summer fun

After all these serious posts, and now that it's (finally) starting to get cold, I thought I'd put up some pics from the summer. That's Christopher balancing on the guardrail on the beutiful road to our house in the Catskills. The tubing shot is from the farm belonging to the family of our friends Peter and David (shown, so classy with the glass of wine!), near Oneonta. And the lovely blonde angels in the blue crab and on the boat are my nieces Samantha and Haley. They have an amazing trampoline.

Jewish-Christian dialog about Israel

I started writing this in response to a posting by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on the National Havurah Committee listserve. But once it started getting a bit lengthy for an email, I decided to put it up here so I wouldn't clog folks' inboxes.
Rabbi Waskow wrote about being invited to speak at a conference at Boston's Old South Church titled "The Apartheid Paradigm: Issues of Justice and Equality." The title is obviously problematic for the Jewish community, and especially Jewish officialdom. Waskow is clear about the differences between the two! Anyway, he was invited to speak after two other "representatives of Jewish officialdom" pulled out in protest. They were objecting to the presence of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has compared the Middle-East conflict to South African Apartheid, and the involvement of Sabeel, a Palestinian human rights group that calls itself an "ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians."
(***Right now I'm reading Tracy Kidder's "Mountains Beyond Mountains" about the amazing, super-hero Doctor Paul Farmer, and his work with impoverished communities in Haiti and elsewhere. Farmer is inspired by liberation theology, and I've become inspired myself, albeit not in a Christian way! Check out the helpful Wikipedia definition of the philosophy.***)
Anyway, if you like, you can read Rabbi Waskow's full account here. The following is my response.

When I think of American Christian relations with Israel, it's usually the Right-wing/Evangelical devotion, financial and otherwise. It's problematic, especially when I heard that a lot of the money for Nefesh B'Nefesh, which helped fund my Aliyah, came from such Evangelical groups. I can't understand why the Boston Jewish "officialdom" would reject the opportunity to engage a large and progressive Protestant congregation on this issue, especially when the conference in question (and its problematic title) demands a Jewish response. Just what is so controversial about Sabeel? Their call for refugee return? It seems like a perfectly understandable position for a Palestinian human rights group to take, even if it may not be tenable if-- I mean, when!!-- a treaty or agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is forged. I've been aware of the difficulty of Israel's "Right of Return" for Jews since I befriended a Palestinian German many years ago at a music festival. Both his grandmothers lived in the Palestinian territories, yet he had never been himself. "You can go anytime you like," he said to me, not unkindly, but with a kind of wistful smile. In that context, I can understand this statement of Sabeel's on their website:
"Israel's 'Law of Return' which allows any Jewish person to immigrate to Israel while denying Palestinians the right of return to their homeland is immoral and discriminatory."

My only disagreement with Rabbi Waskow is with the statement he suggests Boston's Jewish officialdom should have made in response to the conference:
"And we think it important to point out that applying liberation theology and all the vivid rhetoric about Jesus' crucifixion raises deep dangers in the Israel-Palestine context, strikes a deep nerve of Jewish pain from centuries when Christian charges that the Jews killed Christ, killed God, led to rivers of shed Jewish blood."
I have to say, I don't quite get this. From the little I've read about liberation theology, it seems like a perfect jumping-off point for dialog between Christians and Jews. For me, social justice is one of the defining ideals of Judaism. I don't see anything about liberation theology that suggests the charges that the Jews killed Christ. Is there something I'm missing?

Living in Israel didn't do anything to simplify my feelings about the conflict. I heard the boom of a suicide bomb not far away from me, and the resulting symphony of sirens. I understand the Israeli reliance on the military, and the instinct to keep as far away from "those people" as possible. I rarely saw on Israeli news what life was like on the other side of the Wall (oops, sorry. I mean, the Fence!) even though it was going on less than 15 miles away from where I was living. But American Jews can't keep being so afraid to criticize Israel, and can't keep going on pretending Palestinians brought this upon themselves. Israelis criticize Israel all the time!! Honestly, I feel like our fear of real engagement with the problems of the Occupation and Settlements actually divides the two communities (American Jewish and Israeli) more than if we spoke freely about our concerns. Also, it makes us look hypocritical if we take stands on human rights issues all over the world, and look the other way instead of facing the reality and repercussions of Israel's policies.
Families stage interventions to help each other. I'm not saying we should, or can, do anything like that. What would an intervention look like anyway, especially if we don't believe in military solutions to human rights issues? But criticism is healthy. And admitting to "outsiders," i.e. Christians or- gasp!- Muslims that we, too, see these issues, which are so clear to everyone else in the world, does not mean we aren't committed to Israel's future.

In memoriam Rudolph Hazucha

The transition's hit me. I feel like I'm going through jet lag now, after having been back for more than four months. I remember that number, because right after I got back, I was a sucker and bought one of those salon package specials a guy tried to sell me outside the subway. Haircut, manicure, "hand massage" blah blah blah. I went for the haircut, but of course, after she tried to sell me a fortune's worth of crap and get me to dye my hair, and after she only very reluctantly, rolling her eyes, cut the bangs I was asking for (which I like very much, thank you) I thought, maybe I wouldn't get such a good hand massage here. Anyway, the thing was valid for four months, and I kept trying to use it as incentive to stop biting my nails: that I could get a manicure. But I didn't. And four months are up.
Come to think of it, that story sounds like something that could have happened in Tel Aviv.
Anyway, I don't know why I expected that with a new teaching job- where I've somehow convinced people I could lead orchestra! (Gosh, I hope none of my students are reading this. If so, um, hi! Go practice!) and with being back in the freelance pool, and starting to try- I mean trying to start- my own non-profit... that I could STOP biting my nails.
Things are really good, though. So much has happened and passed that I wanted to write about. Discovering the "Freaks and Geeks" DVDs (it's embarrassing that's the first thing that came to mind), getting really into practicing solo stuff again... Our trip to California for Christopher's brother Bryan's wedding was incredible. I got to spend good time with Christopher's friends and family, and met some wild, super interesting people. He and our niece and nephew and I went out for an 8:30 AM canoe trip our first morning there. Christopher and Riley were rowing in the front and back, Chloe and I were passengers in the middle, all of us in a straight line. Chloe wanted to paddle, so Riley handed her his oar. A few seconds later we were all in the water, and the canoe was upside-down. That's all we know. We tried digging for answers, but there seemed to be none, just shrugs. The wedding was at Lake Zaca, north of Santa Barbara, which is, we were told, the only natural lake in California besides Lake Tahoe. Is that true? And, we were told, no one has ever found the bottom, it's so deep. AND Al Capone "disappeared" some slot machines there in the 30's, or alcohol during Prohibition, or something. AND Keith Richards swam in it. So you can imagine, we were nervous having taken Riley and Chloe out and dunked them into the middle of the bottomless lake, and their grandparents were on the shore, watching. Luckily, the water was warm, and their Dad and Grandpa rowed another canoe out to rescue us. Chloe held on to one side of it, and Riley and I on the other, me trying not to freak out that Riley was starting to shiver all over. Their grandpa and I started singing to boost the morale. I started "Hokey Pokey," which got Riley singing, and "Always look on the Bright Side of Life," whistling and all. David sang "Old Man River." He had a beautiful voice! Poor Christopher stayed in the middle and made sure our canoe didn't sink. They went back and got him after they dropped us at the shore. Since our cabins didn't have hot water (they later turned it on) Olya ran a bath for me an Chloe in her cabin, and Bryan ran a bath for Riley and Christopher in his. So Chloe and I got a sneak peek at the 3 red linen dresses, a traditional Russian wedding gown in pieces I guessed, that would be worn in layers by Olya, later at the ceremony. Bryan, for his part, wore a Scottish dress outfit, with white lace spilling all over the place, and big funny wool socks.
Something about that story just made me think of this great title one of Christopher's students gave to an essay about her summer. It was called "I Was Swimming."
I love that.
I'm dropping off, and there's a gorgeous heavy rain coming down outside that's distracting me. I just had to put this link in for an interesting article about musical blogs in the New Yorker. The best part about it was that it led me to a beautiful http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifdescription of the experience of playing Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" by the pianist Jeremy Denk. That's one of those pieces, like Beethoven piano trios, that makes me angry at the composer for not writing a viola part.
AND I had to pay my respects to a great man. The man who founded "Rudy Hazucha's Suzuki Kazoo School." He also did a lot of other great things, like starting the Suzuki camp I went to in Virginia for nine (!) years. But what I remember best is how at every final concert, there would be a performance by Rudy Hazucha's Suzuki Kazoo School. We all had to play a Suzuki song on kazoo. The faculty got so into it, that was the best part. That camp was so so so so so so fun. It's far away, so I don't get to give it props the way I do Third Street all the time. But I want to get Suzuki-certified, or have a baby quick and make it play Suzuki, just so I have an excuse to go back there. The institute was only a week, but it took several days (or what felt like it to me at the time) to get there. My mom and dad and I would drive through Pennsylvania Dutch country, or down the Maryland coast, and through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Park to get there. And then the week would feel like a month, so much would happen, but it also would be over before you knew it. We'd always do fiddling. One year MR. Hazucha brought Jay Ungar down, and we played "Ashokan Farewell" (which was later the theme song to the PBS Civil War documentary).
I feel funny eulogizing someone I didn't know very well. I was one of (what felt to me like) thousands of other kids there. And Mr. Hazucha definitely scared me; he was a disciplinarian, and we all had violins so we just wanted to make noise all the time. Boy, do I feel his pain now! It's Karma, or something, that now I'm the one saying "you practice at home. Here we play together." But Mr. Hazucha also had a charismatic and warm sense of humor. And that place, that institute, was his baby, and he brought the most wonderful teachers, teachers I still remember with a lot of love. It's good to be reminded of how much there is to aim for, how much you can maybe do from the front of the room.
There's a nice profile of Rudolph Hazucha here.

editorial

I often put links to NYTimes articles, and then they expire and you have to pay to read them. I think the paper has changed its policy, but just in case I'm going to paste in a pretty incredible Editorial. Definitely stuff I struggle with as an over-apologetic person who feels funny and sometimes wrong for keeping a blog.

Politeness and Authority at a Hilltop College in Minnesota

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: October 15, 2007

Last week I spent a couple of days in western Minnesota, giving a talk and visiting some classes at Gustavus Adolphus College. ...
I sat in on four classes, which were marred only by politeness — the deep-keeled Minnesotan politeness that states, as a life proposition, that you should not put yourself forward, not even to the raising of a hand in class.

Things always warmed up, but those first lingering notes of hesitation were something to behold. I tried to think of it as modesty, consideration for others and reluctance in the presence of a guest — from New York nonetheless. And yet I kept wondering just how such bright, personable students had become acculturated to their own silence. I had grown up in a similar place and knew a little how they felt, but that was a long time ago.

Midway through lunch one day a young woman asked me if I noticed a difference between the writing of men and the writing of women. The answer is no, but it’s a good question. A writer’s fundamental problem, once her prose is under control, is shaping and understanding her own authority. I’ve often noticed a habit of polite self-negation among my female students, a self-deprecatory way of talking that is meant, I suppose, to help create a sense of shared space, a shared social connection. It sounds like the language of constant apology, and the form I often hear is the sentence that begins, “My problem is ...”

Even though this way of talking is conventional, and perhaps socially placating, it has a way of defining a young writer — a young woman — in negative terms, as if she were basically incapable and always giving offense. You simply cannot pretend that the words you use about yourself have no meaning. Why not, I asked, be as smart and perceptive as you really are? Why not accept what you’re capable of? Why not believe that what you notice matters?

Another young woman at the table asked — this is a bald translation — won’t that make us seem too tough, too masculine? I could see the subtext in her face: who will love us if we’re like that? I’ve heard other young women, with more experience, ask this question in a way that means, Won’t the world punish us for being too sure of ourselves? This is the kind of thing that happens when you talk about writing. You always end up talking about life.

These are poignant questions, and they always give me pause, because they allow me to see, as nothing else does, the cultural frame these young women have grown up in. I can hear them questioning the very nature of their perceptions, doubting the evidence of their senses, distrusting the clarity of their thoughts.

And yet that is the writer’s work — to notice and question the act of noticing, to clarify again and again, to sift one’s perceptions. I’m always struck by how well fitted these young women are to be writers, if only there weren’t also something within them saying, Who cares what you notice? Who authorized you? Don’t you owe someone an apology?

Every young writer, male or female, Minnesotan or otherwise, faces questions like these at first. It’s a delicate thing, coming to the moment when you realize that your perceptions do count and that your writing can encompass them. You begin to understand how quiet, how subtle the writer’s authority really is, how little it has to do with “authority” as we usually use the word.

Young men have a way of coasting right past that point of realization without even noticing it, which is one of the reasons the world is full of male writers. But for young women, it often means a real transposition of self, a new knowledge of who they are and, in some cases, a forbidding understanding of whom they’ve been taught to be.

Perhaps the world will punish them for this confidence. Perhaps their self-possession will chase away everyone who can’t accept it for what it is, which may not be a terrible thing. But whenever I see this transformation — a young woman suddenly understanding the power of her perceptions, ready to look at the world unapologetically — I realize how much has been lost because of the culture of polite, self-negating silence in which they were raised.