TLV --> YYZ --> YOW

Tomorrow I fly home to Ottawa... hopefully I'll have time in the airport to update everyone on the past few days of my trip. As much as I've enjoyed Israel, I am looking forward to returning home and getting back to my life in Ottawa!

Built to Last

In the best selling business book "Built to Last" Jim Collins and Jerry Porras profile 18 "visionary" companies that have had sustained success relative to the market. They looked at companies at least 50 years old. It's just one example of how in North America our conception of time is so different than here in Israel and the Middle East, where history is measured in centuries and millennia, and not years and decades.

Two things in particular have stood out to me as being "built to last". Many of the ruins I have seen are two thousand years or older, yet they are still standing. I am talking about walls, structures, even columns. It just makes me laugh when I think about all the condo's in Toronto that were thrown up overnight in the past ten years. A friend of mine once commented to me that his condo was "old" when I asked it's exact age he said about ten years. I won't be surprised if some of these buildings don't even last fifty years before being knocked down due to poor building standards or materials.

The other thing that stuck with me was my visit to the Israel Museum earlier today. Some of the books and scrolls on display are over one thousand years old. In contrast I bought a brand new copy of George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" in Cambodia last summer and pages started falling out within days. Today we no longer "build to last". We build for cheap and now.

In a funny kind of way this relates to my interest in family business. Since most family businesses are private, they are not pressured to make long-term sacrifices to hit short-term profit targets like many public firms often are. It's easier for them to take the long view, which is something that appeals to me.

Why I love hostels

Once the group trip I was on arrived in Tel Aviv for our final two nights, I turned my attention towards finding accommodation for the next few nights. For me it was a no-brainer - I was going to find a hostel to stay in. This was even before I found out one extra night at The Carlton would set me back about $245 USD. Even splitting a room would be pricey.

48 Hayarkon, the hostel I am currently staying at had consistently good reviews across hostel booking websites. It also seemed to have good amenities, so I booked it. Aside from a couple small issues my stay here has been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, this is a nicer hostel than most, but the real reason I have so thoroughly enjoyed my stay here is because of the people I have met.

I have met a medical resident in radiology from New York, a recent journalism grad from Australia who has spent the last eighteen months traveling the world, a wide-eyed & bright-eyed Northern Californian who is fresh off her birthright experience, and a fellow Canadian who seems to be an aspiring polymath much like myself (we also have no less than six friends in common according the all-knowing Facebook). I really want to expand on this right now, but I need to get ready so I can go out with some of these very same people!

More to come on this soon...

Short rant about The Carlton Tel Aviv.

The group I was with earlier in my trip spent two nights at the Carlton in Tel Aviv. It is supposedly a five star hotel. Despite the high cost of a room wireless internet is quite costly (at roughly $20 USD), and the computers in their so called "business centre" are quite expensive by metred internet standards, despite being so old they may date back to the 1990's. There is also a sign giving directions about how to print from their computers even though you can't actually print from them.

Anyway, this is my way of saying if you can't do something well then don't do it. The Carlton would be better off not offering their own computers. I just hope their uber expensive wireless internet is faster than the connection on the computers sitting in their lobby. I actually had to go to another hotel (The Sheraton) to find fast & reliable internet.

More pictures...

You can find them here

More to come when I have some free time!

Pictures

You can find a few pictures here

My camera is giving me problems so I've had to use my blackberry to take pictures... so unfortunately they aren't coming out quite as well and are not as plentiful as in Asia. I have a few more I'll be posting soon though!

Day at the beach

Today I spent the day at the beach in Herziliya with a couple other people from my trip that are also staying for a few days extra. We cabbed to the beach at the Daniel hotel, and were immediately blown away upon arrival. It's a much nicer and quieter beach than anywhere in Tel Aviv!

I went for a nice walk down the beach to a point where the beach is maybe 40 feet of sand deep before abruptly becoming a cliff. The homes on top of that cliff must be some of the nicest in the country. I'm back at the hostel nice and relaxed (and free of sand). I'm about to go meet my friends for fancy desserts at Max Brenner. I made some friends in the hostel that might join us.

Re-connecting with family in Israel

Tonight I am going to my cousin Raanan's for dinner. I haven't seen him in many years and am very much looking forward to it. He has three young children - I don't think I've met any of them yet, so I am grateful for the chance to meet them. His oldest speaks only a few words of English, and his two younger children don't speak any (sidenote: obviously the baby who is only a few months old doesn't speak any language). It will be interesting to see if my Hebrew is good enough to communicate with my young cousins!

I am also hoping to see my cousin Michael (Raanan's brother) over the next couple days while I stay here in Tel Aviv.

***Update (I just made plans to see Michael tomorrow night, and thank you to my sister Shayna for pointing out that Raanan in fact has three children. Clearly it's been too long since I've seen his family!)***

Reflections on the organized portion of my trip #1

After thinking more about the posts I wrote about Yad Vashem, I think it's important to give a little more depth to my earlier comments.

At dinner last night my group's guide said that first and foremost, he believe's a good guide is a good educator. I think it's a great insight, and after experiencing him for a week, I agree. This is especially the case when you have someone that hasn't visited the sites you are visiting, which was the case for several people on my trip.

I just want to make the distinction between the importance of teaching people about historical sites, and facilitating a experience so as to have historical sites/museums leave as deep and lasting an impression as possible.

What was particularly impressive about the guide I had on this trip was that his knowledge spanned the three main monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). He did a great job of weaving the stories of the three groups together. Building off of this, it is not surprising that he was an excellent educator - several people on the trip repeatedly commented on his encyclopedic knowledge of the sites we visited. I also admired him for admitting when he didn't know the answer to a question.

While I think it's possible to both educate and facilitate an experience leading to a lasting impression, they are not the same thing. The former relates to knowledge, the latter to a feeling. On this trip I think my guide was excellent at the first, and good at the second. It's going back eight years since I was on a guided trip in Israel (we also went to Poland). I remember only a few facts, but still remember the feelings my guide's story-telling stirred within me.

At some level the these two concepts are mutually supporting, but I wonder if it's possible to be "the best in the world" at both. Either way I am lucky to have benefitted from truly excellent guides on both of my organized trips to Israel.

Now for the solo portion of the trip!

Psychic Numbing Explained

The purpose of this post is to give the proper context of my musings on Yad Vashem. If you are already familiar with the concept of psychic numbing than please skip this post.

This is a re-posting of a blog post I wrote four years ago during my time at Stand. The original post sadly no longer exists, although it was reproduced on the Sudan: The Passion of the Present blog. Unfortunately the text there is incomplete, so I have taken that re-posting and am re-writing the end to the best of my ability.

-----------

Often times, when I see my fellow advocates trying to convince others about how serious the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is, they focus on the numbers - 400,000 dead, 2.5 million displaced, 4 million relying on aid to survive, etc., but to their bewilderment, the people that they speak to just don't care. I recently read an article about this, and I believe that it has important implications for the work we, as Darfur advocates, carry out.

In the journal Judgement and Decision Making, author Paul Slovic examines this phenomenon in an article entitled "Psychic Numbing and Genocide." It's about how numbers are ineffective at conveying the mass atrocities being committed in Darfur. While we know the value of one human life, we can't comprehend what that value would be multiplied by 400,000. We are, therefore, overwhelmed by the statistics. Studies that Slovic cites show that feelings become less intensive when the victim group goes from being even just one person to two.

This suggests that instead of discussing the enormity of the crisis, we must come up with ways to personalize it. We need to provide something more tangible than numbers alone. As advocates, we must realize that Darfur is not about numbers - it is about people.

For me, the story that captures the essence of Darfur is about a decision that most families have to make on an almost-daily basis: who to send to get supplies. Often, the eldest woman in the family is sent. This seems counter-intuitive, but actually makes sense upon closer examination. If the family sends a man, young or old, he is liable to be murdered. If a young woman is sent, she is liable to be raped. Thus, the oldest woman in the family is sent, as she is least likely to be killed, and least likely to be raped - but keep in mind that she is not immune to either. The comparison is merely relative. No family should ever have to make such a decision. Ever.

Next time you meet someone who doesn't know anything about Darfur, don't bombard them with statistics. Instead, I encourage you to share the above story with them. As well, below are links to two other fantastic tools that will help you tell the stories behind the statistics.

Children's drawings from Human Rights Watch

If you are to send one link to the uninformed, this is it. Nothing does a better job of putting a face on the genocide in Darfur.

Google Earth Images of destroyed villages

Each one of those little round and square dots represents a burnt/destroyed home. Each dot represents a family forced to flee their home with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and whatever they could carry.

*** As an addendum to this, I think it's important to mention the "Stand for the Dead" campaign which was launched in my final year with Stand and led by Aneil Jaswal. The campaign was generously created for us by the global advertising firm J. Walter Thompson. The campaign video, which they created for us can be found below:

How to get past psychic numbing to have a meaningful Yad Vashem experience

While my guide at Yad Vashem was extremely knowledgeable, I sometimes found myself taking off my headset and staying behind or going ahead of the group so that I could have a moment of personal reflection.

The downside of having such a knowledgeable guide is that they sometimes feel obligated to share as much of their knowledge as humanly possible. In my case, this meant that my guide spoke throughout the tour. The result was little time for personal reflection. As someone who has spent innumerable hours grasping with the issue of how to communicate messages related to genocide and mass atrocities, I think there are only two ways to properly experience a place such as Yad Vashem. Ideally, one would have an entire day so that they could really take the time to soak everything in that the museum has to offer. Some might say you need more than a day, and I wouldn't disagree with them. However, in reality most people and tour groups have a precious few hours to go through Yad Vashem. In our case we had about two and a half hours.

In a situation where you have limited time, I am an advocate of the "less is more" approach. The truth of the matter is that when you have such a high volume of information thrown at you in such a short time period, only so much, if any, is going to stick. At the end of the day, I don't think it's important that people know that in Germany Jews had to wear yellow stars to distinguish them because they looked like ordinary Germans, whereas in Poland there was no need for the yellow star because Jewish men had long beards and all dressed the same.

I think it's important for people to realize that being marked for death just because of who you are is one of the worst things in the world. People should come away understanding the sheer magnitude and evil of The Final Solution, and why it is the Holocaust left such a mark on it's survivors and their children. People should also have a grasp for how brutal and dehumanizing the methods of murder often were. In a sentence, people need to come out of Yad Vashem with a burning desire to "Never Forget" and that the words "Never Again" must not become a hollow saying (although you could argue "Never Again" has already lost it's meaning).

When you have no time for personal reflection, and when you focus too much on the macro at the expense of the micro, people won't come away with a deep understanding of these broad themes and ideas. People can't comprehend the enormity of the Holocaust when the focus is on large numbers, general discussions on the inner working of concentration camps, and other macro level concepts. Instead, people should be given a compelling individual story, and time to quietly reflect on that story.

Eight years later I still remember that braid of hair I saw at Auschwitz. In a display of thousands of pounds of human hair that was shaved off of Jewish inmates upon their arrival, I noticed a long braid of hair. I must have sat there looking at it for five minutes. What was her name? Her age? Did she have brothers and sisters? Did she ever have a first kiss? A first love? Did she get the chance to tell her parents she loved them? What was the last time she saw her best friend like? Was she sent straight to her death, or did she toil away labouring for months on end before meeting her fate? Maybe she was one of the lucky few who survived. If so, did she ever see any of her family or friends again, or were they all killed by the Nazi's?

I could go on but you get the point. When you go this deep on a person, and take the time to think about them as an individual, it becomes something entirely different. Once you understand the Holocaust or other genocides on a personal level, you can begin to understand it on the larger scale.

Now back to the topic of how to have the most meaningful Yad Vashem experience possible. In hindsight I kind of wish I went through on my own, or at least spent more time without my headphones on so I could reflect on what I was seeing. I think it is better to only see some of the exhibits and take time for quiet personal reflection than to go through every exhibit but have little or no time to reflect. Since I am already knowledgeable about the Holocaust I may have not benefitted as much from the colour commentary our guide was adding to the exhibits in front of us, but even for the uninitiated I encourage you to create your own time/space for personal reflection if your guide doesn't give it. When something strikes you, take off your headphones and spend a few minutes to really think about it. You can catch up with your group once you're done. Years later you will most likely remember those five minutes you sat reflecting on the courage of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising more than anything else.

My first visit to the new yad vashem - what I learned

On Tuesday I went to the new Yad Vashem, which is Israel's national Holocaust memorial museum. I've been there before, but it was eight years ago and the museum has since been completely re-done. Having been a student of genocide studies for 3-4 years during my time at Stand Canada, I was particularly interested in seeing the new methods Yad Vashem chose to teach about the Holocaust.

Most tour groups use a Yad Vashem guide when they tour the museum, but in our case our regular gave us the tour, as he has studied the Holocaust extensively, even teaching at Yad Vashem for a number of years. His knowledge shined through and I certainly developed a better understanding of certain aspects of the Holocaust as a result. One thing in particular that he talked to us about how the Nazi's engineered their killing machine to make it easier for their rank-and-file to carry out the mass murder. Early on the primary method of the mass murders was lining people up and shooting them. However, not surprisingly German soldiers could not stomach this, and did not like having to do so.

In order to make their atrocious acts more palatable, the Nazi regime removed the human element from the killing as much as possible. For example, they enlisted Jews to help round up people from the ghetto's to send them off to the camp's, and then upon their arrival, another group of Jews shepherded those who weren't fit to work to the gas chambers. Even the use of gas chambers was a way of creating a disconnect between killer and victim. By not actually seeing their victims die in front of them, the Nazi's were better equipped to mentally deal with the horrid acts they carried out. This is also why they had Jews remove the bodies from the gas chambers and bring them out to be burned, or dealt with in whatever way the camp in question disposed of the piles of dead bodies.

Putting people into prison like uniforms and then stripping them naked upon their death was another way of dehumanizing the victims of the Nazi genocide, as Hitler's inner circle discovered that when they were naked the Jews and other victimes were seen as less human by the rank and file German soldiers. Apparently even Himler himself almost threw up at the site of some of the atrocities the Germans carried out.

Another thing I think our guide did an excellent job of was getting us to stop and think about the implications of Wannsee conference. It was a meeting where relatively high ranking Nazi officials planned the logistics of stepping up "The Final Solution" so that they could see Hitler's plan of exterminating the Jews taken to it's fruition. Just like there is probably a group of people in a room somewhere in Bentonville Arkansas discussing how to more efficiently get men's pants from coastal China to their stores in North America, there was a group of Nazi officials discussing how to most efficiently get Jews from even the smallest towns scattered across Eastern Europe into the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The level of planning and coordination that went into the Holocaust is almost unthinkable - the only comparison I can think of to better comprehend the scale is the logistics challenges facing global retail stores.

Neat Surprise upon arrival to Jeruslaem

On the way to the hotel to check in, the bus I was on had to stop for a minute as the Prime Minister's motorcade passed us on their way to his official residence. It was kind of cool to have just landed hardly an hour earlier and to immediately ran across the PM's motorcade by happenstance. The hotel I stayed at in Jerusalem is in the same neighbourhood though, so I guess it's not a huge surprise.

Tent Cities, Social Protests & Israeli Politics

Today I went to see Professor Reuven Hazan speak. He teaches in the politics department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

He has the rare skill of being able to succinctly express the nuances of some of the more intricate aspects of the political culture in Israel. As a lawyer who has a deep interest in politics, I found it interesting to learn that in Israel cabinet ministers who come from parties other than the leader of the coalition essentially have complete autonomy over their portfolio. As part of their agreeing to join in the governing coalition, they get control over one or more portfolio's such as finance, education, or religious affairs. This left me wondering about external facing portfolio's such as foreign affairs - surely the foreign minister can't have complete autonomy there!

I asked Professor Hazan about this, asking who has legal authority in Israel to bind the country to an international convention or a peace treaty. He told me that the PM and the foreign minister both have the authority to do so, but in practice things of the highest national importance such as peace treaties are decided upon at the cabinet level. Additionally, in the case of the peace treaty Begin made with Egypt, the cabinet decision was brought to the greater parliament, although this was only done once the PM knew acceptance was a foregone conclusion.

However, despite the above the foreign minister has the autonomy to pretty much say whatever they want. This was how we found ourselves in the situation where the foreign minister made a speech while Joe Biden was in Israel that contradicted a speech given by Netanyahu, the PM, only a couple days earlier. I don't recall news outlets pointing out that the PM had little power to control his foreign minister's words.

Coming from Canada this fascinated me, as I am more used to the Canadian and American models, where cabinet ministers tend to have little leash in their public comments. This is particularly the case in Canada, where many people view cabinet minister's as an extension of the Prime Minister, and they cannot stray from the party line in public.

He also spoke at length about the social protests currently under way in Israel. Virtually overnight tent cities sprouted up in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. People are upset about the spiralling cost of living in Israel, and want the government to do something about it. Several times a week Professor Hazan walks amongst the tents and talks to the young protestors - some of whom are his former students. Sadly, a number of people whom he spoke to hadn't voted in the previous election, yet at the same time they committed hours, or even days to the current protest!

One reason the protestors have garnered such wide spread support in the 85% range has been their decision to be apolitical. Even members of the governing Likkud party, which is right of centre, support them. The professor talked to us how security often trumps economic and social issues at the polls, but that he sees this as an incredible opportunity for a re-alignment in Israeli politics, where social issues could potentially become more important. However, for that to happen the protestors will have to get political, which essentially means creating their own party in the hopes of leaching votes from people that have socially liberal values, but have voted for hawkish parties in recent elections. Unfortunately the protestors have failed to heed the Professor's advice. I happen to agree with him.

If they maintain the status quo nothing will chance in a substantive manner. However, if they get political, they will have actual power to enact change. Even getting 10 seats out of 120 could garner a cabinet position and the autonomy/power that entails on "their" issues. Better to have support of 30% of the population and a seat at the table than support of 85% of the population but no seat. Hopefully some of them will stumble across this post before the next election :)

Day 1: Arrival & the Old City of Jerusalem

While I knew that the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem are "only" a few hundred years old, I had yet to have been on a tour where the original site David established Jerusalem upon was pointed out. Our bus took us to a part of East Jerusalem overlooking the Mount of Olives with a beautiful view of the Dome of the Rock. It is in a small valley near the foot of the Old City where David first set down roots in the city.

It was interesting to learn about this, because he picked one of the lowest geographic spots in the area. Tactically this was not good when it came to defending the city, but the location is the only natural spring the area, as Jerusalem is a water poor city.

Shortly thereafter we went to the Western Wall and toured the tunnels, which I had surprisingly not gone through on earlier visits. I was absolutely blown away by how cavernous the tunnels are in places. I knew Jerusalem had a number of layers, but the tunnels really hit home the point that Jerusalem has layers that have been built on top of each other an almost innumerable number of times.

While walking through the tunnels we arrived at a cramped point where a small number of Orthodox women were praying in front of the stone walls of the tunnel. Our guide said that that specific section of the tunnel is the closest point to the Temple Mount, and is thus to many is an extremely holy place to pray. Once I heard the explanation I was surprised to see so few women there (maybe 7 or 8 - definitely less than 10).

All together I think the day could be summed up with something my Birthright guide Tzvi Sperber said eight years ago when I first visited Israel: "In North America you measure history by the decade. The roaring 20's, dirty 30's and such. Here in Israel we measure history by centuries and millennia!" No place exemplifies this saying better than Jerusalem.

Keeping the name of this blog (for now)

Since I'm writing from Israel I thought about changing the name of this blog to something more general, but at the end of the day I decided to keep it for a few reasons:

1. Nostalgia: Seeing "Yoni's Asian Adventure" makes me smile and reminds me of my summer in South East Asia with Steve and everyone else I met there.
2. Technically Israel is a part of Asia.
3. I couldn't think of a good name for a more general blog... "Yoni's travel blog" or "Yoni's Globals Adventures" are not exactly great names.

If you have any suggestions for a new name for this blog I am all ears, and would love to hear from you!

Israel!

Today is my first full day in Israel, and I thought I would dash off a quick post before dinner. We arrived at 11am local time yesterday morning, and I didn't sleep a single minute on the flight. At least I watched some great movies though! I also had a really nice Israeli woman who sells beauty products with dead sea minerals. She had been out of the country for a year for work, and was really excited to be going home to see her mom. She was in the aisle row and would do small favours for me so I wouldn't have to get up - like bringing my meal tray to the back, and even getting me a sandwich at one point! I was joking to myself that she was my "plane mom".

In any event, I was SUPER tired yesterday, as we didn't get back from dinner until around 11pm. The meal took forever to arrive, but was delicious. Possibly the best chicken I've ever had (although my mom does make a pretty awesome chicken breast...)

I need to go catch the group before we head to dinner - I promise more details in my next post!