Tel Aviv, week 1!

It’s Sunday night in Tel Aviv, Israel. Tel Aviv is a mid-sized port city on the Mediterranean Sea built near the ruins of ancient Jaffa, where Jonah set sail before being intercepted by a whale, and where the timbers of Solomon’s temple first came ashore. Present day Tel Aviv boasts a thriving nightlife or “club” scene, and to be honest the city reminds me a bit of Miami, except that most of the people have guns and only a handful of people speak English. So actually it’s quite similar to Miami.

Tomorrow we begin a 6-week academic program at the University, studying “Jewish-Christian Encounters in the First Centuries C.E.” We’ll be examining the ancient Rabbinic cultural context which, in addition to preserving and enriching the traditions of ancient Judaism, also gave rise to a religious movement of perhaps even more momentous historical proportions: Christianity. And of course, “The first Christians were Jews,” as Sir Henry Chadwick begins his seminal tome, The Early Church. The rhetorical strangeness of Chadwick’s masterful opening shot—which predicates two seemingly exclusive things of the same group of individuals—reminds the reader at the outset that ideas are not born into vacuums. Ideas are lively, messy, world-saturated things; we learn to anticipate where they are going only by examining where they have been, with the usual provisos made for methodological limitations, quantum uncertainty principles, and, yes, plain old human ignorance, arrogance, and error. To “contextualize” something (scare quotes indicate a general aversion to stretching certain nouns into verbs, a favorite vice of graduate students and moral reprobates everywhere) is not the same as to have understood it, although context can provide a place to begin.

So here we are, like Whitman, “Walking the old country of Judaea.” How did we get here? Actually Whitman, unlike his contemporary, Samuel Clemons, never travelled to the Holy Land, except in the hours he spent reading his Bible, if that counts. Whitman spent the first half of his career walking the (then forested) hills of Brooklyn and Manhattan, which is where our own journey began roughly four days ago…

Thursday, 16 June: We awoke in New Haven, CT, and were greeted at the front door by our trustworthy friend, James Harrison Christian--or Harrison, as he is affectionately known among intimates.

Harrison at the Yale Glee Club, circa spring 2011

Harrison maneuvered us expertly down the “freeway” (and occasional parking lot) known as Interstate 95 to the Isle of the Manahattoes. I almost withstood a bout of motion-sickness, only to throw up into a planter on the upper East side somewhere near 74^th street. This should surprise no one; chances are that if you’ve known me long enough I have thrown-up or attempted to throw-up in your car, too, dear reader.

Other than Harrison, the highlight of our time in Manhattan was a viewing of Terrance Malick’s newest film, Tree of Life. For those who have not yet done so, GO SEE IT. Malick is an artist of the highest caliber, and this film successfully conjures the evanescent glories of childhood and places them before our eyes to wonder at anew. Its story is our story: the tension between the way of nature and the way of grace. None of this praise is hyperbolic, I assure you. More on Tree of Life later, perhaps.

Friday, 17 June: We took the red-eye from JFK to London. I fell asleep around midnight while watching True Grit, which, from what little I can recall, has an incredible soundtrack of old hymns played soothingly and somberly by a lone piano.

At Heathrow we had a fortuitous 12 hour layover, which we spent with our friend, Phil Yoo, one of Yale Divinity School’s finest alums. Last summer Phil, along with the lovely Hannah Roh, took us on an unforgettable trip to Quebec City and Montreal. This is because Phil, God bless him, is as Canadian as a Tim Horton’s maple bar. But Phil has adapted himself strategically to the Mother Country during his time as a doctoral student at Oxford, as seen below, and was able to show us a bloody lot of London in the short time we had together. 

Sorry, Phil, this was the best picture we took of you in London.

Other nerdy highlights included the British Museum, the British Library, and Harrod’s department store.

1410 Edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

3rd century fragment of Gospel of John

Saturday, 18 June: Another overnight flight and we arrive at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. I hardly ever get to see movies these days, so I watched two more: The Fighter gets a B+ for effort, and Voyage of the Dawn Treader a C-, only because some of Lewis’s truly amazing book was able to shine through this disappointingly predictable film adaptation. Lewis's scene of Reepicheep’s departure across the sea to Aslan’s country is so touching that it could not be marred, even by Hollywood.

A taxi deposits us at the Tel Aviv University dorms at 7:30 AM. We have not showered or slept in some days now. I’ve never seen a city so big so silent. But of course it’s Shabbat and even in pagan Tel Aviv, with its reputation as a land of techno music and lax religious observance, the streets are mostly empty. The only market open is an AM/PM around the corner from the dorms. Ash and I procure cucumbers, hummus, peanut butter, and bread for lunch, in the hopes of obtaining more traditional fare at a later time. The dorms have few amenities. I discover some pans and bowls tucked away in a utility closet, and boil water to sterilize them. Sleep weighs heavily on our bodies and minds, and we retire for a nap until well after noon. Sitting on the grass late into the late afternoon, we play dominoes and talk softly, the city around us temporarily stilled in commemoration of this holy day.

After sundown on Shabbat, everyone in Tel Aviv goes to the Mall to buy shit made in America. If that sounds judgmental, it is meant to be. Here's why: travel involves experiencing the customs and conventions of other cultures in the hope of establishing a broader, more informed basis for making judgments about how to live your one wild and precious life. To travel halfway around the world only to find oneself in a place that basically resembles Valley Fair mall, but without a cheeseburger in sight, is simply surreal. When the main things that “unite” us are such superficialities, is it any wonder that the world continues to be consumed by division and, seemingly inevitably, by violence?

Paul and Phil last summer at the F#%*LaMode store in a fashionable quarter of Quebec City, raging against the machine, coffee in hand

Sunday, 19 June: We met up with Andrew, another fantastic Yale Divinity alum, and a nice student from Holland named Daniel. Daniel asked me what I’m doing next year, and I told him I took a teaching job in Virginia, where Ashleigh will be starting her PhD in the fall. The almost universal reaction to this plan is, “So you’re basically following her?” Because this question is never, ever asked of females who relocate to be near their significant others, I admit to being a touch defensive about it sometimes. “Well, actually, I’m teaching at a pretty good 4-year college, and living in a really ideal city, and plus the job market is tough for someone who is unpublished and without a doctorate, etc., etc.” All true enough. But I realized today that I don’t, or at least I shouldn’t, have a problem “following” a path where I have found great love and great peace walking alongside another person in mutual joy and gratitude. I suppose that to even a very thoughtful 21-year old like Daniel, this kind of answer doesn’t make the most sense. But I must say that it makes much more sense to me now at 25. Where else should I be following?

Tomorrow’s itinerary: explore the Arab market; attend University orientation; and take a run down the Mediterranean in the evening, jump in and cool off.

Peace,

Paul

At Picadilly Circus, London, UK

PS, look forward to a much shorter and cleverer chapter from Ashleigh next time!

Ash getting rained on with Big Ben in the background