Trunks packed with crates of oranges and
salatim, rolls and cherry tomatoes, we pulled into the gravel parking lot of Neve Shalom, a village where Arabs and Jews conscientiously coexist. A group of about twenty women from the board, the staff and the various projects of Kol Ha-Isha gathered in a circle in a studio with a vanilla colored hardwood floor, women from Mizrahi, Sephardi, Palestinian and Ashkenazi backgrounds. In the center, we created a type of altar, a knotted silk cloth with a candle and a vase of kalaniyot, loud red wildflowers in season now. A woman named Viki led us in a movement workshop. She asked us to consider our cultural relationship to space; how we take up space, how much space we safeguard between ourselves and others, how we move our bodies through space. Each woman found a spot outside to reflect on these issues, sitting cross-legged beneath sun soaked palm trees, overlooking a montage of farm plots and fields freckled with wildflowers, high rise buildings on the far horizon.
We regrouped to share our experiences of space. One woman described growing up in a two room house with six people. She spoke of how she would retreat into her walkman and books, her private palace. A volunteer from Switzerland spoke of adherence to watches, of formality through distance. We discussed the use of clothing to cover the body and preserve personal space in some cultures and the zig-zagging of traditional Middle Eastern dances. Viki cranked up the volume on a boombox and in a village where Jews and Arabs assert there is room for all of us, we began moving in our space for the weekend, stepping lightly then sinking into the floor, brushing against each other and backing away. We pondered our arrivals and departures into physical, emotional and spiritual space. Each woman led the group in a movement of her choice.
We had a picnic lunch outside, women carefully arranging tubs of hummus and eggplant and salty cheese, dicing cucumbers, and dipping breads. When we returned to the space, Yvonne, the past director of Kol Ha-Isha placed multi-colored stones in a ring around the candle in the center of the space. Each woman spoke when she felt moved, telling her story, of labels and rebellions, of struggling and passing. Of childhoods in Iraq, Morocco, Siberia, India, Romania, Switzerland, Curacao, the Galilee, East Jerusalem . . .of seven languages in one home, of fighting with fathers and mothers to take on roles outside the home, of staking out rights to sexuality and spirituality and hybridity. Shedding sabra skins, women cried, reiterating painful experiences of confinement, of identity boxes and glass ceilings.
I am reading a book right now called, "The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage." In America and Israel, Ashkenazi norms and conflict with Arab nations, have cornered and silenced Mizrahi women. "Some of us refuse to dissolve so as to facilitate neat national and ethnic divisions," Ella Shohat writes of her history as an Iraqi-Israeli living in America. "But war is the friend of binarisms, leaving little place for complex identities," she writes of her seemingly conflicting concerns for Israelis and Iraqis during the Gulf War. The identity of the Arab-Jew poses a threat to the simplistic us/them, black/white ways of thinking. Currently, half of the Jewish population of Israel is comprised of people of Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds. Since their arrival (often dislocation) in Israel in the years following the founding of the state and rupture in the region, they have faced discrimination on social and economic levels, pinned as primitive and backwards, handed canons of Jewish texts without their stories and philosophers and songs. There are still wage gaps today between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi employees in similar positions.
Kol Ha-Isha was founded in 1994 in its current form to change the elite, Ashkenazi face of the feminist movement in Israel. At the time of its establishment, there was a case in the Israeli Supreme Court regarding the rights of women to be pilots in the Israeli air force. This decision polarized the feminist movement. On the one hand, feminism promised an alternative discourse to the militarism of the Israeli army. From another angle, the women who would have the opportunity to serve this elite role in the army would most likely come from well-to-do, Ashkenazi families. Kol Ha-Isha sought to reach out to meet the needs of women from diverse backgrounds, especially Mizrahi and Sephardi women, to amplify their voices in Israeli Society. The process of integration, of becoming a multi-colored organization was frought and sticky. At the time, the founding mothers of Kol Ha-Isha decided on a model of "quarters," for ensuring that Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, Palestinian women and lesbians would be represented equally in the organization. They continue to debate the relationship between equal representation by numbers to equal clout and voice. The organization continues to search for more effective tools for resisting Ashkenazi, male, heterosexual hegemony in Israeli society.
Over the past few years, Kol Ha-Isha has focused on economic empowerment programs for women to help them cope with unemployment and deteriorating social services here. We currently run an employment readiness course and two micro-business initiatives,"A Business of One's Own," and "Women Cook up a Business," to help women turn their talents into sources of income. The projects reach out to many women from Mizrahi backgrounds as well as immigrants from Russia.
Kol Ha-Isha currently supports one project specifically for Palestinian women – a support group for students at Hebrew University, many of whom come from small Arab villages in the North to an environment dominated by Jewish cultural norms. Palestinian women participate in other projects such as a network of women directors of social service and social change organizations, and others volunteer in the Crisis Counseling Center. However, there are no Palestinian women on the staff. The idea for last weekend's retreat was initiated to discuss the role of Palestinian women in the Kol Ha-Isha and the role of Kol Ha-Isha for Palestinian women. The situation is murky in Jerusalem – because although technically, East Jerusalem is under the auspices of the same municipality as West Jerusalem, its primarily Arab residents are not Israeli citizens. What would it mean for Kol Ha-Isha to reach out to this area under occupation? Is Kol Ha-Isha an appropriate organization to assess and meet the needs of Palestinian women? Will focusing on Palestinian issues detract from the work to be done on inequalities that still pervade among Jewish women? Is Kol Ha-Isha a Jewish organization, an Israeli organization or a multicultural organization? Is multiculturalism an appropriate model for discussing relations between Jewish and Palestinian women, whose divide is one not just of cultures, but of nations? The weekend generated more questions than anything else. And a community of women committed to asking and listening and delving together.
Friday night, I sat with three women around my age, jabbering in Hebrew, a language that is a mother tongue to none of us. Sanaa grew up in the Arab town of Tamra in the North of Israel. She went to boarding school in India and is currently studying pharmacy at Hebrew University. Nadine made aliyah from Switzerland two years ago and is studying International Relations at Hebrew University. Rina came to Israel from Siberia when she was eleven and is studying social work at Hebrew U. She is one quarter Jewish by blood, and was granted citizenship according to the laws of the State, though she is not Jewish. When Rina joined the conversation, she found us sitting on her bed. "Kiboosh," (Occupation), Sanaa joked. We laughed. We spoke about frustrating laws of belonging, of being profiled at airports, about elections, about dating.
I appreciated the down-time throughout the weekend, the frequent and lingering breaks between intense sessions. I felt at home surrounded by other women with
shpilkes, who couldn't sit too long without peeing or stretching or smoking. Every hour or two, we moved from inside to outside, shelling sunflower seeds, sighing, slipping into side conversations. We emptied tray after tray of sesame and tehina cookies, baked by two of the graduates of "Women Cook Up a Business."
* * *
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speaks of Shabbat as a "palace in time." All week we obsess over matters of space, marking borders, building out and up. On Shabbat, we revel over glimpses of eternity, uncontainable, indivisible, to which every one has an equal and infinite share.
Shabbat morning was dashingly blue at Neve Shalom. I walked alone to a path through a chain of green hills speckled with wildflowers –
Red Kalaniyot punching through glass stems and surrendering,
Shimmery Rakafot positioned for landing like retired war-planes,
Tiny blue flowers popped open like eyes after bad dreams.
Roots and petals wrapping and comforting.
Bees whispering things.
Surrounded by colors coexisting, I was reminded of a line from Yehuda Amichai's poem wild peace:
"Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace."
I pray.
