Thoughts from Jerusalem

There's some Jewish kosher law: Do not cook a kid in its mother's milk.

I'm not sure that I've reproduced this faithfully. But the general gist is: Do Not Mix Meat and Dairy.

There are a few other laws. Fish without scales are unkosher- so mussels, clams, etc. And pigs- "Riiight, some kind of wonderful, magical animal, Lisa,"- they're a big no-no.

No clam chowder? No grilled pork chops, no sizzling, greasy bacon, no Christmas ham? Would the Chinese restaurants have char siew? And what about fettucini alfredo with shrimp?

And most importantly: would McDonalds have quarter-pounders with cheese and bacon?

The answer is "No".

In addition, a Big Mac meal- minus cheese- costs about 11 bucks. We called it a "Jew Value Meal."

***


The Mandarin is a Chinese restaurant in West Jerusalem. It was started in 1958; supposedly the oldest in Israel. More importantly, it's non-kosher- so it serves up char siew, sweet & sour pork, and all that good gentile stuff.

The guy who runs it is named Billy. Born a Christian in Hong Kong, Billy immigrated to Israel at the age of 15 with his parents. He hinted that his parents did missionary work, and he's been here 30 years. As Billy took the order, the stereo played a tinny Mandarin version of the hymn "This is the Day that the Lord has made."

I couldn't resist bombarding Billy with questions. The variety of the Chinese diaspora has never ceased to boggle my mind. Here was a Honky who spoke the most butchered, helicoptering, sing-songy, fresh-off-the-boat, Tai Mai Shu, Chicky-flied-lice brand of English you'd expect from the waiters at Hon's in Richmond... and shouted at his Arab accountant in fluent Hebrew in between orders.

Billy is actually an Israeli citizen. More importantly, he has served in the IDF. I didn't press him on this, or on the details of being a Chinese Christian in a Jewish army. And at 45, his army days are over.

But let's logic out some dates.

It's 2008. 30 years ago was 1978; he would have been 15. If he was given citizenship and drafted at 18, it would have been 1981: the year before Israel first invaded Lebanon. I wondered if young Billy, who would have spoken a shaky Hebrew and felt no affiliation to the tribal Jewish jingoism of those days, was in a tank on the outskirts of Beirut, watching the tribes of Lebanon duke it out.

And he would have had a front row seat for the Occupation. He would certainly have seen action in the Second Intifada as a reservist. He might even have fought Hezbollah in Lebanon, in 2006.

More questions, more answers. The Chinese community of Israel is, according to him, about thirty. This seems unbelievable: there are so many foreign workers in Israel today. Billy replied that these were migrant workers; Chinese citizens are few and far between.

Are there Chinese Jews? Yes, he said, two kinds. Some are descended form a tiny, age old community that fled the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, and made their way east into China. Over the centuries, they interbred with the locals, took Chinese names, and built synagogues in the shape of pagodas. Some tiny percentage survived, and came to Israel.

The second source was more recent. After the Holocaust, most Jews went to Israel and America. A tiny number went to China, took Chinese spouses, and had Chinese-looking Jewish kids.

And do you feel Chinese or Israeli?

Billy sighed, his answer confused. "Here, I am Israel," he said. (Not "I am Israeli", but "I am Israel.") "I have been here so many years, I feel Israel. I serve in army, I speak Hebrew. We no celebrate Chinese New Year. Here, is Jewish country, you no feel."

No oranges and new clothing and massive round table feasts? No red packets? He seemed amused at my dismay.

"But!" he continued. "Sometime I go China, Hong Kong. Then I feel. I feel Chinese again. But here, no feel."

So you do feel Chinese! Do you feel more Chinese, or more Israeli? I don't know why I was so intent on this. I think I was trying to answer something about myself, and on behalf of Kevin, and Gavin, and all my banana brethren back home.

Billy shrugged eloquently. "It is like you," he pointed at me suddenly. "Are you Chinese or America?" He thought I was from America. "You are Chinese on outside. Inside, you are America. Inside, I am Israel. But is difficult, because China, I also feel."

"If China fight America, who you fight for? See?" He seemed gleeful, as if he had sprung some kind of verbal trap. "If Israel fight China, I run to church and hide. I cannot fight. I cannot choose."

Meh. Part of me was satisfied by this stalling answer. Identity is any individual's greatest crisis, and the divided loyalties of the hyphenated identity, in my experience, defy articulation. I felt vindicated, somehow, that this Chinese-Israeli felt the same way.

And you feel welcome here?

He waved the question away. "I am Israel. In Jerusalem, is different, maybe. But in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, everywhere, people welcome you. You not Jewish... well, is still ok. You serve in army, you want to be Israel, they say, ok, come."

"But is also hard to be Christian," he went on, not realizing that this hint at exclusion contradicted the earlier claim of belonging. "Because is Jewish country." He wouldn't elaborate further.

All of this said much about Israeli attitudes toward migrants, though it revealed more questions than answers. Apparently, secular Israelis don't care. Being a Zionist is more important than being Jewish, though it was best to be both. Religious Jews are straight-up less welcoming. And the moral climate of a Jewish country can often ostracize non-Jews. Like Chinese Christians.

Above all, I found Billy's faith and his Christian connection to the Holy Land most interesting. In order to remain in Israel, he was willing to serve in the Occupation, and abide by a nationalist ideology of no resonance to his Chinese roots or his Christian beliefs. In order to live as a Christian, he was willing to die for Israel- a country that would always keep him, a non-Jew, at arm's length.

***


Kieran likes to joke that there are two kinds of Arabic music.

(1) Koranic recitations. An old cleric's thin, ululating voice droning verses from the Koran. There are whole radio freeks dedicated to this garbled garbage (especially withering at 8 on a hungover morning ), and the felafel & hummus joint down the road has its television permanently turned to the Islamic MTV: music videos of chanting, white-robed clerics superimposed over images of Mecca or crowds of men praying with their asses in the air and bouncing their foreheads off the ground.

(2) "Habibi" songs. "Habibi" means "my friend" in Arabic, though it also has intimate connotations... like "my dear", "my love", or "my comrade". Arabic pop music is built on a carbon-copy stream of simpering love ballads, each containing the word "Habibi" as its centerpiece- the way hip-hop uses "nigger".

Imagine the most irritating dying-swan ballad ever upchucked by a teenage pop princess. Combine this with a synthesized snake-charmer drumbeat, and the kind of affected, pseudo-coy, ululating Arabic mating call you imagine a virgin in a Turkish harem would belt out, hips gyrating, before being deflowered by the fat, mustachioed sultan.

"Dirka dirka Muhammad jihad habibiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...*bomp-ti-bomp-ti-bomp-bomp-bomp*"

The first time you hear this, you think: "Ah! How very rhythmic, how sensuous!" Somewhere around your 839th same-same-but-different tune, you start to fantasize about the Israeli army bursting in and filling the stereo with lead.

The best example of this is the Lebanese diva Fairouz. The Lonely Planet: "a voice of silk and flame." This is apt enough; listening to her is like being wrapped in a sheet and set on fire.

The fanciful, literary half of me that takes guidebooks at face-value and romanticizes ancient ruins wants to believe that Arabic ballads are sensuous and exotic- you know... the sultry, unveiled passion of the harem and the lingering serenity of the desert... that kind of fatuous nonsense.

The other half of me, that listens to Irish punk and makes vicious comments about my girl friends' dates, thinks that the first half is an idiot.

When I get back to Vancity, I am going to find my iPod, jam the headphones over my head, put Flogging Molly on repeat, punch something, and thank God for real music.

***


Israelis and Palestinians have absurd names.

Let's start with the Palestinians. I'm not just talking about the Muhammads, the Hassans, the Husseins, and the Alis. Or even the Osamas.

We were doing some film-work, interviewing the workers and patients of a psychology clinic for torture victims of Israeli jails. The psychologist's name was "Thawra"- which means "revolution". Her patient's name was "Falastin", or "Palestine". And back at our hostel (run by a man named Osama), the handyman repairing the lights was "Abu Jihad".

Just to be clear, Arab men, as a sign of respect, address each other with the title "Abu"- Father of- followed by the name of their eldest son. So Abu Jihad probably has a son named Holy War.

Mass movements throw up names like this. You recreate your identity by changing your name. Hippies: Liberty, Rainbow, Phoenix, Dharma; or Lennon, Dylan, Janis. Or blacks and their Back-to-Africa pseudo-Swahili: Ashanti and Shaniqua and Kwame and Kunta-Kinte-Himbohambe-Himbohambo. The Palestinians reshape their names and identities to reflect the Intifada.

And the Israelis. If you study the early days of Israel and Zionism, it's identical to the Palestinian struggle today- complete with the child-of-war names. Jews were changing their Yiddish ghetto names (Hershel Finkelsteinkosherburger?) to heroic Hebrew names, after biblical prophets and kings.

And so your bus driver's last name might be Dror (Freedom), or Ben-Tsyon (Son of Zion), or Ben-David. His first name might be Barak (lightning), or the name of some Old Testament warrior: Gideon or Samson.

I wonder if there's an Israel Ben-Israel out there. Can you imagine a Canadian named "Trudeau Son of the Yukon"? Or "Alberta Freedom"?

Nowadays, most Israelis, secure in their national identity, go for non-biblical, monosyllabic, unisex names: Tal, or Nir, or Gal. My favorite is "Mor". Think of the possibilities in the sack. "Give me MOR! I need MOR! Oh, MOR! MOR! MOR!"

Most Israeli names, however, are hideous and jarring, all guttural consonants and tonsil-jiggling. The girls' names are especially awful and always masculine sounding; they generally end with "T" or "R" because Hebrew feminine nouns tend to end with those letters.

Smadar. Ugh. Or Shachar, the "ch" being a guttural throat-hawk, like "ccchhhhhhhh". "Shachar" is especially tragic because it means "dawn", a lovely name in English.

The worst by far is "Orly", which to me is the quintessential fat chick's name. It sounds like a combination of "Porky", "Oily," and "Roly-poly", all of which have connotations of morbid obesity.

Lately, I've been signing my name onto visitors' books as "Yochanan Ben-Tsona".

It means Sean, Son of a Bitch.