Ugh why does FOOD have to be problematic? Because it does.

I love this week's topic--food is just the greatest. It is unfortunate that there exists a petty rift between Palestinians and Israelis based on "whose" food hummus or pita or labneh or za'atar is. This is Arab food, not necessarily Muslim or Jewish, just Arab, and it's silly to argue about something as objective and simple as that, I think. As far as I have observed, one reason that Israelis tend to be defensive about ownership over certain foods is because of how common it is that Israel's right to exist is questioned and challenged. The Middle Eastern legitimacy that it gives someone to be from an Arab land(for generations) and to really be able to call hummus "their own" is a trait that Israelis from more recent, European roots, covet.
Food represents culture, history, birthplace, ancestry. As we have read in past weeks, the validity of the existence of the state of Israel is constantly being disputed, so it is understandable that Zionists and Israelis would cling to something as simple as food as a means of bolstering their case. Similarly, it is understandable that anti-Zionists and Palestinians and other Arabs would cling to food for the same reason. There is, admittedly, a good deal of cultural appropriation that occurs within Israeli society, but as was mentioned briefly in the July 2008 Street Food video, many Jews in Israel are just as much Arab as their Muslim or Palestinian neighbors. Something that I have witnessed that surprises and disappoints me is the lack of awareness within the Jewish population about the cultural appropriation that occurs in this context. I myself only relatively recently realized the appropriation that I had been exposed to for most of my life through Jewish education. There are countless articles about Israeli appropriation of Palestinian culture, this one being particularly thorough (and angry), and while some people view it as less of a big deal in comparison with, say, the continued construction of the settlements, it really is a huge deal and I believe that it is a very important issue that needs to be addressed before peace between civilians (not necessarily governments) can happen. Cultural appropriation threatens identities that mean a lot to a lot of people, and straightening out issues of misrepresentation and cultural belonging will enable Israelis and Palestinians to view each other in accurate ways that each group consents to.
1. How can a large-scale anti-appropriation program work?
2. How best can everyday civilians react to appropriation effectively and assertively but also kindly and in an understanding way that promotes discussion instead of angry confrontation and closed minds?
3. Does anyone think that focusing on this detracts from the larger conflict and is counterproductive(an issue I approached in a previous post)?

WOW OOPS OH MAN I forgot about this post yesterday. Whirlwind week. Here we go.

Our discussion today was a mini love-fest about the readings we've been having, and this is a good thing. Everyone is thoughtful, mindful, critical thinkers who are open to new ideas. In my group's discussion, we discussed Galit Hasan-Rokem's short but meaningful piece about the femininization of the city of Jerusalem and other lands throughout history. One group member mentioned that he had not noticed this trend before in studying history, and this surprised me considering that this is one of the first things I think about when I think about the history of a region--the controlling, possessive language used to describe a place. Once we discussed it a little bit more he said that, yes, he had definitely heard this language before in several places. This made me think even more about how feminist education is needed, not only to call attention to the mindsets that have been put in place throughout the years by male-dominated society (history writing/teaching and politics, especially), but also to offer ways of fighting it and eventually reversing it. 

These readings have also made me think more about something that has been on my mind for quite some time. As a child I thought that all Jews were more or less the same as I was, had the same values, liked the same movies, hated marzipan (just kidding, but marzipan is still super gross), etc. This might sound silly and naive, but it was only about 6 years ago that I realized that this was not at all the case. When I was in Israel to celebrate my Bat Mitzvah, I was walking around a religious area of Jerusalem and got harshly scolded for the shorts that I was wearing (it was 99 degrees out, *give me a break*). This was the first time, followed by instances of sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia that I witnessed coming from Ultra-Ultra-Orthodox people that I would have at one point considered members of my own extended family--the family of the Jewish people. Realizing this separation in values allowed me to think more critically about the fundamentalism that is present in all religions, including my own, and to say with truth and conviction that it's wrong and stupid (this is my very-very-proper and professional opinion).

I have to think, now, about how I will include anti-fundamentalist information in my curriculum. It's hard to change mindsets, but how else will peace be achieved if we don't try?

Jerusalem; Not a Woman.

What amazing readings. There are many questions that specifically Hasan-Rokem's and Sa'ar's pieces bring to light, such as 1. why land is constantly anthropomorphized (or rather feminomorphized, if you'll allow me to totally make up a word), 2. how and why that is problematic for people who live on that land and for the gender to which the land is compared, and 3. how that precedent/trend can be crushed (because really, it needs to be).

1. Land is physical, it is fruitful, it is beautiful, it can be claimed. It represents the purposes that men have, throughout history, assigned for women to fulfill, and in this sense it is easy to see how land has been gendered female and how it has been controlled and bought and sold and manipulated and coveted much like women often are.

2. This is clearly a problem, but it is important that we examine exactly why this is a problem. The readings help shine a light on the numerous issues involved in gendering inanimate objects such as land. The concept that since land is where people are born, is where things grow, is beautiful, and therefore is like a woman comes from the mindset that women have an inherent duty or responsibility to produce, to be used for production, to be beautiful, to obey and succumb. This mindset is clearly damaging to women, placing them in a binder (sorry, couldn't help myself) of limited options for ways that they can live their lives or contribute to society. For the people who live on this land, this mindset is damaging because it implies that there is a correct owner of the land and does not allow for co-ownership or collective ownership or--heaven forbid--no ownership at all. This has created, as we see with Jerusalem, violence between groups that see themselves as being the rightful owners and marginalization of less powerful groups living on that land.

3. If only the soil itself could rise up and declare its independence from the fundamentalist sentimentality and arbitrary control that people place upon it. "I'm land! Just live on me and stop fighting!" Of course it's not that simple. I really am not entirely sure how this problem can be addressed. The patriarchy is alive and well everywhere we look--can standing up to injustices we experience as women (and witness or perpetuate, as men or in some cases women) help dislodge land from the area of our brains that is reserved for things that our "mine and mine alone and no one else's"?

My questions for everyone are:
1. How can the anthropomorphizing of land be stopped, especially in respect to the female gender being assigned to it and therefore justifying its control and possession by people in power?
2. Whatever the answer is to that question, can it work in Jewish and Muslim societies, both of which have different ways of marginalizing women and trying to be the sole owners of special parts of physical land?

Music

Music plays an incredibly huge role in my life. I think that a love of music, whichever kind doesn't matter, is something that all humans share. I'm sure there's someone out there who could do without, but if you're anything like me you're listening to music every chance you get. I listen to music when I wake up and shower and brush my teeth, when I'm riding my bike to class, when I'm studying, when I'm hanging out with friends (this includes playing music), when I'm eating, and often when I'm falling asleep. I think some of this has to do with the ADD that I've always suspected I have, but it also has to do with how much music makes me think and feel, and with the fact that I just love that and cannot get enough of it. 

It may be weird to cite this, but last month I tweeted, "glad I listen to music in obsessive stints; every album has a clearly defined place in my memory timeline w/ moods, places, ppl, seasons". This couldn't be more true. As a tiny kid I remember the "classics" (Spice Girls, Destiny's Child, etc) that I would jam to, but more than those I remember artists that my mother introduced me to, including Joni Mitchell, Enya(!!!!!), Melanie Safka, Carol King, The Beatles, and Shlomo Carlebach. My middle school years brought obsessions with Dispatch, Tegan & Sara, more Joni Mitchell & The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Neutral Milk Hotel, Iron&Wine, Panic at the Disco(yup), and Modest Mouse. High school Sophie was still into that music, but was a bit more punk, a bit more experimental, a bit more influenced by the suggestions that would pop up on youtube, taking me on endless chases of that perfect new band. I worked at the local library all throughout high school, and every CD cover that caught my eye was one that I checked out and listened to. This exploded my musical horizon, and led to countless exciting discoveries that I still cherish today. Coming to college, I made friends with/started living with a lot of local musicians and poets and over the past three years have been going to loud DIY basement shows, so my taste in music has expanded even further into the realm of sometimes gritty, sometimes soft, sometimes repetitive, sometimes nuanced and complicated (but always genuine, thoughtful, and beautiful) homemade music.

Writing this post is almost bringing me to tears as I think about how music has changed me and helped me grow and learn and think and act over the course of my life. Similarly to how the internet opened up my eyes to a lot of things that other people think and feel that I thought were unique to my mind only, music (both before and after I began using the internet daily and discovering cool things there) gave me windows into the lives of other people that I would not have otherwise had. Things that I was/am unable to experience were sung about in the songs I listened to, and I gained wisdom, empathy, perspective, confidence, and curiosity by listening to the lyrics.

People are able to communicate their own stories through music, and having the opportunity to just switch on the radio or whatever and hear someone's personal story is an invaluable privilege we have today. This storytelling/sharing helps me learn about types of people and ways of life that I had never myself encountered, and I myself have written down parts of my own personal story, however cryptically, for others to listen to and learn from. One school of thought in nation-building discourse is that in order to nurture peace in a country you must establish trust within the population, especially in cases where ethnic divides have driven a stake between two groups of the citizenry. One way of doing this which has proven effective in several cases is by increasing non-political interaction between members of society, like having more economic integration between ethnic groups or like placing a playground directly in between two distinctly separate communities. Another way of going about creating trust within a population is by sharing personal stories and narratives, specifically through music, which is so deeply enjoyed universally by basically everyone. I don't think that music alone can bring together an entire country that was once at war, but I think that music is a crucial, inherently human, simple way of communicating complicated and often emotionally-charged thoughts and opinions in a way that everyone (even those with differing opinions) can wrap their heads around.

The Consequence of Sound

My favorite piece this week was the excerpt from Parallels and Paradoxes. There were a few fascinating parts that really spoke to me.

The first was Said's observation that "there is a lot of sentimentality about 'homelands'" that he said he didn't care for. So many people, myself included, were/are raised with some sense of history and family ties to something--religion, geographic location, professions or other traditions passed down through generations. These are mostly arbitrary connections, and as we grow older we are more and more able to sincerely question their validity and their meaning and the place that we want them to occupy within our own lives, separate from the lives of our other family members/community members. This is obviously a common trope when discussing the I-P conflict, and it leads perfectly into the next section in the reading that I want to explore.

If one comes to the conclusion that historical connections and loyalties to places and religions and even family members is arbitrary and meaningless, one runs the very real risk of then delegitimizing the thoughts, feelings, and values of anyone who disagrees or identifies even a little bit with any of these connections. Pages 8, 9, and 10 address the concept of the "other" and how a shared experience (even one as small as citizens from two different countries playing the exact same notes at the exact same time) can break down those arbitrary walls between people who were told they should be enemies and believed that.

I usually zoom out at the end of my reading responses and try to think about how the lessons learned on the smaller, situational scales of the readings could be applied to the larger populations of Israel & Palestine (and areas elsewhere in the world, of course). This week, the questions on my mind are similar to some of the things that we've recently been discussing in class.
How can we create shared experiences on large scales, for example in a busy market street in Jerusalem or a shopping center in Tel Aviv or even--and this is a little crazy--in the settlements between Israeli settlers and Palestinians living behind the Green Line? Another question that follows, then, is about whether or not the problems between the two populations are trivialized by the attempt to create dialogue and friendship on a person-to-person level. After all, isn't that the best way to start building peace(this is not a rhetorical question)?