My hoop wobbled on my right shoulder and rocked back and forth against my thigh as I biked back down Rothschild Boulevard from my weekly hoop dance class. Weaving between pedestrians and bikers, I slowed down at the busy sushi kiosk. Bats dropped out from the trees on either side of the pedestrian path, snatching invisible insects from the air, and merging seamlessly back into the treetop foliage as I blinked. Nearing the apartment I will have lived in for almost 11 weeks come Tuesday, I passed through the hovering mist of fountain as it tumbled and rose in the freshly autumnal air.
Over the next few days, I'm packing to leave this apartment and move. I sit here, shuffling through a pile of papers: the tel (archeological mound) of my aviv (spring - though it's actually fall semester, it feels like my personal spring, my time of growth). I go through layer after layer of this tel and sort out what I discover: handouts from different classes I've attended - my weekly beit midrash session on Eros at Alma, Aviva Zornberg's shiurim on Bamidbar... ; receipts from items I've purchased during my time here - a bike helmet, groceries, a camelback... ; schedules - from the dance studio, gym, and yeshivot I've joined... ; maps the person I'm renting from made for me - with her favorite cafes, bars, and dance venues marked on them... ; name tags from conferences and objects that remind me that magic exists -
my Burning Man dog tag, sea glass I found during a picnic on the beach. This tel, this pile of time, describes the mystery - the gross materiality and deliciously sublime nature - of what it is to be human: to be alive to layer after layer of experience as it wraps around some living, breathing, core that is both in and beyond us, like rings around a tree - as each layer endows us with a sense of identity, of purpose, of our unique creatureliness.
Motzei Shabbat, I went to a workshop with "Poiboy" in Jaffa. As I biked through the gritty, silent, lamp-lit streets, two boys holding hands and walking a dog glimpsed at me - either out of fear of an other or identifying me as part of the "tribe". The second half of the poi workshop included some work with contact poi, which allow for so many more types of tricks than the poi I've used. But learning new kinds of movement also gave me abundant opportunities to hit myself in the face and remember how to be a "beginner" again. This is one of the most important "life skills" circus arts have offered me. Learning new forms of movement not only teaches me how I learn, and helps me become aware of the beauty and grace of my body, but it simultaneously requires me to "zoom in" on the moments that comprise this sense of flow so that I can improve and improvise. As I danced like a beginner again, and noticed the atomic nature of my flow at Speevers, LED lights blinked on the store walls and trance music wove, whirled and shimmered in the background.
Learning with Ari Elon at the Yeshiva Hiloni (Secular Yeshiva) in Tel Aviv has also become a powerful lesson in believing in myself - my resilience, my endless ability to learn, and to learn how to learn. This class is one of two unique opportunities I created for myself to study with Israelis (the other opportunity being Alma), and to explore the revolutionary and emerging phenomena of "secular" yeshivot. I'm beginning to get comfortable with the vulnerability I feel as I check my mother-tongue at the door; I'm beginning to let go into this work of playing with new words, and entering a few moments of unselfconscious exchange with them. This week we talked about the sha'ar d'maot (the Gate of Tears), which - even after the Gates of Prayer closed with the destruction of the Temple - is open to us at the moment we cry, at the moment we call out from our own depths.
One of the secular students described, with a sense of reverence, seeing hasidim pray, sob and call out to God in their davenning. In the music behind her words, I was interested that I didn't hear any sense of loss at being an outsider to the hasidic community, and not having access to this kind of Jewish practice. As we listened to Arkadi Duchin's song at the end of class, I understood her comfort with her secular identity - that there are other paths that lead to this same place of Divine connection. As you listen to it, you can hear the Talmudic idea of the sha'ar d'maot in the Duchin's poignant refrain: kol hasha'arim ninalu chutz m'shar ha-dma'ot, "all of the Gates have been closed, except for the Gate of Tears".
When I told my hevruta at Alma (the other secular yeshiva I'm studying at) that I was moving to a new apartment, she said, Mishaneh makom, mishaneh mazal: "when you change your place, you change your luck (or stars, or constellation)". I was curious about this contemporary [Jewish] Israeli aphorism and traced it back to Rosh Hashana 16b in Talmud Bavli (which talks about other "magical" rituals that can change your fate, like giving tzedakah, changing your actions, changing your name, and crying out - which, as we just saw, opens the only gates that are still unlocked between us and the Divine). A few days ago, I hung out with the roommate I'm moving in with after I leave this place on Tuesday, and emerged onto the street with a bundle of hopes for the last 8 weeks that I'm here: she's a good baker, wants to take me to poetry slams in Orthodox-owned cafes with cheap beer, and sings to her mint plant in the morning.
Two nights ago, I had dinner with Art Green and my cohort here - and last night I had Thanksgiving dinner with Lev and Eliana. I stayed in their apartment. The same apartment I lived in for a year with my ex-partner 5 years ago. The same apartment we hosted Thanksgiving dinner at 5 years ago. While we ate our Thanksgiving meal, in each bite, I tasted a hint of the pain and sweetness of Jerusalem for me. Earlier in the day, as I returned to the apartment with ingredients for my Thanksgiving quinoa dish, a woman gave me the wrong directions back to Klein Street. In Jerusalem it's easy to sense that everything happens for a reason, that you meet people for a reason, and that everyone seems to have time to be present to this mystery with you. As we talked, this woman told me she used to live in Tel Aviv and hates it here, especially the arts scene. I realized in that moment that I feel more of a connection with people who have experienced the increasingly black and white nature of Jerusalem, than those who haven't lived, in discomfort, its polarized nature at all. Ultimately, I live in the in-between, but the worlds of the black and of the white give more purpose to my mission of expanding the spaces in between these worlds.
No comments:
Post a Comment