THE LABYRINTH

Life's a bloody maze!

Topics:
-Food and Spiritual Strife
-Major Ido
-Overheard in Tel Aviv
-The Labyrinth
-Prostitution
-"Clubbing"
-Self Respect

Food and Spiritual Strife

The other day we had a seminar about food.

We got a guided tour of Machane Yehuda Market, aka, "The Shuk."

Some of the stalls in the market have been owned and operated by the same families for generations. And then some people, like Itzik, come on only certain days and sell handmade stuff right from their homes. His pickled veggies = delicious.

The guy who runs this produce shop doesn't have prices on anything... he takes a look at you and what you want and names a price.  A lot of really poor people shop here because he will give them a rate based on what he thinks they can afford.

This place is famous for its kubeh (kind of like meatballs) and other food. It made me nostalgic because Matat and I escaped here during Taglit <3

Our homework for the seminar was to prepare a dish that has some significance to us.

Cooking for a group of Jews of various backgrounds is a difficult thing to do, in particular because of laws of kashrut. I've already talked on this blog about some of the standard rules (no pork, no shellfish, no mixing meat/dairy, using separate dishes/sponges for meat and dairy, carefully washing lettuce so as not to eat non-kosher insects, etc...) but today I learned about a new rule, called "Bishul Yisrael" or the "Cooking of a Jew". Or more accurately, I learned about Bishul Akum... the cooking of a Pagan.

So I spent a lot of time thinking about how best to prepare my dish. I chose a vegetarian dish, so that avoids most kosher issues. But my kitchen isn't really kosher. We have separate things for meat and dairy, but I'm pretty sure we've messed up with them before, and when you mess up you're supposed to re-kosher them (Dip them in a mikveh or an open body of water), which we definitely didn't do. We have separate meat/dairy sponges even, but again, I'm pretty sure we've not been super consistent with that. So if I cooked in my kitchen, it wouldn't really be kosher. So I thought about if I wanted to go cook in someone else's kitchen, a really kosher one, but in the end I decided against it.

Which is great, because I learned today about this "Bishul yisrael" business, which says that Jews can't eat food cooked entirely by non-Jews.  Aka, they can't eat bishul akum, or the cooking of a Pagan.  It doesn't matter if the food is prepared perfectly according to the laws of kashrut, if the cooking is done entirely by a non-Jew, it's not kosher, really. The way to get around this, I guess, is to have a true-blue-Jew participate in the cooking in some way... like turning on the oven, or stirring the pot, or something. You need the assistance of  Jew to make it truly kosher.

And as I've cried about many times on this blog (and sometimes actually literally cried about), Jews that are religious enough to care about this, are also religious enough to consider me not a Jew (because I don't have a Jewish mother). So even if I followed all the laws of kashrut, and even if I went to someone else's totally kosher kitchen, unless I got a "really" Jewish friend to help me, I am not capable of making kosher food.  Because I'm a pagan.

(don't be fooled... I'm a pagan.)

I was sitting there at our potluck dinner and just feeling like... fuck it. Okay, I'm done. This is a level of absurdity with which I cannot grapple, and as a folklorist you might imagine I can grapple with a lot of absurdity. 

I think that underneath my bafflement is an acknowledgement that actually, this is a really effective kind of rule. The point of kashrut is to divide the Jewish community from other communities, to keep it separate and prevent socialization between Jews and non-Jews, and thus prevent intermarriage. And this policy has worked a long time... the Jews have survived some crazy shit basically because of self-isolation. And this rule, right now, feels really super effective on me. It's really pushing me away. I need the help of a REAL Jew? No, thank you. Just no. 

And I guess that's a win for the preservation of the Jewish people. Because while yes, I identify as Jewish and nothing else, let's face it - I'm a lot else. I'm also German and Norwegian, and I also have all this Asian cultural heritage, and I'm also an American who values diversity and flexibility and progress and social evolution, and I'm also a feminist, and I'm also a writer, and you know what they say about us creative types...

I do mix with everybody. Most of my closest friends are not Jewish. 

And who's to say that, like my Judaism, these other aspects of me won't flare up one day? I didn't care about being Jewish growing up, this is a recent development. I suppose it's conceivable that one of these days, I'm going to learn something interesting about vikings and decide that my allegiance is with the Norwegians, that my place is eating pickled fish at the fjords. I don't know. I can't promise that won't happen.

And I can't promise it shouldn't happen. I don't think I'm less than a Jew, but I do think I'm more than just my Jewish side. So maybe kashrut is right to caution Jews against mingling with me, to make it impossible for me to feed them without the help of their own. It feels so weird to write "they" about Jews, instead of "we." I don't think I've talked like that since I was very, very young. But it's how I am feeling at the moment. I heard you, kashrut, I heard you. I'm not one of you, okay, okay. Hide your children, hide your men, ya'll need to be protected from me. I might snap up one of your men and take him back to America with me and raise a family away from rocket fire. This could happen. You're right to be worried about my shiksa wiles, you're right.

Major Ido

But while I was wallowing in that bitterness, Ido said to me, "Ariane, what are you doing on Sunday?" And when I said I didn't know, he said, "Because I'm getting a new rank in the army, and there's a little ceremony at my base, would you want to come?"

Of COURSE I wanted to come! Ido works for 8200, which is an elite branch of IDF intelligence, and outsiders normally can't go to the base, but he cleared me ahead of time so I got to go. I couldn't really take pictures, obviously, but it was really interesting.

Getting ready! And I helped him shine his shoes which made me feel important ^_^

The most interesting part was when we were passing some low buildings, and Batsheva said, "That was where Ido and I were working with the team last summer, trying to find those boys." I had no idea they'd worked on that, but I'm not surprised. It makes me wonder what else they're working on, but of course I can't know. Batsheva once told me, "If we do our jobs right, you'll never know what we do all day." 

Anyway, it was really great to see Ido get his new insignia and hear his commander talk about him (even though I only understood a little bit.) And to see the Brigadier-General giving Batsheva a nod because he used to be her boss. I hang out with fancy people ^_^.

Ido eats my cooking! And he's a major in the IDF! :D

It was really near to hear the ceremony in Hebrew and just have that momentary recollection that Jews were scattered over the globe and in the last 100 years or so gathered together in their historic homeland, founded a modern nation, created armed forces to defend itself, and resurrected and reformed and ancient language in which they now conduct intelligence missions and ceremonies and commercials for shampoo. This is such an interesting place and Israel's is such an interesting story.

Afterwards we celebrated with shots and danced around the living room

And at the end of the day, Pagan or not, a very Jewish foundation is paying me to live in Israel and develop myself as a leader this year, so... 

Overheard in Tel Aviv

Noam: So you're interested in working with soldiers with PTSD, right?

Ariane: Yeah!
Noam: I have two suggestions for you. First, you should visit this institute near Azrieli, which specializes in military psychology. Everybody who wants to be a psychologist for the army needs to go through there at some point, they could give you a lot of information.
Ariane: Wow, thanks, I'll check that out. And two?
Noam: Ibn Gavriol Street 54... best burgers. Amazing. There's always a long line, but you have to go, you'll love it.

Ariane: So you're glad you're out of the army?
YetAnotherDude: Totally. Yes.
Ariane: What makes you have such an emphatic answer?
YAD: Um... being in control of my body again. It's basically slavery, did you know? They own you. Did you know that technically, you can be penalized for getting a sunburn when you're in the army? For damaging army property.
Ariane: o_O

StillADifferentDude: I was supposed to go on Birthright once.
Ariane: Oh? What happened?
SADD: I was a platoon commander, of tanks. Anyway it was a month before my service ended, and my commander called me and said my unit was being deployed to Gaza.
Ariane: Oh O_O
SADD: Yeah, so in the middle of the night I had to wake my mother up. And I said, "Ima... don't panic, please. But I'm not going to Birthright in the morning, I'm going to Gaza instead."

This facebook post from Israel Defense Forces:

Sam and his friend Katie and I went to Jaffa, to Abu Hassan, which has arguably the best hummus in the world.

This is the beach literally 10 feet from the school where I volunteer

So I volunteer at a mostly Arab school in Jaffa, and the kids are amazing. They love to learn and they are very sweet and energetic and funny. Like this:

Ariane: Okay girls! What color is my shirt?

Girls: Your. Shirt. Is. Red.

Ariane: Very good! And what color are my boots?

Janat: Your. Boots. Are. Brown!

Ariane: Excellent. And what color is my hair?

Najwa: Your. hair. is. yellow. and. black.

Ariane: Black???

Najwa: *points to roots*

Ariane: No, we don't say that. It's yellow. Just yellow. My hair is yellow.

Also, Yahli continues to be wise...

Ariane: *Tells about deeply personal conundrum*

Yahli: Well you know what they say! If the dog is grey, it has some black in it...

Ariane: What does that mean?

Yahli: I just totally made that up. I don't know. But it sounds good, doesn't it?

Action shot of Ido and Batsheva making malawach... which is a delicious pancake thingy with an egg inside

The Labyrinth

The next seminar from my program was on Tel Aviv By Night... what happens in this glorious heap of a city after the sun sets. The first thing we did was take a tour of the Central Bus Station...

And it was AMAZING. 

"But Ariane," you might be thinking, "Why would you take a tour of a bus station? How is this bus station different from all other bus stations?"

I'm glad you asked this question, because the story of the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station is just what I wanted you to know.

The New Central Bus Station (CBS) is the second largest transportation hub in the entire world! Some stats:

-It covers 11 ACRES of land!

-It contains over 7 KILOMETERS of cooridors!

-There are no external windows, it lets in no natural light.

-There are no straight lines of sight. All floors, etc, are diagonals.

-There are 7 floors... and actually there are TWO 7th floors that are not at all connected to one another.

-It was intended to accomodate 100,000,000 people a day.

-It is designed to look like you're on an outside street inside... with street lights and stuff in doors. "A city under a roof" said architect Ram Karmi.

Much of it is now abandoned and closed off, so you need a guide to really see it, which we had!

Streetlights inside

Everything's twisty and diagonal and weird

Karmi's book of blueprints for the building is called "The Labyrinth", so he knew very well the monstrosity he was building. It was designed this way basically to lull people into a shopping stupor. You don't know what time it is, you don't know where you are, what floor you're on, what planet your'e on... so you just buy stuff.

But its intricacies and funding issues meant it took nearly 24 years to complete, meaning when it finally opened in the 90s, it was already a dated building. And the neighborhood was consumed by floods of illegal immigrants, mostly from Sudan, and is pretty blighted. 

Today the shops are a very bizarre mix indeed. There are hair salons, clothing and shoe stores, a Phillipino super market, a pet store, tech stores, clearly bootlegged stores, vast lingerie shops, one shop that is a restaurant/pawnshop/ AND grocery store, a library, a free STD testing clinic, 2 preschools for migrant children and asylum seekers... 

Stuff at an asian market... why are these eggs purple??

There are 1,400 shops in the station, and many more abandoned spaces. There were supposed to be busses going to all 7 floors, but there is only enough traffic to support 2 of the floors, so the others are empty. 

So why is this albatross of a transport hub still open? Why have they not destroyed it and built something cleaner, and easier and more reasonable?  There are 3 main reasons:

1) There are over 3,000 people who own pieces of the building, and they can't agree on anything

2) There was so much concrete used to build the thing that if they took it apart, it would take 4 YEARS to disassemble it without destroying the surrounding neighborhood... and then what would they do with all that concrete?

3) THE BATS (I'll get to this)

Here our guide explains the mysterious number system on all the shops:

First digit is the floor (4)

Second is the hallway number (4)

Last two are the shop number (05)

Thank God, I always get SO lost, this might help... a little.

Signage in the CBS is notoriously awful. Notable strangeness:

1) Okay so what happened to the fifth floor? Does it not exist?

2) It hasn't been possible to bus from TLV to Cairo for many, many years

This sign was literally hung the wrong way. It points at a wall. And no one bothered to turn it around, decades later. 

The signs were so wrong and so confusing that they just gave up and took most of them down, so you pretty much have to wander the abandoned hallways looking for where you're trying to go and hoping you stumble upon your bus.

I am good at finding the bus TO Jerusalem, but still whenever I arrive at the CBS I get lost. WHENEVER.

Tel Aviv Arts Council This Way! Really?!?

Curious outside architecture inside.

What am I to make of the fact that the air vents leave these marks...?

We stumbled upon some alternative theater group rehearsing in one of the abandoned areas

In order to get to the basement you have to cross this wall that looks rather like the West Bank security wall

This says "Do Not Enter", but of course, we entered

AND THEY GAVE US FLASH LIGHTS AND IT WAS LIKE I WAS ON AN EPISODE OF GHOST HUNTERS AND IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER.

THIS IS LITERALLY A SINK IN AN ABANDONED BASEMENT MEDICAL CLINIC.

THIS IS LITERALLY SOME CREEPY SHRINE SOMEBODY SET UP

WHY IS THIS HERE?!?

LITERALLY.

So you come around the other side, and you find... an abandoned cinemaplex. In the bus station. With 6 theaters! This is the box office. Or was.

This is where the concession stands were

A room lined with plastic garbage bags?? Why??

Because of all the concrete, the CBS is basically indestructible. So of course they used to station a unit of soldiers here just in case some horrible disaster befell Israel, there'd be some people left to protect the survivors. But the soldiers were really bored so they mostly drank beer and screened their own movies in one of the theaters.

This way to the nuclear fallout shelter! :D

It has huge creepy red crank-operated blast doors! :D

It's HUGE!

It was marked by Cheshire Cat, a graffiti artist who places grins in places he thinks need to be covered in street art. Like "Hey you! Paint here!"

And THIS is a door to the totally functional situation room, WITHIN the abandoned fallout shelter, WITHIN the abandoned floor of the blighted central bus station. Behind these doors are tons of advanced computers, maps, scanners, security protocols... you know, in case of the apocalypse.

In case you REALLY have to go on the way to the shelter

HERE BE BATS!

Okay. So. Behind this walled in space there is an enormous cavern that no one can go into anymore. It was supposed to be used for bus parking, but it was left empty, and bats moved in. Lots of bats. So many bats, and in such a unique combination of species, that the Israeli government declared this a NATURE PRESERVE. A nature preserve WITHIN the central bus station! It can't be torn down or violated by federal law, to protect the bats!

The original subterranean departures call, designed to be like an airport, so loved ones could stand on this balcony and wave goodbye to their loved ones below... who were taking intra-city busses to 10 blocks away.

These ramps led to the busses, like plane ramps. But people were too creeped out to line up in them so they'd skip the CBS and wait for the bus at the second stop, out on the street.

This busses were never on time, so they just covered up the time slots with tape.

Of course this is in the bus station!

Rehearsals of a Philippine Children's Dance Troop

And then... you go into this little oddity's shop... and go through the back door, and suddenly you're in...

A Yiddish museum! All the books (and there are over 50,000) are in Yiddish!

And there's a cool performance space!

I found this book beautiful

Prostitution

Then we basically took a guided tour of the red light districts and learned about human trafficking in Israel, which is a huge problem. It was really upsetting and difficult, so I'm just going to give some bullets.

Our guide was Ran Gavrieli, an amazing activist who is best known for his "Why I Stopped Watching Porn" TED talk (You must watch this. It's great.)

-When victims of human trafficking are 'rescued,' they're generally sent back to the countries they were kidnapped from... not given a visa to stay and prosecute their attackers.

-Traffickers generally jump bail and flee the country. Those who are sent to prison eventually benefit from public funds dedicated to reform prisoners, help them get educated, help them get a job post-prison... which is ironic, because there are no such government funds to rehabilitate former sex workers or victims of human trafficking.

-One area in South Tel Aviv, near the CBS, is known as the "Tolerance Zone" where pretty much the police will not go. Ran once saw three guys raping a girl in broad daylight here, though Ran and his friend interfered of course.  And the girl was a junky and wasn't even really aware of what was happening to her.

-Israel was ranked 3, on a 3 point scale in terms of human trafficking problems (3 being the worst). the US threatened to reduce national aid if they didn't work on this, so Israel instituted a few reforms that bumped them up to 2. Once the US continued their aid though, trafficking was basically ignored again.

-Ran pointed out the spectrum of prostitution by making the argument that in a marriage where the man brings the financial capabilities and the woman brings sex isn't so different.

-There is a line item in the financial package given to injured IDF soldiers to pay for sex (!!!!!!!!!)

-Ran feels that Israel's positive feelings about the military are a kind of Stockholm syndrome... that Israelis are suck in this situation, so they've learned to take pride in it, the way that some prostitutes claim to be 'empowered' by their sex work

Ran estimated that 60-70% of these apartments were used for prostitution

"Clubbing"

Our panel on the night life scene in Tel Aviv

Next we had a panel about Tel Aviv nightlife, manned by a professional party planner, a DJ, a dancer, and a drag queen. It was really interesting and they were so nice! My favorite quote:

"I'm in full drag, and we're a thousand people without shirts, and a rabbi came and lit Channukah candles for all of us. It was a moment, in heels, for me. A religious moment in heels."

Also this gem:

Her: "It's about the music"

Him: "I don't know, some people go out, not looking for music."

Her: "Lesbians, for example, they come out to sit and cry about their exes."

Then we all went to a club and drank and danced :).

And yes, that was also part of my program.

Self Respect

In the original story of the labyrinth, Ariadne gives Theseus a ball of string to take in with him so he can find his way out again. I think going into any experience... like say moving to a new country, or embarking on a new relationship, or starting a job... the ability to navigate it and maybe to get out again without being mauled by a minotaur depends on self respect and being anchored in yourself. I found this quote on self respect the other day and I really like it:

"To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we post- pone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves."

-Joan Didion