I last wrote on the eve of what was an incredible month in Egypt and weeklong vacation in Israel. I traveled to Luxor to see the grandiose temples of ancient times, scoured the city for food during Ramadan afternoons, and finally reunited with the land and people I had missed so much. Again, I will try to control the length of this update, but I have much to tell.
In this issue:
- Luxor (and the debunking of a little Egyptian myth)
- Days of Awe: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in Cairo
- Ramadan: Fasting and feasting
- What I did on my Israeli vacation.
1. Luxor (and the debunking of a little Egyptian myth)
A few days after my last e-mail, I traveled to Luxor with the same guys on my Alexandria trip. The occasion was a long weekend for the October 6 holiday, which commemorates Egypt’s armed forces, and more specifically, their routing of Israel in the 1973 war. The irony of this occasion is that the only day the Egyptians were really ever winning that three week war was October 6, after their surprise attack on the holiest day of the Jewish year. During the following three weeks, the Israelis sustained heavy casualties, but managed to recapture Sinai, cross the Suez Canal, and place themselves in a position to completely destroy the Egyptian Third Army. Israel stopped its advance after the United States intervened, but retained the Sinai for another six years, until the signing of the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. Nonetheless, many schools close during this week, and there now exists a major bridge and university named after October 6. In some Egyptian public schools, students are still taught that Egypt routed Israel during that war. Interesting.
Luxor, formerly (5,000 years ago) Thebes, was breathtaking. After a ten hour train ride, my friends and I visited the Luxor Temple in the center of the city, and spent the afternoon at the Karnak Temple complex. While the Luxor temple, with its large columns, obelisks, and statues was interesting, Karnak was overwhelming. The latter is a conglomeration of halls, temples and tombs that was renovated continuously by almost every pharaoh for 2,000 years. While I was satisfied with the sights after one afternoon, an Egyptology major could spend a week there.
The second day in Luxor, my friends awoke at dawn, rented donkeys, and rode into the mountains of the west bank of the Nile at Luxor. There were visited the Valley of the Kings, the burial place of numerous Pharaohs including the famous discovery of Tutankhamen. Riding the donkeys was no doubt fun, but they are extremely stubborn animals.
2. Days of Awe: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in Cairo
As I wrote in the last e-mail, the Jewish lunar month of Tishrei and the Muslim lunar month of Ramadan were the same this year, and took up almost all of the solar month of October. And so, on the eve of the beginning of Ramadan, I began my holy month as well. Several Jewish friends joined me, a number of Israeli diplomats, and some residents of Cairo for a Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year) service at the Adly Street synagogue downtown. While the service was Orthodox in nature, and completely in Hebrew, it was wonderful to be Jewish, and to feel comfortable doing so, after over a month of being completely devoid of any Jewish experience. I even had the wonderful experience of blowing the shofar (ram’s horn) during Rosh Hashanah morning services.
As relieving as it was to be Jewish again, especially in Cairo, it was sad to see the future of the city’s indigenous Jewish population. All that remains of this once vibrant Jewish community is handful of elderly Jewish women that have done their best to preserve their heritage. Yet, as they eventually pass away, one by one, the Jewish population here will slowly be reduced to one consisting only of foreign students and diplomats.
The next week, after my Luxor trip, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) services were held in the southern suburb of Maadi. Not surprisingly, Kol Nidrei, the evening service of Yom Kippur, brought the greatest number of Jews together of any of the services during those two weeks. The next day only attracted about 12 Israeli men and a few students from AUC. During the afternoon break between services, all of us went to the Israeli ambassador’s house to relax on his heavily fortified lawn. Again, it was nice, and somewhat unexpected, to have place to observe the holiest day of the year.
3. Ramadan: Fasting and feasting
During Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise to sundown. They refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, and sexual activity for the purpose of focusing on religion and trying to improve one’s self. The end result is a massive societal withdrawal from stimulants. National productivity falls and personal irritability rises. As many people stay up very late into the night celebrating and socializing, narcolepsy runs rampant during the day. I caught workers of all trades sleeping on the job. Store hours shift into the evenings, and non-Muslims have considerable difficulty finding any restaurants other than American fast food that are open during the daylight hours.
Despite the many inconveniences which accompany Ramadan, it is a very beautiful holiday, both in its meaning and customs. Around an hour or two before sundown, the streets become extremely congested with people trying to get home for iftar (the breaking of the fast). Those who can afford to purchase their own food do so, and the upper classes of society prepare Thanksgiving-like feasts for their family and friends. Society also takes care of the poor during Ramadan, with free iftar dinners located at many points throughout the city. The charge to, “let all who are hungry come and eat,” as Jews read on Passover, is perhaps one of the most important principles of that month.
While on the surface, Ramadan is a fasting of the stomach, Muslims also see this month as a fasting of the heart. The most faithful and the most secular observe Ramadan, and it is unifying in nature. The month culminates with a three day festival known as Eid-Al-Fitr. It was during this time that I decided that I had seen enough of Ramadan, so I took advantage of my long weekend and took a bus to across the Sinai desert with my friend Mike.
4. What I did on my Israeli vacation.
Mike and I decided to go to Israel for economic reasons. While AUC students dispersed in all directions during the holiday break—to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Dubai, and Turkey—each of these excursions included a $400 plane ticket. Using buses, I arrived in Be’er Sheva, a city in central Israel, for a grand total of $23.
Driving north from the Israeli-Egyptian border, watching the land change from desert, to plain, to hills and finally to mountains, I was bombarded by memories of the time I spent in that beautiful country. I had waited so long to return, and this trip was so unexpected. Jerusalem was equally beautiful.
Mike and I stayed the first night in Be’er Sheva with my friend Oded, who was my Israeli counselor for the semester I spent in Israel during my junior year of high school. It was nice to see him again, and to catch up on the last four years. The next day we took a bus to Jerusalem, where we stayed with friends of mine studying at Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, in east Jerusalem. While I had seen some of those friends, who also spent were in Israel on my program in high school, as recently as last semester, I can never see them enough. They were great hosts. It was also nice to celebrate my 21st birthday on November 6 with those friends, which we celebrated in Jerusalem the night before my departure.
Celebrating the Sabbath in Israel was a meaningful experience, as it was the first time since August that I have had the opportunity to do so. My friend Dana got Mike and I invited to a Shabbat dinner with a very nice couple in the Old City. Their gigantic apartment, which overlooks the temple mount, is the home to around 40 young people and soldiers each Friday evening. They too were excellent hosts, and I hope to see them again when I return next semester.
Something was different about Israel this time. At a rest stop in the desert, at which Mike, who is not Jewish and has never traveled to Israel, noticed for the first time the young solders toting their M-16 machine guns. He said to me, “What is a girl that small doing with a gun so big?” Mike’s question, of course, was rhetorical, but it made me realize that unlike the last time I visited Israel, I was now older than many of the soldiers in the military (all citizens serve when they are 18; men for three years and women for two years). Some of them looked like children to me, but they are the ones on the front lines.
Another difference was that during my high school semester in Israel, I never saw any Palestinians. The leaders of our group kept us far from the territories, and we never crossed into east Jerusalem, where many Palestinians reside. Last week, for the first time, I was able to go into east Jerusalem, and into the Arab quarter of the Old City. After spending three days in the mainly Jewish areas of Israel and Jerusalem, walking in the Arab quarter, both Mike and I agreed, it felt like home (as in, Cairo). It was a twisted emotion, but a powerful one. I could now identify with the Arab population on a level that I never expected. They reminded me of my Egyptian friends, and of the culture to which I had become so accustomed. It made them more real to me than they had ever been before. I felt like I knew them personally. Perhaps, this feeling, which I will no doubt expand upon next semester when I am studying in Israel, will be one of the most useful and important products of my time in Cairo. It is a perspective that few who study in Israel have. More on that in a few months.
The winds are changing here in Cairo, and the nights are getting colder. I am thoroughly enjoying this experience, and am learning so much. Keep checking my blog for pictures, and don’t hesitate to give me a call or shoot me an e-mail updating me with your lives.
More to come,
Josh
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How to contact me:
e-mail: jeadland@brandeis.edu
AIM: joshlands
Skype: joshlands
SkypeIn (will ring on my computer): 317-489-3634 (local/long-distance call)
Cell Phone: 011-20-10-531-5261
Web site (with pictures): http://joshadland.blogspot.com
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