To Rest or Protest?

Every Saturday, right outside Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, Walter and I hear a strange groaning noise, “Shaaaabbaaaassss! Shaaaabbaaaassss!”

It sounds a little other-worldly, and when Walter and I first heard it, we couldn’t figure out what it could be. We were going on a walk in the late afternoon, and saw a swarm of Haredi or Hassidic Jews at the railing overlooking the street below…as well as the entrance to a new parking lot for the outdoor mall above…that happens to be open on Saturday…the Sabbath…or “Shabbas” in Hebrew. Haredi Jews young and old, though mostly male, were gathered around to participate in or at least watch a type of protest that we have found goes on EVERY Saturday here to some degree or another.

Because Saturday is a day of rest for Jews, many Jews in Israel interpret this very strictly. For example, because one of the things you cannot do on the Sabbath is to “light a fire,” you cannot turn on any electricity, as it can cause sparks and is, in some sense, like fire. In the King David Hotel, the elevators on Shabbat (slightly different pronunciation when you are speaking of the day as opposed to the event or condition of “Shabbas”) stop on every floor, so that Shabbat-observers do not have to press any buttons.

 

Therefore, for Othodox, Haredi Jews, driving one’s car on Shabbat is also a no-no. So they shout “Shabbas” at any car driving by. But they are particularly incensed by the government-approved parking lot open on every day of the week, including Saturdays. 

 

Walter and I stared in amazement at this bizarre protest, and we really began to get riled at several things:

 

1) Especially by their definition of the Sabbath, wouldn’t protesting count as not resting? And by our definition of the Sabbath, a day for prayer and worship (one-on-one with God) and also a day for enjoying fellowship, this KIND of protesting also runs counter to the Day of Rest. Walter couldn’t stop saying, “Can’t they think of anything better to do? Like trying praying?”

2) Yes, this is a Jewish state, and yes, the majority of people in the State of Israel are Jewish, but how dare they impose their religious codes on those that are not Jewish? And in addition, keeping the Sabbath is NOT a part of Israeli law. This is probably our fiercely American political doctrines coming out, but this kick in the face to religious freedom turned us red with anger. Can you imagine being of the Muslim minority in Jerusalem? When you are already being evicted from your homes in East Jerusalem daily, discriminated against socially and institutionally on a DAILY basis…how would you feel if when you were driving a cab for tourists to support your family, if hoards of people were standing on the side of the road and often throwing rocks at your vehicle???

 

3) Oh, and God forbid that maybe one of those cars zooming past may even be carrying a fellow Haredi Jew who has to zoom to the hospital for a medical emergency.

 

I remembered later that I actually had heard about these protests, specifically over this new parking garage too. When it was originally being built, the Haredi Jews came out in fully-loaded with their protest gear that they normally only save for Palestinians in the West Bank: dirty diapers, rotten tomatoes, and other spoiled and sour garbage. An article about its opening from the conservative-slanted Jersualem paper, Jerusalem Post, is linked on the right side of this blog.

 

To me, they sound like dying geese.

 

Rhythms and Joys - Week 2 of the English Camp

7/23

The second and final week of the English camp was a little less rocky than the first. We are learning so so much about limit-setting and the necessary clarity & simplicity of instructions & expectations for young children. I already had an inkling of all these principles beforehand, as I have worked with substantially large groups of children many other times throughout my life, but never has the student:teacher ratio been so large or the children so rambunctious (though with good reason--see my blog on Week 1 of the English Camp). We have Atallah there to be the "bad man" when things really get wild. Also, 5 young teenage girls come to help a bit in the teaching.

I have so enjoyed my mornings waking up at Hisham's house this week. Walter and I spent 2 nights in a row in Arroub this week, and it was such a delight to feel more and more like I was a part of Hisham's family--helping cook a huge breakfast in the mornings, sitting in fig trees with Balqeese and Lujain looking for the ripest ones, running out to meet 

Walter when he walks over from Aytallah's (where he spends the night) and hollering back to Huweida, Lujain, and Balqeese back in kitchen that "Walter hoon!" ("Walter is here!", in Palestinian Arabic) alerting them to scurry to put on their hijabs again so that Walter may enter the house. 

Hisham is still as outspoken as ever--this week, during a political conversation, feeling comfortable enough around me to declare, "I HATE Americans!!!" But while I feel welcomed in their house, Walter still gets tested by Hisham and even by Hisham's brother Muhammad in various ways. Here's Hisham below lecturing those gathered on America's favoritism towards Egypt.

After all the boys came back from working on the site for Hisham's second house, Walter offered to help Huweida in dinner preparations. When Muhammad waltzed in to see Walter sitting around the kitchen table Huweida, Lujain, Balqeese, and I, learning from us how to roll up rice inside grape leaves, he sneered in all seriousness, "Walter, what are you doing? Get out of here. This is WOMAN'S work." Walter just tsk-ed him (as is customary in the culture, by the way), looked up at him plainly, and continued to work with us. I have to say that this is one of many examples in which Walter is able to live counter-culturally in Arroub, but in a way that never rocks the boat too much. I know that the many ways in which he shows his gratitude for the women's work and his desire to interact with each in her element (offering Huweida help in the kitchen, playing chess with Lujain) is a light to the household, a light that begats even more warmth and hospitality on the part of the women. And I am not the only one who is seeing what the heart of servant who serves out of love can start.

Last week, the English Camp covered basic introductions between people, vocabulary and a few basic sentence structures to be able to talk about foods, drinks, the numbers, and the colors. This week covered vocabulary for people, rooms, and objects in school and in the home. And one day, we used some of our vocabulary to travel to different places in the world! We had different stations for Peru, Egypt, and the U.S., and the kids read handouts with pictures and simple sentences of Walter and I in these different places and did different fun activities in each country. They were thrilled at the prospect of imaginary travel, which we played up to the utmost, as many of them (though they live only 30 minutes from Jerusalem) are confined by checkpoints and the permit system to about a 20 minute driving radius which does NOT include any part of the state of Israel. 

One of our activities for the "U.S." station was swing dancing, which a few of the girls refused to do (even with another girl). As you may remember from a previous blog where I had a very unfortunate experience with my clothing at the women's side of a wedding party, women and men RARELY dance in one another's presence unless they are married and in the confines of their bedroom. Aytallah, who had brought me to that wedding party the previous week, helped me oversee this swing dancing, and had no problem with it as the style I was teaching was even more de-sexualized than swing dancing already tends towards. Luckily I had a chance to redeem myself from the last party I attended, when the woman who keeps the key for the Women's Center where we hold our camp, invited me to a party "lil-nisaa, bess!" (for the women only, in Palestinian Arabic) to celebrate her daughter's high score on the Tawjihi, Palestine's equivalent to high school graduation exams and SATs rolled into one. I went dressed to a "T," with a little make-up, and very welcomed and not judged. Everyone wanted to get up and dance with the foreigner in the center, who to their surprise knew "raksa arabee!" (Arabic dance)

At the end of the week, we held a kind of ceremony for all the kids in the English Camp.  They showed off their conversation skills, and we played some of the educational, interactive (some also having an element that develops emotional communication skills) games from the week to their parents, presented each child with certificates of achievement and candy necklace medals, and served juice and cake afterwards to everyone. Only about 30% of parents attended, but those that attended saw the progress their children had made. Walter, Hisham, and I made respective speeches about how their children watch them, look to them for encouragement in their education, and desire to be assured that mistakes are a necessary part of learning. Given their situation, it is easy to feel like they are not smart enough to learn English, for example. But if the parents try to use and practice with their children what little English they know and allow THEMSELVES to make mistakes, but to be humble enough to keep trying, then their children will follow suit.

Here are a few pictures:

Aytallah's ready to tag someone OUT!

Walter's dodging with the rest of them.

Now it's Walter's turn to get 'em out.

The campers' folders of all of their drawings of their houses, favorite and least favorite things, etc.

Walter and I reviewing a song with motions we taught the kids to sing in English and Arabic for their parents.

Walter holding the pictionary board for Malik, Ahmad raising his hand.

Me giving a hint to Sarah.

From the left, Raheel, Balqeese, me, Maha (who just got a chance to visit Spain!), Ilham, and Lujain after the camp one evening. The older girls helped us keep order in the classroom!

Hebron

Walter and I have taken several people around one city in particular in the West Bank, Hebron. This is from a day we took around a guy named Jacob that we met in our hostel. Jacob is an American who was about to join the IDF, but now he is not as sure.

These are the IDF observation towers on the road to Hebron from my "servees" (the word for a minibus/service taxi).

Welcome to Hebron, the Old City. 

Hebron is Muslim majority, and a rather conservative Muslim majority (you won't see a single woman out on the street without a hijab or niqab), but with growning numbers of settlers. The IDF actually would rather not have them in Hebron as they only create tensions, but as Israeli citizens, the IDF is obligated to protect them. To the right, you see Walter in the Old City, the trash, stones, and shoes above where Walter is standing were thrown by Jewish settlers living above the Palestinian store owners. The grate is what stops those things from hitting the Palestinians.

The shop owners here used to be numerous. In fact, Hebron's Old City market used to be the only one in all of Israel and the West Bank to rival Jerusalem's Old City market. But because of increasing Jewish settler presence in Hebron (despite the IDF's efforts to evict some), more and more stores are closed down by the IDF, their shops padlocked, welded shut, and then graffitied with a Jewish star or other symbols.

On this particular visit with Jacob, we talked to a shop-keeper for some time who explained how the IDF's actions had affected him personally. 

Here he is at the front of his frame shop showing us one of the rocks the settlers had thrown at him. He has a small pile of them that he displays at his store front.

Below, he shows where the IDF has welded shut most of the stores around him a few years ago.

Here we are back in his store again, having some tea. Jacob is the one standing up.

The floor was very wet, and he apologized for it and proceeded to explain the cause. When Jewish settlers moved in above his shop, they drilled holes in their floors into his shop and poured their sewage through these holes. 

Here is a bucket where he collects the water from a particularly drippy place and a shot of the floor that he has already been working on cleaning, but you can still see the used toilet paper.

He showed us that TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron) had been there to document the damages. Here I am with the documentation in my lap:

And here is a closeup of the first page. TIPH also took pictures of his damages at the time of the incident (much worse that they are now, even though now, his entire roof is about to cave in...and he had us WALK on it in his attic to see the holes drilled through the concrete).

Much of his merchandise has been completely ruined by the water and sewage. But he did have in one of his frames an old picture from the Second Intifada, or "uprising," from 2000-2003 of one of his friends being carried away after he was shot and killed by the IDF in Hebron.

Here we see, from left to right, military netting that is strewn all over the place seemingly randomly (I can't imagine that it's strategic military covering anymore, I think soldiers just put it where they have to stand so that they get some shade), then an IDF look-out post on top of one of the Old City street corners, and then an IDF camera on a building corner (there are plenty of these in Hebron).

But what few stores in Hebron's once massive Old City market still remain open have a lot of great merchandise. Mostly their business is very, very bad. Hardly anyone comes to the Old City market. When Walter, Jacob, and I sit in our friend from last summer, Jamal's, fine woven things shop, I see only about 3 shoppers (tourists and locals) go past every 10 minutes. Below, Jamal is the one smoking and pouring us tea, and Walter and Jacob are in the foreground. There are several human rights groups present in Hebron, but just with few workers. The wallets below and to the right are from a women's rights group lead by a two vieled Palestinian locals.

So what's so special about Hebron? Why are there so many Jewish settlers who want to live in a city that isn't exactly welcoming them? See below, the Tomb of the Patriarchs. It holds the remains and the cenotaphs of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah. There's a Muslim side, the mosque, and a Jewish "side" (it's really more like a big tent filled with scholars and bookshelves and torahs), the synagogue. Each side is able to view the cenotaphs (which are in the middle) from windows on their respective sides.

This is the mosque side.

Here is Sarah's cenotaph (tomb, but her remains are actually underground) from the mosque side. The window to the right of the picture is an IDF watchpost.

This is Abraham's cenotaph from the Jewish side.

Here is a Hassidic Jew coming out of the Jewish side looking out over Hebron.

And below are several pictures of rows upon rows of stores that have been welded shut and emblazoned with Jewish stars, skulls, menorahs, fists, and a variety of other insignia. It almost looks like a reverse Kristalnacht. The metal boxed cages over the windows are there to shield inhabitants from rocks thrown by settlers. A very few Palestinian families have actually moved back into these apartments since I was here last summer. 

Next, here is a walk Walter, Jacob, and I took through a residential area which remains Palestinian. There is however, still rather disturbing graffiti from the settlers. 

Most of the bad graffiti and the store closings were making way for settlers, who in moving in and scattering Palestinian business and livliehood, made way for a new synagogue and civic center, pictured here. 

Here is the civic center.

Here is the synagoge on the right as Walter and Jacob look out over all of Hebron.

You will also see on the mountainside that some of the apartments and homes have a lighter layer of brick/concrete on top. The lighter, newer top layer that doesn't match the bottom is because a Jewish family somehow managed to get a Palestinian home and to build on top of it, later forcing the Palestinian family below them to leave for one reason or another.

Here is Walter speaking with a local Palestinian girl and her little brother. Settlers have thrown stones into her house. They asked us to take pictures and to show our friends, and she asked me to pray for them.