Friends, this blog has become far too formal. I suppose that if you are still reading at this point you are someone who is at least mildly interested in things of a literary nature…Fine… you are the primary reader for whom I write…and you will be able to appreciate the best that I have……

if you have been able to surmise the purpose of Many Small People so far, you know that my aim is to change the world by changing normal people through normal words… In all my writing I will experiment until this goal is reached. The point is that starting today the blog will include normal ravings about our lives…not only as intellectuals and academics but also words on our daily existence…

So read on and have the courage to write yoursleves…make comments or even start your own blog. …By your nature as human you are unique. There is no one, and there has never been anyone like you.  Therefore your ideas are of infinite value and if you remain silent you have deprived the rest of us of the only viewpoint like yours…..

From Jerusalem Cont.

If you havn’t been reading all along, I suggest that you scroll back a few days and begin with the earlier parts of From Jerusalem.

Racism            Allot of Arabs in Palestine are racist. Allot of Jews in
Israel are Racist.  Everyone lives next door to each other. My second night I was talking to soldier down in the Hinmon Valley who was guarding a Jewish festival.  Without prompting he explained to me that the Arabs are not people, but dogs. I was kidnapped by Arabs one dark night in East Jerusalem, and they explained to me that if I was Jewish they would have slit my throat. Why I wondered. Because Jews are not people they are dogs. When there are so many atrocities being passed around it is so easy even for civilized people to dehumanize entire groups. 

The Wall            Consider the history of Walls. There is, to name a few, The Great Wall of China, The Berlin Wall, the Wailing Wall, Pink Floyd’s the Wall, the Walls of Jericho. The separation barrier, or the wall that Israel has constructed to divide the Occupied Territories from the rest of the land must be the most visually intimidating of them all. I think the director of the ministry decorating for the state of Israel put the wrong contact in the wrong the eye the day the wall came through his office. Anyway, this concrete barrier that slices through hundreds of miles of West Bank territory stands imposing, towering, and gray over the landscape.  In order to avoid the boredom of well, just a stupid wall, the defense forces have made the aesthetic decision to add variety be setting the occasional sniper towers set into the structure. Each of these towers holds enough artillery to silence anything that tries to move from one side to the other without the right slip of paper.This might be alright. After all it is a security wall and I think we can all agree that security is good. Unfortunately there seems to have been some minor mistakes on the exact routing of the wall. I mean in some cases the enemy(I think we all know who the enemy are) are actually on the wrong side of the wall. In other places the wall actually cuts through people’s backyards. Oops. The house is one side and the dog house is on the other side. Or even worse, Mom and Dad are on one side, and Grandpa and Grandma are the other side with little chance of ever crossing. The wall has inspired art on the Palestinian side. Graffiti, most of which is quickly brushed out by IDF soldiers tell the visual story of pain and conflict. In some places there are even painted giant windows with pictures of paradise. And behind the painted barrier, lies someone’s backyard.

From Jerusalem Cont.

If you havn’t been reading all along, I suggest that you scroll back a few days and begin with the earlier parts of From Jerusalem.

Anti-Goyism            So, I’ll admit that I have not been a victim of any racism during my time here in Israel. However, it think that it might be possible for me to attempt to claim that I that I have been cheated from my title as a victim of racism. Please, indulge my whining for just a moment.  I just would like everyone to know what it is like being a goy in the Promised Land. Right, so by most accounts, to be a gentile is not technically to be a part of any particular race but I counter that maybe it should be. I turn my sympathetic reader to the Exhibit A. I meet this cute girl down at the Western Wall of Jerusalem’s old city. She is a tour guide for the Western Wall Tunnels.  I ask some pretty intelligent questions, and we so we hit it off. Alright, s we had ‘a moment.’ Naturally, this being Israel, she invites me over for a Shabbat Dinner with the family. We’ve just been to synagogue, we are all feeling pretty spiritual and we are about to dig into our feast. I’m looking dapper in my kippa. The conversation is good and Mom and Dad seem to like me yet somehow halfway through the meal I make the fatal faux paux.“You’re not Jewish?”“No”“You’re not?”(Everyone winces a little).“No, I never said I was. I’m Christian.”(Mom chokes on her food; I think there is a tear in the corner of that cute girl’s eye…) The whole table is silent for a moment and it gets really awkward. It feels like Dad is about to reach across the table confiscate my glass of wine so quickly I finish my food, and I go home an outcast. When I am asked whether or not I am Jewish, I always have the wrong answer.  It doesn’t mean I have to sit in the back of the bus, or that I have to use a different drinking fountain, it just means that I am not a part of the club(rumor is that there is a secret handshake, though I have not been able to secure three sources for this fact..) Often time the person who is asks the question is saddened by my answer. They like me, I’m a nice kid and I know more about the Taanak then most of them, but I don’t have a Jewish soul, and that’s just the way it is. And why is that my three Israeli roommates can make jokes about Christians, but I can’t even laugh at their jokes about Jews?It’s not racism, but it could it is a telltale of a national mentality. Strangely it is stronger in Diaspora Jews. So the inevitable question that I daily answer, “Well if your not Jewish then what are you doing here?” I used to point out that Christians actually own most of
Jerusalem and that I have just stopped by to make sure they are taking care of the real estate. None of the Jews really found it to funny so instead I am waiting to exact my revenge for their prying questions, once I return home: So…If you are not a Gentile then what are you doing in America?”

T.S. Eliot Poet’s Society

If you are viewing Many Small People from Hillsdale College in order to access the blog for the newly forming T.S. Eliot Society please scroll down and click the link at the bottom of the page.  In the future that site may be accessed directly from www.TheEliotSociety.WordPress.Com.  The society blog promises to be an excellent forum for sharing the words by which, and to which we are inspired. If you are interested in joining as a poet immediately please contact myself or Kristi at JRyan@hillsdale.edu or KNichols@Hillsdale.edu.

From Jerusalem Cont.

If you havn’t been reading all along, I suggest that you scroll back a few days and begin with the parts 1-3 of From Jerusalem, 

The Abuse of Nations  In my studies I often I encounter those who accuse religion, and particularly Christianity for the death of millions over the years. From this cold reality they garner a condemnation of all religion in its various forms.  This is a severely ignorant view. Understand first that religion is inseparable from human nature.  Indeed the word culture is derived from the word cult (a cult is a religion before it has caught on). Through the ages, the history of man, and the history of religion have been inexorably bound.  It is human nature channeled through religion that is responsible for the massacres and genocide. We are fallen, and this is what we to do to each other. It isn’t the work of religion; it is the work of man. If anything true religion has been the quiet voice of conscience. Go ahead and accuse religion for the atrocities of man kind, but before you do, listen because most religions will be the first to tell you of the nature of their patrons. And don’t forget, that atheism too has claimed its millions.Another accusation that I often encounter, especially in Israel, is that the people of Christian and Islamic states have embraced violence in forms in which Judaism has never been guilty.  Allow me once again to reference my experience in Hebron, as well as the accounts I have read of Israel’s occupation in the territories. Before today the Jewish people have not been in a place where they have been allowed to be the oppressor(unless you count the days Joshua, when the Israelites were setting the standard for genocide.)  We’ve established that humans are a sorry lot. This, in my view, includes Gentiles and Jews. No nation, no religion, no people, is immune to becoming the oppressor, the abuser. Now Israel is the dominant military power in the Middle East. Along with this rise in power comes abuse, and the flaring of human nature which causes us to triumph over our neighbor. Certainty the crimes of Israel do not begin to compare to the crimes of Christianity and Islam, however Israel still sits within the relative early years of its dominance.  The restraint that Israel does show can at least be partly traced to the pressure of a certain Christian patron state who greatly tempers its behavior.

The Messiah Project

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
–T.S. Eliots Ash Wednesday

I am beginning a series and a conversation on the relationship between the Jewish Taanak and Christian New Testament. This project regards the Christian claim that the Jesus (Yeshua) described in the New Testament fits the qualifications of the Jewish Messiah as defined and recorded within the writings of the Old Testament. 

The historian David Mccullough was teaching his yearly class at Hillsdale when he explained to one of my acquaintances how he began to write history.  Many years ago Mr. Mccullough was friends with the with the poet W.H. Auden.  Auden told him that one must simply write anything that he would like to read that hasn’t been written.  Though the daunting task I take up in  The Messiah Project  has been taken by many before me, I remain unsatisfied with the methods of exploration and the rational of the conclusions of my predecessors….thus I take the advice of Mr. Auden and draw my own unworthy pen to begin to write. 

In first entries of The Messiah Project I will descibe the importance and defend the necessity of this this question under both secular and religious understands. I will then proceed to outline the goals, confess my personal prejudices, and discuss various methods before delving into a verse by verse analysis of the question. I have chosen Many Small People as the medium for The Messiah Project because in order to reach any truth this question demands the experience, the education, and the understanding of many who are greater then myself. I am only the mediator.  Secular and Sacred alike, this question of the Messiah deserves the attention of each us for it is upon the shoulders of Christianity that our civilization stands. Joinn me in this conversation…

ANI MEVIN BEDIYUK

a dramatic scene by Matthew Lundin- From the face book wall of my friend Elizabeth-

view the photo chronicles of Anns’s activism at -link removed-

(an old city street covered in leaflets, signs, advertisements)
(An Arab and a Jew cross paths)
عرب: صباح الخير
יהודי: מה ארת?
عرب: ماذا قالت؟
יהודי: אני לא מביך
عرب:انا لا افهم
יהודי: אני מצטערת, אני לא מדברת ערבית
عرب: انا اسف, لا اتكلم العبرية
The two begin to get more angry until they almost begin fighting. Suddenly an evangelical Christian shows up in Bermuda shorts and fanny pack, thumbing through a guidebook.
יהודי: זעזוע אמריקני
عرب: خول امريكي
The two laugh at walk away arm in arm united in their disdain for crass American materio-religion.
The end
النهياة
סוף

From Jerusalem-Part 3

In this section I reflect on the first of my many expeditions across the border into the Isreali Occupied Territories of the West Bank, home of 2.5 million Palestinians and two hundred thousand Israeli settlers and soldiers.

Exploration We didn’t really know the political situation, those of us living at the Petra Hostel in Jerusalem’s Old City and thus we were able to go places where most others would not. I would now like the reader to follow a convoluted passage that I penned after my first journey into the West Bank, the Occupied Territories. In this excerpt one could make two observations. First, please note a heightened sense of danger. Next, note the excitement of a young man who has seen truth with his own eyes and doesn’t have to rely on the newspaperman anymore:

“The journalist writing in Palestine occupies the best position in a place of deeply divided feelings. The obligation for, and expectation of the white flag of neutrality that is carried by the workers of this profession, provides a shield of security and a badge of courage that offers the excuse, and even the responsibility to ask the awkward questions and to go to places where others will not. The tourists that dares to travel to a wartime Israel, and from there ventures into the sometimes chaotic and anarchic rule of the occupied territories may choose to carry with him the name, and a little bit of the responsibility of the journalist.

And so we journey blindly into the deepest parts of the territories and into the heart conflict in order to witness, another other side of the story. We roll up to the military checkpoint outside of the Jewish settlement in Hebron at sunrise. Except for garbage lifted and gusted by an early morning wind, the city streets are gray and quiet. They say Abraham used to live here but its hard to believe. We move quietly past cement barriers which encase sleepy camouflaged snipers and down into one of the most bitterly contested swatches of land on the earth. Expended artillery shells and small arm casings crunch beneath our feet as walk. Richard is a small and nervous British expatriate whose sole profession is that of watchman for the remaining Palestinian residents of this part of Hebron. He is incomplete without that burned cigarette dangling between is twitching and unshaven lips. The man leads us from the barrier to a small compound which sits in a valley that is obscured by thick foliage of a wild and unkempt vineyard. This small building is the home of independent journalists, international monitors, and aid workers who are living (or believe to be living) below the radar of the Israeli Defense Forces. The compound stirs with a nervous bustle as several task forces split to set out on their daily patrols. Today is the beginning of the academic year, and small Palestinian girls must walk through the settlement in order to arrive at school. We must walk with them. We take solemnly to the deserted streets, as the girls, some of who reach just past my waist begin their perilous stroll. From the Jewish settler’s homes their also emerge children, and teenagers. These wear various kippoat, bright orange ribbons, and of many of them are carrying beating sticks. Those that forgot the weapon of choice console themselves by with rocks. If you dare to ask, the Yeshiva boys armed with stones will be happy to tell you something about the biblical David and Goliath. I like the Bible too, but it’s hard to see. I mean Goliath was a giant and some of these little girls hardly even reach my waist. As the girls walk, they face the assault from their Jewish peers. I too was hit. The defense forces stand idly by in the distance settlers parents sit in windows with leveled machine guns and watch in admiration.

On the return journey from the school to the exit from the Hebron settlement, I am pleased to encounter the typical settler family. Dad, Mom, a couple kids and a stroller out on their Shabbat stroll. I offer them a warm greeting, Shabbat Shalom. Mom looks up at me and she must have recognized me. In exchange for my morning’s services, she points her hand diagonally toward heaven in mocking salute and bitterly returns my greeting with a shout, Heil Hitler!”

Here my impulsive scribblings end. In one morning, the respect that I had fostered for the settlers, which was founded in some sort of fantastical religious duty, was snatched from me by some religious boys and girls and a mom with a stroller. Nothing is as simple as it seems.

My experience in Hebron, combined with my first days in the Old City, caused me to adopt another maxim that I have used through the first half of my stay in Israel. When I am asked callously, usually, by another American, to pick a side in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I now do so confidently. I pick the side of the little girl who is having rocks thrown at her as she walks to school. This is simple are pure. Wait. Also, I choose the side of the Jewish Pilgrim who is walking through his own city, and is murdered in cold blood because of who he is. In the end, I guess my maxim isn’t so clever because through it I avoid choosing a ‘side.’ We aren’t in Mordor and there isn’t a dark army of savages threatening the good guys. Every action must be examined individually to see if it is right or wrong. Nothing is as simple as it seems.

Now, months after my first visit to Hebron, after having revisited, and having read reports and books on the area I take new perspective. I wonder now if perhaps some of the activists have been in Hebron for a little too long. In a nervous haze of cigarette smoke they give the impression that they are commanding officers on the front lines of a World War II and ready to beat back ze germans at any moment. Like the mother with the stroller, these activists had passion that pushed them dangerously to the edge of extremism. Both sides are quick to employ the Holocaust as an image of their situation. I soon learned while working at the Alternate Information Center in West Jerusalem, that their kind of passion is necessary but that it can be, and must be tempered by reason. (1.6.06)

Its a Sin to Kill in God’s Name?

In Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan, an American fighting in the Spanish Civil war, comments upon reflection of his foe, that to understand is to forgive. Today on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 we pause to remember and understand all of the living and dead, victims of this War on Terror; Americans, Europeans, Afghanis, Iraqis.

Our rampage of ‘self defense’ to the far corners of the globe, to the places with the people we do not understand and have not cared to understand has taken from us the ability to forgive. Without the ability to forgive we cannot understand. If we do not understand then we fight in vain.

No man is an island, and each of these sixty-two thousand[1] deaths regardless of nationality, creed, or purported guilt, diminishes mankind, and therefore diminishes me.

It is so easy to demonize the enemy with rhetoric. This is the Axis of Evil, Ahmadinejad is insane, Osama is the face of terror, The terrorists are barbarians. Yes, we must examine individual actions and identify evil if we see it, but if we would seek first to understand and empathize with those that oppose us, we will be surprised at what we see. We may identify as we gaze deeply into his dark Arab eyes the reflection of ourselves. The same hopes, the same desires, the same fears we share. We are brothers and we share our humanity. When we see ourselves we may for once understand, and when we understand we may forgive. If from there, it is still our sacred duty to fight, then we at least may fight not out of ignorance or misguided prejudices. If we still must fight, God help us forgive not only them but us. For now we see that we kill not just the enemy, but in doing so we kill ourselves.

---

[1] This is London- Thisislondon.uk.com

[2] Donne, For whom the Bell Tolls

From Jerusalem. Parts 1 and 2.

Six months into my studies inJerusalem, I attempted to capture in words the essence of life in the city. The result was the following essay, A Collection of Light Musings from the Front Lines: Life in the City of Gold.  Over the next few weeks I plan to publish the essay in parts, as well as other papers of interest from my year abroad.

31 January 2005

The Alternative Information Center

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A Collection of Musings from the Front Lines: Life in the City of Gold 

An Introduction to Jerusalem.         Six months living in Jerusalem, Six months to go.  This is my midterm, my halftime show, my analysis of life on the edge, or rather, life in the center.  Often it seems that by living in Jerusalem, we stand constantly at center stage. Indeed this idea is sanctified by several world religions.  Our position, however, means that when the dog shits in the backyard, images of his defecation are promptly relayed across the globe. This is a crude analogy, but anyone who lives here knows exactly what I mean. So quickly we become accustomed to the excitement, to the violence, and to the constant edge in the air. A man is murdered at my doorstep and everyone wanders out takes a few pictures. When their curiosity is satisfied they wander back up to watch the end of the Sopranos. Riots erupt out on our street, a few pleasantries in the form of Molotov cocktails are bullets exchanged, and stationary cars in the area are smashed up for good measure. The interested emerge for a few minutes to have a look and maybe snap a photo for the fraternity brother back home, but then the students climb back to their apartments to finish their Hebrew homework. There is an exam tomorrow and this is Jerusalem. Shit happens.  Shit is always happening. 

Disorientation            So, I, along with every other visitor who steps through the looking glass, will never forget my first moments in Oz. It is dizzying and disorienting in a spiritual, physical, and mental sense. I just graduated the first increment of Officer School with the United States Marine Corps and I have my physical bearing. I don’t get disoriented. I simply don’t. I am learning Philosophy and Religion at the most prestigious university in the Middle East and I don’t lose my spiritual bearing. I simply don’t. Yet somehow I have been disoriented physically and spiritually since the hour I arrived.These disorientations are inalterable linked. In the beginning, I remember spinning towards immersion at 3am from the metropolis of Tel Aviv to the curiosities of Jerusalem’sOld City. The driver dumped me with my bags in the middle of the night into a deserted cobblestone street that sits on the edge of a moat and massive ancient wall. As I stumbled up to my hostel I was so disoriented. I felt as though I was in a different century, and I didn’t even know if I was inside or outside of that wall.My first acquaintance in the Holy City was fitting. He appeared to have climbed out of one of those early chapters of the Torah when Abraham having married his sister was still kosher. A dark man with a long robe, leather sandals, and an archaic looking piece of headgear checked me into a room with a balcony overlooking the darkened boulders of the Citadel and Jaffa Gate. I awoke to the blazing Mediterranean sun in the late afternoon to the intoxication of the Old City which I can never forget. The air is dusted with that unmistakable Middle Eastern fragrances; it’s a mixture of burning nargilla charcoal, baked goods, and the merchant’s tavlaneem. The wailing muezzins, crashing church bells, and joyful songs of Jewish youngsters singing their way to prayer at the Kotel all blend so magically. So here enters the text the standard cliché that I have hastily typed into many emails in a weary attempt to record the impossible, and describe life in this city. No, there is in place like Jerusalem anywhere else on this earth that I know of. Are you ready? Here it is. Living in Jerusalem is as living simultaneously in ten different countries, in ten different centuries. This I know is true. And, yes, the night I arrived I stood on my balcony and watched blood of a man who was stabbed to death at my doorstep drip down towards the heart of a city that already drank its share.