Sulha peace gathering

this past week I spent at a peace gathering with over 1000 Israelis and Palestinians. It almost brings me to tears just thinking and writing about this experience. I heard some of the most horrifying stories of loss and suffering from both sides of the conflict, things that you hear about on the radio but cannot really conceive of in reality. A group of neighborhood children killed in senseless cross fire, a mother who lost both of her sons on the same day, a son whose father lost both of his legs and then committed suicide, a man who saw three of his brothers stalked and killed within a month. To see these victims looking for peace, not as an ideal, but as an act of desparation was the most beautifulthing that I have ever seen. 

We ate meals together, slept together every night on thin foam mattresses in 200 person tents, shared arabic melodies and jewish songs, danced arm over arm for hours every night, taught each other arabic, hebrew, and english, and survived intense heat each day.

I am at a loss for words, honestly. I am at the same time horrifyed by the ugliness of humankind, and inspired by thecourage these people have to come together. Their ability to overcome intense lifelong fears, fears ingrained by ignorant societial understandings,  government controlled media, and terrifying experiences with war, and reach across the barbed wire electric fence brick wall to say shalom/salaam/peace was beyond amazement.

 

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Other happenings the last three weeks:

Got my bag, passport, poetry journal, and peruvian flute stolen in Jerusalem. Not so important--nothing I can't live without! Though I would have rather lost my ipod/camera/wallet because they are more replaceable. Gave my suitcase, most of my clothes, and shoes to charity and sent my valuables home. Camped for a night on the Jordan river with Arab-Israelis, which included an interrogation from the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) that ended peacefully baruch Hashem (thank God). Three crazy nights at an adrenaline rush klezmer festival in the ancient city of Tsfat. Every street packed, 9 stages, jams on every corner, and dancing until my sandal broke in another place (a shoe mendor fixed it somewhat). A mini-rainbow gathering in the valley of the goddess for the lunar eclipse. Had countless hours of conversation only in Hebrew, ironically mostly with Arabs who didn't know any English. Slept on the bare earth every night the past two weeks. Got better at making a fire wherever I was and cooking vegetables in it. Perhaps did not always smell so rosy . . . but certainly enjoying showers when available. Missing my family and friends, while also getting excited to go to India September 18th!

 

Shalom v'ahava lekulam (peace and love to everyone),

Lev

shedding skin

I have been shedding skin everywhere I go. One of my aspirations for this trip was to free myself from material possessions. For a while I felt a little frustrated that I couldn't mentally let go of having money, clothes, electronics, etc. Tel Aviv was somewhat of a miserable lonely experience--I thought I could stay with friends but that didn't work out, and in general it is just like a modern, shallow, Western European city, except without any fascinating history. 

In addition, the youth hostels there are rediculously expensive. So after a few days in one of them I decided to put my bags in a locker and sleep on the beach. I stopped taking any money out and when I needed food I played violin in the street. I realized that, though this new found independence felt amazing, I needed to get out of Tel Aviv. I dropped the Hebrew class I was taking before committing to it, bought a teach yourself book instead, and hitch hiked north. 

I got picked up by these hippie rainbow guys who run tea shops at festivals and parties. After working, and playing music with them for a few days at this incredible Israeli dance festival, I went on ahead to Zfat to take a free course on Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) on the campus of the organization I worked for at the beginning of the summer. There I learned that my last name is a combination of lev=meaning heart in Hebrew, and "enter;" that I was born the morning of the first day of passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating freedom; I learned the uplifting power of eliminating negative thoughts and actions from my life, and I realized that music is the highest expression of my soul, and that my purpose in life is to share this incredible gift and try to achieve this level of spirituality in all aspects of my life.

Tomorrow I am leaving my suitcase and most of my stuff and hitching to a student community in the desert outside of Jerusalem to meet other people I met hitch hiking, but who knows if that's where I'll end up. . . 
 

I cannot tell you how good it feels to be freeeee!

Other activities in the last couple weeks: learning to read, write, speak, and understand hebrew (albeit slowly), cooking all my meals, and watching amazing sunsets.

So, I think I may be traveling for long time. A ticket to India is unbelievably cheap from Amman, Jordan. I think I'll hit that up in a month or two.

 

Shalom v'ahava,

Lev

Shaaalom! 07/2008

So it has been a while since I last wrote!

To wrap up cairo:

I went to a concert every night (traditional egyptian, funk, reggae, egyptian rock, nubian), met some incredible musicians,  jammed every night, slept every day (cause its too damn hot to do anything anyway), played a couple songs with an egyptian popstar "ruby" (similar to "britany"), recorded some tracks for dj samba (check him out on myspace), played with nubian musicians at this park on the nile (pronounced neel), took a couple lessons with arabic violin master alfred gamil, and almost stayed for a really long time (I was there for 10 days).

 

But I left because i wanted to go back to Israel and work on a kibbutz, and because Cairo is just too nuts of a place to stay for very long.

On my way I climbed Mt. Sinai, the peak of which is the quietest place I have ever been. With the stars incredibly bright I almost felt like I was in outer space.

 

Neot Semadar (the kibbutz):

wake up at 5am 6 days a week, work until 1pm (with a breakfast break) which among other things included picking apples, pears, plums, figs, olives; making/bottling juice, jam, olives, olive oil, dolce de leche (milk jam) and fruit leather; sorting fruit and packaging it for sale; doing construction work on fountains (laying stones, paving, etc), cooking vegetarian meals;  cleaning algae from man made ponds; and working in the kibbutz's restaurant. Then we ate lunch. The afternoon was for sleeping because it is too hot do anything, and we continued to work again from 5 to 8.

It was basically a small zen communist community/cult with silent meals every day and an interesting improv dance in white on shabbat (sabbath). The mindless repetitive nature of the work (putting labels on jars for two hours) was really meditative and my experience of time was very calming. It was hard not knowing hebrew because very few group conversations were in english, though almost everyone could speak decent english. But this motivated me to learn the language which have been doing very quickly.

 

So I moved on, needed to get back to a big city. Tel Aviv is supposedly the New York of Israel, even though it only has like 600,000. I plan to be here for at least a month so I can take very inexpensive course on hebrew, find the music scene, hang with some musicians I know from my university, and experience urban/secular Israel.

 

shalom v'ahava,

Lev

Salaam alaykum from Cairo! 06/2008

I'm in the crazy capital of the Arab world. Its like NYC on steroids with traffic, honking, extreme poverty/wealth, pollution, nightlife. . . i'm really loving it! I went to a great concert in a park last night by a famous egyptian  rock/fusion band playing plus a fantastic traditional arabic band. Met some of the musicians after the concert and went out. Set up a couple jam sessions for this week. sweet!
I spent a couple days walking around, talking and drinking tea with some shop owners. There is hardly any middle class and the poor are incredibly oppressed by the Mubarek the "president" who essentially has dictatorial power. The only way to work your way up is to lie, cheat . . . play the game. And even though much of the city is secular, muslim values are very important to most egyptians. Even in the poorest neighborhoods there  is very little threat of getting robbed, etc. 

Anyhow, i spent all last week in sinai. staying in a hoosha (bamboo hut) on the beach for $4/night. was hard to leave . . . sat under the same tree for 5 days, like an oasis in my life. Amazing. I was planning on going to the nile (southern egypt) this week but probably won't happen cause I want to be back in Israel by the end of the month.
Well, that's it for now. going to go see some sufi dancing/music!

shalom v'ahava,

Lev