Lew Shaw’s Blog from Haifa

A Small World

I thought I’d relate an interesting encounter yesterday. I drove to Ben Gurion Airport to meet Rhonda’s flight. I got there a bit early and was sitting in the waiting area café drinking coffee. I heard a voice in Arabic at the table behind me that sounded very familiar. I looked around and there was Saed (doctoral student at Harvard who spoke at a film at Nehar Shalom) talking on his cell phone. He also recognized me and after he finished his conversation, he and his friend invited me to join them. His friend and driver was an Arab from east Jerusalem, and they were waiting to pick up an American teacher, arriving on the same flight as Rhonda.

Saed is in Ramallah for the summer teaching at a college preparatory program at the Friends’ school in Ramallah (his high school). For about a half hour we had a lively and open conversation about politics – an American-Israeli Jew, a Palestinian from the West Bank, and a Palestinian from Jerusalem. Since the discussion was so open, I got nervous for them and kept looking around to see if we were being observed (I was sure we would be).

When the flight arrived and Rhonda was coming into the arrival hall, two police officers confronted us and asked to see our documents. They were clearly baffled about what we all doing together. They called on their radios and two border police officers came. After they caucused for a while, I went over and explained in Hebrew that we hadn’t arrived together, that I was meeting a friend arriving from the US and happened to encounter the two Arabs, and that I knew Saed from Boston. Finally they returned all our documents and let us go. I apologized profusely to Saed and his friend for the trouble. Obviously they are quite used to random stops and interrogations, and yet again I got glimpse of how difficult (untenable) the situation is for them.

Two Sisters Who Married Two Brothers on the Same Day

On Sunday, Abbie invited me to join her and three South African women for a cooking class in Der al-Asad, an Arab village near Carmiel.  I met Abbie at 8 AM at the Alonim junction and she drove us to the village.  There we were welcomed by two sisters, Camla and Rin, who, in heavily Arab-accented Hebrew, described themselves as in the title of this story and who run a catering business and do cooking classes specializing in regional (Galilee) Arab cooking (http://www.camla.co.il/).  We sat in their living room drinking cups of fennel tea while they gave us background of their business and their experience in culinary arts, some history of the village, and their philosophy about authentic, healthy Arab food.

We then moved to their kitchen, which I found well set up, immaculately clean, and very organized.  They are set up to handle catering for up to 1,000 people, and regularly do Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, and all sorts of corporate and kibbutz events, as well as Arab celebrations.  The menu was to be vegetarian and included red lentil soup, madjadra (here made with bulgar instead of rice), deep fried vegetables cooked with rice and vermicelli, cabbage leaves stuffed with vegetables, mushrooms, and rice, and several salads.  We even wandered through the woods outside their house to look for some greens for the salads.

Each of us donned an apron and was given a task.  Mine was to dice onions, which were then put in a frying pan with tons of olive oil to brown for the madjadra (one of my favorites).  I then rinsed tiny brown lentils to be boiled before adding the bulgar and the onions.  These lentils retain their firmness after cooking.  For the red lentil soup, we used lentils which disintegrate while cooking.  These were added to a base of sautéed onions and wild celery, along with salt, cinnamon, clove, bay leaf, and some other spices, to simmer for the soup.  Meanwhile, cabbage was cored and steamed until the leaves were soft enough to roll.  Vegetables and mushrooms were sautéed for the filling.  We then all rolled the cabbage leaves and put them into a pot to simmer.

Then we went on an amazing field trip while everything was cooking.  Behind the house, a third sister was manning a wood-fired oven for making pita.  The wood came from olive trees and they also burn the dried pulp left over from making olive oil.   The sister was making lots of pitas, enough for the extended family for several days.  We put labane (yogurt with garlic and spices), zatar, and olive oil on a few pitas and threw them into the oven for a little snack before our feast.  I can’t possible describe how good they were and I was not leaving room for the huge meal in store.

We then went back to the kitchen to make several salads.  One was a traditional taboule, with lots of bulgar, parsley, and lemon juice.  Another was with wild zatar leaves.  A third was with a local green very similar to arugula.  And another included raisins, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and greens.

We all plated up everything and brought it into the next room for lunch.  Being quite full already, I still managed to eat some of everything.  What was left we put in containers and I have several meals here to enjoy!  After some strong coffee, we said our goodbyes, exchanged e-mails, and were on our way.

A Holy Trip to the Holy Land

On Sunday I left Boston en route to Haifa.  My itinerary had me changing planes in Newark, then a direct flight to Ben Gurion Airport.  When I arrived at Newark airport, I had a three hour layover and made my way to Gate 139 for my departure.  As in other airports, the waiting area for flights to Israel involves additional security, then passengers are held in a closed area until boarding.

I got there early, went through the additional bag and body search, and took a seat to read and wait.  Slowly other passengers arrived and I noticed something special about them.  I’d guess that about 90% of those arriving were Hasidic Jews from New York.  Men in the long black coats and unique hats, all of them constantly on their cell phones.  Many were followed by the wives, pushing strollers or holding assorted children, lots of them.  An hour before the flight took off, all the men gathered in a corner of the waiting area for evening prayers.  It was quite a scene.  Then back on their cell phones.

As we boarded, overhead storage was in great demand.  It had been filled by enormous black hat boxes.  The men took their seats and continued talking on their cell phones.  And when the announcement (English and Hebrew) said to turn off all cell phones, they just ignored it.  I saw flight attendants speak to several about this.  They would either ignore them, or put away the phones until the flight attendants walked away, then back on the phones.  I even saw during taxiing and take-off, still on their phones until they lost service. 

My seat was next to a young Hasidic couple.  They told me it was their first time coming to Israel.  They spoke Yiddish to each other.  When the PA system started announcing something in Hebrew, they told me they didn’t understand.  I found that a bit surprising.  This was their first time coming to Israel.  Apparently the head rabbi of their sect of Hasidism was up in the front of the plane.  The whole group was on a trip to celebrate Lag B’Omer in the Safed area of the Galilee. 

As they started serving dinner, I was one of the few people on the plane that wasn’t given a hermetically sealed Kosher meal.  Actually their food looked much better than mine!

And at sun-up (based one whatever time zone we were approximately in), all the men got up, pulled out their tallitim from the overheads, removed one sleeve of their black coats, and put on their tefillin for morning prayers.  If anyone needed to get throught the aisles, they’d just have to wait. 

And to add to that, our plane arrived about an hour before the Pope’s.  He was on a trip in the Middle East, flying from Jordan.  Their apparently was a high diplomatic welcoming group, but I wondered how many Israelis really cared whether the Pope was coming.  The adulation would have to wait for Bethlehem and other Christian religious areas.

I had an ending planned!

Well, I had an ending planned for the blog.  It was supposed to end when I finished my sabbatical and returned to life in Boston.  But as we all know, you can’t plan endings.  I even had a title for it, Closing the Circle.  I would describe some poignant summary of what my return to Israel had meant after an almost forty year absence.  I imagined some sort of closure to something I hadn’t finished, but completed during this return – how I found a piece of me (probably my heart) that I had left here long ago and had now been found.  Sounds poetic, and probably is true. 

I feel more at home in Israel than in the place of my birth and where I have lived for the major part of my life.  Halfway through my sabbatical I began work on finding a way to stay connected to Israel, to be able to visit frequently, even to live bi-nationally.  I even looked into purchasing a small condominium here.  Maybe I still will. 

Through networking and successful academic work here, I managed to get invitations for annual summer teaching at both the University of Haifa and the Technion.  Both schools have international MBA programs taught in English and were eager to have an American Ph.D. in accounting on the adjunct faculty roster. 

So here I am in May, back in Haifa, back in Mercaz HaCarmel, getting ready to teach courses for both universities until mid-July.  I doubt I’ll do as much blog writing, but we’ll see how that goes.

Mumbai

I was a young bank clerk in Jerusalem in 1972 when the country heard the news from Munich.  Israeli athletes at the Olympics were taken hostage by members of the Black Sabbath Palestinian terrorist group.  During a botched rescue attempt by German commandos, many were killed.  Israel was stunned and began a period of national mourning.  I had never experienced anything like it, as if the world stood still in shock.

That event seemed so recent as I followed the fate of the hostages in Mumbai over the past few days.  Local news sources gave details of the young Israeli-American Lubbavitche rabbi and his wife who were among the hostages at the local Chabbad center.  Indian officials refused rescue aid from the Israeli government (I expect much flack about that over the next few days, aimed at defense minister, Ehud Barak).  And finally Friday afternoon I read the confirmation that Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg and six others were dead after an Indian commando rescue attempt.  I expect a similar period of national mourning and soul-searching will take place over the next few days. 

I enjoyed a wonderful American-Israeli Thanksgiving dinner at Alonei Abba, hosted by Ron and Abbie Rosner, brother and sister-in-law of my friend Hanna.  Hanna, a 60-year old sculptor and world traveler, had just last month returned from three months in India.  As we raised a glass and gave thanks for so much, we prayed for the fate of those caught up in the on-going terrorist action in Mumbai, apparently aimed at the usual enemies of Muslim extremists – Americans, Jews, Israelis.  Hanna spoke fondly about the work that Chabbad does throughout Asia, unpretentiously tending to the souls and needs of Israeli and other Jewish travelers and local Jewish communities.

November Interim Report

As the television broadcast of the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Ceremony concluded, my dear friends Rob and Joanne (along with their friends, Myer and Linda) arrived from Boston, their first visit to Israel.  The trip was only to be a week, and I had made plans to pack in as much as possible.  So the itinerary incuded a day of touring Haifa, including a private tour of the Bahai Gardens.  Then off we went for three days in Jerusalem with a side-trip to the Dead Sea.  We stayed at a great little hotel in the Moshava Germanit, walked through Mea Shearim and downtowm West Jerusalem.  Then the next day we got up early and headed for the Old City.  With the exception of not timing the Temple Mount correctly, they got to see and experience the intensity of what goes on (and went on 2000+ years ago) within those walls.  Rob was able to recite Kaddish at the Wall for his mother who had recently passed away.  Linda was able to walk the 12 stations of the cross along Via Delorosa.  Our trip to the Dead Sea included visiting the Ahava factory outlet (too many Russian and Polish tourists!), a short hike to the waterfalls of Ein Gedi, a “float” in the Dead Sea, and a ride in the new cable car up to Masada.  We also spent an afternoon and evening in Tel Aviv, including getting stuck in an elevator!  I think my four guests had a great, intense experience and I could easily find a new career as a tour guide.

I have been able to reconnect with an old family friend, Hanna Levav.  Hanna lives at Alonei Abba, is a cermanics artist, and was my children’s first nursery school teacher.  I was invited to Shabbat dinner at her brother, Ron, and sister-in-law, Abbie’s, home there.  I am now looking forward to a sumptuous Thanksgiving dinner with them in a couple of days!  It has been great to reconnect with Hanna.  She reminded me that at the outbreak of the October, 1973, War, she was visiting my parents in New Hampshire.  While she worried about the fate of her country and everyone she loved, my parents were worrying about me, who, unkown to them, was headed for the front lines in the Sinai. 

Last week I finally started teaching at the University of Haifa.  It was not much different than teaching an MBA class at Suffolk, similar classroom, course material, and even students.  I have 36 Israeli students (a couple of whom are Arab), whining about the amount of work expected and not sure why what I have to teach them has any relevance to the real world.  Give me a couple of weeks to hammer that point into them!

When I was visiting my daughter and family at Squam Lake in New Hampshire last August, at my son-in -law’s family annual retreat, I casually invited anyone to come and visit me in Haifa.  Well, Saturday night (with advanced notice) my son-in-law’s brother Ben arrived for a two-week visit.  He lives in Brussels, has travelled extensively globally, and is a very easy guest to host.  It is interesting to observe the impressions of someone with no connection to Israel as he learns about Israeli history, politics, culture, and Judaism and Zionism.  Hopefully I can scientifically measure shifts after two weeks.  He is actually leaving tomorrow for a side trip to Amman, Jordan, then returning via Petra, Jerusalem, and Ramallah (where an old friend from Washington has been living for many years).  He has no idea what is in store for him!

And as a final note, I had a meeting with the dean of the business school at the Technion last week.  Tentatively I have been invited to teach an MBA course there during their summer session (mid-May through early July) which will turn into an annual visiting position.  My roots are spreading, or are they just being rejuvenated.

The Ceremony to Commemorate the 13th Anniversary of the Murder of Yitzhak Rabin

This evening I’ve been watching on television the ceremony in Kikar Rabin in Tel Aviv commemorating the assasination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish fanatic.  The square is packed with people, mostly young and all hopeful for peace.  There are the usual, but very moving, speeches by all the politicos – Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, etc.  There is also some beautiful Israeli music, songs of hope for peace.  One song, sung beautifully by a chorus of young people, is entitled “We are the Children of the Winter of ’73″.  It’s the story of the hopeful generation born right after the Yom Kippur war when the soldiers returned from battle.  It’s a generation who has seen signs of hope – peace with Jordan and Egypt, the Oslo accords and other initiatives – but also has seen suicide terrorists, more fighting, illegal settlements in the West Bank.  And it hit me for the first time that my daughter Jenny (named Ginat Egoz) is one of those children, born in the fall of 1974.