From Ithaca to Tzfat

I realize that this post occurs chronologically before the previous post.  However, my journey is, I think, important and interesting to understanding where I am right now, and what I am doing.

I got out of bed at 3:15 last Wednesday afternoon; my Mother and I drove and picked up Rabbi Eli at his house, and the three of us drove together to the Syracuse airport.  We easily made our 6:00 flight to JFK, and I slept for the whole hour we were in the sky.  We had several hours before our flight for Israel left, and Rabbi Eli wanted to daven Shacharit, so we took a taxi to the closest Chabad House, which happened to be the Ohel.  We fulfilled our obligation, I read a little bit of the book that Rav Ami and Eliana had recommended to me, and we met a couple of Israelis who were also driving to JFK, and so they drove us.

Back in JFK, we met up with Adam (the only other student whom I already knew), and passed through the tightest security I have ever encountered, for El-Al airlines.  Because I can't speak Hebrew, the guards didn't trust me, and asked me a series of questions that only a Jewish person would know, such as "what was the most recent holiday, and how did you celebrate it?" and "what is your Hebrew name?"  At least half of the other passengers were Charedi.  On the plane flight, I met Ben (another Cornell student) and Alex (an Ithaca College graduate), finished Josephus's Jewish War (which I had begun on Birthright), read most of The Thirteen-Petaled Rose, and slept about an hour or two.  We touched down at what must have been four or five o'clock in the morning, local time, in Tel-Aviv.  We stumbled outside, and all of us hopped into the car of the elderly Chabad driver, Eli, from Tzfat, who tells me that he lived for a couple of years in Monsey, New York.  He played a CD of Chabad tunes very loudly on our three-hour journey to Tzfat.  I read as much as I could without

On the way, we decided to make a detour to Tiberias, to Rambam's gravesite.  You can't miss the curving metal monument from the road, and Avishai had pointed it out to us when my Birthright trip drove through Tiberias.  There were groups of people standing around and reciting the book of psalms around his grave, and around other nearby stone tombs, which bore the names of other famous Jewish sages, including some Tannaim, such as Yochanan ben Zakai.  Rabbi Eli was kind (and passionate enough) to translate some of the signboards describing Rambam's life and works.  (Today's quote is in his honor.)  Still awake, we arrived at Tzfat before noon, and met the Rabbis at the Tzemach Tzedek Yeshiva where we'll be staying.  I began to meet the other students, and we luckily had arrived in time to attend the last couple of classes for the day, Rabbi Pasternack and Rabbi Gorenstein both teaching classes, and Rabbi Eli sitting down with me, and trying to prompt my Hebrew, which is quite feeble.  I'm sorry to say that I began to fall asleep in front of Rabbi Gorenstein, but previous conversations with him make me think that he didn't take it to hard.  I refused to take a nap all day long, and eventually went to bed at 9:30 at night, local time.  I was very happy when I finally got into bed!

OK, more adventures next time.  You are all great people!  Also, please e-mail me or send me private message on FB for details, questions, or anything else.

~JD

"[Jewish men] are commanded to acquire a wife before marrying her: either by giving her something [of sufficient value]; by giving her a document [of marriage]; or by having marital relations... only marriage by means of relations has the validity of a Torah commandment" (Rambam, Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Commandment 213).

Last Night in the States (2012)

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).

Countdown: 1... BLASTOFF!

On Wednesday, Paris was dark, overcast, wet, and rainy -- terrible condition for a long walk through town. That was exactly my plan; after blogging, and hoping that the rain would go away of its own accord, I set off, at about 10:50 in the morning for the Musee Marmottan Monet, located in the northern half of the 16^e arrondissement in Paris: this might have been my longest walk in Paris, and certainly the longest walk I have taken since the start of classes. The rain was on-and-off, but I got the chance to see some parts of the city I have never visited before, on the rive droite. My Turkish friend once remarked that the neighborhood in the southeast 14e arrondissement where the Cite Universitare International is located is très bourgeois, and I think he’s right. Paris has its fair share of poverty, beyond the ubiquitous homeless beggars whom I mention so frequently: I’m talking about cramped, lousy housing, etc, with high concentrations of racial and national minorities.

In any case, I eventually made it to the Marmottan at nearly 1:00 exactly. On the way, I passed the UNESCO building, which is apparently something of a local monument. The walls were covered with a thick covering of luscious green moss, and there is what appears to be a duck pond out front. Later, in the small park just across the way from the museum, however, I saw what is by far my favorite statue in Paris: a bronze monument to Jean de La Fontaine, the famous writer of fables, peering down at two of his most famous characters, the Fox and the Crow, which, if you remember the August entry on Parisian children, I mentioned that most French children can still recount from heart. Then it was into the museum, where no photos are allowed. The Marmottan Monet is an impressionist museum, featuring mostly Monet’s work, but also a few canvases by Cezanne, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley (I mentioned that I like him, didn’t I?), etc. There were several striking portraits of several of the impressionists (most notably Monet) and of their close family members.

It was very interesting to see Monet’s lesser-known works, some of which I found, well, ugly. Messy Japanese bridges, sloppy water-lilies, and bland Scandinavian landscapes were all the product of his palette (which I saw, along with his pipe, his pen, and the knife he used to sharpen it). Nor was there a strict chronological arc to the quality of his work: he painted good and bad paintings throughout his artistic career. His best paintings are those which strike a balance between the abstract techniques of impressionism, and the capacity of these techniques to nonetheless immediately depict real objects. When he lost his grip on his control of color, his paintings turned out sloppy, much like Jackson Pollack’s paintings; when his colors were too drab and representative, his paintings aren’t any better than Cezanne’s. For all of this, there are some beautiful Monet tableaux on display at the Marmottan: locomotives in the snow, water-lilies, Britain’s Parliament building, and, of course, Impression: soleil levant, the painting which gave the Impressionism movement its name.

The temporary exhibit was possibly even more interesting than the permanent collections. The topic was Neo-Impressionism, specifically, the work of the painter Henry Cross, and his collaboration with Georges Seurat, but also with several other Neo-Impressionists, such as Maximilien Luce. As with so much other art, I can’t explain exactly why, but I enjoyed looking at this “Neo-Impressionism,” distinguished from Impressionism by its smaller brushstrokes, and sharper distinctions between different bordering objects in the composition (to my eyes, anyway). The Neo-Impressionists had some truly excellent paintings of rural life, of boats, of bodies of water. At first, they painted using a technique known as pointillism, the use of tiny dots of color; later, around 1895, their brushstrokes became true strokes, but still remained small and concentrated. I really enjoyed Cross's pictures of lapping waves, of families of goats, of families of ducks, and of sunlight glinting off the water. Like Cezanne, he also painted naked women, but while Cezanne's tend to be bathing, Cross's are dancing and frolicking. Cross went through a fauvist phase, according to the art historians, but to be honest, I can't see much of a difference. All I know is that I enjoy looking at his paintings!

I left the museum, crossed back over the Seine, and arrived at the Musee Quai Branly, the Parisian anthropological museum. It was a bit of a shock upon first entering the building: unlike every other museum in this town, the Musee Quai Branly was built as a museum, and isn't simply a converted 17th-, 18th-, or 19th-century mansion! I was also surprised by the clientele: now I know where Parisians bring their five-to-ten-year-old children! There were so many little boys running around the exhibits!

The line for the temporary exhibit on the samurai was very long (more than a 30-minute wait), so I decided to explore the fairly large permanent exhibits. The museum was divided into four sections: the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa. I made it through all but Africa before I ran out of juice at 6:00, and decided to leave. While I was there, however, I saw some amazing objects: Zapotec and Mixtec rain idols, 2000-year old funerary masks from Colombia, statues of Quetzalcoatl, Taino shamanic vomiting spatulas, paintings by George Catlin of Plains Indians, Mohawk wampum, and artifacts from New Guinean "men's houses." I found a couple of amulets from Jewish populations of the Middle East, which I always find fascinating (I have been interested in "folk Judaic" talismans since I read the excellent Cultures of the Jews, especially the article on magic by Shalom Sabar). There were also some excellent pieces from India, although I'll admit that my favorite was a tiny bronze figurine of an airplane and pilot, sculpted around 1900, and probably meant for a local altar. I also saw a few Southeast Asian artifacts, although nothing was as impressive as what I had seen at the Musee Guimet. There was another bronze Dong Son drum, even larger than the first, and ornamented with frogs, as well as some beautifully-decorated Thai and Burman pots for betel nuts.

Eventually, I couldn't look at anything more, and wandered out, eventually finding a Metro station, riding to Port Royal, where I proudly spend my 64th and final meal ticket (I won). I returned to the dorm, and found myself involved in a number of tasks until past midnight, including trying to find a way to responsibly dispose of my pile of recycling. I finished packing at nearly 2:00 a.m., and awoke the next morning a bit before 8:00. I was out the door around 9:00, leaving my reusable Franprix bag with some foodstuffs and a few other articles outside of Jamie's room (again, Jamie, thank you for being such an awesome neighbor!). I hopped on the RER B, rode it to Charles to Gaulle, and went through the whole airport gauntlet. On the shuttle bus, I met a French family when I held the hand of their (very cute) little girl, so that she wouldn't fall over, and they wished me very happy holidays, in both languages. On the flight itself, which left slightly late, at about 1:30, I sat next to a girl my own age from Surinam, attending American University in Paris (trilingual, plus some Spanish; I don't know how some people can manage that), and read Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV, although I had difficulty at times with the turbulence. They fed me twice on the plane: I was surprised.

I arrived in Philadelphia, and was off to another security-customs-baggage gamut. I ran it, and the Agriculture section neutralized the banana and two kiwis that were in my backpack. They were very friendly about it though. In fact, all of the guards and officers on the American side of the border were friendly, and it took me some time to catch on that I was not encountering a series of unusually friendly personnel, but rather, a different culture than the one I have been living in for the past several months. On paper, I had a 6-hour wait, but it was really only a 3-hour wait, because of customs, the passage to the proper terminal, security, and the call to my Mother that I made to let her know that all was well, and that I was safe in Philadelphia airport. I ate the non-confiscated food, and then bought a couple of muffins to supplement it (I think I would just have preferred the fresh fruit). I nearly fell asleep before the 9:30 flight to Ithaca boarded, and I actually did fall asleep, while we were still taxiing, and 4th in line to take off. I sat next to a fellow Ithacan and IHS grad, class of 2004, who was returning home for the holidays. When I woke up, we were descending: somehow, I made it out of the plane, and was met by my wonderful parents. We drove back in the pouring rain, and I made it into bed around midnight.

I woke up the next morning around 8:00 a.m., shaved, and ate breakfast with my parents. My Dad, who is sick, headed off to work, and I spent until around 12:30 unpacking and organizing. It was sleeting, so I didn't take a run. Now it's evening: I'm warm, clean, and possibly even already adjusted to the time zone. Sam is coming home this evening. What more could I want? I'm home.

~JD


"J'ai trop aime la guerre; ne m'imitez pas en cela, non plus que dans les trop grandes depenses que j'ai faites. Prenez conseil en toutes choses..." [I loved war too much; do not imitate me in this, nor in the excessive expenditures that I made. Accept counsel in all matters] (Deathbed letter from Louis XIV to the Dauphin, as cited in Voltaire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV, 651).

Arrival in France

Somehow or another, I made it to Tours, all in one piece. The French equivalent of the English phrase "safe and sound" is "sain et sauf," which means "healthy and safe." Perhaps this indicates that to the French, arriving "sound," i.e., without serious jostling, is an unrealistic (or undesirable) goal? Although the journey from Ithaca to France was about as easy a one as I could have hoped for, I got a year and a half's worth of French jostling just getting my Visa from the French Consulate in New York City!

My first flight, from Ithaca to Philadelphia, does not deserve mention, save to say that I was nauseated for most of the flight.

I had a more-than-three-hour wait in the Philadelphia airport, which wasn't bad at all. Luckily, I had packed a selection of Euripides's plays, and the copy of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here given to me by Matt Rosenspire. (Since my departure, I've had enough time to read "Hecuba," "Andromache," and about 110 pages of Lewis's 1935 novel.) I watched a French family eating french fries. The transatlantic flight was easy: happy Frenchmen and Frenchwomen and Frenchchildren chattered away in French, not a word of which I understood, which probably doesn't bode well for my chances at effective communication in the coming five months. I lost six hours on the flight, arriving in Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, at 7:30 AM local time, after having slept only about an hour and a half. Strangely, even though it's now 2:50 PM local time, I don't feel tired at all. Excitement? That's the word for what I feel in my veins.

After retrieving my suitcase from the baggage claim, I took the shuttle to the train station sector of Charles de Gaulle. A ticket machine gave me trouble, and despite the kind help from a French bystander (from whom I learned that"what the frick?" is the accepted way for French to swear in English), I needed to stand in a long, long line in order to purchase a train ticket. Even though I had begun with a two-and-a-half-hour window before my 10:01 AM train departed, I obtained my ticket with under 20 minutes to spare. The French Word of the Day has been "voie," which means "railroad platform" (among other definitions), a term that I have needed to use several times today, already. A couple of train rides later, after having helped a foreign student who spoke neither French nor English to find her host family, I arrived in Tours.

I found Mme. Avertin waiting for me, holding a small placard with my name on it. After we had "fait les baises" (that's that French cheek-kissing technique, in which each party receives three pecks apiece), she introduced me to her daughter, Stephanie, and her husband. They drove me to their apartment building, and showed me to my room, as well as to "les toilettes," a facility by then badly needed: it had been a long and hot ride, and I had become fairly dehydrated in the course of the travel. The apartment as a whole is beautiful, and tastefully decorated with a mixture of European and East Asian styles. It is a clean, well-lighted place, where electric lights are hardly needed at all, in the full heat and sunlight of the continental summer. While M. Avertin ran an errand, that seemed to have involved somebody's lost iPhone (I'm not quite clear on the course of events), I unpacked.

There is a list of residency rules in the room, instated by the Institut, available in both French and English. That is, it is available in French, with a half-hearted attempt to use an online translator. Here is a sample of the opening passage concerning telephone use:
"the phone family isn't use a student. Your family phone you."
The room is larger than my room at home, has a television (complete with VCR), a window, a closet, two bedside tables, and a bookshelf. Best of all, there is a large black desk, on which I have placed my computer in order to write this post, and which I will probably continue to use. The bookshelf contains books and movies left by the Avertins' son when he graduated high school: he seems to have been a fan of Parcel Pagnol, the great writer of Provence. There are also a pair of books about Native Americans, a few choose-your-own-adventure books ("Un Livre Dont Vous Etes Le Heros"), and a copy of Camus's L'Homme Revolte. Movies include several classic Disney films, in addition to "Le Professeur Foldingue" ("The Nutty Professor"), "Robin Des Bois" ("Robin Hood"), "Dragonball" (yes, that's what it's called in France), etc. I gave Mme. Avertin the gift I had brought the family, a photograph of an Ithacan waterfall, which, I think, she appreciated.

After M. Avertin returned, we had lunch, and I did my absolute best to engage in conversation. The Avertins are very convivial, and I began to describe, as best as I could, where I lived, what I do with my life, etc. They served me some of the best Camembert and Chevre I've ever tasted. The Camembert, as is legally required in the EU, came from Camembert, and the Chevre came from a real goat (I hope). M. Avertin is retired, and Mme. is in semi-retirement. Photos forthcoming.

After we had cleared the table, M. Avertin showed me the password to the Wi-Fi Network, and gave me a kind lesson in the use of the French verb "communiquer." After shooting off a quick e-mail to my parents, I typed up this blog post as quickly as possible.

~JD

"There in the house of Nereus, arm in arm, Goddess with god, we'll live the future out. And moving dry-shod over the foaming ocean, you'll see your son and mine, dearest Achilles, lording it in his island home." ~Thetis (from Euripides's Andromache)

Last Night in the States

Ready to leave tomorrow for France, I decided to succinctly describe itinerary of my trip, and explain the creation of this blog. I have enrolled in two dovetailing educational programs, both in France, that will together last until wintertime, around five months from now.

The first is at the Institut de Touraine, in Tours, France. There, I will study the French language, live with a French family (les Avertin), and, I hope, explore castles on the weekends. The program will begin on Monday morning, and will end at the end of August.

The second is at the Univeristy of Paris VII (maybe also I and IV), in Paris, where I will arrive on the fourth of September. I hope to study French history and francophone literature. I will neither know where I am living nor what classes I will take, before my arrival. I will not even know when I will returning, although I will probably fly back between mid-December and early January.

If I am lucky, I will arrive back in time to turn to go on the Birthright Israel program with Sam Moss. I can only hope that the program will accept both of us, and that I will have enough turnaround time between the two trips.

In this blog, I will communicate my French experience to my friends and family in a way less exhausting than individual e-mails, and less intrusive than mass-emails. I will probably update the blog no more than once a day, and no less than once a week. I might also end up discussing politics, books, etc.

I have a bookish personality, and, as I do in my personal journal, will addend to each entry a line from a book that I have read since I last posted an entry. I do not necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in these quotations: I may record because I happen to find them pithy, interesting, true, false, or just amusing.

I hope to keep you all amused with my misadventures!

~JD

"To bring up children is perilous; success is full of trouble and care, failure is unsurpassed by any other pain." ~Democritus