A quick trip to meet the neighbours . . . 24 hours in Jordan

Traveling alone is a good idea when you want to meet people along the way.


Kind, warm, friendly people opened themselves to me all day in Amman and then in Irbid, Jordan's second largest city, home to some 650,000 souls including my friends in Vancouver Najib, Amal, Adri and Khaled.

I met and talked with so many . . . most were displaced Palestinians living in Jordan. Everyone received me beautifully -- and I never hid who I am. I spoke with some for hours . . . about exactly what is important to us.

A pita baker takes his fresh loaves off a cooling rack and stacks them in wooden trays to take to nearby restaurants and bread shops.

Late at night, in one of hundreds of little coffee shops in old Amman full of men young and old playing cards or chess, sipping thick sweet coffee, a young man uses his hands to mix the narghileh tobacco with pungent apple flavouring while an older fellow tries it out.

Right across from the Husseini Mosque in Wust al-Balled, old Amman, a young guy with a sweet smile sells very tempting almond and farina pastery. I didn't find anyone to be pushy or in my face there.

Just outside the mosque, a kind man prepares a miswak for me -- a special stick from Pakistan used for cleaning the teeth, just like a toothbrush, complete with specific instructions on how to do it just like the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) did in his lifetime. They come in plain, mint, lemon and sandalwood. First, he peeled off a finger's width of bark from one end and then lightly tap-tap-tapped it with a little hammer to break up the fibers for me.

Two lifelong neighbours who might have made such a different life for everyone if only . . . if only . . .

This photo is on the wall inside the border station on the Israeli side between Israel and Jordan at the Sheikh Hussein Bridge between Beit Shaan (Beisan) in the west and Irbid in the east.

I'll write more when I can, im yirtseh ha-Shem.

Amsterdam opens possibilities of what a city can be

Amsterdam opened possibilities for me of what a city can be.
Compact.
Light on the land.
Clean, green and open, despite the dense population.
Gorgeously cosmopolitan diversity of people.
Easy, comfortable, cheap public transport everywhere.
Rich history and culture alongside dynamic creativity and newness.

I stayed with Jenn and Rob, newly-met friends of friends, in Olympiade, a vast and tidy neighbourhood of closely packed four- and five-storey brick apartment houses built up around large green open courtyards in the 1920's in the Oud Zuid quarter of Amsterdam all laced with park-like canals populated by a dazzling variety of ducks, geese and other waterbirds. Jenn and Rob are connected to the Jewish Spiritual Renewal movement in Amsterdam and Rabbi Goldie Milgram connected me to someone who connected to them. Jenn is from New York, Rob from Cape Town. Jenn is a playwrite and dramatist and both are very involved with the arts and a studio. They've been in Amsterdam for years and years and raised both their now-adult sons there. Many of Jenn's plays are about the Dutch Jewish community and how they are still slowly, slowly dealing with the massive trauma of betrayal during the Holocaust.

Jenn and Rob's apartment is small -- tiny, in fact, by our Canadian and American standards. They have no car, only a little Vespa. They graciously fit their lives into a modest space, a few hundred square feet with perhaps four other households all above them in the same footprint. Right out their groundfloor front window is a quiet sidewalk, a lovely bricked road and stretch of green green grass and then a beautifully calming canal with small row boats, punts and motorized dinghies tied up along its edge. There are more boats than cars -- and hundreds and hundreds of bicycles. And out the back is a lovely garden space with a table and chairs. It was there that we had dinner before Jenn took me on a lovely evening tour of some of her favourite places in old Amsterdam.

We took one of the quiet little trams that run through the streets and then walked through narrow brick lanes lined with old shops and apartments to the wide-open Museumplein, a grassy plaza where people were wrapping up their lingering picnic dinners to head home for the evening. Three museums are on the plaza, one being the Rijksmuseum, a very ornate old building where young people were hanging our and climbing all over a very new sculpture of the letters spelling out "I AMSTERDAM". We walked on past the Royal Palace, a rather modest affair that looks more like an old hotel, where a big traveling carnival was in full swing right across the street. I loved seeing the ferris wheel and flashing lights right in the plaza of the queen's front yard -- that's the kind of queen I'd like, one who invites everyone to come over and play at her house.

Jenn took me also to the old Jewish section of town, where tens of thousands of Jews lived for centuries from the time of Spinoza and even before, having come in great numbers in the late 1400's after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. The Jewish Quarter now is empty of Jews. The old synagogues remain and are magnificent. One is still in use but most have been turned into museums. Amsterdam and Holland as a whole turned in their Jewish neighbours to the Nazis with great orderliness and cooperation. The Netherlands had one of the highest rates of annihilation of Jews of any country occupied by the Nazis and the community still has not recovered either numerically or emotionally. Jenn says that the old Jewish quarter was not re-occupied by Jewish people because it is so horribly haunted by the deep unhealed trauma of being murderously betrayed by once-friends and neighbours.

Istanbul -- a gorgeous flow of image and sound

Soak in this sensual invitation to Istanbul. I am thoroughly intrigued with this city and can't wait to be there.
This gorgeous flow of images and sounds was made by Veysel Gencten in Istanbul. This was given to me by Musa Kalaora of our Ahavat Olam Synagogue who was born and raised in Istanbul until his family moved to Canada.

Inside the hammam in Bab az-Zawiyyah, Hebron, May 2001

When I was last in Israel-Palestine, Aug 2000 - June 2001, one day I went to Hebron to see the realities there with my own eyes.
I went to visit the Christian Peacemaker Team who had been living in Hebron for several years at the invitation of the mayor so that they could serve as witnesses and reduce the level of violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers and authorities.
I took a Palestinian bus from the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem and traveled with Palestinians on the back roads through fields and orchards because they are prohibited from the main roads.
What I saw in Hebron eight years ago shocked me despite all the reports I had heard. Well over 100,000 Palestinians locked down in their own city to provide "security" for a tiny handful of several hundred fanatic Jews. Signs of brutal violent repression were everywhere. Homes and stores everywhere were pock-marked from being raked with large-caliber machine gun fire. Horrible anti-Arab graffiti, "Death to the Arabs" in Hebrew, was spray painted on shops and homes. Many shops were burnt out. Israeli military patrolled everywhere and had set up outlooks and gun posts on rooftops all over the city. It had been this way for decades.
One very beautiful place was this, the inside of the hammam or bath house in the neighbourhood called Bab az-Zawiyyah. Even after decades of occupation and repression, it was an oasis of calm and comfort. I learned later that a zawiyyah is a Sufi prayerhouse and I remembered my rebbe, Reb Zalman's experience with the Sufi sheikh in Hebron years ago. Was this the place?
I have no idea if hammam is still opan and functioning. There's been so much further destruction of Palestinian life in Hebron since I was there eight years ago. I'd like to go there again on this trip and see.
The Christian Peacemaker Team is no longer there. I don't know if they were expelled by the Israelis or if they left on their own. They have moved to At-Tuwani in the south Hebron hills, between Hebron and Beersheva, a place where Palestinian farmers and villages have been under intense assault from fanatic Israeli settlers in recent years. I hope to visit there on this trip and will let you know if I do.