Ful of It

Jerusalem at its Best

2008-03-23T21:11:00.009+02:00

( I know it's been a while since I posted. I guess I took a short break, and then felt like I needed something exceptional to post again. But I realize that I would probably keep pushing it off in that way, so here goes)

It's amazing that less than 2 and half weeks since a terror attack struck in the heart of Jerusalem, killing a number of young Yeshivah boys, the city put on a magnificent weekend of celebrations. The holiday of Purim was spread over three days this year in Jerusalem due to the fact that it fell out on a Thurs Night/Friday. The addition of Good Friday and Easter Sunday meant that the whole city was abuzz with celebrations and activity.

Even before Thursday night, lots of costumes, especially on children, were seen around town. But by Thursday night, everyone on the street was decked in a variety of costumes, ranging from the men wearing dresses (myself included :) ) to the usual array of butterflies, princesses and vikings. After the reading of the Megillah at Pardes, and an entertaining Purim performance, I headed with a bunch of friends to a special version of The Boogie in the Binyanei Ha'uma. This time the crowd was especially diverse, made up of a nice mix of Israelis and foreigners and the music was a hip combo of dance music and traditional Israeli folk music as well as a good number of Purim songs.

Friday and Shabbat were lower key, but still nice as the weather was beautiful and the spirit of celebration remained in the air.

Saturday night the partying picked up. After a small 'impromptu' party at a friend's, we all went to a really cool block party in Nachlaot. It was really fun - everyone outside, dancing and just having a good time.

On Sunday, I woke up early and went to volunteer at Yad Lekashish (Lifeline for the elderly). Yad Lekashish is this really great place I've been volunteering. It's basically a crafts workshop for senior citizens, but the people who come to work there are making good quality crafts for sale in the giftshop. Maybe I'll write more in another post. But on Sunday it was my job to lead a Ramah group through the workshops - observing the work of our elderly workers, bringing some Purim cheer and learning what Yad Lekashish is all about.

After the groups left, I went to spend some time with some of the men I've been working with in the screenprinting workshop and actually had a really great conversation with a man who had at first seemed cold and wary of my presence. In broken Hebrew, and through translators, he was explaining to me why he left a good position in Russia to come to Israel, because "Israel is here" as he pointed to his heart.

After Yad Lekashish, I wandered around the old city for a few hours - just watching the different people walking around. Tour groups of Christians on Easter Sunday. Muslims rushing off to the temple mount after the call to prayer. Jewish teenagers still costumed rushing to their festive Purim meals.

Ben Yehudah street was really happening - performances ranging from musical to acrobatic, to magical were taking place on stages place about every 20 meters along the street.

Walking back from a Purim meal at a friends house, the sounds of music and Yiddish words of Torah could still be heard emanating from the Yeshivah across the street from my apartment well after 8 o'clock.

Bush: Bringing People Together for 7 Years

2008-01-13T14:51:00.000+02:00

As we've entered the period of the US primaries for presidential candidates, many of us have excitingly watched the rise of a political superstar in Barack Obama. Included in his stump speech is a central pillar of his campaign - the need for opposing groups in Washington to work together - he likes to say "there are no blue states and no red states, but just the United States." That's all good and well, but has he lived up this? Are his attacks on President Bush for polarizing our country really justified?

Well, after Bush's visit to Israel this week, I don't know what to think of Mr. Obama's accusations. For all his talk about Bush being a divider and splitting the nation into polarized sections, I witnessed the ability of our President to bring about a real merging of opinions by two groups who are generally in staunch, sometimes violent, disagreement. Walking around the city of Jerusalem during Bush's visit we came across a number of gatherings and demonstrations.

First we happened upon a group of far left, mostly Arab, protesters, calling for America to stop its support of the Israeli occupation. A few blocks away, another small group had gathered. A group of right wing activists donning kaffiyehs and sporting toy Kalashnikov rifles posed for a Hamas style photo op while their leader expounded upon the terrorist state that will undoubtedly result from the negotiations being led by the US.

Yet despite the vast differences of opinions these groups both had a similar message on their signs and slogans - they all called for Bush to leave. They all hate him and want him out of the Middle East. Their loathing for our commander in chief because of his unabashed support of the Israeli occupation and his desire to create a terror state in the midst of the holy land, respectively, has transcended all divisions and brought together these groups and shown them that while we may disagree on certain small details, there are certain things we can all agree on.

Egypt

2007-12-31T12:20:00.000+02:00

I spent two days last week in Egypt - seeing the great pyramids and the sphinx and all of the amazing artifacts in the National Egyptian Museum. It is truly amazing. Huge structures built around 5000 years ago! Articles of clothing and even branches and leaves that were buried back then and have been amazingly preserved (though I'm not sure how long they'll stick around - the museum isn't exactly state of the art). All of the pieces from King Tut's tomb that were missing from the traveling exhibition when I saw it in Philly this past summer - including the actual golden coffin, and the many layers of golden boxes which surrounded it. It's really amazing to see how much time and wealth was put into death and the afterlife, while very little was spent on life on Earth.

The highlight was probably when we went into the second pyramid. After crawling down through a long passage and back up into the center of the pyramid we arrived at the tomb room. The room has been emptied of almost all that was originally there, but the sarcophagus is still in place, so while there were no guards around, we climbed into the tomb and lay back, arms crossed mummy-style and took a mental picture (no cameras allowed inside) of being in a pretty cool (if a bit gross) spot in the world. (Good thing we waited till the night we got back to watch 'The Mummy' - otherwise fear of the cover being put on while inside and being mummified while alive might have discouraged this particular adventure. The city of Cairo is dirty and thick with pollution, but the trip is highly recommended - seeing the things in real life that we've seen in movies and heard about all our lives is a pretty amazing experience.

Bethlehem

2007-12-04T12:51:00.000+02:00

I spent this past Thursday and Friday in Bethlehem on a program called Encounter. I won't go through all the details of the trip, but I'll just try to highlight some of the sessions or thoughts that stick out in my mind, or that other participants pointed out and I found particularly compelling. If anyone wants to speak about anything in more detail, I'd love to over phone or email. I've been pushing off writing this post. It's a bit overwhelming, trying to fit everything in. Trying to process everything I saw and come up with some concise way to describe it all. But I figure that it's better to get something down than to just keep pushing it off, so here's my best shot.

Encounter

The purpose of the trip is to give future Jewish leaders, educators and rabbis the opportunity to speak to Palestinians and witness a bit of their lives outside of the filter of the media and the things we hear within our own community. I know there are people who would oppose even the existence of such a program, and I find that very difficult to accept. Yes, it's true that the people we spoke to have their own 'agenda' ( a word I don't really like to use) and probably slant certain facts. But if someone has political views that are more to the right and is unable to maintain his/her own beliefs while listening to the people we heard from and gain something from hearing their viewpoint then I think they must not know enough to support their own opinions - a problem in any case. I find the position that it is better to remain ignorant than to take on the challenge of grappling with the information available to us completely untenable. It is our obligation, as people, and especially as Jews, with a special connection to the land and the politics of the region, to gain as much information as we can and come to our own conclusions about the conflict and the policies of the people involved.

Because of the nature of the program, I will not really discuss very much about the problems caused by the Palestinians, especially terrorism. Please don't take this to mean that I condone terrorism in any form - I adamantly believe that any form of terrorism is morally repugnant. But this was a listening trip, and I think there's some value to that. We were told not to try to convince anyone about anything, but just to listen. That doesn't mean accepting everything we were told. Of course grappling with the information we received and deciding what to believe is part of the process. But I think it's a good exercise to be in a position of gathering information instead of always being on the defensive.

Difficulty of Expression

One of the reasons I've had difficulty writing this is that I know I will not be able to properly convey the experience. Most of us who have bothered to keep track of the politics in this part of the world will have heard all of the factoids and complaints before. We have been exposed to the Israel advocates' explanations of Israeli policies and the Palestinian protests and slogans. The special thing about this experience for me was the interaction. The experience of hearing from individuals. Gaining the ability to not just think of 'The Palestinians' as an abstract concept or the generalizations we maintain, but as people, individuals, with families and businesses and homes filled with little trinkets and disagreements with each other. I don't think that seeing Palestinians in this way automatically means that you change your opinions or views, but it certainly does make it more difficult to write off things like 'the wall/fence/barrier', checkpoints or military occupation and settlement as minor inconveniences necessary for the defense of the Israelis. There is nothing minor about them, and one thing that became clear from this experience is that anyone who wishes to maintain their support of any of these things, must have some very good arguments to explain why the benefits outweigh the difficulties that result.

Trying to See Through the Eyes of Another

Part of the reason I think that meeting with people in person makes a big difference is that it forces you to try to see the situation through their eyes. When we hear the positions of a group of people or even an individual through the lens of the newspaper or television, we are removed enough that we can easily maintain our own pre-conceptions and view the statement as an object that we can analyze with the tools and ideas we have already formed. It's much more difficult to objectify an opinion when it's being expressed by the person in front of you (also probably quite rude to do so).

For instance:
We focused a lot on the construction of Israel's security fence/barrier/wall in and around Bethlehem. We saw the places where it deviates from the green line with no apparent security reasoning. We followed the path of the wall where it cuts into Bethlehem in order to provide for Israeli passage to Rachel's Tomb with disregard for the houses that become blocked in, or the businesses that previously subsisted on business from tourists to the tomb that have now closed down.

We then heard from a number of Palestinians who claimed that they are completely sure that the wall is not meant for security. My opinion was that the idea of the wall is for security. My opinion still is that in essence, it is meant for security. However, many aspects of its route clearly have other, political, or religious motivations. The Israeli government is not a single person with a single voice. Getting political backing for certain moves sometimes requires that different groups, with competing motives are allowed to give input into things like the route of the barrier.

Here's where personal contact comes into play. After hearing from the people we spoke to, I completely understand their belief that it is not for security. I have no doubt that looking from their viewpoint, it would seem that Israel's motivation in building this barrier is to grab more land and pre-determine political boundaries. If my business closed because of the wall, or if I was now forced to use the side entrance of my house because the front door now faced a twenty foot slab of a concrete wall that could have easily been built 100 meters away, I would probably be pretty skeptical of claims that this wall was meant for security. So now, even though I maintain by belief in the justifiability of constructing a security barrier, my understanding of where Palestinian complaints are coming from has changed considerably. While I would continue to defend the construction, I would be more hesitant to dismiss complaints as mere political ploys.

What's in a Name

Along this same line of reasoning:

On Thursday evening we spent a couple of hours with a group of Palestinian youth leaders for the Holy Land Trust. We played some ice-breaker and peace games, but the more interesting part was the discussion groups. We spent a good deal of time speaking with a 23 year old Palestinian girl, Rana, about what we call this land. A few of us from the Encounter group distinctly recalled learning how to draw the map of Israel in elementary school. The teacher had carefully carved out the shaped of the entire area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean on the blackboard and we were told to practice drawing the shape of Israel. There was no mention of the fact that most of the world, and even the Israeli government itself does not consider all of that land part of the state of Israel. We were young and we took this picture of Israel to be a fact, same as our multiplication tables and science class.

Now, of course, Rana remembered the same lesson, except in her class, that same shape was called Palestine. Now I know there are lots of people who will jump on this story and say- Ha, see, I told you. All the Palestinians want is to destroy the state of Israel and throw all the Jews into the Sea. But that would be missing the point. My guess would be that Rana doesn't believe that this entire land will one day become a Palestinian state. She probably believes that some solution will split this are into Israel and Palestine. The point here is that she is just a young person like me. There is no ulterior motive or sneakiness in her belief that this land is called Palestine. She didn't sit and try to think of it or come to some important decision about it. She accepted it as fact, just as we did, and the idea of calling it Israel never even occurred to her. Now, of course, all parties involved probably need major revisions of their elementary school curriculum, but I think that the tendency of the American Jewish community to immediately shut out discussions with anyone who uses the word 'Palestine' is unwarranted, and a great way to make sure we never achieve peace.

Location

The fact that this trip took place in Bethlehem as opposed to another Palestinian city had some special significance for me. I spent the year before college learning in the Gush - technically considered an area of Israeli settlement. At that time, and up until this trip I put the Gush in a different category from other Israeli settlements. This is partially because it is generally believed that in a final settlement, the Gush is one of the areas over the green line that will most probably be incorporated into Israel proper. There also is the fact that this was an area that was inhabited by Jews until the 1948 war of Independence, and so the presence of Jews in that area is not a new development.

But what became clear on this trip is that while that separate category does have some justification, it does not mean that it is exempt from some of the criticisms of other settlement areas. It was especially difficult for me to hear about the difficulties endured due to expansion of certain settlements in the Gush, or to see the places where roads I traveled on frequently make life harder for individuals. This doesn't completely change my view of the Gush, but it did convince me that putting it in a different category is not necessarily a way out of having to thoughtfully consider the implications of that area of settlements.

Another personal point of difficulty was the proximity of Bethlehem to Jerusalem proper. On our return trip we drove through the gate in the wall that's near Rachel's tomb. It was like going through a portal to another dimension. One moment we were in the city of Bethlehem, which while more prosperous than many Palestinian cities (in some ways I was expecting much worse), is still a poor and run down looking place and the next we were in the industrial Talpiyot district of Jerusalem, just minutes from my apartment. The fact that this other world exists so close to my own, and that in some ways the relative ease and safety in which I can live here is made possible by the roadblocks and walls which make life for some so difficult is something which I can't get out of my mind.

Images

A few images that stuck with me or other participants:

The Israeli soldier who came on the bus to check that we were all American on our way back into Jerusalem. The smile on his face. The "Shabbat Shalom." We had just come from two intense days of hearing about the difficulties endured by people, often with the Israeli soldier as the symbol of the source of that suffering. It might have been easy to be angry at this soldier. To use him as a representative of all the problems with the Israeli policies. But he was just a person, just like all the people we had just met. He puts his life in danger every day to protect me. He follows orders. He is innocent.

The children. We saw children from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. The 11 year old girls at the Hope Flower School - a private school. They were typical, crazily hyper 11 year old girls. The kids in the village of Al Walaje, playing outside the concrete squares that are their homes. Smiling and waving. It's amazing how children can be happy no matter what situation they're in.

We got the chance to meet with some truly amazing and inspiring people. Azziz amazed me. After his brother was wrongly jailed by Israel and died from medical neglect while in prison, he started getting involved with groups that resorted to violence to resist the occupation. But at some point, he decided to not allow the situation he was placed in to make his decisions for him. He is now part of a group of families who have had family members killed in the conflict - on both sides. He is a peace advocate who travels to both Israeli and Palestinian to spread to message of peace and the possibility of co-existence. We met with a number of people who had similar stories. They chose to follow a path of peace rather than resorting to the violence that surrounds them. In some ways, this may be a flaw of the program. It's quite easy to come out of the program believing that every single Palestinian wants nothing more than peace with Israel, which is obviously not true. But I think if we are aware of that, then there is something nice about coming away with some hope for peace.

Loving Israel

At a certain point on the trip, I felt the most intense love for Israel that I've felt in a long time, maybe ever. But this feeling came in a very particular form - of fear of losing Israel. I was thinking about what will happen in the next fifty years. Suppose nothing changes. Suppose settlements continue to expand, to the point where Palestinians are forced to leave, or are chased out, and in fifty years, this entire piece of land is Israel proper. If that were to happen during my lifetime I think I might be unable to come here. I would lose Israel. And that is terrifying for me. I suddenly realized how important Israel is to me, and how horrible it would be to lose it.

I've been searching and speaking to people since the trip, trying to understand what people who support settlement expansion plan for the future. Those who believe that we are obligated by our religion to settle all of this land and kick out all the other inhabitants - I understand and don't really have anything to respond. I can say - just remember that you choose to believe that, and there are many religious authorities who disagree, who you could choose to follow instead. But if that is their belief, then I can't refute it. But anyone else, I don't really understand. The only options I can seem to come up with are: a) maintaining the status quo - not only a bad idea from the standpoint of security, but also morally problematic to have a military occupation over another people who have no citizenship in Israel while Israel claims to be a democracy. b) annexing - ie one state - and giving all Palestinians citizenship - not something most Jewish people would embrace since the Jewish people would quickly become a minority in Israel, which would lose its status as a Jewish state, and who knows if we would even have a place here. c) removing all Palestinians - morally completely unacceptable to knowingly kick people out of their homes while they are not even citizens of the country doing it. While removing people from settlements is also an extremely sad process, at least the people there are citizens of the country doing the removal. They got to vote in the election that put this government in power, and in doing so, they relinquish some of their rights, while the Palestinians have no such voting rights. d) Two states - this is the only one that seems an acceptable option, and continually expanding settlements is making this less and less possible. Already, the West Bank would be a strangely shaped piece of land for a country, with holes eaten out of it by Israeli settlements. A little more time, and it will be nearly impossible to create a state there without the withdrawal of hundreds of thousands of settlers.

So even just logically (ie - putting political beliefs and tit-for-tat arguing aside), I haven't yet heard an argument in support of settlement with a rational plan for the future - if anyone has one, please let me know.

This is far from a complete description, but already this is quite a long post, so for now I'll leave it here. As I said in the beginning - let's talk over phone or email.

Did you ever wonder....

2007-11-28T20:10:00.000+02:00

...what would happen if you took two laptops with webcams and faced them towards each other while they're connected via video chat?

Well we did, and it was possibly the most amazing moment of my life! Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but it was still really cool. Here's the picture and video of what resulted. Highly recommended!

Middle Eastern Israel

2007-11-20T21:23:00.000+02:00

Living in America (or Jerusalem for that matter) it's easy to forget that Israel is in the Middle East. We all know Americans who have moved here, into towns full of English-speakers. It's easy to walk around Emek Refaim or Ben Yehudah and hear only the chatter of Anglo-tourists and seminary students. We imagine Israel to be a Western nation, fighting the terrorist battle facing the entire Western world, participating in the academic world we inhabit and embodying a Western-style democracy we can all relate to. Of course, there's an element of truth to all of these, but I think it's worthwhile reminding ourselves once in a while that Israel is a Middle Eastern countries, and that does make a difference.

I was first reminded of this last week, when a former member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) gave a speech to a group of former Israeli Fulbright scholars. His speech was a refreshing analysis of certain aspects of the conflicts in the Middle East. Refreshing, because he is a former member of the government, and therefore is no longer required to adjust his comments to fit any party line. He gave a frank analysis of the prospects for peace in Israel, including his suggestions for future Israeli and American approaches to Iran, Syria and the Palestinian conflict. But when addressing America's role in the Middle East he reminded us that all those other entities are not the only Middle Easterners, but that Israel too is a Middle Eastern country, and many of its citizens have what may be called a Middle Eastern mentality. This is apparent in politics, and is often a reason for misunderstanding between America and Israel, and especially between America and other Middle Eastern countries.

After that reminder, I began to take note of those aspects of Israeli culture which are Middle Eastern. It's especially obvious in the arts. The international oud festival is a great example, but it also shows up in the fine arts, in the works of my classmates and in the galleries and museums. But perhaps it is most obvious in the Israeli manners. The type of hospitality and bluntness which seems to me to be characteristic of Middle Eastern cultures.

Political Art

2007-11-18T22:11:00.000+02:00

Last week I went to an exhibition at Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem's coexistence museum. Entitled "Bare Life," it is a collection of contemporary art focusing on human rights and the times and ways that governments choose to infringe on those. It was an interesting exhibit with all the strange quirkiness to be expected from any display of contemporary art. Bruce Nauman's piece, which consisted of a spinning head on a bunch of screens screeching, "feeeeeeed me, eeeeeeeeat me, anthropologeeeee" was particularly difficult to get out of my head, as the soundtrack (which became exceedingly irritating) was audible throughout the museum. I was surprised to find that the exhibition wasn't overly saturated with finger-pointing or extreme liberal sentiment. It did, however, bring up some interesting questions in my mind about the place of political art, especially journalistic type photography.

There was a fairly wide range of pieces there, including installations, collages, paintings and photography, and I suppose such an exhibition begins to force us to ask some basic questions about what is considered to be art. When does a photograph or video of a peace rally move out of the realm of photo-journalism and become art? Is photo-journalism itself an art, or a method of documenting events, or both? Is a video of a man discussing some interesting insights about the nature of language and possession a piece of art or a piece of philosophy? This in turn brings up some questions about the place of the artist in this type of art. For instance, suppose that the artist taking a picture of a riot has the choice to photoshop the photograph so that the violence of the police or the rioters is more or less extreme. Even without photoshop, things can be cropped out or focused on. I suppose these things are the choice of the artist, but what gets sticky with these types of photos, is that they're often considered factual rather than a single artist's interpretation. And when such a photo appears in a newspaper or news program in addition to the gallery or museum, the significance of these choices is further magnified.

Clearly I don't expect there to be an answer to these questions. There's no distinct line between art and history or science. No exact way to define the difference between objective documentation (which doesn't really seem to exist) and subjective interpretation. I just found myself thinking about this as I walked through Museum on the Seam, trying to categorize what I saw and to find a way to place the artist in the creation of these documentary pieces of art.

Jesus of Jerusalem

2007-11-16T14:06:00.001+02:00

Was just walking home from the supermarket and came across a tree that looked remarkably like Jesus, so I had to stop and sketch for a while. Do you see it?

Oh How I love Oud

2007-11-12T00:16:00.000+02:00

Big news here in Jerusalem! This weekend marked the beginning of the annual international festival of the oud! (pronounced ood)

The oud (according to Wikipedia) is a pear-shaped, stringed instrument similar to a lute used in traditional Middle Eastern music and East African music.

There are events throughout the next two weeks, all featuring the oud in some form or another. On Saturday night, I attended an event entitled 'Sufi Song and Dance.' It was performed at a small, intimate venue (actually the same one as the Avishai Cohen concert I attended a few weeks ago). There were only two performers: a man singing in Arabic and playing the oud, and a female dancer. The dance was a mix of modern, flamenco and sufi dance, and the dancer was truly incredible. Her body moved in ways I didn't think possible. The story seemed to be a sort of typical love saga, filled with a variety of intense passion, some anger and uncertainty etc., although the fact that all the words were in Arabic made it a bit difficult to actually follow.

One point of interest - on the one hand, this seemed to be a modernized version of a more traditional art form. The dance included some distinctly modern elements and I've heard from a number of people that the dancers in traditional sufi dancing (at least in public) are usually men, where as here it was a woman. However, I actually found this fact - that the dancer was a woman and the musician a man - to feel a bit anti-modern, or at least anti-feminist. In this scenario, the woman was completely lacking a voice. She was only there to be looked upon, whereas all of the speaking and the music came from the male. Even during the rare lines when the dancer actually sang along with the singer, her voice was barely audible, as his microphoned voice and oud overpowered her. I could be over-analyzing here, and it's totally possible that the roles taken were merely coincidental, but it stuck out in my mind anyway.

Overall, not the most amazing night of my life, but certainly an interesting performance, and a good reminder that we can all use a little more oud in our lives.

Finding My Voice

2007-10-30T11:27:00.001+02:00

One of the more difficult parts of being thrust into art school after having only minored in art during college is that most people in my classes seem to have a very good idea of what their style is, while I'm still searching for mine. Most students at Bezalel, at least those beyond their first year - ie the ones I'm in class with - seem to have developed at least some sense of what their style is. I'm not completely sure about this, and I know there are many exceptions, but of course, when I'm sitting trying to figure out how I'd like to approach the assignment, feeling completely lost, I tend to only see those students who have already made significant progress because they started working right away.

In spite of everything I wrote in the previous post about the importance of constraints and how to use style as a personal constraint, this seems to be something that I have a lot of trouble with. In typical Raffi fashion I tend to push off decisions and choices, and so I refuse to allow myself to be constrained. That might sound romantic and free, but it's no fun. It means that every time I enter my painting class, or sit down in front of a smooth, blank lithography stone, I get stuck. Ideas pop into my head, and I push them away, ruling them out for being trite or overly conceptual. I fight against representing my thoughts too literally, or producing something that is simply representational, without enough conceptual backing. Once I finally decide on what I want to do, I immediately start doubting it, thinking of all the other possibilities I might have chosen, and am now missing out on.

For example, people I've spoken to are always interested to know how I plan on combining art and computer science. Will I paint pictures of computers? Will I decorate actual computers? I immediately dispel the notion that my art will have any direct connection with computers or cognitive science. It will be a much more abstract connection. For some reason, literally trying to create art about computers seems trite to me. I'm not quite sure why. This past week, for the first time, I decided that I will try to start incorporating some of my interests in cognitive science or math into my art. I'm not sure how exactly. I'm not going to paint a picture of a computer (I don't like computers very much), but I think there are other things I can do that will somehow connect my interest in art to other interests of mine. All I can do is try and see how it goes. I might give up after a bit, but I still need to try. Who knows, maybe I'll find that there's a way for me to say something unique in this way.

Constraint Satisfaction

2007-10-30T11:26:00.001+02:00

There are many moral and philosophical reasons behind the modern, Western dedication to individual freedom. Additionally, though, there is the more pragmatic belief that complete freedom of expression is what encourages free-thinking, creative ideas and solutions to problems. Now, I am an ardent supporter of freedom of expression as a policy, and believe strongly in the ethical importance of granting all individuals complete civil liberties and freedoms. However, I would like to argue that because this belief is instilled in us so early and often, we sometimes underestimate the importance of constraints, and their ability to inspire our creativity and productivity.

I guess, in essence, this goes back to one manifestation of abstraction which I spoke about in my first blog post. Specifically, one function of abstraction is to filter out a usable nugget from a body of information which is unusable because of its vastness. In this case, when a person has unlimited possibilities open to him it becomes difficult to know what to do. Too many choices are available so that sorting through all of them might be more work than actually doing the thing itself.

(Once again, I believe I'm trying to describe a model which risks being too general, so as to describe everything, and thereby lose its usefulness as a model, but I'll do my best to isolate (ie constrain) what I'm talking about into just a few instances.)

It is surprising that constraints are supremely important in the fine arts. Many of us think of art, especially any art since the beginning of the 20th century, as being fundamentally generated by people's creativity and freedom. In contemporary art, the most valued quality is a sense of freshness and the sense that the artist is truly expressing themselves, unencumbered by the norms and expectations of society. However, even as the artist yearns for the freedom to do anything that comes to her mind, I think that constraints are often integral to the actual execution.

For example, I think that part of what I love so much about the printmaking class I'm in are the limits imposed by the process itself. With many types of printing, the creative portion of the process is severely limited. Aside from the fact that there are simply many things that just aren't feasible given the limitations of the materials, it's also true that the amount of time spent creating the image (what may be called the 'creative' part of the process) is generally miniscule compared to the total time spent on a single print. Much of the time is spent preparing materials, using the various chemicals, sanding and smoothing, operating the press etc. You may then be prompted to ask - is there really that much of a difference between craft and art? If the process becomes so restricting that the artist is basically just going through the motions, doesn't it become craft? I'm not sure about the answer to this one. This certainly does make the line between the two a little bit less clear, but I believe there still is a distinction.

In any case - I've felt the helpfulness of constraints in generating creativity in a number of art classes I've taken, and I've heard this from other people as well. An exercise suggested by an art teacher, such as limiting your palette or working on a very specific subject, will often bring out an ability or creativity that may have remained hidden had the assignment simply been to 'paint whatever you want.'

I also think that the whole notion of an artist having a style is fundamentally an issue of the artist establishing constraints on their own work.
In a lecture this week, we were learning about an artist named Haim Steinbach. For thirty years he has done the same thing. Every piece of his has been a shelf, with a few objects on it. The objects change, the style of the shelf changes, but the idea of the shelf persists. Now I don't actually know why he chooses to use a shelf. I'm sure there is thought behind it. But I'm sure there are other things he can do. There are other ideas in his head, ways he might express himself. Why didn't Jackson Pollack decide to give up the whole splatter thing and just try out something else. Why does Chuck Close insist on repeatedly working on grid based portraits?

Well there is a cynical answer, and that is that it's simply specialization. People get good at a specific type of creation, and once they see that it sells, they stick to it because it makes money and they know they're good at it. But I really believe there's more to it than that. Style is a starting point. It lets the artist know where to begin. Of course choosing a style is a creative decision as well. But once it's chosen, the artist is constrained, and within that reduced realm of possibilities, creativity actually flourishes.

There is also a technical, mathematical usefulness to constraints. The title of this post is actually a type of problem encountered in artificial intelligence. The computer program is given a situation described by a number of constraints, and must use those to solve the problem. The systems of equations we all learned in algebra class are just constraints that help us find the values of a group of variables. The constraints are what give the solutions.

As I said earlier, this can get quite general. It can be used as a reason to adhere to religious beliefs which constrain our daily activities. It can almost as easily be used as justification for repression and control. Obviously it's an idea that can be taken too far. Many great pieces of artwork are created by purposefully escaping from constraints. But I do believe there is something to be gained by not viewing constraints only as retarding forces, but also as tools which, when properly taken advantage of, can just as easily inspire and create.

I wanna hold your (sweaty) hand

2007-10-24T19:57:00.000+02:00

Just one illustration of the importance of context:

Last week I attended the wedding of an ultra-Orthodox cousin of mine. As is traditional at such weddings, the dancing consisted of separate men and women's hora circles. I'm sure many of you have participated in such circles before. Have you ever noticed how it's actually kind of strange to hold the hands of two complete strangers for an extended period of time? A gesture that's normally reserved only for those who we are intimately close with, somehow in this context it's completely acceptable to tightly grasp the hand of another, and not let go for quite a while. This is strange without even mentioning the fact that straight men probably never hold the hand of another man for such a long period of time, except in this context.

Then of course, there is the variety of hands to hold that you come across. Among others, there are the cold, limp fish, the iron-grip, the slippery wet noodle-hand, and of course, worst of all - the extra hairy, profusely sweaty bear-hug clutch.

My First Prints

2007-10-24T19:25:00.000+02:00

So I'm really loving the printmaking - it's a lot of fun. These are my first two prints.

This one is a lithograph. It's an amazing process - it's completely chemically driven.
Here's the Wikipedia explanation of the chemical process:
Lithography works because of the repulsion of oil and water. The image is drawn on the surface of the print plate with an oil-based medium (hydrophobic). The range of oil-based mediums is endless, but the dexterity of the image relies on the lipid content of the material being used--its ability to withstand water and acid. Following the placement of the image is the application of an acid emulsified with gum arabic. The function of this emulsion is to create a salt layer directly around the image area. The salt layer seeps into the pores of the stone, completely enveloping the original image. This process is called etching. Using lithographic turpentine, the printer then removes the greasy drawing material, leaving only the salt layer; it is this salt layer which holds the skeleton of the image's original form. When printing, the stone or plate is kept wet with water. Naturally the water is attracted to the layer of salt created by the acid wash. Ink that bears a high lipid content is then rolled over the surface. The water repels the grease in the ink and the only place for it to go is the cavity left by the original drawing material. When the cavity is sufficiently full, the stone and paper are run through a press which applies even pressure over the surface, transferring the ink to the paper and off the stone.

This one is an etching. For this type of print, you use a metal plate.
First you cover it with a layer of wax and then draw the picture into the wax using a metal point which basically just removes the wax. The entire plate is put into acid which eats away at the plate only in the places where you've drawn because the rest is protected by the wax. After washing off the wax, ink is pressed into the lines that were etched into the metal by the acid, while the rest of the plate remains clean. The press then transfers the image to a sheet of paper.

Tricky Art

2007-10-17T22:25:00.000+02:00

I'm no expert in modern or contemporary art. I feel a bit uncomfortable making general statements about a field with which I admittedly have only an amateur familiarity. But these are just some thoughts I've had about a number of exhibits and pieces I've seen, so might as well flesh them out.

One aspect of late 20th century art, which seems to show up quite a bit, is the idea of playing with the viewer or using little tricks and riddles as part of the art. The artist might 'play' with the idea of switching foreground and background, mixing up the real and the artificial or the object and the subject. There are lots of different types of games the artist might play, but I think it's safe to say that much of the motivation for contemporary works consists of ideas that somehow plays with things we assume or take for granted about what art and life are. I even believe that such tricks, albeit subtler ones, go back much further than the 20th century. In some ways, those subtle riddles are probably a big part of what made all the masters great, and gave each of them a unique voice.

While I sometimes really love artwork that is playful in this way, I often find that some line is crossed, and I find myself getting annoyed with it instead. I'm not sure exactly what it is. Maybe it's that at a certain point it just becomes too kitschy or obvious. I think it might even be more than that. Maybe some sort of inconsistency or untruth. Might even relate to my own artwork, and the way that when I try to get too conceptual, I get finicky and too controlled. These are all hard to characterize, so I'll try to explain through some examples.

One example which I mentioned in a previous post was a performance I saw last week. It consisted of two men, sitting back to back inside a cage-like ball.
They were each continuously sketching what they saw on at every angle on small pieces of paper and then pasting those papers to the cage, thus blocking out the actual view of what they had drawn and replacing it with the sketch. This continued until they had completely replaced the actual world around them with the 2-D representations.

Now I actually did like this performance, but there was something about it that bothered me, so I guess it kind of sits on that line of mine. I think the idea was a really interesting one, albeit one that has probably been covered quite a bit. And it was executed quite well. It raised interesting questions about the nature of the art in relation to our perceptions and the real world - questions certainly worth thinking about.

My only reservation is that it was a little too obvious. This idea is a big one. It's important. It sits behind all of art, maybe even all of life. There's a lot to it. By being so literal about representing this idea, however, it's as if they were claiming to have captured or solved it. Sometimes, if you just hint at an idea as grand as this, you can get away with it. You're not claiming to solve any major philosophical problems, just pointing out that they exist, and maybe gesturing towards an interesting approach. But by addressing it directly and without a sense of humility in the face of such a heavy concept, they end up looking a bit foolish, like some 15 year old claiming to have figured out the meaning of life by coming up with a clever answer to the riddle about the rock that God can't move.

Another example is a work by a contemporary Chinese artist named Xu Bing that I saw at the Israel Museum exhibition of Chinese art. The work is called 'The Living Word' and it consists of colorful Chinese writing on a block on the floor. The last word on the block is the Chinese word for bird. That word is repeated over and over in the air, hanging from wires, emanating from the flat word.

Moving through the air, the word continually morphs, until it has taken the shape of an actual bird. Once again, part of me really liked this work. It's a nice idea and it was a visually interesting and beautiful display. Still there's something about it that feels a little bit cliche or kitschy. Maybe this is an idea that should appear in a TV ad for a bird company, where the digital animator would cleverly morph the word into the bird. Maybe it would have seemed more original in 1991 instead of 2001. There's just not much mystery in it. There are no holes to fill in, no questions left to be thought about by the viewer. The artist literally takes us step by step from letter to bird. It's such a literal interpretation of the connection between langauge and life, that once again, it seems to approach a big idea head on, trying to conquer it instead of playing with it.

I suppose that might be the type of inconsistency I mentioned before. On the one hand, these artists are approaching these very grand, very serious ideas. They're attempting to speak about issues that lie at the center of human existence. And yet, they are using little tricks and riddles to speak about those ideas. And not just to hint at, or play with the ideas, but to approach them fully and unabashedly trying to 'solve' them. Now I haven't yet read much about the artists, and maybe that will change my opinions a bit. Perhaps they are aware of this inconsistency, and that's part of their message. But, at least to me, it doesn't seem like there's a self-awareness of this problem. It feels a bit like they had a clever idea for a riddle, which sounded interesting, and pulled them along. Somewhat like a person trying to tame nature by chasing after a butterfly with a net, only to end up being drawn into the lion's den - they may have taken on more than they originally bargained for.

Now, as I said, I'm not sure these examples are such good ones, because I actually enjoyed both works more than most of the other art displayed at the same exhibits. But I guess I'm using them more as subtle illustrations of the type of tricks I'm speaking about. I hope you can see how the slight issues I have with these two works might translate into actually creating much worse artwork. Artwork that turns kitschy or cliched unintentionally. Artwork that reveals the artist's lack of self-awareness about the issues he/she is tackling and the methods being used. Artwork that gets so caught up in playing with a certain idea that the visual appeal suffers (uninentionally).

This is something that's happened to me a number of times in painting. I get an idea in my head of some concept I'd like to try to represent visually and the idea is so strong that it overtakes my ability to paint freely and well. Instead I get caught up in the idea itself and my painting becomes tight and finicky, instead of the freedom I've sometimes been able to display in my better paintings. Here, I'll put up a couple of examples. These are paintings that were originally intended to be part of the same series that I did last year in a painting class. My original idea was for a very conceptually driven series which would examine representation in art and technology. The first two painting I did were the still life and the i-pod.

They're not the worst paintings I've ever done, but they're certainly not the best. I was caught up in the idea I was trying to speak about, and my strokes are too controlled and the paintings get boring. As I continued to work on the series, I started to free up. My idea changed quite a bit, and the last three paintings strayed completely from my original idea, but by freeing myself from the constraints I had originally imposed, I ended up painting much more freely (which was way more fun) and also creating what I think are some of my best paintings.

Finally, I'd like to speak about one piece of 'tricky' art that I absolutely love - it's one of my favorites. There are many versions, but the one that I've seen is in sculpture form, and I think that the 3-D nature was an important addition. It's called 'Pitcher and Picture' by Roy Lichtenstein, and it's absolutely brilliant.

Part of what's so great about this piece is that it's playing with riddles on two different planes (once again I'll just put forward that I'm speaking completely from my own opinion and I could be totally off, but hey, that's why art is fun). The title is a completely silly trick. It's a play on words. It's just silly. 'Picture' and 'Pitcher' happen to be two words that sound similar in English, so why not put them together in the same work. It's fun and simple. No harm done, no big issues addressed.

But the much bigger problems and questions are all there, he just doesn't speak about them in the title. It's like some sort of meta-trick. He's tricking us into thinking that the issue he's addressing is the funny similarity in names given in the title, when actually there's so much more going on. There's a riddle here about flat art and 3-D art - viewing art as an object or a flat picture. This is a huge issue in 20th century art, and Lichtenstein subtly comments on it by creating the 3-D sculpture, which is displaying a 3-D scene, with depth (the picture is obviously behind the pitcher, and yet the actual sculpture is flat. The pitcher is not in front of the picture, they're on the same plane, taking up the exact same space.

There's an experiment with negative space - much of the sculpture is just the dark frame, and the white parts are actually just air, but those empty spaces are just as important to the composition as anything else. There's the important artistic idea of putting a frame within a frame. There is a 2-D picture contained within another piece of art - a classic commentary on the nature of representational art. And yet it's not actually contained at all. The picture is not inside another frame, it's as free-standing as any other frame hung on the wall of the museum. There are a bunch of other interesting riddles and games being played here. Many of them are brushing with important philosophical and artistic questions. And yet, Lichtenstein throws us all off track, portrays the work as a childish joke and shows us his true playful nature and the wonderful art it can produce.

Hippy, Native American, Hawaiian, Kiwi, Palestinian, Baal Tshuvah Eskimos

2007-10-17T22:24:00.001+02:00

The other night, Sarah and I attended an event put together by a peace group in Jerusalem. No, there weren't actually any Eskimos there, but the rest of the groups I mentioned were all well represented. The first part of the night was pretty interesting. We met some Palestinians who had just barely gotten permission from the army to attend. They were eager to speak to us, although it seemed like they may have been prepped to tell all the Jews and Americans they had come to meet about the difficulties involved in living under occupation.

The rest of the night consisted of some tulip meditation (no I don't have any idea how tulip meditation is distinct from any other type of meditation), some horribly cheesy folk music (if you took the words 'beautiful', 'harmony', 'unity', 'love', 'happiness', 'together' and 'forever' and created a bunch of random combinations, you'd get the lyrics to these songs), and other prayers, songs, candle-lightings and speeches.

While it was interesting to meet some of the people there, most of the night wasn't really my style. It was just too lovey-dovey, hippyish for me. The goal of the evening was unclear. I'm not sure that meditation (tulip or otherwise) is the solution to the current political situation. But above and beyond the fact that this just wasn't my style, there was a distinct discomfort generated by the strange combination of a few Palestinians and a group of hippy, non-Israeli Jews and Christians. Even though they both supposedly came to sing and meditate and talk about peace, there is just such a huge gulf between those two groups.

The Palestinians who attended are living in a society where the idea of sitting around singing about peace and love is an impossibility. They're concerned with making enough money to feed their families and keeping them safe from the violence around them (whether internal or external). The concept of a society that has enough money and free time to concentrate on folk songs and poetry readings must be so foreign to them. So they sat and listened to the speeches and songs, looking decidedly uncomfortable. They took every opportunity to inform others of the hardships they must endure daily. That telling is the type of activity that makes sense to them as a means to work towards some sort of peace and understanding. Unfortunately, I think it will be many years at best, before they will live in a society capable of supporting the luxuries (even those I find somewhat irritating) we take for granted all the time.

(Just to be clear, I'm not saying that there aren't a good number of artists, poets and musicians among the Palestinians. Difficult situations often generate powerful and wonderful movements in the arts. I'm just commenting on the difference between the current Palestinians society and the type of 'hanging around' I wrote about in an earlier post, which is something that needs an economically successful, and politically stable society to support it.)

Language of the Land

2007-10-16T15:47:00.000+02:00

I didn't come to Israel to learn Hebrew. The truth is I originally planned on not taking any Hebrew lessons, but when I was in Thailand this summer, there were lots of Israelis and lots of Hebrew, which made me realize how out of practice I am. So I decided I would take some classes or tutoring just to make sure I can keep up in art class. But through speaking Hebrew and the tutoring sessions I've been taken, I've actually come to see a beauty in the Hebrew language that I've never seen before.

In particular, what I'm referring to is the way that Hebrew is centered around the usage of a relatively small set of root words known as Shorashim. This small vocabulary is then conjugated in a myriad of ways in order to create a complete language. It's really quite amazing when you start to realize all the connections between different words.

For instance, the verb "to follow" is Le'Akov לעקוב. The shoresh (root) can be conjugated into a noun as Akevot עקבות which means footsteps, as in to follow in someone's footsteps. The shoresh itself is Akev עקב which means ankle, also the origin of the name Jacob, or Ya'akov.

Another nice example, which I'll be dealing with a lot I'm sure, is the word Moof-shat מופשט , which means 'abstract.' It is derived from the root word meaning simple, or to simplify, which can also be conjugated to mean 'to undress' since undressing is returning to our plain and simple bodies.

This trait of Hebrew gives it a feeling of cohesiveness but also a sense of being tied to tradition, and a difficulty moving forward. I'll explain. Because everything revolves around this core of root words, it seems to me (keeping in mind that I know very little about the history of the language, or language development in general, of course) that it is quite difficult to introduce new words into the language, because you can't just add in a new root word to the somewhat rigid body of existing roots. Therefore, modern words in Hebrew generally don't sound very Hebrew at all. Technology is Technologia, conceptual is conceptuali, lithography is litografeea etc. etc. etc. These words have such a different feel from actual Hebrew words, that it's almost humorous to listen to a lecture on theories of art, or philosophy, since every other word is basically in English. While that does make it much easier for me to understand such lectures, it also feels like a bit of a cop out, as if there's this thin veneer of modernity layered over an ancient and traditional core.

I guess that seems to be a good description of the land of Israel itself. Ostensibly, it's a modern (moderni), technologically advanced (mitkadem b'teknologia?) society. But there's an underlying core which is mired in the past. It's especially obvious in Jerusalem, where walls and buildings from thousands of years ago still stand next to modern high-rises capturing the interest and religious devotion of the masses, and street names recall biblical heroes and historical achievements. But even the country as a whole, is still very much centered around traditional and enduring ideas. Maybe the best example is the one that's central in any Israeli's mind and is entwined with the existence of the state itself - the struggling and fighting between the inhabitants of the land that has been going on for millenia.

There are those (in the linguistics/psychology world) who believe that language is so fundamental to human existence, that the forms of our language actually impact our thoughts, and in that way become more than just a means of communication. Language is central to the workings of our minds, the ways we organize our worlds and our modes of interaction. Not sure I would have the gall to make such a grand claim about this observation of mine, but there certainly is a strong and deep connection between the language and the land.

(I won't claim these observations are original. Many people who either study languages, or maybe even anyone who actually sat through high school Hebrew classes instead of sneaking out to play ping-pong in the student lounge may have noticed all this. But since I don't fall into either of those categories, I find this pretty interesting.)

Finally, (this comes from Sarah) there may be some interesting connection here to the topic of abstraction I've been thinking about. There are lots of different words, with minor differences in spelling or pronunciation, which make up the Hebrew language. However, if we weed out those small details, and 'abstract' up a few levels, we are left with just the more general shorashim, the root words which encompass the basic human activities and thoughts. Perhaps exploring the language at the level of the roots will give some insight into our basic desires and actions.

First Day at Bezalel

2007-10-15T22:57:00.000+02:00

I'm tired!

Today was the first day of classes at Bezalel. I decided to try out a bunch of classes this week, and then choose the ones I like best, but that meant that I spent 9 hours in class today. I left my apartment at around 8:30 a.m. and just got back home at around 9:30 p.m.

The first class of the day was a drawing class. The topic of the day: how to sharpen a pencil and scribble in circles. We have a very advanced art school here at Bezalel.
That actually was the topic, but it meant sharpening using a blade, not a pencil sharpener, and while the scribbling was just that, the point was to explore different ways of holding our tools and trying to loosen up our strokes. (It still just felt like scribbling though)

I sat in on a lecture in the afternoon, which was a bit too long for me considering that I haven't sat in a classroom in quite a while, but it was also interesting because he actually spoke quite a bit about abstract art in ways that relate to the topics I'm thinking about for my research.

Finally, I went to an evening printmaking workshop, which was a really nice, tight-knit group of students. I felt like a little bit of an outsider, since they all seemed to know each other very well, but they were welcoming and helpful, so I ended up learning how to do an etching!

Aside from the long hours, I think it felt much longer and more tiring because even things that are usually somewhat relaxing, like listening to someone speak, or having friendly conversations, take a lot more effort when they're in Hebrew. It's tough, but I think it will really improve my Hebrew. By the end of the day, I was already thinking in Hebrew. It also means that I'm learning lots of words that will be of very little use to me in the real world, such as etching, acid and lithography.

While it has been very intimidating entering into this world of Israeli art students, I met a lot of very nice people, and everyone was helpful - sometimes without even having to be asked. I think it's interesting that Israelis are so helpful. On the one hand, I know that Americans and other foreigners are always shocked by the bluntness and rudeness of many Israelis. However, it's also true that the niceties and manners that are typical of Americans, are in some ways a means of distancing one another. We make a show of being nice and polite, because it's also a way of being formally distant. Don't get me wrong, I think all those niceties are important and I have a lot of difficulty dealing with people when those things are missing. However, there is something refreshing about the way that Israelis are so open and in your face, that they can immediately either offend us, or make us feel like part of the family.

Owning Up

2007-10-13T18:03:00.000+02:00

The prospect of returning to Israel, for me, held some fears and apprehensions. I was worried about coming back to a place where I had spent a lot of time back when I was much younger, when I was different in many ways. I was especially worried about how the changes in my religious and political opinions would seem to certain people here. I wasn't sure I'd be able to be myself. Maybe my fear of somehow disappointing, or clashing with those people who knew me back then would get the best of me. In the past, when visiting, that might have been ok. For short spurts, I could be conciliatory just to avoid conflict. But now I felt that I could no longer do that. I've thought too much about the things I believe in. I'm proud of the opinions I've developed and the things I've worked for.

This past week, I faced a couple of situations where these feelings were particularly pertinent.

The first was going back to visit the Yeshivah (religious school of higher Jewish learning) where I spent a year before coming to Penn. Now I can't say that back then I was the most religiously devoted person. But I did come out of that year with a certain sense of religious conviction, and certainly with a desire to continue to learn Torah and be an active participant in the Orthodox Jewish community. I was an active leader in Penn's Orthodox community, but over the years my beliefs also changed in many significant ways. I won't go into details, but I have lots of problems with Orthodoxy and many ways in which I think my beliefs might place me outside the pale of mainstream Orthodoxy.

In any case, I returned to Yeshivah and went to say hello to my primary teacher/rabbi there. I was never exceptionally close with him, but I do respect him a lot, and spent many hours over the course of my year there in his class. He was a little more questioning than I've known him to be in the past, and so a question about my 'religious path' at Penn came quickly. There was no dodging the topic. I could either quickly brush aside the question by pretending I hadn't changed much in four years, or try to be honest.

In the past, I've been torn on this point. One complication is that I feel that I represent more than just myself. This Yeshivah has a bit of an internal struggle going on over whether or not they should accept many students who are going to secular universities, as opposed to Yeshivah University or other Jewish institutions. The reason for excluding certain students is that some people believe that limited resources should be focused on those who will be most involved in Jewish learning and Jewish communal life. By admitting that I am not among the most dedicated of alumni, do I hurt the chances that other students who plan on going to secular university will be accepted to the Yeshivah?

Well, this time I felt that I had to be honest. I'm not good at lying anyway, so I'm sure I would just give myself away if I tried to dodge the truth. It actually turned into maybe the best conversation I've ever had with him. When I hide the truth, I have nothing of substance to say. I just try to change the topic, and finish the conversation as quickly as possible so as not to be discovered. This time, I was able to engage him in a real discussion. To actually speak about things I've thought about. And not surprisingly, he also spoke more openly than I've known him to. Clearly these are things he has at least thought about, and while we obviously have a difference of opinions, it was nice to hear some sense of understanding about the things I think and believe.

Later that same day, I spent some time with a close family friend who I grew up with. He has a family of his own now, and lives in a settlement. He just recently moved into a well established Jewish 'settlement bloc' which is widely considered to be established enough that it is expected that it would become a part of Israel proper in any final agreement with the Palestinians. However, the settlement he moved from is much more controversial, and he still believes strongly in the settler movement. While I never agreed with his political views, I now have much stronger feelings in opposition to them. Anyone who's been in touch with me over the past year knows that at Penn I was very active in trying to connect the Muslim and Jewish communities, and particularly through discussions about the Middle East. So I didn't feel like I could just pretend that I don't think about it at all.

Once again, I decided to at least reveal a bit of what I think. I expressed my concerns about traveling to certain areas in the West Bank, which I had been ok with before. I'm not completely sure what my policy will be, with regards to both the morality and safety of traveling to certain areas. But I told him about this uncertainty, so that at least he would know this was something I thought seriously about.

I don't know where any of this will lead. Will it hurt my relationships with any of these people? Will they view me as some sort of failure for not living up to the expectations they might have had for me? I don't know, but I guess I feel that at this point in my life, it's more important to be myself. To let people know what I think, and stop worrying about trying to please everyone, because that never works. And if I am able to maintain my relationships with these people, I think they'll be more real and meaningful than they were in the past.

Avishai Cohen and THE BOOGIE

2007-10-12T01:41:00.000+02:00

Tonight, I joined Sarah and the Dorot fellows at a concert by the Avishai Cohen Trio. I know very little about Jazz. The last jazz club I went to was probably Zanzabar Blue in Philly, where the group leader was playing one of those keyboard-guitars that haven't been seen since the 80's. Even so, I can say with certainty that this was one of the best performances I have ever seen. While I had never heard of him before, Avishai is apparently a world famous jazz bassist, and his fame is well-deserved. Israelis packed into the intimate venue to catch his performance, which supposedly only comes to Israel every couple of years. When they began to play, the energy in the room was incredible. Accompanied by a pianist and drummer on par with him, they completely blew us all away. (Yisroeli, you would have been in heaven.) He moved from slow mournful melodies, where he was practically hugging the bass, to fast-paced solos, which he would execute while simultaneously tapping out the beat on all different parts of the bass. A really incredible experience - I highly suggest giving a listen to some of his music, although I'm sure the live energy was a large part of it.

After the jazz concert we headed to the BOOGIE. The boogie is a truly unique Jerusalem experience, that takes place every couple of weeks on Thursday night. Lots of young adults show up for a night of dancing to the beat of everything from hip-hop to country and Jewish simcha music to Israeli folk songs. There's a kind of a hippy feel to it. No one dresses up - rather everyone tries to wear clothes that are flowing and loose fitting, because the dancing isn't ordinary either. Everyone just totally lets loose, throwing away all inhibitions and letting the music move their bodies. You see so many people, all doing their own thing, that you just feel like there's no need to hold back - you can't look any weirder than anyone else. Not to say that there weren't some great dancers there, because some people seemed to really know what they were doing - and in this venue, it's all smiles and energy, which makes them even better.

There was one nice feature of both these events that stuck out to me. Even though I haven't been in particularly active of late with regards to religion, and I certainly have lots of reservations and skepticisms about how religion should play a part in my own life, there was something nice about the small touches of Judaism that are alive here in Israel, even in events that aren't religious in nature. The Boogie was obviously full of young Jewish students, and the Jewish and Israeli songs gave it a nice feel. But even more interesting was Avishai Cohen. This was a concert that was in no way a religious event. I'm sure that he, and most of the audience are completely Chiloni (secular). And yet, the last song of the night was the only one with words, and the words were those of the Shalom Aleichem, traditionally sung on Friday night at the Shabbat table. Everyone in the crowd sang along, and there was an amazing feeling of keeping alive a traditional religious tune in a young, energetic crowd.

Yeah, so I'm wearing a zebra costume and no pants! What's Your problem???

2007-10-11T10:13:00.001+02:00

Last night was my introduction to the Jerusalem art community and it was quite an experience. There was a night of performance art at the Anna Ticho House - a kind of mansion converted into a museum and restaurant. Lesson of the day was: performance art is really weird, but can also be interesting.

In the entrance hall, a stilted bride stood, heavily breathing into a piece of tubing which was inflating her swollen belly. She was creepy and sort of frightening.

Upstairs, two young women discussed opposites (e.g. - Q:"what's the opposite of my mother?"... A:"a blue sky") while the famed trouser-less zebra circled and contorted itself.

One of my favorites was a video which showed the artist (mysteriously accompanied by an Arab man with a head-covering) reciting the names of what sounded like all of the people she'd ever met, sometimes indicating the nature of their relationship, such as: "Adi Koren hugged me through the car window", or "I know something about Adit Steinberg that she thinks I don't know." This went on for about twelve minutes and I thought it was a very interesting way of getting at who a person is. After a while, you start to think of the artist as being defined by all the people she knows, and their interactions. (I'm not quite sure why the last few minutes consisted of her and her Arab accompanier passionately making out, but hey, I guess you can't understand it all)

I also liked the two men, sitting back-to-back in a cage-like structure. They were in the process of sketching what they saw at every angle on small scraps of paper, which were then pasted to the cage - blotting out their actual vision and replacing it with the sketched representation.

I liked the idea, although the performance may have taken it a bit too literally for my tastes.

The other exhibits included a group of blind-folded girls slowly dancing around with each other and a video in which the artist played a number of different characters, which included a Russian girl dancing to a folk-tune which was actually a quote from Primo Levy - it was very funny, but I think you had to be there.

Perhaps the best 'performance' of the evening, however, was not actually part of the show. During the video presentation, a religious looking man, who I supposed had just eaten dinner there passed us sitting on the stairs and called out, "It's amazing what people will watch. All this vile trash is typical of the Chiloni (secular Israeli) culture." Now I guess you can't totally blame him - at that point, we were watching as the person on screen bit off the tips of fruit roll-up wrapped fingers or slowly ingested a number of pearls while pasted-on cartoon-eyes danced to the music. Certainly a style of art that is...well, I'll be generous...inaccessible to many people, especially those used to pretty paintings of the old-city or floral designs around quotes from psalms. But the timing of his performance was flawless and sent my friends and I into fits of laughter. Oh well, I guess performance art isn't for everyone. But at least everyone can participate.

Registration Frustration

2007-10-09T22:42:00.000+02:00

Today was the first day that I actually had to be awake early for something, and let me tell you, it's no fun. Especially since Sarah and I went in to Tel Aviv for someone's birthday, and didn't get back till after 2 am. In any case, today was the first day of the Fulbright orientation. It was really great to finally meet all the other people on the program. They all seem friendly and everyone's working on very different and interesting things. I hope we'll create some sort of community where we're all in touch, keeping each other informed of what we're working on.

A Professor Hazan, from Hebrew U came to present to us on the Israeli political system. It was actually a really great lecture explaining the differences between Israeli and American democracies. He was explaining how because we're used to our American system, we think the parliamentary system is unstable (all the votes of no confidence, etc), but how actually, in the parliamentary system, there's never a lame duck leader, and the no confidence motions are just part of the fluidity of the system. He said it much better that I am, but in any case, learned a lot.

Anyway, at about 12:15, I left the orientation to go to Bezalel to register for art classes. I figured I had a good 45 minutes before lunch at 1, should be plenty of time, right? Wrong. I think there's some saying about how one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. Well this is exactly how it seems to work in Israeli Universities (at least with the artists). I was circling between the fine arts department office, the registration office and the payment office and each one was telling a different story even though they are just a few yards from each other. One would say I needed a signature from the other. The other would say that I need to pay first before they can sign. The third said I didn't have to pay. Back to the second, who sends me to the first and then back to the third. Finally the second says I do have to pay and then they'll reimburse me, but then they charge too little because they forgot that I'm a foreigner, so they have to make sure to take more money from me. Then I can't get a receipt till the first puts me in the computer, but she needs help from her boss who's busy with the third. After about two hours, having missed lunch and just barely making the bus for our trip to Migdal David, I walked away with my three courses put into the computer - I still have to go back to pay the extra foreigner fee one of these days... can't wait.

Hangin Around this J-town corner...

2007-10-07T22:20:00.000+02:00

Over the holidays of this past week I met lots of very interesting people doing all sorts of interesting things. There were no i-bankers, or people working in finance for a couple of years 'just till I save up some money.' Rather, there were a number of teachers, a few artists, a whole lot of students, and an amazing general attitude of just...well... hanging around.

People (mostly Americans) come to Jerusalem for a year, or two, or ten and just spend a lot of time in self-exploration of all sorts. The American dollar goes far here (supposedly, although not so much for me) and so people either support themselves or receive various fellowships or living stipends or low-paying jobs in Jewish institutions of learning. There are lots of opportunities for volunteering and learning.

I must say, I have mixed feelings about this whole set-up (which I guess I'm participating in this year). On the one hand, it's a refreshing contrast to the New York mentality of high-power, high-speed, high-paying jobs whose goals are more money and more power. People take the time to think about themselves and where their lives are going and what they live for, and not just during a 45 minute therapy session during a lunch break or an hour and a half yoga class fit in at the end of a 12 hour workday. These are people who seem to genuinely care about bettering themselves and the world around them.

However, there is a bit of a feeling of... I don't know...maybe uselessness is too harsh of a term for it, but something along those lines. For people who generally seem to be on the forefront of liberal thinking, hoping to change the world, etc. how much actually gets done? Sure, volunteer and peace organizations are created. Sure, they (we) all get to participate in lots of different causes and movements. But in the end, we're generally being supported by someone else's dollars. Those same dollars that require the hard work of all those people back in New York. There's certainly not much money to be made in informal Jewish education or peace-oriented inter-denominational dialogues. That seems to be the point and the justification - 'we pursue our dreams, even though there's no money in it.' ie - it's a sacrifice. But which one is really the sacrifice? Giving up a high paying job to do things you love to do by using external funding or being a productive element in the economy that helps support these initiatives even though you might not get to love what you do?

2007-10-07T18:02:00.001+02:00

Be Afraid (of clowns)! Be very afraid!

2007-10-07T17:14:00.001+02:00

Thanks to Simone for the pic.
Do you see the look on that girl's face?

Ever wonder why some kids are afraid of clowns? Well, I won't be wondering anymore. Now I know.

On Ben Yehuda (a big anglo hangout in the center of Jerusalem) there is a stoned-looking Israeli clown. His costume consists of a soiled purple and yellow clown suit (if you catch a peek through a slit on the side, it appears there is nothing underneath), a black cowboy hat, a red clown nose, a green parrot which usually resides on top of the hat, a bag of balloons and a polaroid camera.

We watched for about twenty minutes the other day as the clown harassed each group that would walk by. He would yank young children by their arms in order to try to pull them into a picture with him and the parrot and beg a few shekels for the polaroid from an annoyed and angry mother. He placed the green parrot on the shoulder of a mother holding a young toddler, and as the scared child frantically avoided they eye-aimed pecks of the parrot, the clown actually yanked the cell-phone from the mother's hand, screamed "she'll call you back" into the phone and actually thought that she would take kindly to this and hand him a shekel.

A Russian man looked distinctly uncomfortable as the parrot was placed on his head to pose for a picture he clearly hadn't asked for.
There is nothing like watching a burly, Russian man run down a crowded Ben Yehuda, being chased by a crazed Israeli clown!

Abstraction

2007-10-03T09:50:00.000+02:00

As you all probably know, I just arrived in Israel, for a year-long ‘research’ project as a Fulbright student scholar. Many of you have asked “But what exactly will you be doing?” My answers have been vague because to a large extent I still don’t know. While I plan on taking some art classes at Bezalel academy of art and being in touch with a computer science advisor from the Technion, my actual project is still very much up in the air. But, while I can’t be clear on what I’ll be doing, I can at least give you a bit of what I’ve been thinking about, since that’s sure to play a part somewhere in my project.

Mostly, I’ve been thinking about abstraction.

Abstraction is a process that we perform every second of the day, without even realizing it, and yet it is powerful enough to be the basis of the computer age, mathematics, pretty much all academic disciplines, as well as social and political movements. The general definition of abstraction is the process whereby information is organized into models and categories by focusing on certain details, but choosing to exclude others that are unnecessary or even distracting.

Maybe a few examples will show just how...well... cool this process is.

While we may be the first generation to have grown up with computers around, it’s pretty obvious to all of us that they’ve completely changed society in ways that were unimaginable before this. Ever wonder how a computer works? I probably didn’t really think about it very much till I took a class in computer architecture. (Just so you know this will be a horribly general, and probably somewhat incorrect explanation, but hopefully the point will come across) We’ve probably all heard the word ‘transistor’ before, and I just assumed it was some complicated little piece that makes my computer work. It’s not. It’s not really complicated at all. Its basic function is pretty much that of a little piece of wire. If you input an electric current, it will either output an electric current, or not, depending on which type of transistor it is. That’s it! Then how in the world can that be what accounts for 99% of what goes on inside a computer? How does that account for 3-D video games, wireless internet, google, i-phones and the words you’re reading right now?

Well, what was amazing about that class in computer architecture is that we made our way from that little piece of wire, all the way up to the complex computer programs that are responsible for all of that. From transistors, you can build logic gates - simple circuits that can perform conjunction, negation and other simple logical operations. Those, in turn, can be combined to create simple ‘machines’ which can perform operations like addition, combinations and even store memory. Throw together a good assortment of those ‘machines’ and you can build the processor that is the core of your computer. The language of that processor is pretty unintelligible to humans - just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s known as machine code, but we can get a handle of these codes by building a very simple programming language known as assembly code to perform basic operations. Finally, low-level programming languages, like C can be built on top of assembly, and once you’re there, it’s only a short leap to all of the amazing operations done by our computers.

At each of these jumps (ie - transistor to logic gate, assembly to C, etc) we perform an abstraction. We assume that the underlying machinery will work as its supposed to, so we can just forget about the complex details of what is actually occurring. I can assume that if I put two numbers (encoded into binary) into a simple adder, the outcome will be their sum, and if I type in a web address, the page that comes up is the one I was looking for. I don’t have to worry about which logic gates are used in an adder, or how the internet will manage to send me exactly the information that I want through a complex network of wires and routers. It just works! That is the power of abstraction.

There are a million more examples of processes and phenomenon that can be seen through the lens of abstraction, and are equally amazing. The neurons which make up our brains. The way our minds filter everything we see so that we are only conscious of those details that are essential to our evolutionary survival. The entire field of mathematics. The way an artist chooses to represent the world (not to mention the entire artistic movement dedicated to abstraction). Projections in linear algebra. The senior project I did last year on data compression. All of these things can ( I believe usefully) be seen as acts of abstraction.

Finally, I’ll just quickly mention that following a discussion with a mentor of mine, I began to see the dangers in abstractions that are too general, or leave out some details that just shouldn’t be left out. In computer science, this has been dubbed (by Joel Spolsky) a Leaky Abstraction. When people get grouped into categories based on some commonalities, disregarding the differences between them, the results can be disastrous. This is what racism and stereotyping are all about. It is the reason that some people might assume that if someone is a Republican, they’re bent on killing innocent Iraqis, or if I say that I support Israel, it means that I agree with those people who would love to prevent students from Arab countries from studying in America. ( I wrote an editorial in issue 4 of Kedma which is tenuously connected if anyone is interested - www.kedmajournal.com)

Dangerous, no?