and change the status quo.  In the next few days I'll introduce you to them, one at a time.  Stay posted.

Keep the balance,

ALN

Why I Will Be Thanking G-d This Shabbat

This Shabbat, I will (b"n) be saying Birchat haGomel , the special prayer one offers in a public forum after one's life has been spared by accident, illness, childbirth, travel, or some other potentially dangerous situation.

OK, so there are lots of good reasons to thank G-d.... this despite a U.S. economy spinning out of control, the fact that we have already begun seeing the repercussions over here in Israel, and many other tragedies...

It just takes a second and a half, and an exercise in imagination, to understand what was, versus what could have been...

Yesterday I was returning from the bar mitzvah of a patient who has recently completed treatment for leukemia (in and of its own, a reason to celebrate).  Driving from there to work (for the first time all week, thanks to a nasty flu virus) I almost lost my way, when suddenly I realized I'd been paying way too much attention to the signs along the road, and not enough attention to the traffic that had come to a complete standstill in front of me.  

With a second to spare I looked left, saw there was no oncoming traffic, and pulled into the next lane, giving me time to brake slowly and safely.  I have very little doubt that this one critical second was the difference between me continuing my day as an employee in the hospital, and not as an emergency room patient.

הודו לה' כי טוב, כי לעולם חסדו.

Drive safely.

Shabbat Shalom,

ALN

Missed Connection, Reconnection

We got back to Israel safely, bodies exhausted, luggage intact.  I only wish I could say the same for my head, but the J-L word has been rearing it's ugly head.  I've now tried the stay-up-really-late-method, the take-a-nap method, the don't-take-a-nap method, the no-caffeine, no-alcohol diet, the caffeine -and-alcohol diet... it all sort of comes down to "Damn!  Here I am, awake  between 2 and 5 a.m. yet again."*  Last night, Shabbat, was the worst,  -- all the lights were out (no reading) and using the computer was out of the question (no blogging... all those posts, composed in my head, the permanently lost in memory wasteland / oblivion).  Sometimes I envy those locals (read:  EU members) whose flight back to The Old Country costs them only six hours of their lives, plus waiting time, and possibly a couple of time zones.   I know, I know, it could be worse;  Australians must envy everyone.

(A recent conversation companion suggested that the lengthy travel time might serve a higher purpose, giving our minds and bodies time to readjust to the new environment.  I'm not sure what that means, since I'm assuming that if not for the jet-lag, my adjustment time would near zero, even accounting for other adaptations). 

Straight off the plane, the white light is blinding.  The abrupt weather transformation -- from California balmy to Middle East heat bake -- shocks my system with an immediate, unforgiving reminder that the sun is stronger here.  Like the emotional charge of everyday interactions, this heat is a force to be reckoned with, a consistent reminder to budget your energy and appreciate the basics:  Clean water, the roof over your head, a cool evening breeze.  

For the first few days following our return our house always seems so small and dusty, but that's only because, in comparison, my parents' house is enormous and several thousand miles from the Sahara.  After a few days our house goes back to looking its normal self (reasonably large and dusty).  

We visit the Old Country every two or three years, and each time it feels more like a foreign country.   Yes, my English is still fluent (though some would claim otherwise), and I remembered to say Have a nice day and Nice to meet you like I really mean it.  But the differences inevitably reared their heads. I could still think in inches, but no longer in pounds.  In the supermarket, the endless selection of every category of product was truly overwhelming.   Parking lots became their own sprawling world, filled with superfluous SUV's, and the twelve-lane freeway where I'd learned to drive as a teenager had somehow transformed itself into a massive, threatening behemoth.

I came to Israel as a college student, unattached and uncommitted to any particular person, child, job or goal beyond trying to find a place to live, finish my degree, learn Hebrew.  Within a year or two those goals expanded to include finding a beit knesset, acquiring job skills, searching for a spouse... and then, building a home, having children, developing a career and joining a community.  Every one of these steps furthered my integration into this life and this society, even as it increased the barrier -- without my noticing -- between this life and my old life.   On this trip, I began to understand that while I grew up in California, I actually became an adult in Israel.  Marriage, motherhood, career, community -- all of these seminal moments happened in Israel, which means that my integration of these experiences also happened in Israel.  

By living so far away, I am also keenly aware of what I am missing, and causing others to miss.  My grandmother finally has three great-grandchildren -- who might as well be a million miles away.  Was this trip our last chance to see her?  I really, really hope not.  My Mom savors every long-distance telephone call, but nothing compares to helping her grandchildren practice their swimming in the neighborhood pool.  I can't remember a visit when my Dad hasn't "threatened" to kidnap one of the kids, so he won't have to wait another two years to see her.  

My good friend Q asked, as she always does when I return, Do you ever feel the urge to stay there?   No, I don't, even though coming home means coming back to the regular routine.  Gearing the kids up for a new school year.  A less-than enthusiastic return to the stresses of work.  Grocery shopping and carpool schedules.  Trips to the doctor, the dentist, the veterinarian.  Household repairs and reorganizations.  A fish tank in need of scrubbing and disinfecting.  A pile of laundry that dares to reach the ceiling after three days.  Dust.  Everywhere.  I know all too well that for me, "California" now means "vacation."  Were to we live there, I would still have all of the above and more, that is, all the ingredients of a regular life.  

But just in case I'd ever forget where home is, my kids wouldn't hesitate to remind me.  From the moment we left Israel, they struggled with the separation from their friends.  For four weeks they begged me to find them someone to play with;  even our three-year-old exchanged email photos to his nursery school girlfriend.  Driving home from the airport, the kids were barely out of the car and they were already asking, pleading to call their friends, invite them over, visit their houses.  Seeing my neighbors on Friday evening felt like a real home-coming, my neighbors sitting in the Beit Knesset, welcoming Shabbat, while the little kids ran around in the park.  They all looked so beautiful.

I love coming home. 

Keep the balance,

ALN

_____

* Note the time-stamp.  And yes, that's Israel time.

Landing on Time

I feel compelled to balance out our recent flight disappointments with a top-ten list reviewing our own home-grown, sardine-class service.  (Anyway, I'm way too stoned with jet-lag to accomplish much else here for the moment).

It's all been done before;  nonetheless, allow me to present my 

Top Ten Reasons to Fly El-Al:

10.  Flight attendants who are truly courteous, helpful, and good with kids (remember the old days?).

 9.  Choice of meals among many:  kosher, super-kosher, kosher vegan, kosher fish, kosher kiddie meal, etc. etc.

 8.  Those new 777's with the personal seat-back MP4 systems, featuring on-demand movies, music, games, and the latest Israeli TV shows.

 7.  You kids can scream and kick all they want -- someone else's will always drown them out.

 6.  Snacks and drinks available in the back, all hours of the day and night (or is that night and day?).

 5.  Our guys are in charge of security.

 4.  Tfilat haDerech* on page one of the in-flight magazine.

 3.  Directional arrow up on the screen points toward Jerusalem throughout the flight -- no guessing where to aim your prayers.

 2.  Lost luggage now a rarity due to the strict security tracking system.

And most importantly, the number one reason to fly El-Al:

 1.  You'll feel like you've come home, long before reaching TLV.

I know, there are always a few snags in the system, but like so many other things, given a choice, I choose the Israeli option.

Keep the balance,

ALN

_____

* The traveler's prayer, said before long or especially dangerous journeys.