Jenin, Jenin…
My route through the checkpoint to Jenin was surprisingly quick – much faster than the previous occasion, and punctuated only by the sarcastic “if you DO want to go to Jenin…” from the security guard as I tried to find my way out of the terminal. I had reached the terminal by bus, sitting [...]

If I’m not going to blog, then…

Though the blogging has slowed to a trickle (which I’d credit to this double life going on physically between the kibbutz-based program and the family I’m staying with and more generally with the political and cultural perspectives), I’m still reading a lot on the Middle East and conflict studies through the assorted blogosphere, and sharing [...]

Israel/Palestine

I have excuse not to ratchet up the blogging – I have both interesting photos to post, and experiences to report…
For a start, last week:
Israeli Independence Day (as known as النكبة , the Catastrophe) fell on Wednesday, though starting at dusk the night before, as per Jewish tradition. We spent the previous day, Tuesday (which [...]

Schlinder’s List, Sufi music, and Psalms

So I have a camera again, and am back from Jordan.

Today is Holocaust (שואה; كارثة) Remembrance Day, so we sat down for an hour with one of the older residents of the kibbutz to hear his story. Aged 83, Zechariah was 13 in 1939 when his life in Poland in a religious Jewish family was [...]

Catching up (part 1 of many)

I’ve been in and out of internet communication over the past few weeks, spending my time out of classes with a family in Ar’ara (an Arab Israeli town 10 minutes east from us on the main road), as well as the past few days on weekend two of a leadership program in Jerusalem. Life is [...]

I write this sitting and intermittently checking how Carolina (our basketball team) is getting on against Duke… And I guess I have a lot to reflect on. Today we were in Dalit El-Carmel, a Druze village about half an hour away. The Druze are a fascinating lot – secret religion, strict rules for marriage, and [...]

Jerusalem cont’d…

So the past few weeks haven’t exactly been empty – I’ve been to Jerusalem (twice), Zippori and Bait She’arim (capital and mausoleum for c. 200 AD Jewry), a Circassian village, a Sufi mosque in Sakhnin, as well as the regular Arabic and Hebrew classes. Excuses aside, I think it would be fair to say that [...]

Under the skin

Inside out – the past week was rather enlightening, in terms of looking more deeply at different perspectives: the half day we spent in Ein Hudh, a displaced Arab community in sight of the homes they been forced to flee; the time spent in the Artist’s Colony set up in those forbidden homes; the time [...]

slowly slowly…

Three weeks in, and I’m conscious that I’m not writing much in the way of my thoughts – it’s more out of confusion than anything else. The language courses are marching steadily onward, Hebrew especially, where I’ve gone from looking at the script as meaningless doodles to understanding and being able to [...]

Settling in, Barkai so far

So I’ve been in Israel almost two full weeks. A lot less going and seeing, and a lot more reading and thinking, than the average travel excursion, but that’s certainly not a negative assessment. I spent the weekend in the northern port city of Haifa, once again fortunate to have generous and welcoming local hosts. [...]