Travel Log #17

September 22, 2009

It has been a long time since I have written. Lack of internet has played a large factor in this. Hopefully, I will soon be back in the technological realm of existence. Meanwhile, I have been sharing one computer kiosk with over one-hundred people.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago, I moved to Ashkelon, a city on the sea, seven miles north of the Gaza border, along with thirty-seven other OTZMAnikim. We live in an immigrant absorption center: Mercaz Klita Kalanit. Kalanit= a kind of flower. In the front yard, there are etrog trees. The fruit will be ripe in time for sukkot, a week-and-a-half from now. Baby etrogim fall from the trees. We sit in circles and throw them at each other. I scratch the skin and smell like citrus. The oil does not bother me, so perhaps it is only oranges and grapefruits that dislike me.

Kalanit is empty, other than us, a few dozen college students, and three families. During its golden age, it had hundreds, so many you couldn't find a seat on the lawn or benches. Now, it is nearly empty. We have been placed here with high hopes. We are expected to save it from extinction. Money dries up here, very much like everywhere else. Money dries up here like water but our time is still spent.

In the mornings, we got to Ulpan. I am placed in the "advanced" class, meaning intermediate. There are only two levels: those who spend their time learning the aleph-bet, starting from absolutely nothing, and those of us who speak just a little. Today, I went out and bought a dictionary. My problem is not a lack of understanding. It is a fear of speaking, a lack of confidence.

We are here to volunteer. I have found what I was looking for: a dance floor. Ballroom dancers in this country number merely seven hundred. Ninety percent of these dancers are Russian. The method of teaching is as foreign to me as the Russian language. The instructors do not promote teams, only couples. Couples do interact with one another. They are enemies. "We would all benefit it we dance together," I say, knowing this from experience. "No. We are Russian. It's not going to happen," is all I am told. And that is supposedly the end of that. I will see what three months of American influence can do. Social dancing does not exist here. The dance floor is full of animosity and competition. I begin dancing three days a week: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday. On Thursdays, I tutor Russians in English. I help beginners dance and I am allowed to take the overly-priced classes for free. It is good to be an OTZMAnik. Ashkelon has been made a volunteer city and we are volunteers. We are highly revered. Last Wednesday, the mayor came to us. Kalanit threw him a party for us.

On Thursday night, we were taken to Jerusalem for slichot, a spiritual all-nighter before Rosh Hashana. We got a walking tour of Jerusalem and were then let free on our own with maps that could hardly be made sense of, so that we could go and observe the crack-of-down services. Tallit and tefilin on men dressed in white are nothing new to me. I got lost, ran into others of the group and followed them to our destination, where we were given breakfast. Then, I got on a bus to Tel Aviv and got a train up to Binyamina and Zichron. I have gone there every weekend to be with my adoptive family. It is a always a relief to get away after the long (and hot) weeks in Ashkelon.

This weekend was the New Year. I went to shul on Shabbat, which was nice, and refrained from Quaker Meetings on the second day. Not that there are Quaker Meetings to be had in Zichron. On Sunday, I took a walk in the nature reserve and the botanical gardens with with my friend. The views are gorgeous and the walking is good. I ignore my flat feet.

The wind is good at the those heights, and the view is far and wide. As usual, I am not alone and my celestial companions stand guard everywhere. They remind me constantly:

"You are close to the place where we were born, Little Girl," and all Orders populate the landscape . There are the Orders without names. They are voices only, arrows in suggestive directions. They remind me of my purposes for being here.

I look around at faces, physically young and actually old. Where I come from, young faces accompnay people into adulthood. The world does not press down on us so heavily, so noticeably. There is no need to escape from reality. For most. Here, I look into young faces and see the kind of expression I have always worn looking back. They understand--the world is not easy, it must be carried. Happiness is not free. Here, we know the price.

In high school we were always preached at for being privileged. They showed us pictures of starving children in India or Africa. "Oh, yes," we'd nod our head. "We are privileged," and then go home to our nintendos 64s, reach into our pockets and dole our our money and not our time. We tuck the notion of disadvantage and despair away in a file labeled with a number and not faces. Here, each individual face counts, each individual face counts, each individual life. This is why we come upon dilemmas where we debate trading one soldier for hundreds of prisoners with the pressing knowledge that those released prisoners will mean more lives later, and usually, lives out of uniform. Maybe even our own lives. But this is the way the game is played. We continue. There is nowhere for us to go. It comes down to (once again) the notion of Heimat: "I don't necessarily enjoy living here," someone said, "but I couldn't live anywhere else".

The people here are warm and kind. It is like one big family and for the first time in my life, I feel truly welcomed everywhere. At least outside the typical drama of the living situation. I don't feel unwelcome here, but it's just the typical story with me and my age group. I stay out of the loop. I am through with trivialities. So I branch out to the locals. I get phone numbers and Shabbat dinner invitations. I accept. As usual, I am most popular and most impressed with those a generation older than I am. Still, I have not caught up with myself. It is like waiting for rain in a drought.

But, as the weather proves, be careful what you wish for. The opposite of drought is a flood. Casualties result from both. It has rained non-stop at home. The city is drowning. It has begun to rain here, too, a little bit early. The climate is changing. Nature is angry and in the face of it, our work on the ground is inconsequential. I work anyway. All things in moderation. For an individual, a little can mean a lot. And to save one life is to save an entire world.

The world around me is full of music, fresh fruit, the screams of military airplanes flying low at night, Amharek, Russian, Hebrew, birdsong, laughter, arguments. It is full of the sounds of life. It is Israel. This may be a little hard to paint in words, especially for those who have never been here, and particularly because o the media's portrayal of it.

Israel is just as multicultural as New York City, London, or Berlin. The difference lies in the fact that in all those cities, we're Jewish, and in Israel we are American, British, or German, Ethiopian, Russian, Iranian, French, Argentinian...You get the picture. Like I spoke about in Germany, Jews have the uncanny capability of assimilation/acculturation almost too perfectly into any culture world wide. Except for the fact that we are viewed as Jews in those countries by the host population, we are more French than the French, more German than the Germans, more American than the Americans, and on and on. In Israel, we are all Jews, so that label disappears and we are left with the host cultures we have become and carried with us; we are left with what we are: the embodiment of cultures with a Jewish twist that we held in such great esteem but which slighted us more often than not.

But pooled together, we are only Iraqi and French and German and Moroccan and American, and all the rest. Left to our own devices, we become like all the others. We have our feuds and prejudices, our racism, our alliances, our assumptions, and our own ardent display of Octavia Butler's "Human Contradiction" of intelligence and hierarchy. More on that later. I will be working with a lot of Ethiopian children in the coming weeks, teaching them English, improving their skills in whatever they need improving in. It's a class struggle like in every other country. This is why I refuse to grant any group of people greater respect than another--we are all quite Human in the end. I just feel the right to hold my own to a higher standard. I live my life attempting to embody it. Let us see how it goes.

Travel Log #16

September 3, 2009

Another city and another country. I have traveled again. This time, to the country of my final destination, at least for a while. Admittedly, it feels rather like a dream. I had nearly given up, after all. But here I am in the capital, Jerusalem, Israel, and all my nerves have been quieted.

I landed right on time, at 2:21 in the morning on September 1 in Tel Aviv. I sat next to two Norwegian women, a mother and daughter, visiting another daughter/sister who has lived in Israel for thirty years. Also, on the plane, I met a girl named Stephanye, who has moved to Israel for the year to be with her boyfriend. She's a graduate student in English. I run into these everywhere and remind myself that in my mind I am not switching disciplines although on paper, I am.

Luggage took about 45 minutes to arrive and Therem, who they took away at the gate, for supposed lack of space, was missing. I found her abandoned on an oversized luggage belt across the airport. I think I almost had a heart attack over her going missing, but no worries.

After the luggage was picked up, I sat around and waited for Sue for about an hour in the public part of the terminal. I read some more of the fantastic Amir Hamza and bought some water, after I traded my Euros for shekels. After a while, I wondered how we would find each other, since I don't think either of us knew what the other looked like. Somehow, she walked right up to me, recognizing me by Therem (who was luckily found), and then we were off!

It took almost two hours to get to Zichron, and I had a really good time and a good conversation in the car. When we got to the house, I opted to stay up and go on a walk with the two very aweesome dogs. The cat bit me and ran away. No worries, I understand. I'm a cat person. Anyhow, the "hike" was awesome and gorgeous, through a nature reserve kept up by the Rothschild foundation. I didn't get to go in because dogs aren't allowed and it was too early, but in the middle of the reserve is an amazing botanical garden. I saw the edge of it. In the distance, the Mediterranean.

Finally, we got back to the house, I took a shower and went to sleep, got up, and went to sleep again. When I really got up, we went to the grocery store, which didn't have fresh mozzarella, to my utmost dismay. But they did have good bread and Boursin.

At home, I met Keren over dinner, who will be eighteen on Monday. I also met Mike, the dad, and ended up having a thought provoking political conversation with him. It is very werid but very good how I feel like I fit in so well. Hopefully, I'll go back next weekend. Everyone will be home and there's a birthday celebration for Keren.

After dinner, some really good fish, etc, I took Therem out and sang for a while. In the morning, I rearranged my things, left a bunch of stuff here and repacked. Sue and Mike were at work, so a friend's daughter, Ayelet, picked me up and took me to the train station. The security guard had a little too much fun with all of my crap and ended up giving up. "I'm going to trust you," he said to me. "Don't blow up the train, ok?" Like I would have explosives.

The train ride to the airport was pleasant. Once I arrived, I waited twenty minutes for the Nesher shuttle, which took me right where I wanted, which ended up being JAFI, the Jewish Agency for Israel. Everyone was waiting there. I went to sign in and found myself face-to-face with Ya'el, who was my madricha from Seminar! "I knew you were coming. I told Benny [Levi!] to tell you." "He didn't but..." and both of us said "He was too busy getting married!" All is forgiven.

We had a very low energy pre-orientation. Almost everyone was jet-lagged. We piled onto the bus with all of our stuff and unloaded at the Yitzchak Rabin Youth Hostel where we will be staying until Sunday morning. The food here is amazing. Especially for a hostel.

Today, we had orientation, rules, regulations, scheduling, security issues, etc. I love having a phone again, but the plans here are ridiculous. I can change it at any time but I'll test it out for the first month. After lunch and more orientation, we went on a scavenger hunt through Jersualem (not the Old City). When it was over, we met at the windmill, then had dinner with representatives from our partnership communities. Mine is Yokneam-Meggido, which is twenty minutes from Haifa to the Southeast. In the hostel, I'm rooming with Andi from St. Louis, Rachel from North Carolina, and Stephanie from Pittsburg. I'll be living with Andi and Max (also from St. Louis) during Part II.

August 4, 2009
After all that was done with, Rachel and I desperately searched for a bathroom because we were about to experience spontaneously combusting bladder syndrome. The rest of the group walked of toward Ben Yehuda. We walked into the cafe, asked where the WC was located and ran off. Its amazing what a difference thirty seconds can make. By the time we were through, everyone else was long gone, so we walked and decided to wait for bus 17. We waited for forty-five minute! IT wasn't even 21:00 yet. What the hell kind of "good" public transportation system is that? Anyway, once we were on the bus, we realized that the driver should be in a padded cell. Tearing up the road, cutting people off, screaming at them at traffic lights, screaming at us to sit down when asking him a question. WTF. We actually arrived alive and unharmed at the hostel. Miraculously.

I forgot to mention the OTZMA opening ceremony, which took place at the windmill at Heinrich Heine Street. (Heinrich Heine seems to follow me around, right?) We did a ceremony in the manner of Havdalah, in order to separate ourselves from our "past lives" and to get on with the new. We were overlooking the Old City and the New.

August 5, 2009
For Shabbat, we stayed together at the Rabin Hostel and hung out on the porch with a unit of army boys who are being trained to be commanders. We sang and danced and chatted. Lots of people drank, etc, and I went back to my room around 1:30 and had some great bonding time with roommates. I forgot to mention that we went into the Old City and to the Kotel for Kabbalat Shabbat--before we went to the Wall Annie, Ariel, and I led a mini service for everyone.

During the day on Shabbat, we got to sleep in and then we had an educational program on some Halacha in the morning before lunch. Then, we had the OTZMA cafe, where we got together in groups of six and had more group bonding time with food. After that, chofesh, dinner, more chofesh.

Tomorrow, we hike perpendicular cliffs and end up in a Bedouin tent...until next time.

Travel Log #15

August 31, 2009

I have three-and-a-half hours to spare in Schipol before I board my long-awaited flight to Tel Aviv. But I promised you Turks. You'll get them this time. I promise.

In the meantime, my European adventures are at a close. The most advanced German I have ended up with is most unuseful unless I find myself in some sex fantasy theatre shop, but I have no idea why I would spend my money on a schamhaar toupe. Look it up yourself. Don't ask. Kate Winslet apparently had a need.

In Luxembourg, I avoided French, as usual, and learned a tiny bit more of Italian. Also, it was just as wonderful as I remembered. I met more extremely nice people, from Portugal, to Italy, to Israel, to France, to Belgium. The fairy dust hung in the air. My visits with old friends and colleagues were spectacular and I wish I could stay forever just so that I can see them as often as I want.

As for my promise, my last days in Berlin have left me with continued speculation, even twelve days out. I suppose what I mean by "giving you Turks" is not necessarily "Turks" per say, but minorities--anywhere--and the notion of Diaspora.

In Germany, as I have mentioned, the largest minority (and growing) is that of the Muslim Turks. They began entering the country around thirty years ago as "guest workers"--people invited in to help boost the country's economy as cheap labor, and later, encouraged to stay, in the early 2000s, with the opening up of Germany's borders in order to make it appear and actually be, on paper, an "immigrant country", also known as "accepting of minorities". I view this as yet another aspect of vergangenheitsgewaltigung, the untranslateable word for German "reconciliation", "making better again", or "coming to terms with" Germany's history as a society and as individuals. Gewalt--it can never be better again. This is an eternal, ongoing process of the prevention of hatred and genocide that can only be overcome by the individual in his constant vigilance against a past that repeats itself constantly under different names.

Of course, Germany is composed of human beings. So, the immigrants come in and are ghettoed off into their own neighborhoods. It is both a self-imposed isolation as well as one passively sanctioned by the host society. As for the Turks, many third-generation Germans already, have a loose handle of the Turkish and German languages, and sometimes a very great command of both. Yet "assimilation" is not happening easily. Like Jewish identity, are they Muslim Turks in Germany, German Turks of the Islamic religion, German Turks, Turkish Germans, etcetera, etcetera, you get the point.

It is a question of home, of homeland, of Heimat. Wherever they go, they will not be entirely welcome, nor entirely dismissed as "Other". To make themselves feel more acculturated or assimilated, many "official organizations" spring up that claim to represent the Turks in Germany. But, like any other minority, there are various groups and factions. Who can claim to represent anyone at this rate? We have anit-assimilationists, raidcal zealots, assimilationists, secularists. The list goes on.

The big question asked is: "Why can't the Turkish minority in Germany assimilate smoothly in one generation or less like the Jews? For the more liberal Turks, a partnership has been formed with the "Jewish Community" of Germany (whatever that means--we've already been through Jews in Germany). Human rights groups batter the ball back and forth across the net with the German government and the populace.

Minorities band together, if we can, under many labels. The truest label is not given, though--it is hard to label vagabonds who feel themselves permanently settled but not quite at home. It is the "packed suitcase" mentality.

When I applied to LBSU I had a notion of "home" that lacked concrete definition, and a notion of being a "Diaspora Jew" that has now been upset at the least. Most likely, it has been overturned. "Diaspora"--those dispursed from a homeland--"diasporic"--those who (literally translated) are monsters in a strange land. Eventually, that strange land becomes home, perhaps even Heimat, to those monsters, but they remain different, Other, monsters to the majority. Masked beneath their assimilation, they speak the local language flawlessly, perhaps they speak no other language, perhaps they speak it more correctly than their assumed "mother tongue"; their dress is like the majority's; their skin, hair, mannerisms, all match those of the populace. Assimilation is good camouflage but minorities, though masked beneath assimilation, remain cloaked in their alterity. It is an assumed and, inevitably, an inherent difference. It is most often a difference imposed upon them. Nonetheless, there is a separation.

Before I left the United States, I wrote an essay that railed against the American Jewish Community for being particularly hypocritical. I said that we have forgotten the meaning of being Jewish, that their preaching of charity is too often merely empty rhetoric because what is preached is all too often not practiced. Of course this is an anthropomorphic phenomenon, but I like to hold my own to a higher standard, as I do myself. I finished by caustically reminding us that true assimilation is impossible (look what happened in Germany, after all) and that we must, above all, cling to our roots.

Yet Germany has swallowed me and spat me back out again. In the process of digestion, it dawned on me that I did not have it quite right in regard to American Jews. I said that they act as such precisely because they--we--are allowed to in America. My flaw was in assuming that the people I come from knowingly practice their hypocrisy--again, precisely because we are allowed to. This is the blessing and the curse, and the unfortunate nature of Jews and probably many other minorities in the United States: we are allowed to assimilate, acculturate, so well that we forget the fact that assimilation and/or acculturation has occurred. It has occurred so thoroughly that mainstream American accepts us, becomes us, allows us to become it. My criticism has changed now. Do not take this fact for granted: We are all too often American Jews.

I will explain. In Germany, I realized that because of the United States' natural order of acceptance of most (not all, because doctrine only goes so far), that I can be an American Jew and fully accepted. This is why I must not be one. I am, and proudly, a Jewish American. If it is a matter of Heimat, I was born in mine. Ethnically, I have another and I am en route, but I cast my votes primarily in the interest of the former.

I am anti-Diaspora, another notion introduced to me in Germany. I bring my home with me and it is not attached necessarily to a physical place, but a spiritual one. I long for nowhere as home, except for America, because it is only there where "in the beginning all the world was...". And I take it with me--American is everywhere, and I don't just mean commercially. The Dream is everywhere. American is made of everyone and in so, I can find it everywhere and take the brunt of the diatribe against me for knowing only one language, although that is soon to change. I can go home and be home anywhere because that is the nature of America and "all come to look for" whether for good or for bad, whether for dreams of creation or destruction. I am aware that since America is composed of populations representing everyone from everywhere, it carries within it both the best and worst of all worlds. In turn, it creates a new one everyday.

It is potential, realized and growing. The world is big and full of people. We all have the same potential, the same virtues and flaws. But the more I travel, the more I realize that there is only one place (at least in my experience) that carries out that potential kinetically so well. And so I am proud to be a Jewish American--an American, because that carries more weight than most things.

It will be a year until I see her again. It is boarding time.

23:15
This plane flies forward, accelerating time. This kind of travel underlines the arbitrary nature of the clock. We continue to move against the grain. The moon is bright and waxing. It reminds me of my last flight involving Israel. It was flying west, back home, and the moon was low and orange-pink against the sky of Tel Aviv. I whispered goodbye. I was seventeen. The rest of that flight has completely flown from my memory.

In the Luxembourg airport, I had to pay over $200 for my excess baggage or throw it out. Guess which one I chose? I'm not that cheap. United States baggage policies are so much better than Europe's. Only 20kg period. And 15 Euros for every ADDITIONAL kilo. I was twenty over. The man was nice. He told them it was only 10. Still an FML moment. I'm throwing my life out over the course of this year, or shipping everything by snail mail.

On the City Hopper flight from Luxembourg to Amsterdam, I had the pleasure of sitting next to this very large, smelly guy from Denver who was either reading his paper, sticking his elbow into me, or complaining to the flight attendants. I had to go through passport control again to switch gates in Schipol. A three-and-a-half hour layover ensued.

During the layover, I got the last bit of writing done. In the middle, I decided to eat the food I packed and in my normal clod fashion, ended up with water all over me, the notebook, and the seats around me. After I dried that up, I resumed writing. I have also finally started reading The Adventures of Amir Hamza. (Thank you, my wonderful friend--you know who you are--you know me and my tastes far too well.) For those of you who don't know of this tale, it is the Indo-Persian Islamic epic of the Medieval Period. Adventure, magic, mythology at its greatest. It excellent, particularly for learning of what it is that people dream and how.

The flight to Tel Aviv is rather pleasant. My iPod layers over the screaming babies. KLM by far has the best airplane food I have ever encountered. Good seatmates, too--this time from Norway. However, the flight is completely full, so they took Therem away at the gate and put her in cabin baggage. She will hopefully be returned unharmed at the gate in Tel Aviv. My Weimar vase will hopefully be unharmed, too. It is very padded, but you can never tell with how airport luggage people throws things around. And let us hope my luggage actually makes it.

Right now, a million stories are buzzing through my head but none of them are solid. They are gestating and will come out when they are ready. At the same time, I am thinking of what I am missing: the first day off classes at Clark University. I have left my life behind and am going forward into the absolute unknown. I know that I am crazy. My views are not deluded.

The plane continues forward--through turbulence.

Travel Log #14

August 23, 2009

LBSU has come to an end, and so has my time in Germany. After ten hours of trains and buses, I have finally made it back to Luxembourg. Of course, this time around I find myself here under extremely different circumstances. I have no lofty-sounding position, nor do I have a place of my own. I am a visitor who does not speak French. My Americanness is made fun of--I am only fluent in one language. My love of words means nothing. My words are merely incomprehensible sounds, meaningless.

But on the train ride between Berlin and Frankfurt, I made friends with an East Berliner named Janine who is studying Jewish Studies and, for some reason unknown to me and under what I thought were strange circumstances, was transporting an Argentinian artist named Sergio to Manneheim. Sergio spoke neither English nor German. Janine asked me if I spoke any Spanish. I answered that I used to but am so out of practice that my "speaking Spanish" might as well be compared to my success in training as an astronaut. Yet, as fate would have it, Janine (no idea how to actually spell her name) and Sergio, despite the language barriers, ended up helping me a great deal and Janine begged me to try my Spanish so that we could both understand this very nice, mysterious artist from Buenos Aires. To my surprise, I remembered far more than I ever would have imagined, including verb conjugations in the preterite.

So: I learned that he is an artist on tour with his oil paintings (he had them all rolled up and the canvases were on the shelf above his seat). The tour was going through Germany and was ending in Saarbrucken. He has been in Germany for three weeks and was there three years ago. I also learned that he is a teacher of fine arts for students between the ages of ten and twenty.

When my stop was up, he helped me with my bags and we said goodbye. I luckily caught the bus, with twelve minutes to spare, to Frankfurt Hahn Airport and then the shuttle to Luxembourg. The phone card wouldn't work once I got to the Gare, so I ended up asking some cabbies how to get to Namir's place. Apparently it is too close to the station for them to bother trying to gouge me of money, so they pointed me two blocks down and to the right. "Five minutes walking. No problem," they said. I start walking with all my bags. I end up in front of some nightclub named "Byblos" with about ten mobster-looking gangsters straight out of The Sopranos, practically, who are all making eyes with the hooker across the street. I ignore this, figure it's Luxembourg, it can't be worse than Worcester, where I can pass as a prostitute at 2:00pm because I'm female. Baggage included, probably. I go up to one of the bouncers and tell him where I need to get to and if I can possibly use a phone.

The bouncers usher me inside with all of my things. I call Namir and he says he'll be there in five minutes. The bouncers laugh at me. Stupid American. Yes, I know. But: "You have a guitar, so it's ok". That was the bossman. Namir shows up on foot, thanks them for helping me and apologizes to them for my being American, which by now is synonymous with "only speak English". By the way, I understand far more French, etc. than I let on to any of these people. I'll keep that a secret.

For this log, I will bounce around in time. We are going backwards.

August 19, 2009

I have neglected these travel logs for the sake of my supposed studiousness. Today, I am 99% finished with my academic career, at least until I resume for graduate school. In any case, I have three pages left to write before the official end. They can hardly be considered academic. But where should I begin?

I will begin with this morning, when I stepped off the U8 at Weinmeisterstrasse and heard music through the Creedence I was blaring in my headphones. I turned the iPod off and walked up the stairs. There I found a street musician sitting on the floor, playing a guitar with the High E-string missing. The guitar had no pegs. He tuned it with a wrench. The strings were rusted out and were probably as old as the guitar--twenty, he said. "Zvansig." I donated change. I left him there smiling. He spoke broken English but sang it perfectly. His voice was very good and it followed me all the way up the stairs and halfway down the block.

"I'd give up everything to be like that. Poor, on the street, with only five rusty strings. But it's free and I'd have nothing left to lose," I thought. Part of me wonders why I kept walking, why I keep walking. Perhaps it is habit to have everything left to lose. Or maybe I am a coward and am afraid to push the boundaries through which music will break me. "I do this sometimes," I told him. "Sing on the street." "Can you live?" "No!" I laughed. "But I wish." "Aah," he answered. "A lot of us wish." And so we do. The acoustics are best in stairwells and subway stations, and bathrooms--three places where we are commonplace pariahs, where we are background noise, usually ignored, and almost always unapproachable. But the payment in sound is worth it. A lot of us wish.

The street was busy, as usual, but I was early again, so I walked down to the Backerei on Sophienstrasse. I have gone there almost every day for coffee and heavenly baked goods, from pastries to raisin bread. The owner, a wonderfully nice woman, encourages my German. I can order now, completely in German. She still doesn't understand any English. Tomorrow will be my last day to see her and I won't be able to say goodbye, just "danke" for my kaffee mit milch.

On my lunch breaks, I often go to another place around the corner for coffee or sandwiches. I made a friend there, Dustin. Speaks perfect American English bush wishes he still had a German accent. His goal is to move to the United States. His passion is German rap. He writes songs dedicated to his mother with names like Ich Liebe Dich. His arms are full of tattoos.

I am working backwards. I promised you Turks last time and I'm giving you musicians and bakeries. Turks will come up later but may have to be reserved for yet another one of these. I am working backwards, after all.

Presentations of our final projects began yesterday. I worked with Noam and Zuzanna. Zazi is from Poland. Noam, who I've mentioned before, is one of my best friends on this program. We decided to do our project on the "effectiveness" of the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" in the center of Berlin. It is is a one-minute walk from the Brandenburg Gate and about seven minutes from the Reichstag. The "effectiveness" is a controversial topic: effectiveness of what? What is the purpose or goal of a memorial in the first place? We decided to test the memorial's ability to inform viewers about the Shoah and its ability to evoke an emotional response in relation to the artwork's existence as a memorial and specifically, as a memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe/Holocaust memorial. We hypothesized that there would be a direct correlation between the amount of knowledge viewers brought with them to the memorial and the level of emotion experienced. We learned that there is no correlation and that Americans are by far not the only clueless people in the world as is generally believed. Apparently, WWII ended in 1938 and 1953.

Our research involved a questionnaire, walking around the memorial site, and interviewing people about their basic knowledge of the Holocaust, National Socialism, and WWII. We also asked them about their emotional reactions/opinions/views/interpretations of the memorial, designed by Eisenmann of New York. We presented yesterday. The level of rest achieved last night is amazing compared to the rest of the summer.

On Sunday, we took another field trip. Ravensbruck Concentration Camp Memorial. One interesting thing about this camp, like almost every camp in Germany, is that most of its victims during the Nazi period were non-Jews; they were political opponents, many were from Eastern Europe, and they were mainly women. In the States, I never really learned about the non-Jewish victims of the Nazis. They're mentioned but just in passing, at best. Actually, they were numerous and made up the greater portion of victims within the borders of Germany. Eichmann decided to literally have all of Germany "judenfrei", so Jewish prisoners were shipped out beyond German borders, mainly to Eastern Europe. The remaining prisoners at Ravensbruck were active non-Jewish Nazi opponents and were forced to work as slave laborers for companies like Siemens until they either died or were liberated or shipped off to another camp.

I had never been to one of these camp memorials before and didn't know what to expect. In my head, I prepared myself for a depressing day of mourning. But when we got there, it seemed more like a beautiful summer lake resort (which is used to be) that I wanted to relax in for the rest of the summer. Quaint houses lined the shore, boats chugged along, beach grass and trees blew in the wind against a clear blue sky.

The houses were for the SS officers and their families. Yes, families. With children. About a ten minute walk away is the gas chamber. I only felt a horrific chill once, when I walked across the grounds and felt ghosts. The question recurred, the same one as at Wannsee: how could a place so beautiful be the site of so much blind hatred and destruction? Tens of thousands of people were murdered here. And I couldn't help but notice the lake and the trees and think "Oh, how beautiful, let's play frizbee". Most of us felt this way or similarly, I learned, after speaking with the others. What does that mean? What kind of monster am I?

We returned to Berlin and resumed class the next day. The memorial I carry on my spine gained more significance. In class, I was asleep. My class presentation on Monday went well, once it got started. The professor had to wake me up to get it started. Really. How sad is that? Actually, if I happen to not be sleeping in class, what keeps me entertained enough to stay awake is watching other people fall asleep. It's not that we're lazy, it's that we're studious. Seriously. We can do the reading and fall asleep in class, or not do the reading, get a good night's rest, and have nothing to say in class. I suppose it doesn't matter. Either way, most of us are useless in class.

In the afternoons, we have been meeting with leaders of the Jewish Community here (I have not been impressed), with the AJC (American Jewish Committee), and other NGOs like the Heinrich Boll Foundation, and some "Jewish artists". All of these meetings complemented the readings very well. The overall impression of Jews in Germany/Jews in Berlin, though, is more than complicated. There is, I feel, no concrete definition of what constitutes a "Jew" in general and/or what a "Jew" living in Germany is. Most of them are not descendants of pre-war German Jews and are caught between defining themselves as "Jews in Germany", "Jews living in Germany", "German Jews", or "Jewish Germans", or even "Russian-speaking Jews in Germany". Most are of the latter category, "Russian-speaking Jews in Germany". Many feel comfortable in Germany and do not want to leave, but are not very enthusiastic about calling themselves "German" despite the fact that many o them have or are in the process of getting German citizenship.

As I mentioned before, there is a huge problem over defining what a "Jew" is here and the typical intra-"community" rifts and fights. Examples: Should people not halachicly Jewish be allowed to join the Community or not? They are considered Jews by the larger society. The current Gemeinde (Community) excludes these people--at its own expense. The community is shrinking and alienating thousands of potential members. Another point: the "Community" in Germany, like in many other countries, and like all religious communities in this country, must be applied to. Member allocate 10% of their income tax to the government-funded religious "Community". This is how it works in many European countries, apparently. The Separation of Church and State is interpreted a bit differently than in the United States and to me, doesn't seem like a true separation. But that's my Americanness.

Most Jews in Germany opt to skip out on this tax and not become members. Or, they join as extremely poor immigrants who know they'll get benefits from the Communal funds. Once they're employed, they leave the Community and don't pay the tax. Considering the 80% Russian-speaking immigrant portion of Jews in Germany and the rather large rift between them and the pre-1989 population, I wouldn't want to join, either. And within the Jewish Community, where religious differences can mainly be ignored, the rift comes down to the usual human heirarchical struggle of class. The rich "do not associate with those factory workers". I believe I would be, as I am, comfortable in my non-membership and my secularism.

Travel Log #13

August 6, 2009
The important thing is to retain the conviction that every moment counts, every point of connection, every greeting and farewell--because without warning, like a flash of lightning, moments are gone. An explosion of angels on rooftops occurs around me after months of silence. Perhaps I am really breaking this time, or maybe the exhaustion results from my futile but unceasing push against the grain. Our conversation continues.


"Life is but a dream. Row your boat, right?" I say.
The angel tells me that I must cross the threshold of death in order to capture life. I tell him only gods can do that. 
The angel laughs. "What have you lost, Little Girl?"
"Almost everything, Uriel."
"Do you wish me to cover you?"
"No, angel. I am on my own. Let me bear it without illusions."
"As you wish."
"It will always be as it has always been, won't it?"
"Yes, Little Girl. As you know, the world is only as you perceive it."
"No. The world is as it is."


In the mornings, I sit down to enjoy my tea and my kefir, a German food very similar to yogurt but much tastier (in my opinion). At ten 'til nine, I walk downstairs and hope I run into some others on the way to the U-Bahn. That is on most days. On Monday, I did things differently because I needed to be alone. I am not a talented mourner, although I should be by now, and I hardly give myself a chance to grieve. These days, I don't know how to grieve anymore, because the tally of the dead keeps rising. But Bill Tapply was dead six days by Monday morning and no one can understand what that means unless they knew him and no one here did. There's also the complication of the past year or so. This grief is for multiple losses, losses by entertainment bullets at 5:00am, by ropes, by disease, by trains, by heart failure.

So, on Monday morning, I left early and bought a bagel and coffee for myself, sat down at a table on the inside of a window and watched the morning crowds of Mittel walk by. I knew some of them. They walked past. The window hid me. I was invisible. And then the hands of the clock moved forward, I finished my breakfast, told the cashier good day and walked down the street and around the corner to Sophienstrasse and waited for class to begin. This is how it has been: pretend that all is well. Merge with the apathetic, trivial crowds. Erase the individuality because that is all too often too painful to bear. Yet I live for only myself. I am a droplet incorporated into and separate from the sea of motion. As always, life goes on. I haven't written because life is busy. The second module of Leo Baeck has been quite different, in some ways more familiar (because it is literary rather than historical), and in some ways more demanding because of the amount of work. But the professors are nice and understanding, particularly after a group-wide mutiny over the elusive, esoteric nature of the "introductory" material. We have some brave people in this group (Matan) willing to voice student opinion straight into the instructors' faces. The rest of us followed. Results were good: reading was cut down, explanations of terms were offered, and people calmed down a bit. On the Sunday before Module II began, we were told to meet outside the flats at 8:00am, where we boarded a bus, met an offbeat ex-pat Canadian tour guide, and shoved off to Dresden with her for the day. As for the agenda, I didn't get much out of it. It was another long string of Holocaust memorials, including new ones like clear benches and plaques outside of train stations, calling attention to the German train line as equally responsible for the deportations--and the bench as a "statement" to combat neo-Nazi activity. The tour guide had a cow over the train station plaque because a bike was leaning on the wall under it. "Well, we know what kind of person this bike belongs to," she said and moved the bike two feet over to the overpopulated bike rack. My conviction is that the memorial is a bit inconspicuous--the "neo-Nazi" or at least "passive anti-Semite" probably didn't even notice it. I know I wouldn't have. And as for the bench, with its "For Aryans Only" sign, I wanted nothing more than to sit on it. But we weren't allowed. Then, we stood for forty-five minutes with the artist complaining about neo-Nazi activity in the area and her "feeling the need to do something to combat them". I walked off and took pictures. The bench, I think, would do nothing to "combat" but everything to provoke. I rather agree with the Dresden man who protested the bench's erection in the park among the other benches by the river because he had actually been banned from the park 65 years ago because he was a Jew--why should he be forced to confront "For Aryans Only" again? I agree. If Nazi symbols belong nowhere but in a museum or a classroom, why should a bench directly quoting Nazi sanctions against Jews be allowed to replace a normal bench in the middle of a park? Rather than memorializing, the bench reinstitutes the sanction. The fact that it was designed and built by a Jew does not excuse this reinstitution. It makes it all the more obscene. Particularly because this Jewish artist is proud of it and thinks of it as "combating Nazi sentiments". There is a fine line between commemoration, remembering, and recreating history in the present. Especially in Germany.

The new synagogue in Dresden is beautiful but closed off, inaccessible, and dead. In Dresden, it is a symbol of hope for the Jewish community but it is a monument and not a place of life. People are either too assimilationist to join or too bored with it and opt for Chabad instead. I've heard a similar story. I am one. For the last two-and-a-half hours, we went off on our own--sans the tour guides. Beer and ice-cream were in order. I went off with Rachel, Florian, Carrie, and Kalani to the other side of the river, away from the bombed-out, rebuilt churches and houses, away from August the Strong, and away from statues of Martin Luther and from Johann, at whom we would have to meet later.

We complained about what I discussed earlier with the memorials. I watched children play around us and other talking and juggling. Dresden is a beautiful city that has been completely rebuilt to look as it was at its height during the Saxony reign of August the Strong during the 19th century. At the end, we went back to Berlin. On the road between Dresden and Berlin, there are fields of sunflowers stretching towards the sky. There are fields of windmills drawing on natural power. I wonder why my own country lags so far behind in the progressive movement for clean energy. I turn on my music loud to block out extraneous conversation and I clear my head to reminisce. Words come, inspiration, a deus ex machina--history has been suffocating me. I exhale it.

"The interesting thing about how Holocaust memory has been constructed," says the professor, "is that we focus on the big names like Auschwitz and Dachau. These are the names that resonate with us, the places that evoke the most powerful images of destruction and death. But let us ask ourselves this question: Why? Why do we remember these particular camps? Precisely because these were not the worst-case scenarios. We hear about these camps the most because they had the most survivors. There is a tale to be told. Others weren't so lucky. The other stories are lost in the camps we hardly remember, because in those, there were no survivors. Think about it."

I think about it and then I stop. I can't think about things like this for too long without draining myself of life. Forgetting is something I cannot do, but memories like these--postmemories--are there as reminders. Preventative medicine. Life must go on. And it does. I have been to shul twice. This is allowed. No one gives me funny looks. Miracles happen every day. The Jewish population in Germany has reached its pre-war levels. Yes, most of them are foreigners--Russian, Polish, Israeli, etc, but Jewish. Hitler did not win. Still, National Socialist ideals and anti-Semitism are alive in a repressive manner within the national consciousness. The repressed sentiments, or rather the taboo against talking about history, creates a paranoia and a guilt. This is the paranoia to which I have referred multiple times. It is very apparent in Berlin; it bulges against the thin film of celebration and rebirth and newness that is this city. But, as Zafer Senocak says (who I have had the good fortune of meeting and speaking with): Berlin is a city where "what is new grows old faster than elsewhere"; there can "be no better place to be young".

On the surface, Berlin seems to me a city like any other: busy, "cosmopolitan", vivacious. Yet, there's always, inescapably, the weight of this city's history and with that history, the guilt, and with that guilt, the paranoia. This city is a work in progress, forever under construction, decorated with scaffolding. New bricks replace the old, but they grow old quickly, too. New architecture brings Berlin into the post-Wall twenty-first century from an imaginary post-history/post-apocalyptic era. New immigrants from everywhere, mainly the East--Turkey, the former Soviet bloc, the Middle East--flood the city, merge their cultures with the native inadvertently and explicitly. Begrudgingly. There is the usual tug-of-war between assimilation and isolation. Berlin is a mongrel city despite the war. It is a city filled with ifrits, leprechauns, and golems all bunking together under the same bridges. None of the bridges burn, but the buildings they connect across water are razed for fear of a polluted past.

And alongside all of this, Holocaust memorials and Jewish spaces spring up like weeds on Miracle Grow; Jewish spaces without a Jewish presence. The Jews are elsewhere in certain areas and at certain times. I wonder: when will history become an acceptance, a lesson in this city and not an oppressive and repressed aversion? Our vision of the present is so obscured by the past here that I struggle to find a piece of this place--just one piece--that is itself, present, neither looking back nor forward, but proud and unguilty, responsible, for its own moment in time. But everywhere I look there's a new memorial and a vision of something absent. Or a suggestion of a void. No one explains what that absence is these days. Perhaps the full extent of it is unknown. It is more than the descendants of the Shoah and the war. The absence makes the present in this city just as much a myth as the past because we are forbidden from living in and celebrating the moment beyond the borders of dreams.

We are the living and we, too, deserve life. Martyrdom will bring no one and nothing back. We are the descendants of survivors--of all parties. We should live as what we are: a celebration of the continuation of life and of the (hopefully) enlightened and more humane generation. Yet the past is bestowed upon us as an inheritance we cannot decline. Because of this, I propose that today, the tragedy of genocide is not merely just the destruction, but rather the continuation and perpetuation of memory amongst those who survived and pass along such burdensome histories to us, their children.

Yet every generation bears its burdens. What I have found is a focus on one point of memory, and on one specific history. Specific histories are, no doubt, important, but individual histories must be placed (and taught) in context. Here, I feel that they are not, which is why we get questions regarding how Jews developed a certain way in Germany or elsewhere. The problem is that we only say "they assimilated" and discuss the theory of assimilation without looking at the (just slightly) important element of what Jews are assimilating into, aka German society. And we go on about the "German-Jewish symbiosis" but neglect to talk about German society and German history. History classes like to pretend that German society began in 1933 with the rise of National Socialism and ended in 1945 with its fall. Lo and behold! there is a whole history before that--where Germany was more tolerant and accepting of Jews than anywhere else on earth (including the United States). And there is post-War, occupied, and partitioned Germany; and now, post-Wall Germany--and all the while we invoke historical notions without defining our terms and or even looking at those moments of history directly. Instead, we zero in on Holocaust memorials. Memorials are nice, and sometimes necessary, but after a while they all become the same and begin to lose their meaning.

A memorial is a fine thing and it is a necessity that the past be commemorated. But when it comes down to the past as stone for a tally of deaths and the present as absence for just one missing life that I actually knew—six now—my grief gravitates and expands and pools for the present absence and not for the tally of deaths represented by a stone. And yes, there is another present absence, too, and I grieve for it as well. It is the absence of all the descendants of those tallied by the stone, and as I said before, five years ago: that place where the air blows freely could have been me. But I am lucky, some survive. Thus I am here, and I bear no survivor’s guilt. But a stone is just a stone and bench is just a bench and after a while, so-called memorials lose their meaning when you see them one after another. I am not desensitized—not to individuals—but to numbers invoked over and over again? We are no better than those who transformed names to numbers and who consigned numbers to death and a statistic, and who categorized people by race or religion or otherwise.

So, here, I can blow history wide open and remind us that there is a present to be lived, that guilt is not healthy, and neither is living in the past. We all owe death a life, after all. At least let us make it worth while. And so, I make friends with Germans who feel no guilt because they weren’t there, they killed no one. Rather, they feel a responsibility to educate themselves so that it won’t happen again—to anyone. But even as I write and as we speak, I know that history teaches no lessons. The same thing is happening right now all over the world and the paranoia is growing, and thus is the practice of ignoring the truth and the labeling of hate with a different name.