I'm in a new hostel, in East Jerusalem. I have a cell phone, too. If you want the number, email me.

I love East Jerusalem. The area right around Damascus Gate, where I am not, is very hopping, a bit of a commercial center, not tourist-focused. In fact, it's more Church Avenue than anywhere I've been except for, um, Church Avenue. (Sorry if you never came to visit me in Flatbush, but it's a very visceral thing.) I'll try to post some photos to give you the idea.

West Jerusalem I'm finding I can't get into. I haven't totally processed why yet, but I think a little bit might be that it seems unsure who it is. Let me tease this out more and get back to you.

I went to the Israel Museum today--some of it was great. Their contemporary Israeli art collection is good in one sense, that is that the art itself is super. However, I didn't see a single Palestinian Israeli name in the whole collection. I'm not too hot on telling Mizrahi and Askenazi names apart, but I don't think there were many Mizrahim either. So that sucks, but is very standard for an art museum. (Slightly better than usual stats on gender, but I only paid attention in the contemporary art exhibit, which has a better gender dynamic usually.)

Also, there were these fascinating collections of (mostly women's) clothes from Jewish communities around the world, but they left out a lot of information--like the classes of women who wore them, and the gender relations that these clothes embodied. Also, the majority of the clothes were from "Oriental" countries--Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, etc. In part of the exhibit, they explain that European Jewish jewelry was lost during the holocaust, which is one thing. But setting up "foreign," "other" Jews as artifacts to be studied is a poisonous cycle in a country with poor race relations to begin with. (Let's not get into the fact that there was nothing about the culture or history of Palestinians living in Israel; this is the Jewish State after all, and we can't let reality get in the way of nationalism.) The Judaica collection was amazing over all--lots of silver, three whole synagogues reassembled (from Italy, Poland, and India), lots of illustrated texts (my favorite). In addition, they were pretty open about the fact that Jewish artists/artisans borrowed from local artistic techniques (Islamic art in the Middle East, etc).

Also, there was the fact that the "Islamic Art" collection was 5 cases, collected by an Iranian Jew and donated to the Museum. It was in a hallway. Brooklyn Museum has a better collection, and their collection is nothing to be impressed by. Mostly it was pottery, no paintings, only a few pieces of textiles. Again, there is/was Islamic art being produced in Israel/Palestine, and it's totally erased. (I won't get into the problematic designation of 'Islamic Art' as historic artifacts from pre-Ottoman times. But you know what I mean.)

Hmm, so maybe I didn't really like the museum. But there was a lot of great stuff in it, even if the politics were yicky.

I think I'm going to go find some ruins. Yay ruins. I will try not to analyze them too much.

(note: in this post I transliterate Arabic. when an H is capitalized, it means the 'middle H' in arabic, the one between normal English h and the kh/ch sound. FYI.)

I got to hear more of the conference today. A lesbian Israeli activist on whom I have an activist-crush (you know, ooh, her politics are so sexy, she can organize me any time) gave a brilliant speech about second-intifada activism, and moving from protest to resistance (of which protest is a part). It was really good, and it addressed a lot of the changes in Israeli peace activism; basically she was providing an ideological narritive of the changes I described in my senior essay. So it was an intellectual morning for me.

I'm living in extreme language dysphoria, which is pleasant and unpleasant simultaneously. English is my first language, and is also the tourist language of the Old City. There are two journalists covering the conference for Feminist International Radio Endeavor; one speaks only Spanish, and we share computers and tech stuff. My two roommates are Palestinian women from near Akko. So I'm spending my time hopping between English, Spanish, and Arabic. Of the three, I find I am the least comfortable about speaking Spanish. Let me be clear--lease comfortable performing the act of speaking it, not least capable of speaking. My problem with Spanish is that I don't know how much Spanish I know.

Five years ago, I was very comfortable in Spanish; I got a 5 on the AP test, I could read and write and communicate with relative ease, and I preferred speaking Spanish to any other language I knew. But then I stopped studying Spanish and French, and started studying Arabic. Arabic is a huge language, metaphorically. It takes up mental space that used to be occupied by other things--like Spanish. I've kept my French in shape (more or less) through reading academic stuff in French, and also because it's older, deeper in my brain. But Spanish moved over, condensed itself down into a collection of whateverness. I don't speak much Arabic, but I know I don't speak much Arabic. I expect that, when I'm talking in Arabic, there will be large gaps I will have to talk around. But in Spanish, I never know what will happen. Sometimes all the words are there. Sometimes none of them. Sometimes I can get the verb in the right person and tense. Sometimes no.

All of this is complicated by the politics of what is called in French tutoier, addressing someone in the informal. Who do I call 'tu?' when speaking in either French or Spanish? My instinct is to address all the women around me as 'tu,' because we are a feminist community, aimed at knocking down borders. Women who I talk to all address me as tu. BUT I'm only talking to women who are older than me, so maybe they're tutoiering me because I'm a kid. (95% of WiB are my mother's age or older.) So as I come to the verbs and pronouns, I flounder in knowledge both of grammar and of manners.

Arabic is easier, not because it's easy to speak, but because I know I can't speak it, so it's fine if I screw up, can't communicate, etc. I mean, not fine, but I understand. I was trying to explain to my roommates that I would be getting a phone call at 7AM, and it just wasn't working. But I know why: because I don't know the verb "to call," so I was saying (literally translated) "my friend in New York in telephone at 7 am." Mikhael thought I wanted to know how to call, how much it cost. We gave up at some point.

Of course it's not easy: the complicating factor here is dialect. For those who don't know: Arabic has two full registers, fusHa, formal Arabic as it is written, and 'ammiya, dialects that differ from place to place. I "speak' fusHa, a complicated language of triliteral roots and case endings. The women I'm trying to speak with speak 'ammiya. It's not just differences of pronunciation, or of noun-vocabulary differences; there are different verbs in 'ammiya and fusHa, there are different grammatical structures, there is different everything. I tried to say this morning "I'm going to breakfast" and I had to say "I go that I eat" (really I should have said "I go for eating" but hind-grammar is 20/20) and I have no idea if I was incomprensible because I screwed up or because the sentence 'athab an akul' should be 'biruh bikul' or something entirely different. (That's my 'ammiya guess, at least.) My phrasebook is in fusHa, too, which is frustrating but probably best.

I may ask people to write things down; if they write they would write in fusHa, and I stand a better chance to read.

BTW: I was on the TV this morning! Well, the wibcast. I got up and read comments from different women who sent messages to the conference. It was great. I'm hoping to get some women to come post on the blog--only one has so far. Oh well.

So I'm eating Hummus at every meal, and it's great, but I may be about to max out. Don't get me wrong, I love my breakfast of stewed plums, yogurt, Hummus and za'atar. But I'm worryed I may max out at some point, and then what will I eat? (Rugalach.)

However, I just got the news that lunch is blocked...because it was coming from West Jerusalem, and the Old City is closed. Like, closed-closed, you have to live there to get in. (Lucky us tourists, we get to go anywhere.) There were checkpoints all through the city yesterday; I'll write more about them, but the point is, the politics are everywhere here, even walking down the street. Or in lunch. Dammit, I'm hungry.

The conference is happening right now. I have the audio on, while I work in a little room off to the side, getting things online. It's a hard job, but I'm cool with it. Right now they are reading the list of women from what countries are here. (Live quote from Gila: "That's not America, that's New York.")

There has been politics since I got here--drama over lesbian representation/visibility, and the normal working things out. I might blog more about this later, when I have time to write at leisure.

I went this morning to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I was all ready for a religious experience, because I like dark churches, I like holy spaces, I like sanctity. But I went, and it was unmoving. First, most of the beautiful parts, including the ceiling, were totally not visible. Second, it was a huge reminder of how servile Christianity can be. People bowing and scraping to enter holy spaces, prostrate across the actual sepulchre. I've been a Christian my whole life, but I refuse to bow like that before God anymore. She's better than that. There's also the fact that I never felt the Spirit while I was in there. No one moved me, no Light touched me. I was just a person in a building.

The experience at the Sepulchre was the exact opposite of my experience at the Western Wall yesterday. I walked onto the women's plaza, and an immense wave of emotion came over me. Rather than being subject to the wall, the women praying were active, rocking, weeping and wailing, reaching out. They reached out their hands, touched the stone, and kissed their hands. And when they were done, they backed away from the wall, refusing to turn their backs to it. But I never felt they were powerless before it, that they were subjected to it. They were participants in the experience, full ones, and their interaction with the holy was consentual and beautiful. I sat and cried with them for a while (not that I'm even sad about anything, but the mojo was so strong) and then I left, still me.

It's funny, I don't have a problem with ritual bowing gestures during prayer--Muslim raka'as, or the bowing that some women did while davvening at the Wall. It's being servile in the face of divinity that makes me cringe.

I did kneal in front of one altar in the church (it was in a room only 3 feet high) and also by the actual sepulchre. The altar was disturbing, because it was set up to venerate the host (the consecrated communion wafers that are said to be in Catholic tradition the actual real body of Christ), and I'm not ready to do that anymore.

Tomorrow I think I'll hit Haram al-Sharif, al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. So I'll let you know how God is doing up there.

I know, you're not looking for me to be religious here. But hey, I'm in the old city, whaddyu expect?

In other news, I love eating hummus for breakfast, with cucumbers. I love walled cities. I love palm trees. I love speaking al-'arabiiya. I love being here. I'm just getting settled.

Check out the blog and video and audio: go to wibjerusalem2005.blogspot.com to see what's there.

I'm here. I'll post more later because I'm about to run to a vigil. But I'm in the Old City, which I am loving, and I am speaking some Arabic, which I am loving, and I am drinking so much water I am about to float, which is necessary.

much love,
Emily