A simple question

Eich lishaeyr ben adam bechol habalagan hazeh?

Bereishit bara Elokim...the G?d of creation

Its amazing how relatively early on in their lives people produce work that echoes the themes they will keep on exploring....how prescient these works are, how the non-time bound essence already works through the adolescent body. Here are three works by three friends of mine, all pure and beautiful souls who have all gone on to achieve and be greatness in their own way, and who have all fulfilled their original promise. All of them were created at around age 15 or 16, at the time of the great flowering.

The image above is by Porat Jacobson, a talented artist who has long walked his own path with courage, dignity, and sensitivity. As teenagers he rode to me on his bike and expose me for the first time to the study of mishna. He had a seminal influence on my life. On the surface we haven't spoken to each other for years but in my heart I love him.

The next piece is by Adrian Perkel, now one of the most respected therapists in South Africa. This early sample of his writing taken from the King David School Magazine of 1979 again seems to echo in so many ways the twists and turns of his subsequent journey. To make the image large enough to read, simply click on it.

The third item is a delicate sketch by, I believe Sharmaine Krengel, who is now called Shimona Tzukernik. You can visit her webpage on http://www.shimona.org/home.html

Returning to the path

In the post war western diaspora, some people have lost the way; as they have become more affluent they have spent their money on displaying that affluence, with unecessarily elaborate houses and cars, with ostentatious bar-mitzvah clebrations; with a linking of self-esteem to the "right" things instead of a much more fundamental empowering of self as valuable with or without; worse still we have all been complicit in admiring and venerating community members who are capable of mounting the biggest displays of ostentation or who have accumulated the greates financial worth; and as such we have departed from a fundamental precept as outlined by one of the Hebrew prophets:

Micah 6:8 "....and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love loving mercy, and to walk modestly with your God? The Hebrew is "lehatzniah lechet, which means to hide, to be discreet, to not flaunt what you have. Although the phrase does not directly imply how much one may have - the two earlier phrases - to do justice and to love mercy - imply that the accumulation of resources that is not for the aim of being of service to life may not see ultimate blessing; but certainly when we see the supposed symbols of success - the unecessarily large 4 X 4's, the ocean cruises etc etc.....we should recall that these successes may be built upon multiple small acts of selfishness and self interest (where the self is understood very narrowly) and not be overly impressed by them...

Anxiety 3:30am

At 3:30 am in the morning I wake up
sweating and regretting
a 45 year old who'se supposed to be a man
and have it all handled
a week of zoloft has made me dizzy and light headed
what will become of us
what will become of me?
I make myself a snack of olives and feta and salsa on matzah
(its Pesach), and read a book to calm myself and take my
thoughts away from the anxiety
until my eyes grow heavy and I can crawl back into my womb bed
how many others are there out there like me
suffering in private and plodding on in public
how can we imagine a different life for ourself?

(and yet I've done well....)

sometimes people seem so self sufficient
so wrapped up in their lives
their familes
I rarely felt complete unto myself
always searching for other molecules to connect to
in commune like structures
and this instability
is not allayed by "having"my own family
where is strength and how do I get into relationship with it?
how can I stop gazing at lit windows
as if only those who move behind them have warmth and life

how to resist commodification
when even resistance is commodified
and commodifies?

Hora'ah - observations on teaching

School a week before vacation
staff and students
thoroughly sick of one another
can already smell it in the air
they sniff at it greedily
with engorged nostrils
and continue to pretend
to learn and teach

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My blog – just like some of my classroom experience – seems to be a lot about talking to myself.

Sometimes aiming to teach just two or three students in each class can be a valuable technique – and by rotating who those two or three students are the entire class can be reached that way across a month or term.

What I am discovering at school is the enormous freedom that comes with compromise ...so things are not perfect, but they were never going to be so anyway, and in giving up that pretense, there is great relief

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Elana Rosin: The administrivia we have to deal with - how will lap top usage impact in the long term, when children can hardly even write their names legibly, never mind the classroom management challenges these infernal machines create
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The easier it is to teach someone, the less impact you can make on them. From the greatest opposition comes the greatest transition.
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The pigeons at Emanuel play a very important role in the school's eco-system. They eat all the popcorn, bits of pasta, bread crumbs, mashed fruit etc etc that the kids leave on the playgrounds after lunch.
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the biggest problem facing any over resourced school such as SCEGS or Cranbrook or Emanuel is the over abundance of information, too much information available too easily, with no process over time that makes it significant (instead of excavating and connevting the bits together its all habded on a plate) does it not trivialise, the possible spoonfeeding, the lack of taking responsibility) - subscriptions to millions of thing no one even knows about or has time to read, and ridiculous ways of pushing content electronically to students when they are sitting right in front of you in the class - and so the disconnect widens.
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Ani kevar mitgageya le yeladim
shelifnei shvuayim lo ratziti lachshov aleyhem
ki im hapreydah
lo nuchal lehaamik et hadoo siach beyneynu

yesh po eyze hefsed
eyze fisfus
eyze kishalon
shelahem vesheli
aval beikar
sheli

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Lord give me the courage
to take risks in the classroom
so that lessons are authentic
and meaningful
let the students be my wings
and let me be theirs
so that together we visit
new places
and reveal the ever new
in what had been discarded
as old

Visualisations

Instead of seeing myself as a lamb on the spit
skewered and slowly roasted
or a bear on a chain to be taunted by the crowd
or a target for them to shoot their arrows at
I could see myself as a dolphin herding salmon
or a sheep dog knipping at the heels of sheep
or a trampoline from which everything bounces back
or a fog into which everything melts
or a giant heart
kadoom kadoom

Here are some other teachers responses to how they see their role:

In no particular order (luckily) and getting more poetic etc:

Cheerleader, drill sergeant, mother, social worker, circus ring master, lecturer, stand up comedian (not that I am funny but you feel like you have to perform!), magician, gliding calm swan with legs paddling furiously to get somewhere, bridge, cushion, lighthouse. (Sarah de Wilt)

Nathan Eldred

Notes on my garden-to-be

I don't have a thriving garden (we live in a flat, and I don't seem to have the time even to look after a herb window box) but I hope to have one someday. (When I was 25 I wanted to write a great novel. I haven't. When I was 35 I wanted to write and direct a moving and meaningful feature film by the time I reached 40. I didn't. Now that I'm 45 I hope to have a hectare or two to farm by the time I'm 50...)

There is something enormously therapeutic about gardening and growing your own food, especially when you don't have to, i.e. when your livelihood and survival are not dependent on a crop yield. And there is also something appealing about eventually turning a hobby into a second, substantial, income stream, perhaps by having a garden where I can grow niche organic vegetables, flowers, or herbs.

Growing vegetables in a non industrial way has always seemed to me a very "pure" occupation, one that causes little suffering and can bring life to both producer and consumer. Like the potter, the dedicated teacher, the craftperson who pours themselves into their work, the doctor who aims to consider the entire patient, growing vegetables can really become love in action. Perhaps I romanticise them, but it seems to me that working with plants, gardens and gardening can have a redemptive effect, making the burden of though and memory lighter, like a mikva does. I hope one day to merit this....

In the meantime I look at photographs of gardens and get filled with a yearning to be earning my living in ways other than I do now that threatens to explode my chest... not tha teaching isn't a form of gardening, but as of yet my fingers don't seem to be so green at it

You can watch a soothing programme on gardening every Sunday and visit its website now

http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/

Hallevai
that the idea of a garden
and all that it represents
takes root and flowers
in my Self and those who surround me
ken ratzon yehe

Hallevai = if only
ken ratzon yehe = may it be the will of That which determines the way things are

Chapter 2: Lessons from lettuce (to be continued, G?d willing)

Gaza 1987 - The Flag

Dangling from the power lines, with a stone attached to it by a string, it fluttered in the hot dirty wind which came in from the sea. At that height, and in the gathering Gazan dusk, it was almost impossible to make out the red, green, and black of the Palestinian flag. The three jeeps screeched to a halt, and several soldiers jumped out. Gavriel remained seated next to the radio.
“Come here" said Dror, motioning to three youths who lounged against a crumbling wall.
The youths came over, smiling and apparently unafraid.
"Give me your ID”, said Shalom.
One of the teenagers, who wore brown polyester bellbottoms and a striped shirt, handed over his identity document. The others followed suite. Only the fourth, with a light moustache shadowing his upper lip, jeans several sizes too large and whose feet, in plastic Adidas sandals, had thick callused heels, hung back. He was holding a dustbin lid.
"Put that down" snapped Erez, the Mem mem . Then he gave them their assignment.
"We don't speek Hebrew", said the moustache, "don't understand."
Erez ignored him.
"The sooner you finish, the sooner you get your IDs back and go home."
"Its impossible", said the youth in the polyester pants, his Hebrew thickly accented.
“There's no such thing as impossible”, said Erez, as if he were lecturing a group of new recruits. "Yallah, ibshi."
The youths began a lively and animated discussion. Then they split up, and reappeared ten minutes later with a stone and a rope tied around it.
"Fat lot of good that will do" said Moti
"Rosh Aravi" said Shalom, whose own head, like others in the unit, was shaved bald.
The Arabs began throwing the stone at the cables, but each time it fell short, and returned to earth followed by the long snake attached to it. It wasn't clear what they planned to do if they did get the rope over.
The soldiers stood nonchalantly, leaning against the jeeps, and watched the youths. Shimon kept an eye on the rooftops and Nelson watched the surrounding alleys, just in case an unpleasant surprise would emerge from one of them. Not for nothing had they called this road "Rechov HaHaftaot - Surprise Street." It was always something different. One day a roadblock of burning tires and scrap metal. The next a hail of stones from behind the UN school. And once a Molotov cocktail which bounced of the jeep and burst harmlessly into flames.
The youths appeared to be enjoying themselves. They smiled and laughed and took turns to throw the stone. It was now so dark you couldn't see its flight at all. Only moustache didn't participate in the general frivolity. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, his lips closed and downturned, his eyes on the ground where he kicked at an empty can.
Motti beckoned to him.
What's your name ?"
"Osman"
"Well Osman" said Motti, speaking very softly and gently, "didn't they teach you at school to help your friends ?"
Motti put a brotherly arm around moustache's shoulders, and led him a few paces aside. Then he suddenly slapped the youth across the cheek, twice, hard enough that Shalom, who was digging around in the back of a jeep twenty meters away, heard, looked up and smiled. Moustache rejoined his friends, aided by the kick Motti delivered to his sparse buttocks.
By now the Arabs had grown tired of the stone and were deep in discussion again. They fell quite as bellbottoms, with gesticulations and a thick guttural flow of words, expounded on something. This speech was responded to with more passionate debate.
"I'm getting sick of this" said Shalom. Thirty five minutes had already passed.
One of the jeeps, with much revving and screeching of tires, shot off down the alley. It stopped after two blocks, next to a heavy Mercedes Benz truck, of the sort seen all over Gaza. On its orange bonnet a large eagle had been painted, wings outstretched and talons extended. The truck was parked next to a tiny shop from which the delicious smell of shishlik on the fire emanated, temporarily overpowering the rancid smells from the open drain and garbage in the street. A group of men sat in the shop, smoking and playing shesh besh.
"Whose truck is it" , asked Shalom
"Menfadlik", said one of the men, "Pleez, you speek Arrab?”
"I want the truck owner" said Shalom in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic.
"Lo mevin" said another of the seated men.
"Does no one here speak Hebrew ?"
Silence.
Shalom pointed at the truck, put his hands around an imaginary steering wheel and played with an imaginary gear lever.
Silence. Blank uncomprehending gazes
Dror intervened.
"Tell me who owns the truck or we'll smash the lights. After that we'll start on the mirrors and windscreen."
Silence. One of the men, wearing an old Israeli army parka, perhaps in his late twenties, looked up and his brown eyes momentarily flashed hatred and resentment before they turned down again.
"Beseder" (all right), said Dror, and went outside. Then there was a crack as he broke the rear brake light with his fibreglass truncheon.
"Stop", said the man in the parka, in fluent Hebrew, "what do you want with my truck ?"
"Just to help some friends of yours. Don't worry, you'll be back eating your supper" - Dror looked at his watch which read 6:30 - "in half an hour."
The truck driver reluctantly stood up, went outside, and after various explanations and negotiations, climbed up into the cab of the Mercedes, which started with a low rumble. He followed the jeep back to the cross roads, and parked it there. He wasn't happy and smiling like the youths. It was the middle of supper, he had a family, and he would be rising early the next morning, at 3:30AM, when the Muezzin called the faithful.
He shouted at the youths and from this flood of Arabic a new idea emerged. The youths tied several wooden planks together with bits of rope, steel wire, anything. On the end of this leaning wooden tower went an oily peace of cloth the truck driver produced from the cabin. They poured petrol (supplied from a jerrycan on one of the jeeps) onto the cloth and set it alight.
"Jewish-Moslim co-operation in Gaza" thought Gavriel, watching from the side.
Bellbottom climbed up onto the roof of the cabin, and another youth handed him the wooden contraption. Bellbottoms made several awkward swipes with the three meter long rod, but it still fell half a meter short. After a few more ineffectual passes the cloth had burnt away and the flag of Palestine still flew proudly, if invisibly, in the Gazan night.
"They should have checked out the height first" said Shalom, "what can you do? Arabs.”
"Debilim," said Dror. Retards.
"They're drawing it out deliberately", said Gavriel softly, "why shouldn't they ?"
Another youth climbed on the cabin, this time with an even longer construction, and another burning cloth, and this would have reached the flag had the top pole not fallen off - it seems they hadn't tied it very solidly - directly on top of the youth who yelled and scrambled of the cabin to avoid the flaming cloth.
"That's it", said Erez. "Get the rest of their identity documents."
The soldiers gathered the identity documents of those who had not yet surrendered them.
"Take your time", he addressed the Arabs, "we're in no hurry. But you get these back only when the flag is down, or burnt, or whatever."
Erez knew they would finish the job. Without an ID a Palestinian couldn't get into Israel, where most of them worked. In addition, if they couldn't produce it for a passing patrol they might be taken for interrogation.
"Right, we're out of here" said Erez, climbing into the jeep next to his driver.
The jeeps roared off, down Surprise Street, and into Salach aDin Street. Gavriel sat at the back of the last jeep, in the cramped space between the radio, an extra spare wheel, a 20 litre jerrycan, the remains of lunch picked up from one of the rooftop lookouts who did 8 hour shifts, and the box full of rubber grenades, tear gas cylinders and 'tamponim' as the soldiers called the non lethal slugs fired from a tube which screwed onto the end of their rifles. He sat there, the only one with his perspex visor down, holding onto the roll bar so as not to fly off at the bumps.
They continued down the tortuous allies ripe with rotting smells, past the big central 'square' where the mosque stood. Fallen lampposts lay next to piles of uncollected garbage. Brazen rats scuttled from pile to pile. They went on, towards the sea road, and drove past the little fishing boats.
"Slow down here" said Erez when they got near the blue painted wall of the other UN school. The jeeps crawled slowly forward, about fifteen metres between them. But it was unlikely there would be stones at night.
"Let's head for the Garage", suggested Motti.
At night the jeeps would usually do a patrol or two, and then park in a local garage to wait out their shift in comfort and safety. Someone would turn on a transistor radio, someone else would open a packet of sunflower seeds. They would sit there, spitting out the shells, talking, smoking, waiting for the night to pass. Gavriel, who was from Chile, would listen to Sting singing "Ellas Danzan Solas, They dance alone." He, who at high school had participated in demonstrations against Pinochet, and been chased and tear gassed by police, now found himself in an Israeli army uniform in Shati, the worst refugee camp in Gaza, firing tear gas at the chanting mobs, and chasing after stone throwers. As he listened to Sting his heart would ache with an unameable yearning, wanting to impress upon some all-knowing consciousness the irony of ending up here. Often, on these night stops, one of the soldiers would hook up a ghetto blaster to a battery from the two way radio's, and play loud music over it. One song was especially popular, from a rock opera called Mami then playing in Tel Aviv. In the opera underpaid Palestinian waiters who work – and try to rape - the heroine Mami sing:

"You took our land in the name of democracy
called us Nazi's and cockroaches in the name of demagoguery

the soldiers would all join in and sing the chorus lustily

Mami, Yah Mami tiftechi et haraglayim
LaShiva Medukaim, Shiva Palistinayim

Mami, mami, open your legs
two seven oppressed, seven Palestinians

It seemed strange to Gavriel that the soldiers sang without seeming to make any connection between the words and their situation. As the music boomed out over the quiet streets, Gavriel wondered if any of the locals were listening, and if they were, what did they make of it ?
But tonight they never reached the garage. The jeeps screeched to a halt because someone had spotted a Caterpillar earth-mover parked at the side of the road. And an earth mover, as is well known, has many uses. Again banging on doors, questions, and then the owner - a mature man, with gray hair and a gray mustache, dressed in a white jalabiah. He didn't want to come of course, but the soldiers brought him anyway. In a little convoy, two jeeps and then the caterpillar and the last jeep, they returned to the intersection. The Caterpillar driver got out of the cab and joined the others.
Introductions. Ahalan we sahalan. Gif Halak ? Il Chamdulilah. ( Hello. How are you ? Allah be praised.) The two elder men looked weary and pained, but the youths still maintained an air of revelry. What else did they have to do on a dusty Gazan evening in this forsaken place where everyone went to sleep an hour after nightfall ? So the Israel Defence Force had come along and arranged the evening's programme for them: flag lowering, flag burning, solving puzzles, team-building exercises, socialising with previously unknown neighbours. All free of charge, courtesy of the IDF.
One of the youths climbed into the large flat shovel of the caterpillar. The man in the jalabiyah raised him up slowly. The make-shift pole now reached the flag but the wind took the flame away. A delegation was sent to locate more petrol. (The army, that is, Erez, had decided it was no longer supplying it.) They disappeared for more than half an hour.
While they were away the truck owner argued, pleaded, with Erez.
"It is impossible, please, Adoni, you said only half an hour."
The man pointed elaborately at his watch, which now indicated 10 o clock, turned and addressed anyone who would listen to him. He demonstrated, with many hand movements, why it was an impossible task. He gave scientific proofs, the wind, the foolishness of the youths; he cajoled, was supplicatory and ingratiating; Adoni will certainly understand that a married man should not be involved in these pranks, he has four children, Allah be praised, he is a good man, he works very hard, he is certainly not looking for any trouble, could he please go home now, Adoni ?
The Caterpillar owner was different, silent and stern, saving his precious energy for more productive things. His thoughts remained hidden behind his grey moustache. He climbed into the cabin and puts his head on his arm, which rested on the steering wheel, like an observant Jew at mincha saying tachanun.
The truck driver was still talking when the youths returned with a two litre Pepsi bottle filled with pinkish petrol. This time, with a new rag and new petrol, the flag caught alight and burnt merrily. Gavriel wanted to shout hooray until he remembered who he was and who they were and what was burning. Seemingly satisfied the youths waited for the return of their identity documents. The Caterpillar driver went off immediately, without a word, the lorry driver soon after him. The youths still lingered, waiting to see what might happen next. But nothing did. The jeeps drove off, and the eyes that had been watching from behind the slatted windows of the surrounding shacks and houses turned away, perhaps to other occupations.

I Suttner -1990?
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Glossary
Mem mem - lieuftenant
tachanun - prayer asking for mercy said with forehead resting on arm