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Israel Trip: In The Peoples’ Eyes – Last Days

November 23, 2011 By 1 Comment

Our Israel trip is winding down. We have one more day in Jerusalem and, after dinner tonight, we will all drive back to Ben Gurion airport to catch our Seattle-bound flights. We spent the last two days in Jerusalem already, beginning with Yad Vashem—the Holocaust Museum—on our first morning and ending with the holy sites of the Old City yesterday afternoon and evening. These are the kind of days that no words can convey, the kind of experiences that mere sentences cannot contain, express or even reflect.

What stands out for me is the gift that Jana, in her masterful organizing of these trips, allows all of us to receive; the gift to meet the people of the land. We met her Israeli friend Miki on our first dinner in Tel Aviv. Then it was Dudu, the next morning, who owns this most amazing middle-eastern home-style-cooking restaurant in her neighborhood, and the “spice guy” in the Tel Aviv shuk. We met a Druze family in the Galilee, shared in the most incredible lunch there, and got to listen to the stories and history of this unique people. In Jerusalem we walked through the different quarters of the Old City. We spent time in the Arab shuk, ate at one of my favorite hummus places, and had baklavas with mint tea in a little coffee shop. We shopped in different places, listened to the most amazing stories from the shop keepers and overall got a real sense of the life of the people of Jerusalem.

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Israel Trip: An Oasis And a Fortress – Day 6

November 20, 2011 By 2 Comments

There is an oasis in the middle of the Judean desert called Ein Gedi. Israelis built a kibbutz there many decades ago and transformed it into an internationally recognized botanical garden where the most astonishing species of flowers, coexist alongside the richest varieties of cacti and palm trees. The whole place is a version of the Garden of Eden by the shores of the Dead Sea. It is warm and beautiful, and it is where we spent the last couple of days. We are SO lucky!

Yesterday, we drove fifteen minutes from the kibbutz to ascend King Herod’s desert fortress of Masada. As our little group was climbing up the steep “snake path” I found myself transported 2,000 years earlier, connected to those who made the journey up endless times, bringing to Herod’s palace the finest mosaic pieces, construction supplies, and dozens of amphorae filled with the best Italian wine money could buy. What Herod had built there, in the middle of the unbearably hot desert, is nothing short of a miracle and an incredible feat of human engineering genius. But history only remembers the end results, only celebrates the accomplishments, and rarely accounts for the human cost associated with them. That is because history is of the mind. History is goal oriented, result focused, legacy preoccupied; and all these are the concern of the mind, of the ego. The ego needs to leave behind a physical proof of its existence as a postponement of its death, an extension of its life into eternity. The cost to others, the cost to the biosphere, becomes simply labeled as collateral damage.

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Israel Trip: Up in The Air – Day 5

November 18, 2011 By 2 Comments

The day started in meditation. Our practice was about holding in awareness all of our sensations, emotions and thoughts with love and compassion; to open our heart to what is, to fully receive the moment without resisting it or wanting it to be any different than it is. To receive in Hebrew is Kabbalah. This morning was about practicing Kabbalah, practicing simply receiving, being unreservedly available to what is.

The meditation set the tone for our visit of the Kabbalistic town of Tsfat in the northern part of Israel; the town that harbored some of the greatest Jewish mystics that ever walked the earth. There are a few places in the world that are filled with soul energies like Tsfat is. One of the four holy cities of Israel, Tsfat is associated with the element of air; when Hebron is associated with earth (since our three patriarchs are buried there) Tiberias with water (being on a lake) and Jerusalem with fire (being the place where the Temple’s sacrificial altar was.) Tsfat is air because, geographically, it is the highest town in Israel; and when we drove in, it was still in the clouds. Tsfat is also the mystical soul of Israel when “air” in Hebrew is also ruach which means “spirit.”

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Israel Trip: Out With The Old – Day Two

November 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tel Aviv is the contrast between the old and the new. In 1909, a group of Jews left the millennia old town of Jaffa where they had resettled decades earlier after leaving their native Europe, in order to build a new city on what, at the time, were only sand dunes by the Mediterranean shores.

Tel Aviv, therefore, expresses the courage of a few—60-or-so Jewish families—to break out of the status quo, to take the risk and follow a vision with fearless courage; leaving behind the comfort of the known, of the established, to create something out of nothing. Jaffa is unique with its cobblestone streets and its ancient homes built to face the 100 degree humid weather of the summer months, the eroding power of the salty assaults of the winds from the sea and the sands of the desert around it. Building a new “suburb” to Jaffa (as Tel Aviv was originally called) on these sand dunes was a feat of untold bravery and dedication to an incredible ideal. Such commitment helps us touch, for a moment, that part of self that is reflected in the courage of these 6o families. We are moved by their story because it is our story. It reminds us that we, too, are capable of breaking through old patterns of habits and comfort; that within us are soul-energies that move us beyond our ego-bound complacency and acceptance of the status-quo, to stir us to evolve and grow beyond the rampart of our own inner old-city.

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Israel Trip: Getting Our Feet Wet – Day One

November 14, 2011 By 2 Comments

Greetings from Tel Aviv!!

The whole group is here, safe and sound, and finally got together tonight for the first time. All of us went out for dinner at this restaurant on the Tel Aviv promenade by the beach. Just picture if you can, nine of us trying to order from this poor Israeli server, with me in the middle doing my best to translate everyone’s questions back and forth. Comical! I think we’re going to have a lot of fun on this trip! At some point the poor server gave up and sat down next to me and said in Hebrew “OK, just translate for me what everybody wants and I’ll just sit here and write it down.” But this was mostly a sweet time to share together, a time to reconnect and listen to each other’s stories, especially because we all wanted to hear from those who had been traveling around Israel and Jordan in the past few days. And it sounded like everybody had a terrific time.

My choosing to name this first blog post “Getting Our Feet Wet” is no mistake, as you will understand in a moment. But before I get there, do you ever get the sense that there is a Presence guiding your processes and helping you look at your personal story from beyond the literal level? This is what’s happening to me right now as I am writing. I just thought to myself (not being a native speaker): “I wonder where this expression—‘getting your feet wet’—came from?” So I asked Rabbi Google and here is what I found:

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