Tranquility Amidst Pandemonium

Three hours before Shabbat came in and the shops in the shuk (market) close for a brief 25hours I take refuge in a small cafe called Mitbakh Briut (Health Kitchen).

The crowds which pass me by are seconded only by the hordes of teenage girls who rush to get a glimpse of Justin Bieber.

People pushing past people, veggie -vendor trying to out-scream veggie-vendor, and I sit and escape the daily grind at this quaint cafe with a sizzling pan full of shakshuka (eggs fried in a tomato base) and a glass half full of coffee.

I watch the kids stand in bewilderment of fruits which looks as though they exploded out of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I see the religious sieve through produce, desperately searching for the choicest goods for their weekly feast. Tiny birds mock shop keepers by flying down and stealing grain from the open sacks which lie on the floor in vibrant colours. Tourists come, caught behind their cameras, they knock and block people, unable to break through the lens and see.

After a while of digesting the chaos, I sense some sort of order.
Spruikers yelling daily specials and bellowed greetings of “Shabbat Shalom” from across the main drag now sound melodic and I’m somehow apart of it.

I feel as though I’m playing the part of the breaks in the soundtrack of the shuk. Just as poetry would seem a melting pot of letters without its spaces and commas my role is just as key.

With me creating these silences are the sigh of exhausted hagglers who breathe again after scoring a bargain, the beggars who smile when a stranger drops a coin in his disposable cup, and the savatas (grandmothers) who drift by tasting an olive from here and a date from there.

It is us, the silent ones, who exist in contrast to the noise, who complete the orchestra of the shuk.


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Chug a Chassid

This past week has had its highs and its trials but whenever you're asked 'mah hamatzav' (what's up? Lit. What's the situation) you respond with 'me'ah achuz' (100%)!
last week ended on an absolute peak with a spiritually uplifting Shabbat service at a shule in nachlaot (suburb in Jerusalem) where I was greater with an array of head coverings from knitted kippot, to classic strimel (Chassidic fur hat), to tie-dyed kippot. There were about 60 men party cramped into a room which fit 20 comfortably, and the rest were singing their praises outside the shule, and this was only on the male side. I was dumbfounded when the bearded hippies started maneuvering themselves into a circle in this intensely crowded space to dance. I wouldn't exactly call it dancing, rather a sweaty stroll around the room in circular formation rubbing the rest of the congregation platonically as you pass them. Its was great, I think I was standing next to a guy wearing a kimono, another guy at the front was crying as he prayed, and the rest clapped and bounced on their toes sporadically throughout their service as an expression of their soul leaping within their bodies.

I just get so into it when the congregation is the choir in a shule, I find it really empowering whilst feeling a sense of unity with the smiling strangers standing well into my personal space.

The greatest thing about those experience was that after 2.5 hours of singing and praying, the well fed Chassids in their black kippotas (traditional eastern european trench coat) were dishing out 'good shabbos hugs'! this is great for me because I'm always that guy who goes in for the hug too early, before you've even met the person I'm up for the hug. Its just the way I am..

Huge shout out to my host for Shabbat, simply divine!
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Hug a Tree!

Been having quite a bit of trouble connecting to God here, I actually feel that with my souls burning desire to reach Jerusalem satiated the flow has been restricted slightly.

Then comes Tu B’Shvat the festival of trees and nature and BOOM my shakras (spiritual cisterns) are cleared and I reopened to the idea of being friends with YHWH again.

So I went to the hardcore-hippy tu b’shvat seder where the symbolism what dripping of the walls. Going through each of the fruits and through the four cups of wine representing the four levels of spirituality I could sense meaning in things again.

For example: before eating the date (one of the seven species of Israel) we meditated on the idea that the fruit comes from a tree whose roots, who’s values, run deep into the earth. The palm tree is firm in its beliefs but at the same time the trunk has the ability to sway and be flexible in its ideals. So when ingesting the fruit of this unique tree you ingest this idea as well.

Another example is the pastries, you don’t eat a pastry that falls on the ground but you also forget that it actually came from the ground and is something that can level you. Also when making the pastry (which was delicious) the flour is sifted so you meditate on the idea of sifting out the bad from your life and using the good to contribute to the world.

In the back of the room, which could fit 40 comfortably but was packed with about 80 people, there was the religious equivalent of a "WOOW girl" only instead of being a girl he was a guy, and instead of being a “Woow Party!” kinda guy he was a “WOOW GOD!” kinda guy. And in his American accent and tie-dyed tzitzit (ritual fringes) he would eat each fruit and shout “Yay God thank you for making Banana trees” “Thanks God for rugelach!” etc. His passion for nature was a cross between inspiring and God damn annoying. (70% of the latter) He was normal compared to the Mother Earth looking grandma with a tamborine which said Moshiach (Messiah) on it. She was the Gaya from Captain planet of the seder.

I leave you with a final though a lonely girl shared with us:

Its so interesting that his festival falls in winter, where the trees aren’t in bloom and their colour and fruits are hidden. A seed (she said) disintegrates completely before sprouting out of the ground, meaning that when it appears that nothing is happening the most vibrant activity is happening hidden from the naked eye. All you need to do is scratch the surface a tin my bit to see it.

The parallels with the fruit and my life are lame but meaningful to me, so I wont share them.

Happy new year trees!

Semi Retraction

Re: my previous post I have also learnt throughout my week’s experience here that to be Israeli you also have to care a lot about your fellow Man (gender non-specific). You have to stand to let the elderly sit, you have to offer people you don’t even know lifts if they are standing in the cold, and most of all you have to make sure people are not only fed, but bloated and crying from internal bleeding from exploding intestines. This past Shabbat I was stuffed like a thanks giving turkey while staying at a family I adore. The experience as a whole affirmed the idea that Israel can be home.

In a small Israeli town called Tzofim, next to a bigger Arab town named Kalkilia (cheap oranges) I was introduced to the community as ‘the guy who moved to Israel’ to which people responded which varying degrees of surprise, shock and interest which obviously reflected their experience of Israel to date.

From one of the Bnei Akiva youth it was “Why? Because I want a reason to stay” from a middle aged man pushing a pram it was “why?! I came back from a trip to America wishing I was still there” and from an older man who had made aliyah 20 odd years ago it was “Why? I know why I came, I hope you know, because you’ll need those reasons to get you through the tough times”.

But at the end of the day I could feel that they all know why they were there, they look around an get a feeling of belonging that runs deeper than mere familiarity. Israel sends vibrations to their core which make them quiver and shake when they think about their relationship with the country, it’s both positive and negative.

I’m starting to feel it, but it could just be a bowel movement..

Shavua Tov!

(Pleasant Week)

The Art of Not Giving a Shit

As part of my absorption into this fine nation I need to learn to not give a shit. For example if you drop food on the flood in a shopping centre, don't pick it up or everyone will know you're a chutznik (lit. Outsider, i.e. not from Israel). Asking if you can use a restaurants toilet without buying something also makes you a chutnik. If you need to spit don't swallow it, go right ahead! Let is out! Also,. don't wait in lines, you were here first! And finally, using full sentences can also make you look like a chutznik don't ask in your perfect Hebrew "excuse me, is this the bus that I take to the centre of the city?" rather just say in a mumble "City Centre?". In fact the less words you say the better; "toilet?", "Movies?", "Single?" etc. you get the picture. Basically all I need to learn in Ulpan are nouns, no need to work on conjunctions, or conjugations, let's leave full sentences for the bible.

Israel is really great, spent two days chilling with the hipsters of Tel Aviv (TA), they don't sell picklebacks (an independent drink consisting of a shot of whisky followed by a shot of pickle brine, created in Brooklyn but perfected in Sydney)but they do sell 'arak-ashkoliot (licorice spirit with grapefruit juice) which I recon s the equivalent coz I received a nod of acceptance from the pierced fellow behind the counter. YAY Acceptance

Aliyah Day 2:

There’s something uniquely serene about sitting with the morning sun shining on your back helping you defrost from a night of bitter cold sleeping next to a window with not glass in it, with a pot of fresh porridge in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

Even though my room is Fung Shwayed like a prison cell (besides the cupboard with its mahogany veneer making it look the centre piece of a lumberjack’s living room), the sun and Paul Dempsey tunes playing in the background warms the room almost to the degree of a mother’s hug after a bad day at school.

In other news, went to the first bureaucratic stop today (Ministry of Interior) and although I didn’t get what I went there for, the woman at the desk told me that “Alita Be’style” meaning “I made Aliyah in style” commenting on my outfit, my sisters would be proud :-D

Idealistic or Insane?

There’s a fine line between idealistic and plain crazy; After my 24 hour flight to Israel lying in my bed at about 2am in the absorption centre I will call home for the next 6 months a strange laugh erupted from within me, it was actually closer to a cackle. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. I’ve laughed plenty before, but this was different. It was coming from a weird place. I laugh from my stomach when I’m around friends, sometimes I laugh from my mouth, like when my Dad tells jokes you know you’re not meant to laugh at because they’re about minority groups or something. This laugh had a life of its own and came for somewhere much deeper, from the middle of my essence, my soul (if you’re into that) it was as though the centre of my being was expressing itself ferociously saying “you’ve done it you crazy son of a bitch!” It may all just have been a result of my lack of sleep, combined with the sleeping pills I took, mixed with my excitement, and the fumes wafting from my armpits.

Not sure really, but I did just use an oxford comma, yooHOO yaHooHoo.

In other news, is using facebook to say how bad the Social Network movie is ironic or hypocritical? Saw it on the plane, didn’t really like it, I feel the whole non-linear structure has been overplayed

“Shalom” – Just about says it all

“Shalom”: “Hi”, “bye”, “peace”, and one of the many names of God all rolled into one word. With that one lonely word you can start and finish a conversation while praising the Lord and wish for World Peace! I guess that’s why Israel is so fast pace. If only saying goodbye was that easy though. To the more ‘mature’ member of my family, i.e. grandma (Nana) and great aunt it could be one of the last times I see them, which is both a morbid and sad thought...

My Nana didn’t say “Shalom” when I said goodbye to her this evening, she simply turned to me and with her ocker Melbournian accent said ‘Kol-aka-vod’. Although she said it with a similar intonation as “G’day mate” with a similar tone to that of Julie Andrews the day after her throat operation (because of her pack-a-day for 50 years), I could tell it meant a lot more than the literal meaning of those words - “Well done”, or literally “all of the honour”.

I could sense she was saying something along the lines of ‘my parents paved the roads of Israel in the 20’s, and my husband kept them safe in the 40’s, my daughter lived there in her 20’s and my son moved there with you in his 30’s and now you are going to enjoy the gift they built for you. They followed their dreams now you have to too!’

Even though her pearls of wisdom usually need to be censored for coarse language or mild vulgarities I really got that vibe from her. Her “Shalom” was more of a "I wish I wasn’t saying 'goodbye', but go in 'peace' and prosper!"