Chapter 7
Israel
I was now in the second vortex. I was in YEES-RAH-EL! The land of my turbulent adolescence. A place I loved and hated intensely. My first day in Israel began badly. It was a day of wrathful purification. I broke a fingernail on the boat as I packed and began to scatter emotionally. After leaving passport control, the baby carriage finally broke down and died. I was stranded in the streets of Haifa with no Israeli money and an accelerating feeling of despair. A car salesman took pity on me and drove met to the bus station. I was thinking of visiting Safed first, but decided instead to GO STRAIGHT to Jerusalem.
In the chaos of arrival, I lost my precious address book and started to cry. The confusion of my emotions overwhelmed me. The bus ride to Jerusalem seemed like a dream. Israel was unrecognizable. The heavy modernization blighted the land; and it was more hideous because the country was so small. Israel was plunging into the Third Wave. But I had little time to worry about this. I was paralyzed by my emotions. I was going to see Dad after almost four years of bitter family feuding. My father’s legacy still burned me. After what seemed weeks, my step-uncle Sasson showed up to retrieve me. He threw the broken corpse of the baby carriage onto the sidewalk and loaded my bags into his tiny van.
I was amazed by the cultural and racial variety hopping and seething in Jerusalem. People were helpful and rude at the same time. The Israelis never changed! My step-uncle had a plumbing job to finish and left me to simmer in the van. I was falling apart. My nose started to bleed and I wept. I felt lost and totally alone. Summer seemed so far away in this alien land. I was truly on my own. There would be no support for a Buddhist here, in the Holy Land. Muslims and Jews were still cursing at each other. They had NO TIME for me. My step-uncle introduced me to his family. I remembered his wife, but not his three kids who were polite to a fault, on my first day in Jerusalem. Then the phone suddenly rang; it was my stepmother! We both cried on the phone. My stepmother told me to relax. She urged me not to hate my Dad. I felt strange, feverish, and exotic. Things no longer felt so sinister and doomed. My stepmother had a special telepathy when it came to the family
and Israel. I was sure of this now.
My step-uncle took me to Motza, a sleepy hamlet, outside of Jerusalem, along the Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem highway. It was here that I took refuge among the vineyards and plum trees. My stepmother’s family had all lived in a small but comfortable house here. Now it was abandoned and condemned. I found shelter in a collapsing prefabricated hole, down below the main building. The place was filled with troubled ghosts and strong emotions. I cried all night and was able to construct a short mailing list from letters and jottings on legal pads. Summer’s address was safe and I was ecstatic. The day had ended better than it had started. That’s how purification works, folks.
The next day I did a Dur, a kind of fire puja. I burned a photo of Summer that looked particularly egotistical, in order to purify karma that was an obstacle to her and to us. As the photo burned, a raindrop fell on her third-eye. I found this to be truly auspicious. The photo sizzled and bulged into a bubble until it exploded with a loud pop. I felt greatly relieved. But there were more surprises. I found Dad’s old warehouse and discovered my past in it. Old models, magazines, newspapers, and notebooks had survived years of hideous neglect. I found a stuffed kangaroo my Mom had made for me. It was damp and covered with mildew and it stunk really bad, but I decided to keep it and take it to India with me. I started sorting all this stuff out. Motza was deserted. From my vantage point I could see the cemetery my father was buried in. The Jerusalem landscape looked blighted and forlorn. The developers had wrecked this sacred land with all kinds of ugly jabbering eyesore constructions. It was a Southern California kind of disaster. The highway was congested at ALL TIMES. The smog was bad too. Israel had become TOO successful. I was too confused to do much about it.
I took a bus into town and walked down Jaffa St., all the way to the Old City. I could see the Palestinian flags fluttering in the wind. It was an amazing sight. The Israelis had finally started to come to terms with their conscience. The Palestinians were stoking up their pride, but tension still lay beneath the surface. Rainbow graffiti sprayed on the walls competed with the wailing minarets. The techno-capitalist ambiance of New Jerusalem didn’t seem to fit here and I was glad. The Old City still had a human face. I felt very much at home and struck up friendly conversations with the local Arabs. Indeed, I was convinced that I had been an Arab in a former life. The vibrations floating out of this cauldron were familiar. I felt a goodness of heart here. I had no illusions about Arab craziness. I had seen it before, throwing up its cloud of dust and hazy steam, but everything felt right at the moment.
I walked to my father’s cemetery and became completely lost in the dark chilly night. I sat down and imagined where his grave might be and started the puja. I cried for an hour. I was working hard to heal a wound that had long been festering. It was time not only to forgive Dad, but to forgive myself. The more this painful bruise was released, the easier it was to forgive. I felt Summer had to forgive her own dad in order to heal too. I could see her pursing her lips. Summer always did this to signal mischievous satisfaction or deep annoyance. In regards to her dad it was always the latter. Summer and her dad did not get along. I felt a deep connection here. I was sure now that self-love was the best kind of protection. It was the foundation for loving others. Forgiveness came naturally after that. This sounded simple in theory, but it was very tough in practice. I wiped my eyes and stared into the pitch inky darkness. The freezing autumn cold made my body shiver. This was also IT. I was doing IT with my Dad. I could almost hear his voice.
Every day seemed to last a lifetime in Israel. I did a tarot spread and discovered Summer’s mom was going through a lot of changes. It was also putting a strain on Summer. They had a weird relationship I didn’t really understand, not that I wanted to, at the moment. The boyfriend was fading fast. His physical body occupied Summer’s attention, but her heart was now elsewhere. I was sure Summer and I would make it in the end, but all I could do was pray and keep sending letters. I found some beautiful postcards of the Old City that I knew she’d like. Only the best would do. It was that simple.
My stepmother’s clan arrived in force to play a charade with the government. The land was needed for an extension of the highway and for many years the inspectors came and went, looking for proof that would allow evictions. The lights were always turned on at night. I could see them glowing from below. But it was all a charade. Nobody lived in Motza anymore. It was a long-lost world that was fading fast. It was an oasis of tranquillity in a sea of impermanent madness. The inspectors came and played their own charade. I was amused by the false promises they made. It was all a dance of ghostly husks and withered mud rats. I was the silent observer watching this prolonged death of Eden.
Not far from where I slept, archeologists were feverishly digging up Odyssean logs from the days of the First Temple. They were all on a scavenging hunt. The government had given the crazed diggers the green light to salvage and worm the earth before the new highway covered it with asphalt and auto exhaust. It was all a twilight kind of thing with a grapey sunset feeling hovering lazily in the air. I could hear the angels weep. The dry bones of the valley screamed. YAHWEH WAS ABOUT TO MAKE ANOTHER JUDGMENT.
I stocked up on some food in the open markets. The cucumbers were crisp and delicious. The tomatoes sweet and exotic. I was in the Middle East and it was a new adventure. The sights and sounds seemed very far away from Central Europe. It all felt like a dream. A fresh new one that I didn’t care to wake from. I was gazing into my past. The old newspapers and magazines rekindled a gold mine of memories and secret symbols. It had been the hipless seventies of my painful adolescence. America and the world were having a terrible hangover. War and oil dominated the newsprint. Watergate was smoking up the land like a smelly cigar while tank battles raged and sputtered here in the second vortex. I was cooking at an army base in the desert, when the Commie hordes entered Saigon and JAWS came out the week Summer was born. I was a tail-boomer. I had watched the fun only on TV and then gone into exile here in the Holy Land. Summer was a tail-buster. She was not a member of Generation X. She had been born when I was out of the country; and somehow miraculously escaped being turned into a cynic. Summer was not a “realist” like her bratty older cohorts and she was not an “idealist” like my elder boomer brethren. We had this very snazzy balance and a good karma. I looked at the fading past and smiled. It hadn’t been that bad after all.
The Second Vortex as seen from Outer Space:
This is a dangerous place. Like the rest of the world the quality of life is dropping, while these Israeli creatures run faster and faster to earn less and less. The peculiar safety net of the Israeli vortex inhabitants is slowly beginning to disappear. The elder generation is graying while the young and over-educated can’t find work. The Third Wave is hitting hard here too. Fast food and old-age homes are doing a roaring business. There is no job security in this transition scrunch. The global cyber-trend continues as political debate becomes sillier and sillier. Most labor is obsolete. Purchasing power is down while production is up. The lost world of the Second Wave haunts this second vortex. Islamic fundamentalism is offering a BLACK SOLUTION to the WHITE STRESS PROBLEM. It has been discovered by our computers that the closer the inhabitants of a vortex live to its center, the worse the STRESS FLIP becomes. STRESS FLIP: a rapid alternation between BLACK and WHITE STRESS. The faster the alternation the more schizophrenic human behavior gets. The slower the alternation, the more neurotic; and the repression of the cycle often leads to more a extreme blow-up later. It’s called MANIC DEPRESSION.
The facts on the ground:
Dad had made the right call in the late Seventies to get out of here. Why he came here in the first place is a mystery. His body now lies in state here at Givat Shaul, but his eldest son lives in the land of the brave and the home of the free. He also just had his glasses repaired.
I went back to the Old City to get some Jordanian dinars. I also bought a kaffiyah. I had lost my beautiful Mexican scarf somewhere between Bratislava and Budapest. I was kinda hip to hit the holy sights. So I started with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was dank and crowded. Whether Jesus really died here wasn’t all that clear. The sweet smell of incense coated the Crusader walls of the church. Priest gangs fought for turf inside the sacred compartment; and gluttonous crowds lined up for a poke into “The Place” of impoverished crucifixion. It was all good fun. I escaped the crowds and lost myself inside the narrow alleys and secret tunnels of the Old City. I loved this.
I stumbled into an exhibit of war. I saw how fifty-five Jews had held off the Jordanian hordes for weeks and weeks until they were overwhelmed in a Jewish Alamo kind of glory. But it was at the Wailing Wall that I finally hit pay-dirt. I began doing a puja right next to these hypnotized Hassids. They were Black Hats and enemies of all vortex rivals, you know. Just at that moment, the muezzins began to call the Muslim faithful to their afternoon prayers. Soon the church bells began to ring. It was ONE BIG PARTY! I left my body. I could feel the bliss waves, but was not sure of their origin in this crazed and wondrous cacophony. But everybody was jumping to the music. I made my offering to ALL JEWS here.
I was on a roll. I floated into the Kidron Valley and up the Mount of Olives to the Church of Gethsemane. I felt a strange inner peace here. I saw zillions of tombstones. Jerusalem was under a cloudy haze bewitching and beautiful. It was here that my Dad took me as a young child to savor my first trip abroad. I visited Mary’s tomb and walked up the Via Delorosa. I did another puja on Temple Mount. The great Golden Mosque with its meteor underbelly was the sight of my offering to ALL ARABS. I could see Israeli soldiers running around the courtyard in search of hidden demons. There was a befuddled look on their faces. This was peace? No? I flashed past the mysterious signs of nowhere. And I moved!
Saturn as seen from Jerusalem:
Only Saturn has those spell-binding rings; the most spectacular ornament in the solar system. These rings are composed for the most part from rocks of ice, the size of grapefruits or basketballs. The rocks were once swept together and then flattened out into a snow-white, glittering sweep of ribbon long, long ago. Saturn also has quite a few moons, each having a dense atmosphere thick with gassy clouds. And Saturn is also the lightest planet in the solar system; it would float on water if it could. One can see on Saturday nights dozens of young faces with their throaty voices screaming, “Yaah! Yaah! We won! We won!” Such are the peculiar life forms emanating from this giant spinning top.
On the giant spinning top:
I finally found Dad’s grave and decided to say good-bye to him with one last puja. This time there would be no interference. It was time to get clear with Dad. In this dark and solitary environment, I placed candles all around his grave. I shielded them with rocks to prevent the wind from blowing them out. I walked up the stairs and looked at the scene from above. I heard the 23rd psalm in my head:
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”
Dad’s little ship now had a compass to help navigate through the bardo. The little ship glowed in the cold night air. The grave now seemed to move and float. I was happy. I said good-bye to Dad and walked down the side of the busy freeway leading to Motza. It was dangerous and spooky. It was my final test. I had been on the road for two months now, but it felt like ages. I slept all day to prevent further overload. I looked at photos of all the luscious dakinis. These angels had saved my life, time and time again. I looked at a photo of Summer and was completely filled with bliss and wonder.
My mind had been working overtime. White Stress was stalking me. I now just wanted to get to India and be silent. But I had one last pilgrimage to make. So I boarded a bliss bus to the Galilee. I was off to Safed, the ancient Jewish capital of the holy Kabbalah. The bus passed Jericho on the way up. The town looked dumpy and suspicious. The Palestinian flags hung limply and weather-beaten in the desert afternoon. The pull-out was imminent. Nobody seemed to care. The harsh and haunting landscape of the Judean desert was worth the ride alone, but more new wonders awaited me in Safed. Here the air was pure and the great Zaddiks lived on forever. I felt at home in this strong energy. The Jewish bodhisattvahs rained down their blessings on me, as I poured out my offerings to them. The Black Hats kept their distance from the crazy American. I felt a strong connection here both with Dad and with Summer. They were close to my heart now and I felt very, very happy.
I walked all around the cute little artist lanes that Safed indulged in. It was here that the Greats converged. I communed and reveled in the Ha’ari Synagogue. Two wrathful brothers acted as obnoxious protectors here and shooed away a group of school girls, cursing their chatter and zooming in on me, the weird American. I skipped quickly by the Ahuhab Synagogue, keeping one step ahead of the female brats and their armed and bored escorts. I found the study room where Rabbi Caro talked to the Meggid, the holy presence. I struck gold here and meditated in the bliss-filled courtyard. The energy was good. I moved onto the ancient cemetery. All the heavies were here. It was puja-time! Ha’ari, Cordova, Caro, and Halevi, princes of the Zaddik pantheon all lay buried here, but still very much alive. Little black hats flocked to the graves chanting along with their grizzly bearded teachers. Sublime and surreal feelings hit me. I offered all I could at the tombs. The Zaddiks were smiling down on me.
The silent rolling hills and clear blue skies made me forget all my troubles. I took a plunge in the ice-cold mikvah bath fed constantly by a nearby spring. Crazies with locks of wild hair sang nearby in mindless ecstasy. I began to hysterically laugh and felt strangely uplifted, as I shivered and shaked my nude body in this spiritual freeway, where everybody was driving at least a feverish ninety.
I puttered around another old synagogue which legend said once housed terrible demons, but had since been pacified by the local Jewish exorcists. The high spiritual flying resumed at Mount Meron where I made offerings to the great writer of the Zohar, Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai. The crazies were there too, temporarily exchanging their black hats for white ones as they blasted candles with prayers and left rocks and scraps of paper with written requests for salvation and possible enlightenment. I scribbled my name and Summer’s on the tomb of this Jewish giant. Thousands had scribbled before me, here in the twilight zone of the celestial pomegranates.
But where was he? An old man sat near the falafel kiosk and asked me if I wanted a blessing. I coldly turned him down and felt instant pangs of regret and remorse. I sat miserably like an emotional cripple. Had I missed my chance for salvation? The old man looked dirty and unshaven, snot dribbled down his nose and onto his gray shaggy beard. I looked at him from the corner of my eye in excited anticipation. The old man walked up to me. “What time is it?” he asked. “Five o’clock,” I answered. The old man walked away. My spirits plummeted. The old man came back. “Do you want a blessing?” This time I didn’t hesitate and said YES! “Are you married?” The old man quickly asked. “No,” I said. The old man stuck his head into a prayer-book and rattled off his blessings. He then fished out of his pocket a red cord and wrapped it around my neck. He smiled and walked off. I felt light-headed and ran after him to give him some money. He took it graciously and disappeared. But we met up again at the bus stop as we boarded the bus to Haifa. My mysterious benefactor vanished into the rear of the bus. “Who is that old guy?” I asked the bus driver. “Oh, he comes here every day,” he answered in a disinterested tone.
The wind blew at a furious clip, entering through the open windows, and slapping me repeatedly in the face. I had made offerings in Rila to Bulgaria, and at Delphi to the Greeks, but here a strange turn of events had occurred. I knew at that moment that I would soon have a wife. I could not explain this rationally to myself. I also knew it would not be an “ordinary” kind of wife. Not by a long shot. The wondrous and miraculous feeling that was showering me had something to do with the old man. Rabbi Bar-Yochai had made a personal visit today. I was not laughing, I was getting hysterical as the bus lurched around the sharp hairpins of this mountain paradise.
I transferred at Haifa to another bus bound for Jerusalem. I was wrapping things up in my mind. Jordan now loomed and after that INDIA at last! The vanishing bumpers of late-night traffic serenaded me all the way back to my step-uncle’s apartment. He invited me for a swim, but we just talked in the van. “Oh, it used to be one person worked, and a whole family was fed. Now everybody works and barely any money is made,” my step-uncle groaned. I remained silent. I had become a celebrity by my visit to Safed. My aura was glowing now. “When my father died, I lost my bearings,” my step-uncle busily continued. “Now I have to think for myself.” I remained silent. My step-uncle then asked. “Did you see any angels?” I was dumb-struck by this question. “Yes, I did,” I remarked innocently.
I wanted to take a trip to the Dead Sea. This was my final blessing run in Israel. I nagged the bus driver to tell me when to get off at Qumran. The Judean desert was a vast sea of orange nothingness that swallowed everything in its path, and made the whole Universe of the spiritual traveler seem crazy and cock-eyed and extremely strange. The Essene ruins at Qumran were small in comparison to this big celestial vastness, but I cranked away and felt nothing but resistance here. The locals hated my blessings and screamed at me to GET OUT OF HERE! I bumped into a numbed-out Canadian dentist who was on a pilgrimage of angst deep inside this desert unfriendliness. He treated me to a Mexican dinner in Jerusalem. I discovered my dentist buddy was fighting his ex-wife for custody of his children. His pockets were full of money and he was a half-Jew like me. I appreciated my newly found friend’s company. I was no longer in limbo. My stepmother’s relatives were from Iraq and had NO CONCEPT about what a YOPI was. They refused to help me get to the border. My “relatives” were scared of the Arabs. They hated them and an emotional numbness could be detected in their disorganized, but polite behavior.
I was finally rescued by a young guy who lived on the other side of the prefab. He was a young red-haired Jew who worked for my step-uncle when he “felt like it.” I noticed he looked a lot like Harpo Marx with his wild cumulus hair and big hook-nose. His name was Avi and he liked to argue, to assume the worst scenario for every eventuality. “Don’t go to cemeteries. It’s strictly forbidden,” he cautioned. “Why?” I asked. “Because it is,” he countered. “Don’t go to the Old City,” he further warned. “Why?” I stupidly inquired. “Because they may kill you,” Avi matter-of-factly announced. “You wanna get outa here?” he asked. “Don’t rely on these jerks. They’re DISORGANIZED.” I was beginning to worry about the run to the border. Once across it was easy. Buses to Amman took off hourly. Only the craziness of second vortex politics could produce the following tedious itinerary. Three different vehicles and two different crossings just to cover a half-hour ride from where I stood.
Avi finally persuaded a friend to take me to the Old City next morning. The guy wanted thirty dollars for a ten-minute ride. I told him to fuck off and got the ride for only ten bucks. I began to despise the Israelis all over again. Their tedious hair-splitting and sordid unsaintliness was wearing thin. But Avi was a saint. He lifted my heavy bags and ran across the congested highway, almost getting hit in the process, so he could hook up with his buddy. We eventually got to the Old City in good time. I asked Avi what he thought about Middle East politics. “Ah, you know, they discharged me dishonorably from the army. I just didn’t want to go to Lebanon,” he muttered. Avi’s stock suddenly sky-rocketed. This guy wasn’t so bad after all, I thought to myself.
I now had this metal carriage for my bags. My step-uncle had “lent” it to me. It was sturdier than the baby carriage I had bought in Prague, but harder to maneuver. I heaved and pushed like a madman. Avi said good-bye and I was escorted to Jericho by Arabs. The radio in the taxi was wailing eerie Arabic music. Something I had not heard since a trip to Egypt more than a decade ago. I was now entering yet another world. I was relieved and afraid. A soft rain pitter-pattered on the roof of the taxi. We were back in the desert.
The border crossing seemed to take ages. A Palestinian I sat next to told me it was hard for Palestinians to travel anywhere now in the Arab world. “They hate us even more than the Jews,” he complained. I had to leave him and the bus at the transfer station. Israeli security was everywhere. STOP! FRONTIER AHEAD! read signs in a menacing tone. An Israeli soldier looked at my papers and kept a serious poker face. The whole business was downright depressing. I prayed that my missing passport page would not be noticed. It had had an old Israeli exit marking and I had expediently ripped it out to avoid trouble with the Jordanians. But all went well. I was processed by Israeli Immigration and forced to pay a hefty departure tax. This pissed me off. I then boarded a Jordanian bus and crossed the Allenby bridge. Just about every centimeter of the Israeli side was covered with soldiers. The Jordan river itself was something of a disappointment. It looked like a muddy stream somewhat lost in this serious, but intensely comical setting. In the end I wondered what all the tight security was for. The Jordanian side of the border was pretty laid back — almost deserted. I saw a few bored Jordanian soldiers milling around. My passport was checked and I was told I could do as I pleased. I was finally on the other side. It was time for puja with the Arabs. I caught the first mini-bus to Amman.
