On Monday, I finished my bike ride and entered Eilat (here are some visual snapshots to accompany the verbal ones, if you'd like): My thighs strained delightfully against the many ascents, and I hooted and yelled my way down the many descents; I found myself at the front of the ride a few times, and often took the opportunity to fall to the back as I became absorbed in the brilliant beauty of the desert; at moments I paced myself to ride alongside others and talk about becoming a rabbi, and at others I allowed myself to bike alone for long stretches - the exact unknown coming into being that I am.
On the ride, there was only forward. During stretches when no other riders were in sight, I began to sense the expansiveness within which my solitude was gently held and, at moments, started to dissolve: the desert, the sound of drums and tambourines that often guided us to our next rest stop, the birds, the smell of manure, the honking of greeting and surprise and anger from cars, the noisy activity of Bedouin villages and firing ranges and fighter jets, the camels, the clusters and points of other riders, the mountains and the endless sky.
At rest stops and pit stops, during yoga, and even while we raced and crept along the road sometimes,
tiny desert flies pursued us. Some people slapped at them, but they were tenacious, and kept coming back. At one point, I gave up and explored the desire to brush them away: it was undeniably about death - the time when I wouldn't be able to brush them away, when my body would become a source of nutrition for their larvae.
I wonder if our disconnection from our bodies and from the earth - a shrinking away from the chaos of nature in pursuit of the untouchable order and seeming immortality of intellectual knowing and synthetic products (food, technology, clothing) - is driven by fear of our own mortality? If so, it seems to me this disconnection leads to a more sustained and immediate tragedy than loss of life: if we deny the ephemeral nature of the fleshly vessels we've been given, we can no longer experience the passionate joy and enlivening pain of being embodied, of moving upon and being continuously (and eventually) embraced by this wild world.
On Wednesday, I attended my first four-hour beit midrash session at Alma. This year's theme, which we're exploring through Greek literature, Torah, and Shir haShirim ("Song of Songs"), is "Eros". To introduce Shir haShirim, one of the two teachers asked the room of noisy young Israelis to close their eyes and enter silence. "Remember a kiss you recently had", she said in Hebrew, "Who was it with? How did it feel in your body? How did you approach each other?".... "Now", she instructed, "think about a kiss you want to have. Who do you want to share it with? How do you want to be approached? How does it feel?" As I felt a strange open sweetness blossom and my body relax, I couldn't help it - I opened my eyes and looked at a few of the 30 other students there. A woman, probably in her forties had, by far, the most amazing half smile spilling across her face.
As I write this a flock of electric beats and human laughter flutters and lands on the roof of a neighboring building... I just walked over there, following blinking lights visible above me through the short corridor of gray asphalt to an open door, and up the stairs, hoping I'd see some inviting faces from the stairwell. All that I spotted was a yellow ceiling lamp with a pattern of glass bumps on it. I felt shy somehow about actually going in: How would I explain myself? Was I dressed right?
After watching the pull of desire move between bringing me to the party, and enjoying the music from the certainty of my own space, I've returned, a bit disappointed in myself, but happy to take the time to write these words. This urban bustle - the rooftop party, the momentary recognition of something known in the spices and dried fruit that lined the streets in sacks and bins as I walked from the train station back to my apartment after a week away - will remain a sweet contrast to the perpetual listening of the desert, but only for a few more days.
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