Alpha and Omega

It occurred to me this evening that I don't know where this story ends. Perhaps I thought I did? I thought this story ended when I came out of the Middle East in 2009. Perhaps I felt that I had shared enough and bared enough to last me for a while.

Yes, I took a step back from public writing, but I dare say that the act of doing so did not render me more silently contemplative. If anything I simply stopped writing for pleasure altogether. Instead, I wrote for a living and got paid for making word that were ultimately mine but not mine to claim. When I was done writing, someone else made a lot of money from the fact that I signed away my words so that I could eat and afford the gas in my car while I wrote to satisfy the requirements for the far-reaching precipice to which my future was clinging. I wrote for the sake of finishing my doctoral degree and for survival. I wrote and wrote...and wrote.

And so, here I am again, old friend. Back to this blog, to this persona that has always been me and not me. Back to the beginning of the place where the excess lexicon of a small part of my inner realm came to be burped. Hello again, old friend, I have missed you.

If it is trite to rehash the past few years, if anything, I will keep it short and sweet:

I am now a doctor of philosophy. And it is weird.

I am now in control of my finances. And that, too, is...weird.

Not that I was ever all that irresponsible before, but I actually have real health insurance now...

To that end, I recently deduced that I am lactose intolerant but I have not been to a doctor because I cannot yet take time away from the employer that provides me with this amazing health insurance plan. The irony.

I am happy.

I am to be wed two months.

So perhaps this is the beginning. Again.

Namaste

Beit Mikveh

"It was a time in my life when many things bored me deeply and I hungered for beauty and those realms of pure elation granted to those who had the imagination to know what to look for and how to find it."--Pat Conroy, Beach Music

Written well over a year ago, my last blog post culminated the end of an era while serving as a commencement ceremony of sorts to this present tense.

Three months prior to this, I woke up one morning in Jerusalem and realized that it was time for me to retire from my self-imposed flying circus. In my effort to live in a state of unfettered freedom, I realized that I was well on my way to becoming unhappy and enslaved to my own cliche. The whole affair simply wasn't serving me anymore. All of my hopes and fears had oddly become prostate to the process of being and becoming, which made my life at that moment feel as though it had become redundant, inauthentic and admittedly trite. That particular morning came with the sudden realization that what drove me across oceans, deserts and intellectual canyons was out of my deep longing for a place to be at peace. I woke up knowing that none of this was enough to silence the ache inside of me that had been simply muted by the stimulation of adventure and the noise of the fast lane and a long standing denial of my obviously flawed logic.

Hours before this realization, I ended yet another love relationship in the desert. It was a rather empty and dispassionate termination of affairs. Our matter-of-fact exchange was a stark reflection of how falsely hollow the brief affair had been in the first place. I knew this was not the man for me, yet the act of issuing yet another note of dismissal made me feel anxious and ill late into the night. It certainly wasn't that I was sick of men, but I was sick of the wrong men. More than anything, I was sick of the story of me and all the wrong men. It was boring me to tears. Literally.

Up all night, mentally spinning in full insomniac mode, it was close to morning when I received a call from a good friend in the US, who told me that my former love partner--the rabbi--had become engaged to his girlfriend earlier that evening. With this news, my night of solemn contemplation was suddenly punctuated by the tearing down of all of the sclerotic scaffolding I had constructed over the year in my ardent efforts to move on and "heal" from the once extremely destabilizing dance of what had once been nothing more than a misspent menage-a-trois between me, the rabbi and his mental illness.

Of course, my response was to simply dance with this knowledge and the deep sense of frustration that erupted within me. Yet in that moment, I knew that it was time to start choosing toward a new way of being and, inevitably, a new life.

A week passed, and after the next sabbath, I decided to do something a bit unique. In order to put my decisions into action, I decided to make my passage into the next phase of my life through the symbolic act of rebirth. I made an appointment with a local women's mikveh in the conservative side of town. Like a spa, a mikveh is a rabbinically ordained pool of rainwater in which Jews go to submerge themselves. Symbolic of birth, the process of submersion itself is significant to a spiritual cleansing.

The female attendant at the mikveh was an Orthodox woman. When she greeted me at the door, with a quizzical look. Despite my attempts to dress conservatively, the woman took one look at me and demanded to know why I was there. With no premeditation, I swallowed the lump in my throat and told her that I was "getting married". Clearly skeptical, the woman held the door for me to come inside.

This wasn't my first visit to a mikveh, but since I told the woman that I was a bride, it was necessary for her to treat me with greater scrutiny according to the Orthodox way of handling these particular rites of passage. After removing my contact lenses, all traces of makeup, showering thoroughly, brushing my teeth with Kosher toothpaste, flossing and cleaning my ears and under my nails, I stood shivering in a white crusty towel in front of the square woman who inspected me in a very businesslike manner. Taking my hands, she proclaimed that my nails were too long. She reached into her pocket for a pair of unsterilized clippers and began cutting. Then, with a pair of little scissors, she proclaimed herself the halachic harnesser of my cuticles.

After what felt like endless rounds of snipping and clipping at my hands and feet, the mikveh lady finally approved me for submersion. Standing over me as I dropped my towel and entered the water, she told me that my eyes were closed too tightly, that every strand on my head was not fully emerged, and then, that my legs were somehow too close together. She told me that if I did not do these things according to her instructions, I would not be spiritually cleansed for my husband. Completely naked in the water before her, I felt suddenly emboldened. I listened to her instructions, and then I asked her to leave me alone in the room to do the rest by myself. She resisted a little, and I told her that if she didn't leave me to do as I like, I would go back to my new husband without "toveling" and it would be all her fault that I was "impure". Through very thin, pursed lips, she told me that I had 5 minutes to do what I wanted and she would return.

Alone in the water, I dunked and dunked as a memory from childhood suddenly surfaced in my consciousness. It was the memory of learning to swim with my grandfather in the deep end of a pool. G-d rest his soul, I realized that my grandfather had given me many more tools for survival than just learning to swim. "Let's get lost today," he would say to me with a wink during the summer when I was learning to drive a car. The game of "Getting Lost" meant taking long drives together through the countryside so that my grandfather could treat me to an ice cream sundae and instruct me on the ways of paying attention to landmarks in order to find my way out of any situation. As I dunked, I could hear his voice saying to me, "You are never lost in life if you are smart, honey. Pay attention to the signs around you and you will always find your way home."

Suspended in this tiny reservoir of Jerusalem's coveted tears, I knew that I was paying attention to the signs. Taking a deep breath and stayed suspended under water for as long as my lungs would allow as I paid attention to the sound of my heartbeat my body as it floated in the water. Against tradition, I opened my eyes and thought of myself in the womb. Then, after uncurling and saying the ritual prayers of the mikveh in Hebrew, I told myself that while I was not getting married tomorrow, I knew that this was the first step in my path to this next phase of my life...one day.

Perhaps inevitably, a rejection in life is a tacit acceptance of what is to come. Moving inward, I rejected all of the fears I had of settling down and, worse, settling down with the wrong person. And yes, I knew that I was listening to myself and reading the signs. Rejecting the fears and irrational aches that had long haunted me, I was finally putting my past to bed in acceptance of the things to come. The motions of coming and going had become such a mundane routine in my life. But this time I knew that I was finally coming home.

They Say You Can't Go Back

It bothers me that I have not yet managed to find out who "They" are. Always ambitious, it is my preference to imagine this dubious "They" as a highly classified group of individuals who must certainly exist in a black box somewhere at the End of The Rainbow. Go up the grassy hill and make a left. When the yellow brick road appears beneath your feet and you begin skipping uncontrollably, you will be very close. Follow this all of the way up to the edge of the Universe, and there you will find the place where all of life's secrets are kept. Knock three times on the black door, and inside you will find the elusive group of "They".

In a pink florescent room with a strobe light, "They" will be waiting for you while they eat stale blueberry scones and sip their tea in the company of the Mad Hatter, the Wizard, the Tin Man, and, of course, the departed George Burns, who will be smoking a cigar and tap dancing with Shirley Temple to the karaoke machine, while Bob Marley sings "Redemption Song" a-Capella and Mahatma Gandhi giggles and passes the peace pipe....

******

"They say you can't go back."

A cascading flight of voices rang through my head during the drive from Jerusalem to the airport outside of Tel Aviv. I wondered if these were the voices of warning? Should I stay or should I go? I began to wonder if all of this was an inner expression of the ominous, Old World scare tactics that I have heard my whole life from my mother--the foreboding warnings that I have internalized as Truth, the Truths that have formed me in the fire of their intent to craft me as the person that I am today...

The familiar voice of my mother's mantra cracked and fizzled somewhere deep inside my brain. The smoke of its fleeting existence floated up to the sky while my eyes searched beyond the window of the shared Jerusalem taxi that carried me to the airport. Looking through the window, my mind mistook the airport lights in the distance for a flashing neon sign in English that read:

"NEXT!"

Next, indeed, I thought, as I considered 16 hours of travel ahead of me, face time with family and friends and then a solitary, cross-country road trip after that...yeeesh...

Meanwhile, the taxi driver smoked his cigarettes, drove erratically and yelled in Hebrew to the plastic phone held to his ear. The radio doled out the heavy phlegm sounds of the Israeli vernacular put into musical score. Two young American children beside me whined in their chairs to their parents, who issued equally ominous warnings of apocalyptic punishments for bad behavior. The basin of the Holy Land sped beneath me, and I couldn't help but wonder if I could go back? And what if maybe...just maybe these last moments in the Holy Land....was... it?-- Were these the final moments of my high-flying solo act around the globe? Forever?

To be perfectly fair, there was a profound sense of finality to the moment. I had the realization that this departure from Israel was completely unlike the ones that came before it. For example, it was not 2006, and I was not consumed by the horrific conviction to leave behind a country at war with a terrorist entity in Lebanon. Folks were no longer dying (en masse) to the north of me, and I was no longer the very hungry, cropped-haired, camel-riding version of myself who had immersed herself in the company of a borderline sociopath and a 21 year old, American war vet. Those were fun times.

Nor was I the confused and equally love-swept version of myself from 2007, when I emerged from living in the Palestinian refugee camp, only to find the rabbi waiting for me at the British Airways gate in London. This time, at least, I knew that I was returning to the US with no preexisting conditions to limit the insurance coverage on my fragile heart. In fact, the only thing that was certain was that there was, in fact, no uncertainty. None at all.

This departure was definitely not a hasty retreat from a war, nor was it consumed in a fast-flying love affair without a net in sight. With an unusual level of closure, I commended myself for finally leaving Israel with my bags entirely packed and an eerie sense of accomplishment within me.

Silently, I said my good byes to Jerusalem. And, with this, I said my good byes to an era of myself in this life that I have so fully cherished and embraced while always knowing that there would be more to come. For better or for worse, I'm the sort of the girl that squeezes all of the juice out of her lemons while making my lemonade. I ache with just as much intensity as I embrace, enjoy and hold dear. Yes, it can be perfectly exhausting at times, but part of all of these journeys of mine has been about separating myself from certain aches and finding myself in others. Ever so homeless and transient, I have been on an even and consistent path of growth and exploration.

And, so, yes, I can look back with a sense of finality, with the sense that this door has closed, this chapter is finished...and it has been so incredible, and so fun to share it with all of you.

Until this moment, I have not had to the words to thank you all for your gentle readership, comments, emails, and enthusiasm for my writing and adventures in this small corner of cyberspace. I thank each of you for this. For what it is worth, it has always been such a scary and equally reassuring project for me to know that people I have never met enjoy reading my words and hearing so much of my quirky tales. In two words: Thank you.

In the meantime, I am happy to report that in fact, one can "go back". In lieu of teaching in India this year, I have returned to the United States, to the location of my graduate institution, to my writing, research and community work. The transition back into this version of my life as a graduate student has been eased by the community of souls that cheered me from afar and anxiously awaited my return to their embrace. I am healthy, happy, working and very productive. In the coming weeks, I will be interviewing for two very different "big-girl" jobs in New York City and Washington, DC. My dissertation is on track, and my dissertation committee roundly considers me a veritable rock star. (Funny how I have them all so fooled.)

Maybe it is better put that we can never go back as the same people we were when we left. With this in mind, I packed my bags with various trinkets from my travels. In particular, two very colorful strings of tiny stuffed camels made it with me through the customs check and then all of the way across America with me in my little blue car. The bizarre sight of camel caravans always made me giggle in my desert travels, and so it seemed appropriate to bring some part of that memory home with me. As I was haggling with the vendor who sold them to me in the Old City before I left, he decided to give an extra set to me as a gift. "These ones are for your beautiful children, who will have your eyes," he said so matter-of-factly as he gently wrapped them in paper. In that moment, the thought of adorning a future baby nursery in colorful camels and beautiful Arabic scroll flashed through my mind, and something inside of me said, "Yes! This is a brilliant idea!"

For now, the strings of smiling camels hang beside my window as a reminder of my journey to this moment and, equally, of the journey ahead. In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho refers to this as living one's "Personal Legend". He writes:

"...there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth."

And so, my dear friends, with a big smile and a sigh of satisfaction, I am pleased to report that it has (and is) all worked out for the very best...

The End/Beginning.

Namaste

Sheik Jarrah

Under the olive tree with the Hanoun Family of the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood, August 2009

Jerusalem.

"Hey, let's go on a treasure hunt to see if we can find the Arab family in the news who is being evacuated from their house!," Recovering Orthodox Guy (ROG) said to me during a class break one day.

"Which Arab family?," I said dryly. My personal thoughts--on the matter of the Israeli government intentionally dislocating Arab citizens of Israel and replacing Jewish families in the homes that the Arab families have claimed as theirs for over 40 years--was more than evident in my voice.

"You know, the one in Sheik Jarrah that's all over the news? I want to check it out, but I want you to come with me. It will be an adventure! We will ask them questions about their case, but insist on only speaking Arabic! It will be fun!!"

"Somehow I don't think that the Hanoun family will think it's fun, unless we are willing to join their vigil," I suggested.

"Oh, well, let's just go and see for ourselves," ROG replied with a dismissive smile. This was more about his cowboy sense of adventure than the Hanoun family and their well-being.

ROG happened to be Israeli citizen (by way of a Jewish Orthodox upbringing in New Jersey), who, despite his bluster about concern for human rights and the human condition, remained a product of his military training and social inculcation in the foremost belief that the Jewish State of Israel was somehow always on the perennial side of "The Right"--for, at the very least--simply not being the Arab "other".

Of course, I realized that this was ROG's way of attempting to impress me with his radical and oh-so-daring attempt at cultural open-mindedness. (The thoughtful execution of his plan was methodologically clear: Invite the cute, uber-lefty academic girl who speaks some Arabic for an afternoon adventure that might just amaze her. Then, after offering her some tea and refreshing pistachio ice cream in your apartment in the beautiful stone structure that was once an Arab home, try your hardest to game her into the sack after you attempt to demonstrate to her that you are as thoughtful, lefty-liberal and utterly naive as you presume her to be.) Unfortunately for ROG, I had already met a number of eager male persons who had tried and failed in this regard. To this end, it felt like I had met ROG (or the likes of him) too many times over, but ROG, unfortunately, had never met a girl quite like me...

With the air conditioning at full blast and Israeli music on the radio, ROG spastically steared his little blue car through the twisting streets of the Arab neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah, on the East side of Jerusalem. At the sight of any random Arab person on the street, he would pull over and attempt to ask for directions in Arabic to the Hanoun family home. In my observation of this, I discovered that ROG was more comfortable if I sat demurely in the front seat while he remained dominant in his attempted banter with the Arab men, who would lean into the car look at him with his kippah, look at me with my hands folded in my lap like a perfectly decent Jewish American Princess, and immediately speak to us in Hebrew.

Of course, what ROG failed to ascertain (because he never asked) was that I knew exactly where the Hanoun family home was located. I also happened to know that despite their polite nature, the Arab men on the street kept giving ROG the wrong set of directions:

"Make a left and then you will follow the fork in the road," one said in Arabic as he gestured with his hands. "You will not understand me, my friend, but you will find your way to your home with no problem!"

ROG nodded fiercely and thanked the man as if he understood these perfectly nonsensical directions. Meanwhile, the man laughed and nodded, pretending to be doing ROG a favor.

"See how nice and friendly Arabs are when you speak to them in their own language?," ROG said to me as we drove on.

I had to at least hand it to him--a racist, albeit in complete and total denial--at least he was trying to overcome himself, even if his method was a bit unclear. Nevertheless, I couldn't figure out what was more embarrassing for him, the fact that he had no idea that he had just been dissed on the grounds of his ignorance, or that he really was incapable of fully comprehending how offensive it would be to the Hanoun family to show up at their vigil with nothing but endless political questions in extraordinarily bad Arabic? (With it being at least 100 degrees in the afternoon, one should at least bring a cold beverage to be offered to the family, if not a plate of food and sweets for everyone.)

In the end, ROG never did manage locate the Hanoun family home. I did my best to commend his efforts and thank him for the "adventure", even while we drove right by the place 2 times without him realizing it. I had decided that his complete lack of social graces when it came to the sensitive matter at hand excused him from allowing me to help him "discover" the location of the displaced family. Call me crazy, but I didn't see the fun in practicing my Arabic at the expense of people losing their home. And so, I also didn't feel it was necessary to mention to ROG that I had already gone and sat with the family as they their vigil outside of their home, and I wasn't there for the joy of language immersion. As a human being, I sat in solidarity with the victims something big, wrong and ugly that was happening to them in the name of something else called "the law", as it was invented by "the victors", otherwise known as the creators of "the law".

In the end, I never did tell ROG that I had spent several mornings sitting in the only shade offered by a singular olive tree across the street from the Hanoun family home. And I certainly didn't tell him that the experience had sent me walking the 12 kilometers back to the comforts of my home on the other side of town. I didn't tell him that I will be forever consumed by the fit of tears and frustration I felt for feeling so small and powerless to help the family that was so warm and kind to me, even as they became refugees yet again in the land grab of the Holy Land. I didn't tell ROG any of this, because I realized that I could learn more from him than he had was able to learn from me:

Because, despite the language skills I acquired in the Holy Land, I learned that the idiom of intolerance--just like tolerance--can be veiled in a smile.

Namaste

This Jerusalem

Jerusalem.

I was thinking today that there must be a Jerusalem in each of us--a wry, complex, winding place full of mystery and surprises. Regularly, I have wondered if this Jerusalem, this dark and whimsical place in the middle of the desert was a part of me long before I came to realize it? I have very distinct memories of the mildly precocious child version of myself, the one who used to crawl out of her bedroom window at night to lie on the summer wet grass in order to have very vocal (albeit one-sided) conversations with G-d while everyone else was fast asleep. I remember telling this G-d person about my worries concerning the fragility of life, its finite nature and its infinite possibilities long before most children realize that life exists beyond the confines of the world that is known to them. To me, the complete subjectivity of what was known was just as interesting than what was unknown. I was a historian as well as an explorer. Perhaps some things never change. I wonder if Jerusalem was also a part of me then?

If there is a Jerusalem in each of this, my Jerusalem is this: It is the place that I wrap my arms around when I am here, even though its sharp edges hurt me sometimes. Similarly, it is the place that I miss the most when I am gone, even though I am ostensibly cooler, cleaner and (much) safer when I am allowing myself to be lulled by the fuzzily wrapped, golden handcuffs of American life. Between here and there and all of the odd conundrums and glaring contradictions in between, there are moments when I realize that this Jerusalem is the place where I have come to know and simultaneously evade myself at the same time. It would be arrogant to say that Jerusalem is the place where I figured it all out, but in many ways, perhaps this is true. (At least, for now.) And perhaps it is a bit cheeky to admit that Jerusalem is the place I have come to hide from certain external realities in my "real life". Though a reality unto itself, Jerusalem will always be the place where time and space are distinctly suspended. Indeed, it is a very real place--perhaps too real?--where the cacophony of oddities and orthodoxies co-exist in a rough and uneven harmony of human struggle.

Jerusalem. For all of its imminent and existential dangers, it has been the safe place where I have been allowed the indulgence of forging something new for myself while communing with the soulful part of me that feels as though it has seen and done all of this before. Still the child beneath the stars on a patch of Virginia grass, I have had the freedom to exist lightly in a place of darkness. Somewhere between the dust and sunshine that existed long before I was even conscious of beginning, I have come here to be a small part of the narrative as it unfolds. It is both my narrative and the narrative of the world. More than just a practically delineated latitude and longitude, Jerusalem for me is the place within the place. I have found myself flung here, so far way from where I began, only to feel my way along the Brailled ribbon of self-awareness from the very end of what I have known...back to the very beginning.

I would be lying if I said that I have not considered cashing in my hand far too soon and staying forever. After all, there is an inescapable realness to living on the razor's edge, which satiates my little addiction to authenticity. There is a certain rawness contained in the evidence of knowing at the visceral level that every day you live in this Jerusalem, every choice you make, every street you cross, every bus you ride...could be your very last. And yet, like any strong addiction, where some people find this way of being far too freakish, dark and maddening, I have found it a far more bearable way to exist. Where the past is fixed and the future is uncertain, the Kundera-esque, lightness of being comes from living in earnest, in the honesty of the moment.

Yet, I realize too that Jerusalem for me was never an end in itself. It was for now and not forever. No less, the love affair was a vital and important one, but Jerusalem is not the one I will wake up loving for the rest of my life. Like any good lusty affair of physical need and emotional hunger, I have always known the magic of me and this Jerusalem would be lost if I attempted to domesticate it. Equally so, in the end I know that the lightness of heart I have regained from being here more recently would be lost if I allowed myself to think for a minute that this Jerusalem will ever be enough to domesticate me.

And so, I allow it to hold me in a quiet, last embrace. I walk through its empty streets on my final Shabbat, noticing the sounds and smells of a place that has become a part of me. When I finally reach its Western Wall, the memories of my first moments in Jerusalem (in 2006) find their way to the nostalgic lump in my throat. I take out the little notebook that has been with me since that time, and read the quote I jotted down during the preliminary hours of my very first trip to the Holy Land. From Bruce Feiler's "Walking the Bible":

"Abraham was not originally the man he became. He was not an Israelite, he was not a Jew. He was not even a believer in G-d--at least initially. He was a traveler, called by some voice not entirely clear that said: Go, head to this land, walk along this route, and trust what you will find."

Carefully, I tear the quote from my notebook. I fold up the square of faded lined paper in my hand until it is a small, flat cube, just the right size to fit into one of the grooves of stone. Silently, I say my prayers of acknowledgment, hope and thanks. And, like so many others before me and to come, I leave this small, prophetic testament to my pilgrimage behind to be a part of the timeless and sustaining energy of this holiest of holy retaining walls of sand and stone.

In the end, I am not the woman I was when began making my way to this Jerusalem. Indeed, I am no longer the agnostic, self-identified researcher who never once dreamed of becoming so much a part of her subject of inquiry. Much like Abraham, I was not an Israelite, and never would have felt completely comfortable with the label of "Jew". But I came anyway and I learned. More than the politics and languages of this land, I learned about the soulfulness of this violent place that connects heaven to earth in such haphazard ways. I connected easily. Perhaps too easily? Although none of this was ever linear and or without struggle, I learned more about myself than ever before.

Of course, I came alone and left alone. And the moments in between when I was in the company of others, I will never claim that I didn't stop to wonder at times if I shouldn't chuck it all now and go back to the life of the person before who simply did not know any better. But I couldn't, and I didn't. I kept going forward because I knew that all of this was rhetorical because, even though I never told anyone this, I never fit so well into the box of ignorance in the first place. Even in the moments in between, when undeserved pain felt like a set back to progress, and profound disappointment in certain others made me wonder if there really is a G-d, I trusted--

and,

I found.

And I lived.

(to tell about it.)

Namaste

The Deep Cover of Humanity

Bethlehem.

I practically swallowed my sweet mint tea the wrong way the other day while paying a visit to Noora, my elderly Arabic tutor in Bethlehem. In the two years I have known her, I have never once claimed to be Jewish. It was certainly no lie to say that I come from good Christian folks and that I was raised as a Catholic. Though the words "raised" and "Catholic" may be a little bit of a stretch, it is certainly no fabrication that my parents were married in a Catholic ceremony and that I was baptized by a bona fide priest of the Catholic Church. It is also no lie that I know a great deal of the Catholic catecism by heart and that my head possesses an entire repertoire of Jesus camp tunes, where, in the early 1990s, I was once re-baptized at the age of 13 by a nice, bearded man named "Father John the Baptist" in a lake somewhere below the Mason Dixon line of the United States of America.

Even still, I came close to choking during our conversation when Noora addressed me by my given name in its Hebrew pronunciation. The only people who ever pronounce my name this way are strangers in Israel who see my name as it is written in Hebrew and pronounce it without the vowels. Aside from a few people here and there, including my former dissertation advisor who was (not coincidentally) also Israeli-- I have never been generally called by the Hebrew pronunciation, and Noora has always used the voweled pronounciation of my name.

Hearing her say it differently immediately caught me off guard. The sound was a signal, a warning of sorts. I knew it in an instant and caught Noora watching my face for a reaction. Carefully, I gave her my classic look of linguistic ignorance. Much like a dog cocking its ear to the television set, my expression read, "I can hear you, but the sound you are making means nothing to my brain." As she does with the difficult Arabic words she has taught me in the past, she reiterated my name slowly and deliberately with the Hebrew pronunciation in her Arabic accent, then explained that this is my name in Hebrew. Again, I gave her a fake, reluctant smile and shrugged my shoulders at the sound while wondering if my perfectly good cover was blown?

In Arabic, she asked in her teacher voice if I knew the biblical story of my name and where it comes from? I answered that I always loved the story of the woman from the Bible for whom I am named--

"Is this name a popular name in America?," she asked.

"It is an old name, not popular, but it is well-known and respected because it comes from the Bible," I said, emphasing the word "Bible".

"It must be very popular among the Jews in America?," she stated rhetorically.

"Maybe," I replied evenly with a little shrug. "Since Jews and Christians share the Bible, it is a common name for both. Christians also use this name for girls in America."

My answer was decidedly too diplomatic. It was clear that it was not the response that she was looking for. So she tried again.

"So there is no one in your family who calls you {Insert Hebrew Pronunciation} as opposed to {Insert Western Pronunciation}?," she persisted.

I smiled, looked her in the eye, and said: "No. No one. Never."

Again, another honest answer.

The subject of dancing around the question of my Jewishness without asking it directly was inevitably dropped.

As I left that day, I worried. I worried about my reluctance to be forthright with Noora from the start, but quickly remembered my reasons for this at the time. The truth was that I was never egotistical enough to think that it was my job to come to Palestine to prove to the good Palestinian folks who lost their homes in 1948 and again in 1967 that a Jewish person might also be a good will ambassador of sorts. Being openly Jewish while living deep in the heart of a Palestinian refugee camp would not have been the most intelligent way to ensure positive relations among and between the people who generously hosted me. Although I will never fully know if openly saying that I was Jewish would have barred me from entry into certain homes and conversations, I can say that I already felt handicapped by my status as a foreigner. Palestinian people are overly welcoming, incredibly hospitable and entirely too polite. As such, it took a long time to get them to open up and actually allow me to join their daily lives, in order to understand their fears, superstitions and struggles.

The truth is that I made the decision to keep my faith out of my politics, and, more importantly, out of my work with human beings. There is important work to do here, and none of it involves how or where any single one of us happens to pray. Even if it is a little bit ironic that my Judaism has actually become that much deeper and observant (for me) over the past two years, I cannot say that my personal affiliation as a Jewish person has made me look at the Palestinian question any differently. If anything, my faith has enabled me to deeply contemplate where I situate myself within my work. At the end of the day, my faith in something actually makes it easier to sleep at night in light of all of the things that could otherwise lend themselves to nightmares. Of course, where some Jewish folks might hide behind their Jewish identity as a way to avoid having any contact with others (like Gentiles and Arabs, for example), I fail to think that life is interesting this way. Like the Buddhist phrase, "The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon", I see my Jewishness in much of the same light. I'm the finger, not the moon. Even better, I am a tiny, extremely unimportant piece of the mosaic, not at all an iconic or self-appointed representative of The Chosen People as a whole.

In the unrelenting sun, I made my way back through the crowded streets of Bethlehem. In two years, I have never felt so aware of my own self-consciousness as I paused to wonder if the people around me also wondered if I am a Jew, too? Certainly, they would readily dismiss the idea entirely. After all, no Jewish girl in her right mind would venture, let alone wander through the West Bank alone. Defiantly, I made my way to the Israeli checkpoint at the top of Bethlehem, where I was stopped in line by a child solder behind his bullet proof glass.

"Give me your identification," he said in a thick Israeli accent.

I slid my American passport through the hole in the window. He took it and slowly flipped through the pages before he looked at the page with my image and name.

"You know you have a Hebrew name, the name of a queen" he said. He held up the passport in the light. I watched as his eyes went from focusing on my picture in the book to looking at my actual face behind the glass. When his eyes registered on me he added with a smile, "And a pretty Jewish face, a face of a Jewish queen."

"I know," I instantly purred back at him. Despite my exhaustion, I gave him my best of my cheeky smiles and added flirtatiously, "I am soooo lucky!"

"To be alive," he sharply quipped back. With his remark, he made a pejorative hand reference to the unaware men standing behind me in line.

"But aren't we all lucky to be alive today? Such a blessing!," I purred back rhetorically without blinking. He rewarded my sarcasm by returning my passport. Back to business, I formally told him to have a good day.

Beyond the checkpoint, I jumped on the 4 shekel bus with a load of Palestinian men from Bethlehem, with whom I had waited in line. The bus was full, and one of the men generously gave up his seat for me. Another offered to share a plum with me from the large bag he was carrying. The man in the seat in front of me asked if his window was blowing too much air on my face. We chatted in Arabic, and they complimented me on my knowledge of their language.

"You speak Arabic very well!!," said one.

"So do you!," I said back.

Everyone around us laughed at my joke.

Of course, anyone else might have been very alarmed to see a Jewish girl cruising across the Green Line in a bus filled with only Arab men. But, of course, that person would have missed out on all of the fun...of simply being human.

Namaste

How to Nearly Start A Riot at Al-Aqsa Mosque

Jerusalem.

It was hot. Very hot. Knowing exactly where I intended to go that afternoon, I decided not to dress the part. My destination was certain, and the truth is that I was uncertain of my social and religious boundaries. In large part, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock is not exactly the place to wear the costume of a Muslim woman when one is, in fact, not Muslim at all. And for a Jew, well, there are a whole lot of other religious imperatives about why a Jew should never set foot on the site of the former Temple Mount without proper rabbinical instruction. Long story short, the part of me that believes in voodoo decided it would be best to dress modestly but neutrally, so as not to piss anyone off.

For so long now, I have played the part of an ambiguous-looking local so exceptionally well. Depending on my attire and usage of my minimal language skills, I can so easily slip in and out of many social situations. My particular strength is looking like either a secular or modern Orthodox Israeli, a secular Muslim, or a Palestinian Christian. With my Arabic and generalizable cheekiness, I have gotten so many free rides and discounts here and there. Everything from free fruit from the fruit guy to an impromptu tour of the rooftops of the Old City, many Arab folks have instantly embraced me for my "Arab face". Of course, mention that this "face" is only attributed to the coloring of my Italian mother, but face and half-green eyes are actually that of my Irish/German father and his American pedigree. Of course, my ability to "fake it" in the past as a half-Muslim has always been a fun way to get invited for tea and keep the conversation going. It has given me an inside to a very closed world. In my mind, I have often giggled that this little white lie has let me bravely go where no white girl has ever gone before...

But obviously, it is not like I am ignorant or insensitive to the emphasis on costuming here in Jerusalem. More than anywhere else in the world, the art of self-expression through how one dresses takes on enormous social, political and religious implications. In fact, it was out of my recognition of this that I was so deliberate in choosing not to look so local that day. Call it a mixture of respect for the sacred or just basic fear for preserving my life, I was happy to play the part of the bohemian tourist on the day that I made the decision to spend the afternoon wandering to all of the places I have neglected to see over the course of my time in the Holy City. This was the day that I would visit the holiest of holy places of Jerusalem, the place where the Jews were the first to claim that this particular spot on earth is where Heaven and Earth touch, and the direct connection with G-d exists. I was paying a little visit to the site of the former Jewish temples and the hotly contested place where the Muslim folks have their sacred mosque and famous, glittering dome today. Yes, folks, I was headed to the Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock complex that sits upon Mount Moriah. I was going to the place where all of the centuries of Jewish hurt and ethnic conflict is about.

The truth is that I had no intention to speak to anyone, much less be anything other than a polite guest to this holiest of holy places. For this reason, I choose a pair of extremely baggy, bright green cotton parachute pants over a long skirt. Since most of my clothing has been bought in Israel, I knew that the cut and style of all of my skirts might automatically mark me as a Jew. For safety reasons, this was not the look I was going for that day. Instead, my over-sized green pants were more than modest and skirt-like without making me look too modest or pious in any regard. Added to the pants, I layered a white tank top under a long sleeved white shirt. With another layer of a pink scarf that would not show the skin of my neck, I was the intrinsic package of Mediterranean comfort and modesty. Overall, I knew that the outfit that did not fit the mold of piety, and this was the point. Certainly the pants were a bit eccentric, but nothing about what I selected was openly Western or defiantly immodest for where I was going that day.

My arrival with other tourists during the allocated visiting hour to the top of the Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock complex was without ceremony. Like everyone else, I passed through a metal detector and said, "USA" in clear-as-day American English when the Israeli police asked my place of origin. But, unlike the others, I was a woman alone. And so, without an escort, I was immediately approached by several men within the first 30 seconds that I arrived on the scene. Testing my nationality, they each began generically in English. Because they were pesting me, I decided to play dumb and not respond. When English didn't work, one tried Italian,while another tried Spanish. I smiled and said nothing. Then another addressed me in French. The first one tried a different tact and asked me a question in Hebrew. Still no response. Finally, I decided that the game would be more interesting if I spoke to them in Arabic. I smiled and told them all that I was fine, thank you, but I did not need their services.

Realizing that they would get no money out of me, three of the men disappeared to harass the other tourists, but one remained glued to my side. He asked if I would like to look inside the window of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. I saw no harm in it, so I followed him to the wall of the mosque to peek inside.

Perhaps my remarks were overly enthusiastic. Perhaps my Arabic was more convincing than I realized. And perhaps the cheeky, adventurous part of me suddenly got way too cheeky for its own good. But when the guy asked why I could speak and understand Arabic so well, I decided to use my typical line, "My mother's family came from Palestine many, many years ago."

"Are you Muslim?," he said.

"My mother was Muslim, but I have no religion," I played.

"But if you like, I can take you inside Al-Aqsa and you can pray for your mother," he said.

Of course, I knew that this was crazy. And yes, of course, I knew that as a Jewish person it is probably not the best choice to casually enter the third holiest site in Islam as a fake Muslim, even one who is supposedly twice removed by a playful lie. I knew this, but I thought it would be such a totally cool experience to actually go inside and see the joint for myself. Authentically Muslim or not--who cares? This was awesome. What an incredible opportunity. My inner inquisitive explorer--the one who always selected "invisible" as her desired super power--simply could not say no.

"It would be my greatest honor," I said to the man with a smile.

The man looked me over far too quickly, and perhaps he saw only what he wanted to see: A half Muslim girl in a very weird outfit. He pointed to the scarf at my neck and said that I should cover my hair. Then, quickly and far too excitedly he walked ahead of me and told me to follow behind him. As I hurried to keep up, I did my best sloppy job of making a proper hijab with my scarf, as I was taught two years ago by a 16 year old girl in my West Bank refugee camp. I knew that it looked convincing enough, but it also occurred to me that I was really pushing the envelope with this little number. Still, the guy scurried ahead, and before I knew it, I was standing at the doorway of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, thinking: Holy, holy shit!! I can't believe I am doing this!!!

Of course, I had not placed a single toe inside the doorway before a crowd of men in traditional Muslim dress came running and screaming out of nowhere. One grabbed my guy and yanked him back from going inside. In fast and angry Arabic, he asked the guy what he was doing. I, of course, was about 4 feet away, and froze in my tracks to see what would happen next. Other people grabbed the man, but no one touched me. In fact, no single man even said a word to me. The men would neither look at me nor make eye contact with me. It was like I was invisible. Though I was obviously the source of the sudden commotion, all of the anger was focused on my guy.

It was hot. Very hot. And tempers were obviously beyond the boiling point. The man with the strongest voice screamed that my guy was a dupe and that he was breaking the rules of Islam. In turn, the guy defended himself by saying that I spoke Arabic very well and that my family was from Palestine. At this point, someone asked me directly if I was from Palestine.

"My family came from Palestine," I replied. Clearly it was best to stick with the story line.

"From where and what is your family name?," asked a man to my right.

I told him the name of the family I lived with in Bethlehem. I added that my family left in Al-Nakba (the 1948 war), and that we have not been practicing Muslims in America.

By this point, the crowd swelled. Older women joined the group. One came up and examined me. She touched my pants and quizzically looked at my face for some sort of genetic marking of my Arabness. She exclaimed, "Look here! The girl looks Arab for sure!" Apparently the combination fo her assessment and my answers were strong and convincing enough that everyone's focus turned back to the guy. The thrust of the debate was that he was basically an idiot that no one particularly liked, and they were all waiting for a reason to banish him from the complex for always causing trouble. Clearly, the fact that I am really not Muslim wasn't the problem. From what I could gather, this man made a big mistake by thinking it was ok to take a Muslim woman wearing PANTS into the doorway of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The woman examining me pinched my pants at my hip and said, "You should have more respect, child."

I felt bad about this, but knew that it was best to agree and get out of the way. With a big, goofy smile, I said an apology to the people for my obvious ignorance. I told a woman that I meant no harm. I feigned ignorance and youthful innocence. I even said that it honored my family to be here, and that was enough for me. In my mind, I thought, Just keep this up. No one will want to kill a pretty, half-Muslim girl from the Holy Land who is really too good at playing dumb. My exact thoughts were, Let them say I'm stupid as hell, but let me get out of here without getting anyone hurt. With this, I quickly put as much distance between myself and the crowd around me as my feet would allow.

As I walked to the nearest exit, I looked back to see that the crowd had now doubled in size. The men were red faced, screaming and wildly gesticulating in an Arabic that I could no longer comprehend. The Israeli police issued a warning on a bullhorn to disperse the people. Some of the police pulled out their batons and began to walk toward the crowd. Meanwhile, my glaringly green pants and I slipped across the hallowed grounds to the nearest exit I could find. With my head still covered, I glided through the security point, into the dank, cool stones of the covered Old City. I recognized it immediately as the entrance to the Dome of the Rock that is reserved for only Muslims. But I gave a faint smile as I passed and the 4 Israeli guards with loaded guns did not stop me from exiting. With the heat of the day and screaming I had caused still at my back, and I would soon only be a memory in the fears and imaginations of the crowd I left behind.

It took me a few minutes to catch my breath. Fortunately, I know this part of the Old City well enough. I kept my head covered and made a few roundabout turns in the twisting streets just to make sure that I had not been followed. Assured of my safety, I felt better when I stopped in a side alley to quietly uncover my hair and shove my scarf in my bag. While it came as quite a relief to disappear as my little bohemian self again back into the obscurity of Jerusalem street life, perhaps the very best part of the whole ordeal was that my cheekiness and I lived to tell about it.

Namaste