“crazy to go north at a time like this”

24 hours after canceling the sadaka reut volunteer work camp, we decided we couldn’t end the year on such a depressing low note, so we invited the seminar participants to come back for the weekend and help us put on a revised “end of the year” event, which took place last saturday night.

the event was revised to give it a degree of relevancy and appropriateness given the backdrop of current events in the region. also due to current events, several musical acts dropped out on their own. some presented understandable reasons, such as individuals from the north who did not want to leave their homes, although I was infinitely disappointed to learn I would not get to hear mc ward’s oft imitated anthem, “ana arabe, arabe, arabe” (i am arab, arab, arab). other groups offered less credible excuses; an act from bat yam (the city touching jaffa’s southern border) reportedly remarked, “it was crazy to go north [to jaffa] at a time like this.” some of the more cynical crowd at the office speculated that perhaps they meant it was crazy to participate in an arab-jewish event at a time like this.

nonetheless, the event went on in the courtyard of the arab-hebrew theater in the old city of yafo drawing a respectable crowd, a number of bands, messages of peace/against the war.and performance art suitable to be a final project in one of the classes annie took at brown.

and despite the daily barrages of rockets landing across northern israel, all of my friends in yafo who hail from the north keep inviting me, completely seriously, to come home with them. some offer me the possibility to sit on the roof, smoke nargila and watch for falling katyushas. others promise that their part of the north actually exists within a impenetrable bubble.

for now im sticking south of haifa, mainly in yafo and tel aviv, where life, for the most, part goes on as usual. but you can sit on the beach and watch the near-constant flow of helicopters flying back and forth, lebanon to gaza, rafah to beirut.