Alternatives

(Not a tree but a giant cactus on Kibbutz Yoav)


Continuing with our theme of dwellings, although this action-packed week involved dismantling our Sukka and returning to the warm security of the house, two events brought it home to me (excuse the pun) that there isn't only one way to live. We may be conditioned since birth to live the way everyone else in the Western world lives, but it's important to remember there are other options and they're not as cuckoo as they may at first appear, one just has to be open minded.

On the eve of the second holiday of Sukkot (Monday, basically) we did something I haven’t done for years but did every autumn without fail when I was a likkle girl. We went to the circus! Oh, the thrills of the big top, the clowns, the drum rolls, the sawdust on the floor (there wasn’t any, but I’m imagining). I can’t tell you who was more excited but as Natan, aged five, had to tell me to sit properly on my seat and stop dancing about, whooping and clapping, the answer to that may not be surprising.

When I was a girl (back in 1875) with pigtails and gappy teeth, the big difference was that circuses had animals. I can’t remember seeing lion’s mouths engulfing a ringmaster’s head but I do recall the glittering ladies with feathers on their hats doing balancing acts on cantering horses; dogs jumping through hoops and a sad old elephant circling the ring with a walking stick hooked around his ear. That, actually, was the last time I saw an animal at a circus and it was so sickening that by the time I left the tent, wiping my stinging eyes, I’d resolved to rescue him that night and bring him to live in our garden. I didn’t care how much I’d have to feed him or that he’d trample over Ma’s flowers: the only thing that stopped me was the frustrating realisation that he would no way fit behind me on the elongated seat of my Raleigh Chopper.





Monday was Dorolla Circus’s last show in Israel after eight months of touring the country. Nothing, nothing can compare to the incredible Archaos, a troupe of French punks and crusties whose show comprised of blowing cars up, juggling chain saws, breathing and juggling fire, the Wall of Death and other mind-bending feats during the late eighties and early nineties. They had so many acrobats and odd-looking mohican-ed, tattooed people climbing above you, running down the aisles wielding dangerous weapons and flying on trapezes in the coolest costumes, you didn’t know where to look first. Yes, yes; obviously I wanted to run away and join them – not only did I look like them with my unconventional dress sense, my defiant spray of dreadlocks and any cartilage that stayed still long enough pierced with silver rings, but man, I could juggle fire clubs! I was bendy enough to do back flips, I could handle a mouthful of oily kerosene to spit in a flame and I’d have happily learned other types of juggling if only they’d handed me three buzzing chainsaws to practise with. Dammit. Missed my calling.





Dorolla's was good, though: highly skilled Chinese acrobats and gymnasts performing feats of impressive flexibility involving the kind of danger that caused Maayan to cry, petrified she'd see twisted bones and death when she came to see fun. It was insanely hot under the big top with no air conditioning, no fans and no open tent flaps, but the reason the mothers were fanning themselves had more to do with the troupe of strapping African dudes with zebra-skinned loincloths, perky dreadlocks and the most acutely defined stomach and arm muscles I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing. The old couple doing their ‘split second change of her outfit under a flag’ routine made me wonder if I’d flicked the channel to ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ by accident, but nonetheless, the kids loved it and munched delightedly on candy floss bigger than their heads that made me want to call the dentist, give her my credit card number and just pay her by direct debit for the rest of my life.

We reconsidered one of our old plans of training the children and creating a circus of our own to tour India and South America with, but at the mention of walking tight-ropes, doing contortion and handling snakes, they backed off. Kids these days have no inner drive, no sense of adventure. Mind you, wanting to run off and join the circus appeals to me less these days – I’m rusty at club juggling, I lost my fire sticks in Japan, I’m still bendy but I’m not fearless enough: risk and danger are for people who don't have kids like Natan who wants convoluted bedtime stories made up on the spot, which involve being alive in order to tell them. I’ve been on the open road and I’d go again at the drop of a plane ticket but I’d rather watch the circus than join it. Unless, of course, Archaos re-form; then, sod it, I'm off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXTUK4VbvZo


I’ve just come back from a birthday treat of a night away without the children, the scratching dog or the incessent needs of the house, which all mothers should do as frequently as possible. Without the husband is also a splendid treat but we went together to try to remember whose clothes they are taking up the other half of the wardrobe. We rarely cross paths now we have to work like normal people for the first time in our lives. It sucks, by the way, this working malarkey. Now I know why I ran away from it successfully until now. It doesn't make any sense, running around all week to make money to hand to landlords and electricity companies when you can live for free on a beach. There's more to life than working - there's a whole planet to explore! But then you have kids and they need schools, friends, stability and that means the rucksack gets relegated to the storeroom. Regular life is expensive, which is one of the reasons, I suppose, why the early European settlers in Israel in the fifties built kibbutzes.





Imagine, ladies, if you will: you don't do laundry any more - you take it to the laundry room and someone else does it and gives it back clean. You see your kids once a day and maybe at weekends because they're looked after and educated in the kids dorms before being given a little house of their own at fourteen. You don't cook, you eat in the dining rooms, and you don't pay rent or bills. You have your job and you do it - maybe in the fields, maybe in the kitchen - and everyone has the same as you, so there's no race to get ahead. It's extremely laid back on the kibbutz; its members are safe and supported - like being in a bubble. Clearly, a life like this isn't for everyone. I love my kids (most of the time) and I want to see them and be instrumental in brainwashing them into thinking how I want them to think, even though it's never going to work out as planned. When we used to say to people in Israel that we had four kids, they'd say, 'Col ha Kavod!', which, roughly translated, means 'Well bloody done!' In England, mothers said to me, 'What? Why? Are you a glutton for punishment? I'd rather hang myself.' The difference in mentality is startling - why do restaurants have to state that they're 'child friendly'? Landlords in England want young professionals in their houses, not families. The prejudice is shocking. Don't get me wrong - I'm elated to have a break from the noisy brats from time to time, but it doesn't mean I'm willing to hand them over to be brought up by others.

As for kibbutz life, whenever hardship came our way, Ma used to tell us her overused, favourite story about an endangered species of deer that were given an enclosure and protected from the dangers of the wild, but then started dying one by one from boredom as they had no thrill or risk to keep them on their hooves. I think it was her way of saying, 'Yes, convent school girls can be utter bitches at times and yes, they may have smashed your ankle with a hockey stick and called you a lesbian but be grateful - you'd die of boredom if everyone was nice to you'.

Maybe she's right, though; maybe having everything done for you depletes one's enthusiasm and drive, but then again, that might be my conditioning speaking. I think I'd be bored senseless on a kibbutz because I crave action and variety, but most people are normal, feel content with continuity and security and are happy to live ordinary, comfortable lives.






(The wonderfully named Mother-in-law's seat.)


The lure of this otherwise not very exciting kibbutz (Yoav, between Kiryat Gat and Ashkelon) was the thermal hot springs. Despite it looking like an old cow shed (aestheticism is replaced by functionality in kibbutzes, it appears) we soaked in the sulphur-smelling, 39 degree thermal mineral pools, sat in the jacuzzi (sadly chlorinated) and had a waterfall-esque massage under the super-high-pressured jets, but the best part was the sauna and steam room and the reason the sauna was so good was because I met two huge Russian ladies in there. They ignored me to begin with, as you do when you're only in a swimming costume in a tiny, roasting wooden room inches away from complete strangers, but then they did the most bizarre thing: they opened a pot of honey, poured it onto their hands and started rubbing it on their faces. Eeuuw, I thought- how thick and sticky is that? And then one of them, noting the horrified look in my eyes, turned to me and offered me some.
'Umm...What does it do?' I asked.
'What can it not do? It's honey!'
'But isn't it sticky?'
'Try!'
She poured a large dollop into my hands and I tentatively rubbed it on my face, wincing, then on my arms and legs, wondering how I'd get to the shower without sticking to the bench. But to my surprise, it wasn't thick and gooey once I rubbed it into my sweaty face and the crystallised bits acted like skin peel. In fact, it completely disappeared, leaving no trace of stickiness whatsoever.
'Mmm,' I said, thrilled by the surprise of it actually being wonderful. 'In England, the Indian women put oil on their skin in the sauna,' I told her, 'but I've never seen anyone putting honey before.'
'In Russia, we put honey,' she said matter-of-factly, holding out the jar so I could add more to my thighs, 'sometimes with salt inside.'
'But honey's quite expensive,' I said, meaning, how the hell did you get hold of honey in the USSR?
'Never mind, I'm in Israel now,' she said. 'I came here in 1985 and went back to Moscow last year for the first time in twenty-five years. What a difference! Some of my friends live in houses with a lift inside and three floors - some people got very rich- and others live in a tiny room with no microwave, no washing machine and when I went to buy food they were so grateful. When it was communism, life was easy. No bills, no rent. Now life is very hard, but it used to be easy.'
'But didn't you have to queue for food for hours? The only communist country I've been to is China and if you want to buy a doll, there's only one in the shop, or one toy, or one kind of cloth.'
'Yes, of course, I wear this dress, so does she and so does she, but I told my friends they should have kept hold of that country as it was.'

So maybe what she was saying was that kibbutz life was good after all, or at least the communist ideal behind it was a good one, anyway. Most kibbutzes are anti-religious, however, so I'm not moving to one but I can see the plus sides. The kids would love it - the freedom that is, not the separation from Mummy - although I think these days they can come home at night and at weekends, which sounds fine by me. The mountain of washing subsides, there is no food to cook, everything is taken care of...

We cooked fish on the barbeque and talked about our days of absolute freedom and how it felt to give up everything, surrendering yourself to another possibility of life. Husband now wants to sell the car, buy a donkey, take the kids out of school and live in a tent forever, roaming the land like a Bedouin (I take back all I said about him having no ambition) and in order to sell this idea to me, he said, 'think of how many stories you'd have!'

Hmm.

I bought a pot of honey on the way home. I didn't tell him I have other ideas - not a family tent experience, which I imagine would be an unparalleled disaster, has no internet access and sounds far too much like hard work, but creating a utopia of a house: one with a roomful of cushions and bean bags; a study where no other people are allowed to enter and peer over my shoulder as I type; an amazing garden full of jasmine flowers and interesting cacti, and a sauna where I'll go and smooth honey with rock salt on myself when it gets cold outside. Communism didn't rub off on me, clearly, despite it being an admirable idea - but layers of skin did. My skin is so silky (I mean, more so than normal) but don't come too close -the whiff of sulphur is still detectable beneath my glowing epidermis.

Lastly, this is the concluding day of me being in my thirties, a place I've dwelled happily within for the last ten years. Maybe my utopia will materialise in this next decade - in fact, I'm resolute that it will and focusing on making it happen with all my might. One day, Please G-d, you'll be able to come and visit me, sit in the sauna and discover for yourself the wonders of a honey rub. I might be living in a tent on a dusty patch of scrub, or I might find my utopia, but whatever transpires over the next few years, I'll do my best to ensure it has a sauna attached.

Temporary Dwellings

One can't help feeling quite relieved when Yom Kippur is over: the lead up to it is harrowing, as though a dark, brooding mountain looms before you even though it's only one widdle day, and once it's been scaled and conquered a collective 'phew' rings around the stone alleys of Jerusalem. This year it wasn't baking hot and I think that was the key -no crashing headache, no dry-as-a-peanut-butter-sandwich mouth, I didn't feel hungry at all and Tamar found it fine, it being her first full fast. The gut wrenching soul searching head twist of many a year was strangely absent, however. When I mentioned this noticeable deficiency of mental and soulful affliction, it was pointed out to me that there's been more than enough of that going on over the last few months, so maybe Yom Kippur this year transformed itself, incredulously, into the one day of light relief.





After breaking the fast, we started mantling our Sukka (I'm aware that isn't a real word. Have you noticed that some words exist in the negative but the positive form has either disappeared from use or never existed: like we say dismantle but we don't say mantle; like we say someone is ruthless but never that he is brimming with ruth. Ineffable is in my hefty Encarta dictionary, but effable isn't. Are there others? Does anyone ever read this blog? I suppose this'll be as good a test as any to discover the answer to that.)

I'll continue regardless, seeing as, forlornly, I have no one to talk to this evening.

Four days after Yom Kippur, the holiday of Sukkot begins - that's the one where we build a small construction out in the garden or balcony, put huge date palm branches on top, decorate it with the same gaudy decorations Grandma's sitting room was festooned with every Christmas (generic use of decorations I consider strictly Christmassy seems unkosher to an ex-convent girl like me, but I guess gaudy decorations are gaudy decorations and they don't belong to any particular holiday. If they remind me of Christmas, and they do, I've decided to ignore - just for the time I'm under them - the warm memories of Grandma's house in December and won't tell my rabbi I think they're not as kosher as he'd like). The sukka is the place where we eat each meal and 'live' for a week, to commemorate the time after the exodus from Egypt, when we lived in tents in the desert and were at the mercy of the elements.





What this holiday does is ensure that all Jews, no matter how affluent they are, have to eat and sleep for seven days in a billowing, temporary residence where the stars twinkle through the roof, the rain can wake you mid-dream and the wind rattles the walls. In London, we'd put fleeces, thick socks and overcoats on in order to go out and eat, and even then, they'd be maybe three days out of seven, if we were lucky, that it wouldn't be bucketing down and we'd have to cover the sukka with a big plastic sheet. Today was the first day of the holiday and it was hot - the kind of hot I'm glad it wasn't on Yom Kippur. Then, by nightfall, which is about ten to six in the evening these days, the sky went a gloomy, menacing colour, a howling, chilly wind gathered up the local dust, and the rain that's been forecast for tomorrow looks likely, just in time for Maor's overnight trip to the Negev with a bunch of kids, no tent and possible flash flooding, which is slightly worrying stroke exciting.







At this time we are reminded of the temporality of all we consider solid, and when this comes to Jews and countries of residence or homes of opulence, it has a chilling backstory. But exiled people are resourceful people, that much I learned in India. In the northern cities in India who can get you a bottle of decent French wine? A top-grade down jacket from Europe? State of the art hiking boots, all sizes? A plasma screen TV or recordable DVD, should you want one? Who runs the black market up there in Manali? The Tibetans, of course - a nation of present day exiles. They gather all the clothes that kind-hearted Free Tibet types collect and send them, sell them on street stalls and pocket the cash to buy other things. They lend money and change currencies; they wheel and deal, exchange boots for sleeping bags, duck and dive, and where they get French wine from in the Himalayas is an admirable mystery but they can and they do. Exile, living in strangers' lands with no rights and no permanent home, brings out survival mode in folk, and that means being imaginative.






Oddly, Sukkot isn't my favourite holiday even though we're supposed to be rejoicing. For a long-term nomad like myself, living in a temporary dwelling should be no skin off my hardened heels, but my feet are actually soft things and I now like four solid walls around me (not the same ones forever, mind). Maybe it's the whiteness of the walls in the Sukka, or the fairy lights - if it looked more like the inside of a nomad's tent it might feel more authentic. Maybe it's the realisation that I'm exiled, or feel like I am, and want to release myself from the survival mode I've been in for years. In fact, ironically, what my mother-in-law talked about today in our temporary dwelling was of buying our own house. How permanent is that? I shiver to think of it, because mortgages are THE scariest concept ever to a free spirit like myself, but then, I reminded myself - how permanent is anything? What is solid and what isn't in this 'ere life? The wind flapped the walls of our sukka and the cold encircled my bare ankles. A storm was on its way. Nothing is permanent and nothing ever has been. As Van (The Man) Morrison sings:

I'm nothing but a stranger in this world. I'm nothing but a stranger in this world. Got a home on high. In another land. So far away. We are going to heaven. We are going to heav-en.

We're all exiles. There is no permanence here. Everything we take for granted is built on teutonic plates and the ground can shift at any moment. The sure-fire thing is never a certaintly and the fleetingness of our time here makes all we worry about laughable. A mortgage isn't scary because a house can be sold and even the most solid walls only surround us for the time being. I know I'm not normal - I can't be: this kind of thinking would make most folk quake in their boots but, weirdly, knowing how impermanent it all is makes me feel so much better.

The Day Approacheth

Yom Kippur, that is, not the birthday that marks a rather weighty landmark in life's road, although that's looming too. When I was young I was certain, utterly convinced I wouldn't live past twenty-one, hence the eve of my twenty-first birthday was more than a little nerve-wracking, exciting too, in a bizarre and morbid kind of way, so I did what any right-minded twenty-one-year-old would do, and drank until I couldn't see. For a whole year, leaving the house was a dubious, curious act : The Reaper with his hoodie up was grinning from behind every dark tree in the park and every car passing was the one that would fly out of control, onto the pavement and run me down. It's weird wondering how you'll die. Will it be gruesome and bloody or will I slip off in my sleep (unlikely at twenty-one)? Will I drown? Because they say you hallucinate wildly when you drown and that sounds like fun, except all that water in the lungs makes me want to take a large breath, and suffocation of any kind must be very, very unpleasant. A pill laced with poison? A spiked drink? A dodgy curry? At a madman's hand? In a traffic accident?

I still wonder those things. What would I choose, given the choice? Everyone wants family and friends around their bed and the slipping into sleep option. I think a bungee jump without a rope would take adrenaline to a new dimension, or to skydive over mountains or canyons and not have to worry about how to land. Quick and painless. No incontinence or madness, please: Future grandchildren, if you are reading this, respect my wishes. Bind Grandma Emma up, wipe her dribble away, appease the spirits she talks to incessantly, and take her skydiving.

But it didn't happen at twenty-one: Here I am! Pretty amazing, really, considering all those hearty efforts at self-destruction. All that hard work for nothing. Huh.

Where was I? Oh, Yom Kippur. Even the words are scary. Everything goes silent and the soul gulps.

For the benefit of you gentiles out there, a run down:

The days between Rosh ha Shana and Yom Kippur are called The Ten Days of Repentence; where we admit to and ask forgiveness for our weaknesses, our wrongdoings, our lack of faith and, among all our other sins, for saying things that hurt others. As opposed to Rosh ha Shana, which is the day of judgement for the world, Yom Kippur is our own soul in G-d's court. Will the defendent please rise. And very serious it is, too. What will your sentence be? Will you be given another chance, another year, to do better?







On Yom Kippur, from sundown Wednesday to sundown Thursday, we can't do five things: eat, drink (anything), wash more than our fingertips or anoint the body, have sexual relations or wear leather shoes. This means Wednesday, pre-fast, is spent (ideally) drinking plenty of fluids, having a proper meal before sunset, getting the Crocs, flip-flops and white clothes out (for purity; to be like the angels), having a shower and preparing mentally for the fast. As it's a holiday, the Shabbat rules apply, which means no driving (and this is amazing, because NO ONE drives in the whole of Jerusalem - in most of Israel - except an Arab or two, enjoying the empty roads, and the whole country stops in a hush), no cooking, no TV, radio, computer - nada.

The sky darkens, Yom Kippur begins. With no distractions, one waits, reading, praying, sitting, for the judgement. We go to sleep without brushing our teeth. The worst part is not having a cup of tea the next morning. The teeth being grainy. The mouth dry, already. A long day ahead.

Children are allowed to eat until the age of Bar and Bat Mitzvah, so Tamar is embarking on her first full fast this year. In the last few years she's been practicing by not eating for as long as she can manage, which was until Maor ate some lunch and said, 'Mmm, yummy, oh, wow, soo very delicious, mmm', licked his fingers with gusto, smacked his chops with gastronomic pleasure and got shouted at, as she then cried and caved in. So the children, bless them, are full of the usual energy, wanting action, playing, arguing, screaming, but the hours stretch in a slow drawl, like intenstines spread out across a football pitch, like the coils of a spiral ironed until they reach the edges of the universe.

No, Mum can't read any more stories because her mouth is dry, and no she can't play Subbuteo because she's lying on the sofa by about four o'clock in the afternoon, suffering, wrenching herself ever-inward, desperately clinging to the very essence of what it is to be a soul, to be a human, grappling with her conscience, her temples hammering, the wires of her head crossed. Where's Abba? Abba's in the synagogue all day, praying for us. Men's version of Yom Kippur is so different: they don't have to rip kids off each other or spoon feed babies, or clear up their plates or change nappies and not be able to wash their hands properly. They can absorb themselves in prayer, en masse, in a collection of suffering souls. I must ask what it is they go through because I'm not sure I really know that.

When Tamar was a baby, we spent Yom Kippur in the mountains in India in the big house we'd rented, and by then, all our brothers and parents and sisters who had come out for her birth had gone back and young Israelis fresh from the army were renting the free rooms. One girl, Tova, felt so bad she had to drink something mid-way through the day. 'What I can't understand,' she said to me, 'is why we have to suffer.' I didn't have an answer for her. I have one now, though.

I think it was Krishnamurti's book I read in a little wooden house in the middle of Australia's green wilderness, that said, 'skip every nth meal, don't overeat. Be vital'. When there's nothing left in the body - no food or fuel, no fluid, the tongue is dry, the body is existing merely on some vital force; when there is no place to go, no TV program on, no web to surf or phone to answer, the soul starts speaking and you have no where to go to ignore it. I've talked about this plenty this summer; haughtily deriding people who watch TV every night and then go to bed never giving their souls a chance to be heard. We erect intangible barriers by day that hold us up: reason dominates, practicality is the key, socio-economic forces push us through hour upon hour of action until we crash into sleep. At night, sitting in the hum of darkness, reason backs off. The walls of the structures slide down. In the quiet times, the soul rises. Hey, it says. Remember me? What about your dreams? What about the things that hurt you? What about doing something else with your time here? Where is the music, where's the artistry, where's the beauty and when was the last time you were awed by nature? What do you believe in? What do you want?

On Yom Kippur, however, being daylight when you suffer the most, the soul says other things. It asks why you behave the way you do and if that's acceptable. It asks how much effort you've made this year, whether you've kept your lashing tongue at bay, if you could have done more, done better, been kinder, more thoughtful. If you're being true with yourself, or true with G-d. If you really mean it when you say you're sorry, or you're just saying it. Every last moment of your year is re-lived, and how you dealt with it is questioned. You stand in the court room with no one in the gallery supporting you or heckling for your freedom. You stand alone, tiny, humble, mortal, before G-d. Before truth itself. A heavy day indeed. No one is perfect, and this is the opportunity to face just how imperfect you actually are.

I hope I've succeeded in putting off anyone who was thinking of converting this year. The Rabbinute should employ me. You want to be Jewish honey? Come, sit. Let me tell you something...


Don't get me wrong; Yom Kippur is not bad. It's the whitest day, a gift, a holiday. How many chances do we get, I mean really, of doing that? Of connecting with all others doing the same, everywhere in the world? Of fasting, of cleaning out body, mind and soul? You know how pure you feel when the sun finally goes down to mark the end of the fast? Do you feel like eating rubbish? You do not. Do you feel angelic? Yes. Are you ready to be a better person. Oh, yes. This time, yes. Definitely. Just give me one more chance and I'll prove it.







Gmar Hatima Tova. Easy fast, as we say in Hebrew, Tsom Kal.