some Brooklyn folks at the Atlantic Antic street fair
the Brooklyn tornado!
murals near my house
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Pictures from Brooklyn
some Brooklyn folks at the Atlantic Antic street fair
the Brooklyn tornado!
murals near my house
Making Sense of Madness in New York
New York. Sometimes referred to as the ‘center of the universe’. I can almost understand that now, if that means the center point through which all peoples and creeds pass, collide, and become dizzy from the impact of such rampant diversity and disparity. It is so striking to me to suddenly realize that although I’ve traveled all over the world and opened myself up to many new ways of living, this is really the first time that I feel like I am living in such a uniquely diverse space. It’s ironic really because one of my major concerns about doing this program was moving into a house with 18 other young, upper middle class, socially conscious Jews, which seemed to me to be the promotion of an intentional lack of diversity. And in many ways that concern still holds true and it feels strange to live that way in this neighborhood and in this city. But as the program and house community builds upon itself, I am finding ways to value this structure both as a place of comfort in shared experience and as a safe place to experience jarring discomfort when our often more subtle differences become pronounced and at the center of sensitive discussions. But venturing beyond the walls of our home, wondering what from out there will permeate into the familiarity of in here, I find myself confronting real time examples of processes that I’ve mostly only theorized about and dabbled with in my journey towards becoming a self-proclaimed activist. Walking the streets in my neighborhood and riding subways up, down, and across the boroughs of New York City, my senses have become highly attuned to both the sheer volume of people that occupy this city, and the extent to which they are largely people of color. But this is markedly different from my experience living in Ghana, a place where I was also hyper aware of race because I felt my whiteness glowing and attracting eyes wherever I went. Here, however, I feel much less like an out of place rare commodity, and more like a member of an interconnected and representative world that we often don’t like to admit that we might actually inhabit.
So what am I actually talking about? I’m talking about my neighbors being a collection of folks from the African and West-Indian diaspora, the Black American community, young white hipsters, Latinos from all over the Americas, students, families of varying socio-economic statuses, elderly people, professionals, working class citizens, immigrants, new neighbors, long-time tenants, brownstone apartments, gentrified modernized buildings, houses with stoops, large subsidized apartments in disrepair, family-run food and drug stores, Baptist gospel churches, swanky wine and tapas bars, hole-in-the wall Laundromats, parks and playgrounds, bike lanes, trash on street corners, people on street corners, life. All this and many, many more snapshots that I decided not to list are just within the 1 mile radius around my house; my house of white Jews in their early-mid twenties talking about and engaging with urban poverty, trying to make sense of our role in perpetuating/combating it, and in that process also make sense of ourselves and the multiplicity of identities embedded in and occasionally seeping out of our very porous bodies.
I especially experience myself as a porous being because I think that somehow I have been gifted with a completely subconscious vibe that has always drawn strangers to approach me. Of course this “gift” has its downsides, but mostly it makes for great stories and learning moments. Perhaps this elusive vibe is just that outward expression of being porous, open to the whim of the world and inviting it to affect me, teach me, change me. This has played out in my time in NY thus far by strangers engaging me in conversation in those in between times, the pauses between the mad-rush of Manhattan at the end of a work day, the bit of silence amidst the competing noises of the sub-culture on the subway, the eyes turned upward in contrast to the forward-looking sharp linear pathways that New Yorkers tend to carve out despite diagonal urban planning.
On my first weekend in the neighborhood I set out on my own in search of a bike shop where I could buy a helmet and a lock for my new used bike which I bought in order to experience the beauty and chaos of riding across the Brooklyn Bridge to my office on Wall St. The day that I set out on this task was the day of the West-Indian parade, said to be one of the largest parades in the city. The parade itself was about a mile away but the festive sentiment seemed to have overflowed to the stretch of Fulton Street a few blocks from my house. The street was so alive with music and people milling about, chatting with neighbors, popping in and out of small local food joints, many of which offer home-cooked buffets of West-Indian, African, and Halal cuisine. I couldn’t help but smile at this scene. I was in such a good mood that the occasional cat-calls didn’t phase me, and by the time I reached Marcus Garvey boulevard and found the bike shop closed, perhaps indefinitely, I realized that I still had a thirst for exploring. Then I remembered my grandfather’s story about the street he grew up on changing its name from Sumner to Marcus Garvey, an appropriate change reflecting the demographic changes in the neighborhood. I figured I must be somewhere near the building, the site of countless stories of the family deli and my grandfather’s youth, and so I made a quick call to find out the cross street and set out to connect more tangibly to my roots. Walking through the Bed-Stuy area, I found it hard to imagine my grandfather living there, and I wanted to know more about how the area had transitioned to become the largest Black community in NYC and earn its reputation as a rough neighborhood where a woman like me shouldn’t wander. As I approached the intersection, I started to look up at the building that should have been the one I sought. I wasn’t totally sure it was the right one until a man approached me and asked if I was lost. I guess a white woman looking upwards is a confusing sight there. I told him what I was looking for and once he confirmed that there was a church on the ground floor, I knew that that was it because it matched the information my grandfather told me about the story of the building post-deli. The man, whose name I learned was Jerry, then told me that he’d lived in that area his entire life, 40 years. I stood with him a while as he gave me his account of the neighborhood, explaining to me that in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s it used to be a very beaten down and dangerous place to be at any time of day. Crime was rampant and neighborhood preservation was low on the priority list. He told me that in more recent years, however, things have really started to get better because small crime punishment became more severe which, he believes, effectively scared people into submission. Jerry walked and talked with me much of my way home but stopped and turned back several blocks before I reached my house, saying that he didn’t need to know where I lived but was just glad to talk to me. I was so grateful for him helping me connect some dots between my grandfather’s childhood in the neighborhood, the last 60+ years, and my recent arrival on the scene.
Another experience of random connection came to me when I sat on a bench around Penn Station, an area of Manhattan that I find particularly nauseating due to incessant crowds and the fervor of consumers ingesting both products and famed NY sights. To sit still in a place ridden with such sounds and movement is in and of itself a surreal experience. But then to sit, and find myself in conversation with a elderly woman who I assumed to be homeless and/or mentally unstable, just took that NY moment to a whole new level. This woman, Miss Maddy, sat next to me smoking, dripping snot out of her nose, and holding her giant teddy bear dressed in a shirt and a hat. As the wind picked up she instructed me to put on a sweater, and then take some vitamins…with a shot of alcohol on the side. She burst into a hearty laugh as she showed me her own personal stash of cognac, which she proudly bought at a discounted rate from a nearby drug store. Unprovoked, she then proceeded to tell me about various other articles of clothing that she had bought cheaply, both for herself and for the bear, who she spoke of as an animate object. I later learned that he was some sort of genius, already shaving and accepted to medical school abroad as a mere 8th grader! Throughout our talk she made reference to many different jobs that she held including NY police officer, Russian interpreter for the UN, attorney, freight handler at the docks, and more. Although much of what she said I didn’t fully believe, I listened genuinely and hoped that this woman was not alone in the world. So when she asked me to call her land lady/ sponsor in Delaware (where she said she lived) I gladly obliged, happy that I wasn’t the only one cared for her safety. She rambled and joked with me for a while, her stories getting increasingly jumbled and bizarre, and I just listened and thought about New York, the converging point of so much madness of the world.
In my 12th grade English class my teacher wrote this quote by Emily Dickinson on the board: “Much Madness Is Divinest Sense/ To the Discerning Eye”. I don’t remember what it meant to me then but as I recall this quote right now, in the context of my first month in NY, it seems strikingly relevant. In my training at work I’ve been bombarded with information about the interplay between government, banks, investors, property owners, and renters. I’ve also become painfully aware of the role that money and greed play in many social and/or professional interactions between peoples, whether incorporated or individualized. I’ll explain. I now work as a tenant organizer for an organization called the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB). Essentially, my job involves identifying multi-family low income housing buildings across New York City that are at risk of losing their affordability for a number of reasons. We find such buildings by browsing open public records from the city, state and federal housing agencies and picking out buildings that have high code violations or failed inspection scores, usually signs of building neglect and horrible disrepair. In more recent years, UHAB has spent much of its organizing capacity working with rent stabilized apartments that fell victim to the predatory practices in the housing market, characterized by overly high mortgages/purchase prices intended to jump start gentrification by getting long time low-income tenants out of neighborhoods like Harlem and the Bronx in hopes that higher paying tenants could move in and bring profits for landlords and investors who put their money into commercial mortgage backed securities. If you had to read that sentence twice because I used strange terms that a) you didn’t understand and b) you are surprised that I understand, please know that you are not alone in your confusion. This is exactly my point…I did that on purpose to both show the extent to which I feel out of my element surrounded by talk of mortgages and interest rates and overleveraging, and also to show how this complex lingo is employed in tragic greed-ridden processes that deeply affect people whose livelihoods are gambled away by banks and speculative investors who exploit the public’s inability to have a voice at their own dinner table, figuratively and literally. Maybe I’ll write another post soon in which I do my best to relay parts of the mountains of information I’ve learned about the housing scandal across the U.S, but for now I won’t make your heads spin too much and just explain how I fit into this picture. As a tenant organizer, I go into buildings that are in very bad conditions and are also often in foreclosure. In buildings bought by wealthy real estate investment corporations in the last few years, foreclosure is usually a result of the fact that the income from rent couldn’t support the expenses (maintenance and repairs) plus the high mortgage payments, so the owner just stopped putting any money into the building at all and let it fall into shambles, now at the whim of the bank to re-sell to yet another high bidding irresponsible landlord. So I go into these buildings, knock on all the doors to get the tenants’ version of the story and see what the real needs are. Then I organize meetings with the tenants, facilitate the formation of a tenants association, and then ask the tenants simply: “what do you want?” and “how can we work with you so that you can get that?” From there, we empower tenants to develop a strategized campaign to demand and ensure affordability and good livable building conditions, whether that be by holding banks accountable for bad lending, getting responsible non-profits to buy buildings at fair rates, help tenants to “go co-op” and own the building themselves, or anything else the tenants can dream up.
So where is the divine sense amidst the madness? Well I think that that is the question that I will keep asking myself and searching for with discerning eyes as I continue to make observations and analyses about intersections of life in New York. In the past month I’ve felt such vibrant mixtures of bliss, depression, frustration, excitement, confusion, anticipation, and a host of other sensations. And as I work towards channeling these thoughts and emotions into actions that I can be proud of, I hope I’ll start to find “sense” in scenarios that often seems too nonsensical to work with in my constant quest for change-making tools and allies. As New York keeps pulsing, I’ll keep learning. I can hardly wait!
So what am I actually talking about? I’m talking about my neighbors being a collection of folks from the African and West-Indian diaspora, the Black American community, young white hipsters, Latinos from all over the Americas, students, families of varying socio-economic statuses, elderly people, professionals, working class citizens, immigrants, new neighbors, long-time tenants, brownstone apartments, gentrified modernized buildings, houses with stoops, large subsidized apartments in disrepair, family-run food and drug stores, Baptist gospel churches, swanky wine and tapas bars, hole-in-the wall Laundromats, parks and playgrounds, bike lanes, trash on street corners, people on street corners, life. All this and many, many more snapshots that I decided not to list are just within the 1 mile radius around my house; my house of white Jews in their early-mid twenties talking about and engaging with urban poverty, trying to make sense of our role in perpetuating/combating it, and in that process also make sense of ourselves and the multiplicity of identities embedded in and occasionally seeping out of our very porous bodies.
I especially experience myself as a porous being because I think that somehow I have been gifted with a completely subconscious vibe that has always drawn strangers to approach me. Of course this “gift” has its downsides, but mostly it makes for great stories and learning moments. Perhaps this elusive vibe is just that outward expression of being porous, open to the whim of the world and inviting it to affect me, teach me, change me. This has played out in my time in NY thus far by strangers engaging me in conversation in those in between times, the pauses between the mad-rush of Manhattan at the end of a work day, the bit of silence amidst the competing noises of the sub-culture on the subway, the eyes turned upward in contrast to the forward-looking sharp linear pathways that New Yorkers tend to carve out despite diagonal urban planning.
On my first weekend in the neighborhood I set out on my own in search of a bike shop where I could buy a helmet and a lock for my new used bike which I bought in order to experience the beauty and chaos of riding across the Brooklyn Bridge to my office on Wall St. The day that I set out on this task was the day of the West-Indian parade, said to be one of the largest parades in the city. The parade itself was about a mile away but the festive sentiment seemed to have overflowed to the stretch of Fulton Street a few blocks from my house. The street was so alive with music and people milling about, chatting with neighbors, popping in and out of small local food joints, many of which offer home-cooked buffets of West-Indian, African, and Halal cuisine. I couldn’t help but smile at this scene. I was in such a good mood that the occasional cat-calls didn’t phase me, and by the time I reached Marcus Garvey boulevard and found the bike shop closed, perhaps indefinitely, I realized that I still had a thirst for exploring. Then I remembered my grandfather’s story about the street he grew up on changing its name from Sumner to Marcus Garvey, an appropriate change reflecting the demographic changes in the neighborhood. I figured I must be somewhere near the building, the site of countless stories of the family deli and my grandfather’s youth, and so I made a quick call to find out the cross street and set out to connect more tangibly to my roots. Walking through the Bed-Stuy area, I found it hard to imagine my grandfather living there, and I wanted to know more about how the area had transitioned to become the largest Black community in NYC and earn its reputation as a rough neighborhood where a woman like me shouldn’t wander. As I approached the intersection, I started to look up at the building that should have been the one I sought. I wasn’t totally sure it was the right one until a man approached me and asked if I was lost. I guess a white woman looking upwards is a confusing sight there. I told him what I was looking for and once he confirmed that there was a church on the ground floor, I knew that that was it because it matched the information my grandfather told me about the story of the building post-deli. The man, whose name I learned was Jerry, then told me that he’d lived in that area his entire life, 40 years. I stood with him a while as he gave me his account of the neighborhood, explaining to me that in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s it used to be a very beaten down and dangerous place to be at any time of day. Crime was rampant and neighborhood preservation was low on the priority list. He told me that in more recent years, however, things have really started to get better because small crime punishment became more severe which, he believes, effectively scared people into submission. Jerry walked and talked with me much of my way home but stopped and turned back several blocks before I reached my house, saying that he didn’t need to know where I lived but was just glad to talk to me. I was so grateful for him helping me connect some dots between my grandfather’s childhood in the neighborhood, the last 60+ years, and my recent arrival on the scene.
Another experience of random connection came to me when I sat on a bench around Penn Station, an area of Manhattan that I find particularly nauseating due to incessant crowds and the fervor of consumers ingesting both products and famed NY sights. To sit still in a place ridden with such sounds and movement is in and of itself a surreal experience. But then to sit, and find myself in conversation with a elderly woman who I assumed to be homeless and/or mentally unstable, just took that NY moment to a whole new level. This woman, Miss Maddy, sat next to me smoking, dripping snot out of her nose, and holding her giant teddy bear dressed in a shirt and a hat. As the wind picked up she instructed me to put on a sweater, and then take some vitamins…with a shot of alcohol on the side. She burst into a hearty laugh as she showed me her own personal stash of cognac, which she proudly bought at a discounted rate from a nearby drug store. Unprovoked, she then proceeded to tell me about various other articles of clothing that she had bought cheaply, both for herself and for the bear, who she spoke of as an animate object. I later learned that he was some sort of genius, already shaving and accepted to medical school abroad as a mere 8th grader! Throughout our talk she made reference to many different jobs that she held including NY police officer, Russian interpreter for the UN, attorney, freight handler at the docks, and more. Although much of what she said I didn’t fully believe, I listened genuinely and hoped that this woman was not alone in the world. So when she asked me to call her land lady/ sponsor in Delaware (where she said she lived) I gladly obliged, happy that I wasn’t the only one cared for her safety. She rambled and joked with me for a while, her stories getting increasingly jumbled and bizarre, and I just listened and thought about New York, the converging point of so much madness of the world.
In my 12th grade English class my teacher wrote this quote by Emily Dickinson on the board: “Much Madness Is Divinest Sense/ To the Discerning Eye”. I don’t remember what it meant to me then but as I recall this quote right now, in the context of my first month in NY, it seems strikingly relevant. In my training at work I’ve been bombarded with information about the interplay between government, banks, investors, property owners, and renters. I’ve also become painfully aware of the role that money and greed play in many social and/or professional interactions between peoples, whether incorporated or individualized. I’ll explain. I now work as a tenant organizer for an organization called the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB). Essentially, my job involves identifying multi-family low income housing buildings across New York City that are at risk of losing their affordability for a number of reasons. We find such buildings by browsing open public records from the city, state and federal housing agencies and picking out buildings that have high code violations or failed inspection scores, usually signs of building neglect and horrible disrepair. In more recent years, UHAB has spent much of its organizing capacity working with rent stabilized apartments that fell victim to the predatory practices in the housing market, characterized by overly high mortgages/purchase prices intended to jump start gentrification by getting long time low-income tenants out of neighborhoods like Harlem and the Bronx in hopes that higher paying tenants could move in and bring profits for landlords and investors who put their money into commercial mortgage backed securities. If you had to read that sentence twice because I used strange terms that a) you didn’t understand and b) you are surprised that I understand, please know that you are not alone in your confusion. This is exactly my point…I did that on purpose to both show the extent to which I feel out of my element surrounded by talk of mortgages and interest rates and overleveraging, and also to show how this complex lingo is employed in tragic greed-ridden processes that deeply affect people whose livelihoods are gambled away by banks and speculative investors who exploit the public’s inability to have a voice at their own dinner table, figuratively and literally. Maybe I’ll write another post soon in which I do my best to relay parts of the mountains of information I’ve learned about the housing scandal across the U.S, but for now I won’t make your heads spin too much and just explain how I fit into this picture. As a tenant organizer, I go into buildings that are in very bad conditions and are also often in foreclosure. In buildings bought by wealthy real estate investment corporations in the last few years, foreclosure is usually a result of the fact that the income from rent couldn’t support the expenses (maintenance and repairs) plus the high mortgage payments, so the owner just stopped putting any money into the building at all and let it fall into shambles, now at the whim of the bank to re-sell to yet another high bidding irresponsible landlord. So I go into these buildings, knock on all the doors to get the tenants’ version of the story and see what the real needs are. Then I organize meetings with the tenants, facilitate the formation of a tenants association, and then ask the tenants simply: “what do you want?” and “how can we work with you so that you can get that?” From there, we empower tenants to develop a strategized campaign to demand and ensure affordability and good livable building conditions, whether that be by holding banks accountable for bad lending, getting responsible non-profits to buy buildings at fair rates, help tenants to “go co-op” and own the building themselves, or anything else the tenants can dream up.
So where is the divine sense amidst the madness? Well I think that that is the question that I will keep asking myself and searching for with discerning eyes as I continue to make observations and analyses about intersections of life in New York. In the past month I’ve felt such vibrant mixtures of bliss, depression, frustration, excitement, confusion, anticipation, and a host of other sensations. And as I work towards channeling these thoughts and emotions into actions that I can be proud of, I hope I’ll start to find “sense” in scenarios that often seems too nonsensical to work with in my constant quest for change-making tools and allies. As New York keeps pulsing, I’ll keep learning. I can hardly wait!
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Hebron: from all angles
For the past three Saturdays I have attended the new wave of weekly Hebron protests in the Casbah (Old City). The protests are intended to disrupt army-accompanied settler tours that pass through the Casbah each week, and demand the re-opening of Shuhada Street and an end to the occupation of the city. Although for the past two weeks the settlers have changed the time of their tour to avoid encountering our protest, we decided to continue with the protests as planned to assert the Palestinians' right to move freely within their city. So, each week a group of between 50-70 Palestinians, Israelis, and Internationals gather in front of the gate which blocks entrance to Shuhada Street. We stand with signs in Arabic, Hebrew, and English and pass the megaphone around as different people lead the protesters in a series of call and response chants in all three languages. Some activists take the opportunity to give short impassioned speeches, sometimes by Israelis who speak directly to the soldiers and settlers peering down on us from the Beit Romano Yeshiva rooftop, saying that these unjust policies will not be carried out in our name. In contrast to the first week when the protest ended in a series of unwarranted arrests, the protests now conclude now with a march through the Casbah which is met by an onslaught of dirty water thrown down on us from the settlers' homes situated above the Palestinian shops. For the past two weeks there has been no direct confrontation with soldiers or settlers, but we always close with a promise that we will continue to protest every week until racism and separation are abolished in Hebron and all of Palestine.
This past week, just a few days after standing in solidarity with the Palestinians of Hebron, I decided to take a step that I believe very few political activists ever take. I put on a long skirt, tucked my dreadlocks away, and joined the settlers on their tour of the Jewish Community of Hebron. After having been to Hebron many times and heard the story of the Palestinians and the ex-soldiers of "Breaking the Silence" I figured it was time to come face to face with the settlers themselves and hear how they justify their presence in Hebron to the many thousands of Jews that they've taken on tours there. I came with the intention to listen, to observe, and to maybe understand their conviction. So on Wednesday morning I found myself sitting on a bullet proof bus with a group of 40 other American Jews about take a day-trip to Hebron, a city that I was assured by the tour guide is just like any other old city in Israel. Even before the tour had officially started, I already began to feel uncomfortable and almost teary eyed due to the realization that all the other tour participants really had no idea (and really didn't care that they didn't) about the world beyond this Jewish exclusivity. Little did I know that that this initial reaction of discomfort and sadness was to remain with me and only intensify throughout the course of the day.
Our first stop was the matriarch Rachel's tomb which is just outside/technically inside Bethlehem. To reach the tomb we drove through an unbelievably surreal corridor in the concrete wall that circumvents Bethlehem. Since Israelis are not allowed to enter Bethlehem, this access road, entirely surrounded by the wall, has been created for Jews to visit and pray at the tomb. As the tour guide told the story about a time when the grave was closed to Jewish access and how women from Hebron set a precedent by coming anyways and demanding to be let in until the government agreed to re-open the site to Jewish visitors, I realized that all this effort to keep people separate and relegated to only certain areas is futile because people will continue to find ways to be where they believe they ought to be, or at least struggle for that right with all of their being as I've seen with the Palestinians in Hebron. For some reason, being there only made me think more and more about how this land cannot be divided. Of course I don't mean undivided in the way that the settlers refer to Greater Israel, but rather that in that moment it just seemed so apparent to me that drawing up borders and erecting walls cannot actually lead to real justice or peace; they merely restrict essentials freedoms such as access and movement, and furthermore will never suppress the people's desire to return to areas that they have been barred from. Religious Jews will never give up their ancestral connection to and right to access these holy sites, and I don't believe that they should have to, but this privilege must come with the equal recognition of the Palestinian claims to this land and their legitimate right to live here and move about freely.
Loaded with these thoughts I got back on the bus headed to Hebron. I listened as the guide told the familiar story of Hebron that began 3700 years ago when Abraham laid down roots in the city and purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs as a burial site for his wife Sarah, and the forefathers and mothers that followed. Later, King David made Hebron the capital of his kingdom for 7 years before moving it to Jerusalem. The phrase that repeated itself throughout the tour was "this is where it all began", which later fused into the story of Jewish contiguity in Hebron, and finally the conclusion that the Jewish presence in Hebron will be eternal. When we arrived in Hebron we were greeted by our tour guide for the next leg of the journey, Rabbi Simcha Hochbaum, originally from New York but for the past 14 years he has made his home in the Hebron Jewish community. The tour started in Tel Rumeida, a hilltop overlooking the heart of the city of Hebron where a few of my Palestinian friends/colleagues live. The guide explained the way the city had been divided in the "Y Accords" which created H1 (80% of the city under Palestinian Authority control) and H2 (20% of the city under Israeli military control and Palestinian municipal control). He continually referred back to the 80/20 split to emphasize what he believed to be inequality and discrimination against the Jews who are not allowed to walk or drive in the majority of the city. In fact, after reading a pamphlet I picked up later in the tour which purports to give the "real facts…in contrast to the false anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda," I was expected to understand that Jews are only allowed to enter 3% of the municipal area; never mind that that 3% area was once the center of Palestinian social and economic life and the gateway to the rest of the city, and never mind that that statement is actually inaccurate because it is not Jews but Israelis that are prevented from entering H1 (according to the Oslo Agreement) and Israelis are in fact allowed to be anywhere in H2 (the 20% mentioned above). This important distinction between Jews and Israelis was intentionally blurred by the tour guide in order to stress his point that anti-Semitism is what lies at the root of all criticism towards the Hebron Jewish community. When, in reality, the disputes in Hebron are entirely political and not based on religious identity. Israeli soldiers patrol H2 constantly, practicing the official policy of "making their presence felt," and it is certainly felt as they are seen constantly peering down, guns at bay, into Palestinian neighborhoods from rooftops (sometimes Palestinian homes that have been taken over and converted into army posts) and pillboxes throughout the city. Of course, this is all information that I learned on the "Breaking the Silence" tour and was not dealt with in any capacity on the settler tour. The tour guide praised the soldiers for their incredible self-sacrifice, but the impression of the soldiers that I get, from starting directly into their eyes as they push my friends and I during protests and from the many testimonies that I've heard from members of "Breaking the Silence", is one of a group of painfully confused and uncomfortable 18-21 year olds who are stuck in positions of power and aggressiveness that throw their concept of right and wrong into a blender, leaving them hardened and numb.
Back on the tour, I was told that I would experience holy people in Hebron. The 1000 Jews that live there believe themselves to be the ones who have taken on the essential responsibility of carrying the eternal Jewish flame in Hebron in the name of our ancient historical connection to the city. Of course learning about and appreciating this history is important, but Hebron especially is a place that cannot be understood separately from its current political context. Referring to the 80% of Hebron that is under PA control as land that was "given away" and the remaining 20% as land that "unfortunately is shared with 15,000 Palestinians" is simply a discursive tactic to confuse the tour participants and make them forget that Hebron is (and has been) a city of several thousand Palestinians living under military occupation. Throughout the tour, the only time Palestinians are mentioned or even acknowledged as part of the story is when they are referenced as "unfriendly neighbors", murderers/terrorists, or hookah smoking couch potatoes. Furthermore, talking about the restrictions on further building and expansion in the settlement cannot simply be received as a baseless effort to discriminate against Jews, but rather must be situated in the context of the larger West Bank settlement issue, namely that the settlements are illegal under international law, some (especially Hebron) are notorious for violence and extremism, and they are a growing thorn in any attempt towards a peace agreement.
Perhaps the most interesting and telling part of the tour for me was when we went into the settlements themselves, which basically consist of just a few blocks of buildings that families have made into living spaces, synagogues, and a museum documenting the presence of the Jews in Hebron. In all my previous tours in Hebron I had never had the opportunity to actually go into their community so I was quite excited to step just a few more meters from where I had always stood, on the Shuhada "ghost street" and see how Hebron looks from this vantage point. On my other visits I was not allowed into the settlements because the large police escort that is mandated to accompany Breaking the Silence tours (supposedly to protect us from settler harassment and prevent friction) had placed strict restrictions on where we can go and when. But this time, with not a single police officer in sight, I found myself on the other side of barriers that I previously had only peeked into through cracks in walls and metal gates. The museum, located on the ground floor of the former Beit Hadassah hospital, was quite impressive and most importantly, effective in conveying the message that Jewish groups respond to best: the message of ultimate victimhood. As I looked at the pictures on the wall depicting the infamous massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929, I felt a sort of déjà vu sensation and realized that the story being told was the nearly the same story that I had heard countless times growing up and visiting holocaust museums. It was the fear-mongering story of anti-Semitism, complete with the moral imperative "never again." And in that moment, instead of being able to let myself grieve for all the bloodshed in Hebron, I found myself shaken by the realization that this story is entirely believable for a Jewish American audience and, had I not been exposed to other credible accounts of Hebron, I too could come away from this tour thinking that the settlers really are the ones in need of my sympathy. But then I remember the accounts of settler abuse and complete disrespect for Palestinian human and civil rights and I start to feel ill. I understand that this mentality does not exist in a vacuum, but rather is steeped in real and troubling consequences that play out on the ground, such as the closure of roads and shops, the disproportionate army presence, the lawlessness of the settlers, and the will of the Israeli government to continue supporting the settlers perhaps for fear of being perceived as part of the cycle of Jewish persecution. I think about the Jewish residents of Hebron pre-1929 who once lived relatively peacefully alongside their Palestinian neighbors, unlike the settlers of today who make every effort to create a situation in which Palestinians essentially cease to exist. I happen to know that some of the survivors of the 1929 massacre or descendents of the former Hebron Jewish community have actually disassociated themselves with the Hebron settlers and do not support their efforts to reclaim the city on their behalf. Yet this Jewish lineage continues to justify the settlers' presence and forceful methods of establishing themselves in the city.
The tour continued with a visit to the guide's home, the old Sephardic temple, and a final stop at the Tomb of the Patriarchs where we were given time for prayer. After spending the day in what often felt like an alternate universe I didn't feel quite able to ascribe the proper holiness to the site and submit myself to any prayers aside from my deep yearning for universal empathy and for at least some of their tour participants to feel confused enough to then seek more information, step outside of their frame of reference, and think beyond the simplistic rhetoric of pamphlets espousing hatred and resentment. I went on this tour out of genuine curiosity and a desire to understand a people that are often (in my circles) written off as crazy and irrational. But after participating on the tour, it wasn't so much what they said that troubled me, but rather they way that the story fits into a worldview based in fear that is held by so many Jews and that has only resulted in generations of bitterness and divisiveness. I want to believe that Hebron can again live up to its name (meaning friendship), but this tour gave me no such illusion.
This past week, just a few days after standing in solidarity with the Palestinians of Hebron, I decided to take a step that I believe very few political activists ever take. I put on a long skirt, tucked my dreadlocks away, and joined the settlers on their tour of the Jewish Community of Hebron. After having been to Hebron many times and heard the story of the Palestinians and the ex-soldiers of "Breaking the Silence" I figured it was time to come face to face with the settlers themselves and hear how they justify their presence in Hebron to the many thousands of Jews that they've taken on tours there. I came with the intention to listen, to observe, and to maybe understand their conviction. So on Wednesday morning I found myself sitting on a bullet proof bus with a group of 40 other American Jews about take a day-trip to Hebron, a city that I was assured by the tour guide is just like any other old city in Israel. Even before the tour had officially started, I already began to feel uncomfortable and almost teary eyed due to the realization that all the other tour participants really had no idea (and really didn't care that they didn't) about the world beyond this Jewish exclusivity. Little did I know that that this initial reaction of discomfort and sadness was to remain with me and only intensify throughout the course of the day.
Our first stop was the matriarch Rachel's tomb which is just outside/technically inside Bethlehem. To reach the tomb we drove through an unbelievably surreal corridor in the concrete wall that circumvents Bethlehem. Since Israelis are not allowed to enter Bethlehem, this access road, entirely surrounded by the wall, has been created for Jews to visit and pray at the tomb. As the tour guide told the story about a time when the grave was closed to Jewish access and how women from Hebron set a precedent by coming anyways and demanding to be let in until the government agreed to re-open the site to Jewish visitors, I realized that all this effort to keep people separate and relegated to only certain areas is futile because people will continue to find ways to be where they believe they ought to be, or at least struggle for that right with all of their being as I've seen with the Palestinians in Hebron. For some reason, being there only made me think more and more about how this land cannot be divided. Of course I don't mean undivided in the way that the settlers refer to Greater Israel, but rather that in that moment it just seemed so apparent to me that drawing up borders and erecting walls cannot actually lead to real justice or peace; they merely restrict essentials freedoms such as access and movement, and furthermore will never suppress the people's desire to return to areas that they have been barred from. Religious Jews will never give up their ancestral connection to and right to access these holy sites, and I don't believe that they should have to, but this privilege must come with the equal recognition of the Palestinian claims to this land and their legitimate right to live here and move about freely.
Loaded with these thoughts I got back on the bus headed to Hebron. I listened as the guide told the familiar story of Hebron that began 3700 years ago when Abraham laid down roots in the city and purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs as a burial site for his wife Sarah, and the forefathers and mothers that followed. Later, King David made Hebron the capital of his kingdom for 7 years before moving it to Jerusalem. The phrase that repeated itself throughout the tour was "this is where it all began", which later fused into the story of Jewish contiguity in Hebron, and finally the conclusion that the Jewish presence in Hebron will be eternal. When we arrived in Hebron we were greeted by our tour guide for the next leg of the journey, Rabbi Simcha Hochbaum, originally from New York but for the past 14 years he has made his home in the Hebron Jewish community. The tour started in Tel Rumeida, a hilltop overlooking the heart of the city of Hebron where a few of my Palestinian friends/colleagues live. The guide explained the way the city had been divided in the "Y Accords" which created H1 (80% of the city under Palestinian Authority control) and H2 (20% of the city under Israeli military control and Palestinian municipal control). He continually referred back to the 80/20 split to emphasize what he believed to be inequality and discrimination against the Jews who are not allowed to walk or drive in the majority of the city. In fact, after reading a pamphlet I picked up later in the tour which purports to give the "real facts…in contrast to the false anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda," I was expected to understand that Jews are only allowed to enter 3% of the municipal area; never mind that that 3% area was once the center of Palestinian social and economic life and the gateway to the rest of the city, and never mind that that statement is actually inaccurate because it is not Jews but Israelis that are prevented from entering H1 (according to the Oslo Agreement) and Israelis are in fact allowed to be anywhere in H2 (the 20% mentioned above). This important distinction between Jews and Israelis was intentionally blurred by the tour guide in order to stress his point that anti-Semitism is what lies at the root of all criticism towards the Hebron Jewish community. When, in reality, the disputes in Hebron are entirely political and not based on religious identity. Israeli soldiers patrol H2 constantly, practicing the official policy of "making their presence felt," and it is certainly felt as they are seen constantly peering down, guns at bay, into Palestinian neighborhoods from rooftops (sometimes Palestinian homes that have been taken over and converted into army posts) and pillboxes throughout the city. Of course, this is all information that I learned on the "Breaking the Silence" tour and was not dealt with in any capacity on the settler tour. The tour guide praised the soldiers for their incredible self-sacrifice, but the impression of the soldiers that I get, from starting directly into their eyes as they push my friends and I during protests and from the many testimonies that I've heard from members of "Breaking the Silence", is one of a group of painfully confused and uncomfortable 18-21 year olds who are stuck in positions of power and aggressiveness that throw their concept of right and wrong into a blender, leaving them hardened and numb.
Back on the tour, I was told that I would experience holy people in Hebron. The 1000 Jews that live there believe themselves to be the ones who have taken on the essential responsibility of carrying the eternal Jewish flame in Hebron in the name of our ancient historical connection to the city. Of course learning about and appreciating this history is important, but Hebron especially is a place that cannot be understood separately from its current political context. Referring to the 80% of Hebron that is under PA control as land that was "given away" and the remaining 20% as land that "unfortunately is shared with 15,000 Palestinians" is simply a discursive tactic to confuse the tour participants and make them forget that Hebron is (and has been) a city of several thousand Palestinians living under military occupation. Throughout the tour, the only time Palestinians are mentioned or even acknowledged as part of the story is when they are referenced as "unfriendly neighbors", murderers/terrorists, or hookah smoking couch potatoes. Furthermore, talking about the restrictions on further building and expansion in the settlement cannot simply be received as a baseless effort to discriminate against Jews, but rather must be situated in the context of the larger West Bank settlement issue, namely that the settlements are illegal under international law, some (especially Hebron) are notorious for violence and extremism, and they are a growing thorn in any attempt towards a peace agreement.
Perhaps the most interesting and telling part of the tour for me was when we went into the settlements themselves, which basically consist of just a few blocks of buildings that families have made into living spaces, synagogues, and a museum documenting the presence of the Jews in Hebron. In all my previous tours in Hebron I had never had the opportunity to actually go into their community so I was quite excited to step just a few more meters from where I had always stood, on the Shuhada "ghost street" and see how Hebron looks from this vantage point. On my other visits I was not allowed into the settlements because the large police escort that is mandated to accompany Breaking the Silence tours (supposedly to protect us from settler harassment and prevent friction) had placed strict restrictions on where we can go and when. But this time, with not a single police officer in sight, I found myself on the other side of barriers that I previously had only peeked into through cracks in walls and metal gates. The museum, located on the ground floor of the former Beit Hadassah hospital, was quite impressive and most importantly, effective in conveying the message that Jewish groups respond to best: the message of ultimate victimhood. As I looked at the pictures on the wall depicting the infamous massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929, I felt a sort of déjà vu sensation and realized that the story being told was the nearly the same story that I had heard countless times growing up and visiting holocaust museums. It was the fear-mongering story of anti-Semitism, complete with the moral imperative "never again." And in that moment, instead of being able to let myself grieve for all the bloodshed in Hebron, I found myself shaken by the realization that this story is entirely believable for a Jewish American audience and, had I not been exposed to other credible accounts of Hebron, I too could come away from this tour thinking that the settlers really are the ones in need of my sympathy. But then I remember the accounts of settler abuse and complete disrespect for Palestinian human and civil rights and I start to feel ill. I understand that this mentality does not exist in a vacuum, but rather is steeped in real and troubling consequences that play out on the ground, such as the closure of roads and shops, the disproportionate army presence, the lawlessness of the settlers, and the will of the Israeli government to continue supporting the settlers perhaps for fear of being perceived as part of the cycle of Jewish persecution. I think about the Jewish residents of Hebron pre-1929 who once lived relatively peacefully alongside their Palestinian neighbors, unlike the settlers of today who make every effort to create a situation in which Palestinians essentially cease to exist. I happen to know that some of the survivors of the 1929 massacre or descendents of the former Hebron Jewish community have actually disassociated themselves with the Hebron settlers and do not support their efforts to reclaim the city on their behalf. Yet this Jewish lineage continues to justify the settlers' presence and forceful methods of establishing themselves in the city.
The tour continued with a visit to the guide's home, the old Sephardic temple, and a final stop at the Tomb of the Patriarchs where we were given time for prayer. After spending the day in what often felt like an alternate universe I didn't feel quite able to ascribe the proper holiness to the site and submit myself to any prayers aside from my deep yearning for universal empathy and for at least some of their tour participants to feel confused enough to then seek more information, step outside of their frame of reference, and think beyond the simplistic rhetoric of pamphlets espousing hatred and resentment. I went on this tour out of genuine curiosity and a desire to understand a people that are often (in my circles) written off as crazy and irrational. But after participating on the tour, it wasn't so much what they said that troubled me, but rather they way that the story fits into a worldview based in fear that is held by so many Jews and that has only resulted in generations of bitterness and divisiveness. I want to believe that Hebron can again live up to its name (meaning friendship), but this tour gave me no such illusion.
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