It's summertime and I'm leaving Ithaca, New York, in order to travel to Tours, France. Sounds familiar? Unlike last year, when I first began this blog in order to communicate with friends and family, I won't be separated from my beloved Ithaca for five long months, but only 10 long weeks. I'm flying out of JFK airport tomorrow morning at 9:00 am, and arriving in Tel-Aviv Airport. I will spend until June 18th in Tzfat with Rabbi Eli and a few other students, visiting historical sites in Israel, and participating in some Yeshiva-style learning. I am extremely excited, and can't wait for the opportunity to really immerse myself in this for a few weeks.
Following this, I'm leaving for Tours, France, the hardest city in the world to search for on Google. I will be spending eight weeks there making a regional study of the deportations of Jews in the 1940s (see my entry "Jews of Tourraine Proposal" for details). If necessary, I may also travel to Paris, home of the Mémorial du Shoah, and its extensive archives.
I'm keeping this short so that I can get to bed tonight. Expect more from me, soon. Peace out, everyone: I love you all, whether you're French, Israeli, Malay, American, Chinese, Costa-Rican, Russian, Jamaican, or reject national labels.
~JD
"Slave labor virtually required single-crop farming that left the ground bare and vulnerable to erosion for much of the year. Reliance on a single crop precluded both crop rotation and developing a stable source of manure... Once established, slavery made monoculture an economic necessity -- and vice-versa" (David Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, p. 136).
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