Yesh Matsav

Recently I went with longtime family friend Steve Wizner to visit the law school at Al Quds University in Abu Dis, which is just outside greater Jerusalem along route 1. Steve is on the international advisory board of the law school’s clinics, and decided to swing by to meet with the staff to learn about what’s going on and see if he could be of any help.

The visit was very interesting on a number of levels, but what is perhaps most striking for the first time visitor to Abu Dis is to experience up close the infamous wall that runs right through the town and next to the university. Regardless of the arguments for and against its value in preventing suicide bombers, or whether or not it is in fact an effort by the Israeli government to set de facto borders, its presence is oppressive and overwhelming. The pictures don’t at all capture it (click on the pictures on the right), but imagine going to university every day and being reminded that you’re effectively cut off from the world (at least from the West, which is where the wall stands). Hardly inspiring to hopeful graduates.

As we went to the center of town to get a hummus with Sahil, the clinic director, an Israeli army armored jeep rolled through town, with its thick armored glass and iron webbing over the windows such that you can’t see who’s inside. Just  anonymous power.

After saying goodbye, we passed through the comparatively innocuous checkpoint from Highway 1 into Jerusalem (you just drive through like a tollbooth), and we were back in Tel Aviv in less than an hour, sipping espresso and enjoying the beach.

Michal and I were invited to attend a seder last on Wednesday evening (erev pesach) at the apartment of a friend of our friend, Lisa. We didn’t know whose house we were going to, or who would be there until we arrived, but Lisa did let us know that it would be a mostly English language affair with expats. Expats are an interesting phenomenon anywhere in the world, because while locals have had little choice in choosing their homeland, expats usually have a story as to why they chose to adopt a new one – often something from which they’re running from, or running to.
[Read more →]

This will be my first live, insta-blog. I’m sitting in the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, enjoying the free internet service, which I suppose is subsidized by the $2.50 bottle of holy land mineral water that I just purchased.

As I sit here waiting for the flight, I find myself surrounded not by hairy hasids on their way back to Brooklyn after voting for the United Torah Judaism party, but by teams of evangelical Christians on their way back to Des Moines, Iowa, Russelville, Arkansas, and other various towns I’ll probably never visit.

One is talking loudly about how the spirit has filled him and that he has lots of energy (give me some of that holy land water), while the other is talking about his visit to the Valley of Eli, where David slew Goliath. I’m used to qualifications to statements like that latter one, such as, where “according to the bible” David slew Goliath. But I realize that for this gang, there is no such thing as a biblical qualification.

I’m praying that I’m not stuck next to one of these folks during the flight. Give me a hairy hasidic torah thumper any day over that.

My letter to the editor below was published recently in the NYT in response to an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof, in which he argues that good hearted liberals (i.e. his average NYT reader) should oppose the inclusion of labor standards in trade agreements because they will lead to the loss of good factory jobs in developing countries. He uses Cambodia as an example, where he in the past has crusaded against prostitution (really bad job) by buying the freedom of some women. [Read more →]

Blowing an opportunity with India

Like many others with India connections, for much of the last few days I have been bolted to my computer screen, trying to follow and absorb every development in the horrible attack on Mumbai. These are places and institutions very much known to me: The Oberoi Trident is where my students and I stay during my annual study trip to India; and ever since my first trip to India in the mid-’90s, when I stayed in the grubby Salvation Army Red Shield Hostel just across from the far more luxurious Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, the Colaba area has remained a mainstay for me whenever I visit my favorite Indian city.

The attack on the Chabad House also hit home. Although I had never visited the new Chabad outpost, several years ago, while spending a summer conducting research in Mumbai, I became friendly with the two Chabad emissaries at the time, Reb Shlomo and Reb Shlomo, who had just started to set up shop there. The new Chabad House at Nariman House was the legacy of their initial work. So watching the violence unfold from the safe perch of my couch in Tel Aviv felt very personal. [Read more →]

Yesterday evening we held a small day after birthday celebration for Michal at our small place. To get ready for the event, I ran around trying to locate all those traditional birthday party necessities, such as decent goat cheese, charcuterie, wine, and of course some birthday candles for the gateau au chocolat that I bought from the French baker in Neve Tzedek.

To get the candles, I went to the local branch of a supermarket called AM/PM. It’s one of the few chains in Israel that is open all the time, and in our neighborhood, the branches are primarily staffed by Russians. I approached the young Russian woman working behind the counter and told her in my minimal Hebrew,

“Ani lo yodaa ech l’hagid b’ivrit, aval ani tzarich “candles” (I don’t know how to say it in Hebrew, but I need candles.” While saying this, I simultaneously made an up and down motion with my thumb and index fingers that, for some strange reason, I thought conveyed the cylindrical shape of a candle. The young Russian cashier thought for a second and responded, “ah, yes!”

She walked over to a wall, reached up, and, looking satisfied, showed me the “candles” which came in two varieties: extra sensitive, and flavored. Deeply confused for a moment, I soon realized that she had mistaken candles (along with my weird hand gesture) to mean condoms. So I told her, “oh no, that’s for something different.” She giggled, turned a little red, and after I found the burning variety of candles we had a good laugh as I paid for them on my way out.

We drove south from Tel Aviv for about two hours, and every few kilometers the land turned drier. The whole country is a desert, but certain areas look the part more than others, and it was clear when we had arrived in the Negev, as Israel’s southern strip is called. We pulled into the goat farm where we had reserved a room for two nights at around noon, too early. The room wouldn’t be ready for another few hours we were told. But in the small cheese store where they sell the farm’s products—an array of goat cheeses, yogurt and wine—Ram, a man in his late 40s who was traveling with his 10-year old son Omri and their dog Chickli, offered to show us where to hike. We followed them in their pickup truck first for a quick bite, and later down into the Mitzpe Ramon crater, one of the largest in the world. With them we hiked the Ein Saharonim trail. Ram amused us with tales from his life and travels around the world while his son was busy climbing every canyon edifice. We would look up after one of Ram’s stories, and there was Omri high above us on some cliff. On our way out we stopped at a Bedouin tent for tea, coffee and some traditional bread with Labane and more stories from Ram. After a life of business, engineering, a few patents and much travel, he has settled on a piece of land (60 dunams) in the Northern Negev where he runs a zimmer—the Israeli version of a bed and breakfast. (Ram’s story is much like that of the owners of Naot Farm, who in 2003 also decided to “fulfill their dream” and start a goat farm together with their six kids.) Ram is happy to be out of the rat race, and told us he hoped for our sake that in a few years we will have left New York. Truth be told after a few days in the desert, eating goat cheese, cooking meat on a grill and hiking in some of the most beautiful landscapes, we hoped for the same. In fact we even contemplated leaving Tel Aviv for a while and renting a house for a month or two in the “real” Israel, surrounded by land and nature. Who knows, maybe one of these days we too will end up with six kids and a goat farm.

This week Michal and I took an amazing trip to the Negev. We will write more about this soon, but I thought I’d share a short anecdote about the process of renting our car for the journey.

We booked a car online with El Dan, one of the major car rental chains in Israel. When we arrived at the rental agency, a young woman with about zero sense of humor assisted us with the reservation. Let’s call her Tzipi. During our brief discussion about the reservation details, I thought I had made clear to Tzipi that I wanted only the basic insurance on our basic little car. She generated the paperwork, I signed, and we were out the door. We walked to a nearby place for a pre-journey bite, but as we walked back to get the car, I looked again at the contract and noticed that there was a strange $60 surcharge for the “extra special insurance” (called an excess damage waiver) whereby you can return your car as a piece of scrap metal (or have your next of kin do so) and have no obligation at all to the rental company. I had never asked for this, however, as I was happy to take my chances with the $500 standard deductible. So as Michal stayed in the car outside, I went in to tell them that they had made a mistake. I looked for Tzipi, the humorless rental agent, but she had already left, so I spoke to another agent. We’ll call him Itzi. [Read more →]

It’s about 5 pm in Jerusalem, an hour before the fast officially ends. But I chose to end my fast early this year. I have taken a cup of Nescafe and a few honey cookies to the garden across the street from where Uzi and Esti live and where Kevin and I have been staying. When I arrive one man draped in a talit is sitting on a bench and he watches me take my coffee to another bench, book in hand. He leaves minutes later and I am alone in the small neighborhood park with a sandbox and a few benches. The light is on it’s way out and there seem to be an endless number of birds hovering above. The city is quiet, but for these birds. I listen and watch them fly overhead. Usually the break fast feels incredibly anticlimactic. You have waited more than 24 hours to finally put something in your mouth, but by the time you do, the desire is gone, the routine has already been broken, and there is no way of gaining what you have lost. [Read more →]

Here is the latest piece I wrote for the Forward.

Two years ago, in the midst of the Second Lebanon War, the popular French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy was sent to Israel by The New York Times Magazine to “ponder, discuss and travel,” as the title of his piece suggested. The result, an essay defending the country’s military action against vociferous critics, was published alongside two photographs by the still relatively unknown Israeli photographer Shai Kremer, who had also been sent by the Times. One photo showed a helicopter about to land, with a flock of birds trailing at its tail. The other featured a soldier atop a tank on duty near the border with Lebanon, with large, white ammunition shells piled on the soil and a distant view of a cemetery.

In August 2006, most readers were probably unfamiliar with Kremer’s work. But Kremer’s reputation was already growing. At the time, the photographer was immersed in a seven-year project documenting the effects of war on Israel’s landscape. His subjects ranged from abandoned military outposts, borders and barriers to nature reserves dotted with military detritus. That collection, Infected Landscape, recently published in art-book format by Dewi Lewis Publishing in Manchester, England, was released to American and European markets last month. To mark its release, a selection of photographs is on display at several galleries around Israel.

The pairing of Levy and Kremer was an interesting choice, given that their views on the war could not have been more different: One launched a verbal defense, while the other sought to present a visual counterpoint. But that’s exactly what photography editor Kathy Ryan had in mind when she paired the two, Kremer told the Forward in a recent interview. “I don’t want to speak in her name, but I believe she looked for a visual opinion that would somehow balance the words of Bernard-Henri Lévy,” Kremer said.

[Read more →]