All the World is a Mustache Contest

Amir Peretz won the Labor Party Primary a few weeks back. Labor pulled out of the government coalition, Sharon left Likud to build a new party and elections are scheduled for March. Peretz could potentially be the first Mizrachi Prime Minister. He is a fiery leader whose parents came to Israel from Morocco and built a life for their family in the development town of Sderot. Peretz was the head of Israel's Histadrut, or Trade Labor Union. He laments the fact that right wing and left wing have come to connote the location of borders rather than the plight of single mothers. He is anxious to bridge the deepening cleft between the haves and the have-nots here. But most importantly, he is known for his bold facial hair choices, his indispensable and voluptuous dark brown mustache. Instead of ribbons, stickers, pins or lawn signs (not that there are so many lawns in this country), I propose that Peretz' Labor Party distributes stick-on mustaches to willing and unwilling supporters. I'm convinced that mustaches are even cooler than the skater hair-dos all the guys had in Middle School.

In Ashkelon, I have been participating in a community organizing project. The idea of the project is to empower citizens of Ashkelon to reflect on their city, dream up changes they want to see and to make them happen. During the first meeting, the facilitator of the course asked the group to brainstorm leaders. A few immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the class shouted out, "Lenin," "Stalin," "Marx," in rapid succession. There's something about communism. And there's something about mustaches.

I saw Peretz speak at a Peace Rally/ memorial service on the 10th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's death. Kikar Rabin was filled with people, teenagers lighting votive candles, red strings dangling from blue cotton scout shirts. Enormous banners stretched across clumps of people, crying, "Geneva Accord!" and "Peace Now!" Kiosks brimmed with activists peddling pins and pamphlets and stickers. Israeli musicians played. The crowd sang along. The Clintons paced across the stage, live from New York. Bill Clinton proclaimed his love for Yitzhak, his hope for the region and delivered his tagline, "Shalom Haver." He also most certainly sang along to the Hatikvah.

There is a sense of nostalgia in this country for the moment before Rabin's death. At the rally, his face was broadcast on enormous screens winging the stage. Balloons and faces blurred in the background from 1995 that could have easily been mistaken for the gathering some ten years later. Only the society is older now, and tired. Sabras with shiny eyes. I think about the kiwi I tried to peel for Shabbat dinner last week that was too ripe and oozed out through the crack in its skin. There was an urgency in the shouts for peace from the speakers - a craving that smokes with tire fragments, mangled metal and parts on pavement - on all sides of a dreary concrete wall.

Enough Already! I wish I could shout.

The mc called for a moment of silence in memory of Yitzhak Rabin, grandfather and father to a whole nation, even its kids who hadn't yet learned to read when he was gunned down. 200,000 people exhaled. And to my sincere shock, not one cell phone rang.

I've spent the past week at the Antea Gallery at Kol HaIsha hanging and advertising a new exhibition that will open this Thursday. It includes art by Israeli and Palestinian women about human rights in times of armed conflict. The title of the exhibition, "And turn into a single scream!" comes from a poem written by one of the artists. All of the private despair, families stripped, livelihoods bulldozed and blitzed swirling "into a single scream" dense enough to birth the universe all over again.

I am thankful for my freedom of movement. I went for a run the other day wherever I wanted to. It was raining diagonally. I had worn shorts without thinking. People at intersections reacted to my outfit, "You're not cold?" "It's not summer!" Though my Jewish mother is more than a Mayflower's ride away, total strangers have no qualms about stepping into that role.

Thank you for listening.