Passage To India

A very merry un-un-birthday to Shalin, Mr. Luther, myself and many others who share this birthday. Phases Crossed is back with its longest installment ever, after observing two days of radio silence, for a special birthday edition.

I have trouble with dates, as some of you know, and my birthday kind of snuck up on me. Sometimes it's hard to remember how old I am; usually there's an off by one error. Although fully prepared, another event that surprised me is my flight from the land of milk & honey to the land of chai & chutney. Israel to India, tomorrow, in search of warmer weather, among other things. Dan & Sarah have checked out the Samosas in Goa for us, and assure Yotam & me that they are of the highest quality. I'm arranging to import several thousand of them to Tel-Aviv, where they will be enjoyed in a large festival.

I originally intended to title this blog Passage to India, but that turned out to be someone else's travel blog about backpacking India. So, in the way that those who search for unique domain names search, I tried every variation of the title, only to find that each one had already been though of, and populated with chronicles of sub-continental adventure. So it goes. But what, you ask, does Phases Crossed refer to? As should be clear to anyone with the world's information at their fingertips (a.k.a. Google), it is a communications term, but our exact namesake will remain a mystery for now.

I love Walt Whitman's poem Passage to India, and believe it is an absolute pre-requisite for the readers of this blog. Otherwise you might drown in what is sure to become endless and senseless sea of literary references, similes, and circumlocutions.

At no extra charge, here's a free sample from the second verse:

Passage to India!
Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann'd, connected by network,
The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together.

A worship new I sing,
You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours,
You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours,
You, not for trade or transportation only,
But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul.

full poem...

But we're getting ahead of ourselves... We haven't left Israel yet, and our embedded correspondents still have much to report. First, some narrative is required to connect our readers with our adventurers' present locations. Our fellowship has been officially, and tearfully, disbanded. Nadav & Anya have returned to The States (which is how we refer to the US here, at least in my incomplete understanding of Hebrew), and Aaron has returned to Belgium. A note to future generations: don't attempt to pick up a rental car in Tel-Aviv during rush hour on the eve of Shabbat 30 minutes before the office closes. This is made doubly bad if you are rushing to the wrong address. Noted, and we are so much wiser. The next day, Nadav drops Aaron and me off at 5am in the airport, where I get a another rental, and drive to Haifa to stay with my aunt Rina.

In order to recover from this exhausting ordeal, and the exciting traveling that preceded it, Rina (my aunt) and I spend the next two days eating, napping, and feeding stray & adopted neighborhood cats. Actually she feeds them, I just terrorize them, as my very image is enough to strike mortal terror into the heart of any stray Israeli feline. One of my superpowers, it turns out, and very handy when trying to clear the house of cats for an outing.



This is part of the living room. My father built much of this house with his own hands, so he tells me. Note the orange tree that can be reached by sliding the window open. Best orange I've ever had in my entire life was eaten this week, in this house, from one of these trees. All other oranges are merely shadows of the pure platonic ideal orange that I consumed.

Before we left the house for lunch, Rina and I cleared the house of cats. I surprised one cat on this couch, and he attempted, in his panic to flee me, to leap through the closed window pictured above, and persisted, like a bird trying to fly through glass, to leap three or four feet in the air, his paws scrambling all over the glass, to get outside. He mewed and jumped and jumped and mewed, and I backed off, giving him enough room to make an escape out of the room. It's a strange superpower to have, this effect on these cats, and I will make it my lifelong goal to use it for good and not evil.



Here is Rina feeding some cats, and the two of us on a beach in Haifa, during a rare outing. Paparazzi are everywhere, and it is most unusual that someone caught us unawares in this act.

After spending a couple days with Rina, I head back to Jerusalem to see some family I missed earlier in my busy travels. Israel is a small country, and bouncing between Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem is a matter of hours. I meet my effervescent great-aunt Dina, who takes me to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial on Mt. Herzl.



This is a really beautiful memorial/museum, and it was redone in the last few years, so while I had been here before, I had not seen the new museum. The museum stresses not just the magnitude of death that occurred, but also the life that was wiped out, in a way that stresses the unique lives of the individuals who perished and endured it. Video testimonials by survivors, art & poetry by victims, and artifacts from pre-WWII Jewish life in Europe create a very unique experience. We spent two and a half hours there, only to be kicked out because they were closing.

The architecture of the building is also very interesting. The entire museum is structured as a long triangular tunnel that slowly rises onto the space pictured above. The entire time, you are moving towards the light, only to have your path blocked repeatedly by ruptures that send you zigzagging through the exhibits that chronicle the journey of European Jewry through WWII. At the start is an incredible video montage made from photographs and video images of pre-WWII European Jewish life, so you begin to feel, in a macro sort of way, the immensity of what was lost. The Nazis, after all, basically succeeded in destroying Jewish life in Europe.

One room, where the Warsaw Ghetto is discussed, has train tracks and bricks from the original ghetto in the floor, lampposts overhead, and speakers playing these uncomfortable sounds of crowds and noise overhead. Without quite realizing how you are being worked upon, or what this space represents, you find yourself hurrying into and out of this main space into side rooms, where you get the intimate, painful, details of what was happening there. Architecturally, what the space is doing to you, is making you feel very uneasy in the main space, so you rush from room to room, which makes you feel weak and vulnerable. Another example of their exhibit design is a spot where survivors tell, through video, of surviving a mass murder in a big pit, where people were lined up, shot, and pushed in. The video screens face upward, forcing you to come really close to the screens to see the people telling their story. As you come close, you see this big concrete hole behind the screens, so you are forced to stand next to this dark pit in order to hear its story.

On with life. Dina and I head over to her brother's apartment in Jerusalem (my great-uncle), where we spend some time with some of his kids & grandkids. Here are the twins Ron & Ora, the aforementioned grandkids.



Too bad humans aren't eligible for Cute Overload. (How can it be that a mouse overstimulates the triggers we have for baby cuteness more than an actual baby?)

Afterwards, Dina takes Imri, her son, and me out for Turkish food in honor of my birthday. Next to us, though not present at the meal in physical form, is my grand-grand-father, Dina's father, who made aliyah to Israel with his 2nd family (Dina's).



I crash at Devora's, and continue to Tel-Aviv the next day, to meet Itzik. Afterwards, I go for a walk along the beach. Tel-Aviv is a really hip city. Nadav says Tel-Aviv : Los Angeles :: Haifa : San Francisco, but I'm not entirely sure I agree. Some streets of Tel-Aviv feel like the best of both San Francisco's cute shops and architecture, plus the urban-rural neighborhood quality Berkeley can have. In any case, I walk along the sunny beach, wearing a hat and coat (it's cold!), and watch the seagulls, sand, and water. It felt especially good because the cafe was playing this album of languid, trip-hop-like, jazzy, cover of all of my favorite Pink Floyd songs.



Boy, it sure is nice to just write without worrying about style, due dates, topics, coherency, grammar, spelling, facts, proof-reading, prior work, excess flowery language, or anything, really. And why not? As long as we don't do permanent harm to anyone's personae, future career, friendships, or marriage, it's all good.