One of the most central goals in Kivunim’s mission statement, as I have discussed at length, is to espouse “world consciousness.” This conceptually ambitious and oftentimes nebulous term, along with its many variants and derivatives, has become increasingly popular in the lexicon of our world. On a more personal level it has been a focus of my own intellectual and educational pursuits, presenting many of the questions and challenges that led me to Kivunim. Stemming from the centuries-old trend of increasing economic and political interdependence, in the last years and decades the more cultural definitions of “globalization” have become more complicated and widely examined in education, public policy and the media.
Certainly terms like “global citizenship” and “world consciousness” have gained traction and buzzword status in western society, and part of my own struggle to define these terms has been to explore whether “globalization” really is just “westernization”—an updated version of imperialism for the era of political correctness. Yet, while this self-consciousness certainly has some credence, it would be unduly self-centered to assume that Western culture is the only one with an emerging sensitivity to the transnational processes in which we are all increasingly playing a role, and to the collective issues that we face on a global level.
Last year I developed and ran an educational initiative called Global Citizenship Seminar (GCS) in my high school, based on the idea that in order to facilitate the development of healthy active citizenship for our time we must embrace the complexity and diversity within ourselves and each other as individuals—and within and between the groups to which we belong—while also appreciating and striving to deepen our understanding of the uniting, common factors. Many of the ideas surrounding GCS operate on the personal, local, national and international levels, so they have developed in my mind as personal challenges as much as challenges I see facing the world. When I first launched the project at the high school, I was curious about whether the curriculum could be adapted for different communities outside the upper-middle class ilk. Yet, while I was confident in the idea that a program such as GCS was appropriate for my community, I would also learn to think about “my community” differently—that Acton was much more complicated than just an upper-middle class suburb.
I bring all of this up because in the same way that the initial experience with GCS opened me up to new meaning behind the philosophy that I was promoting, I am finding that Kivunim is also expanding and challenging these ideas in new ways. Indeed, while I gravitated towards Kivunim in the first place largely because the website advertised a mission statement very much in line with my own, at the core of those common ideas is not a comfortable sense that my beliefs and worldviews are intact and static. I stress that the GCS philosophy is a set of ideals and challenges; at its core is curiosity and a will to find new meaning and deeper understanding of these ideas. In short, to me “global citizenship” does not represent an assumption of understanding, but a commitment to the challenge of exploring the infinite complexity of our world and how we all play a part in it and are connected through it. Ultimately, to say these things is to admit that we do not entirely understand them. They offer guidance and encouragement in the endless journey of realizing how much more than rhetoric and philosophy they truly are.
And so, as much as I find myself feeling a deeper and deeper dedication to the principles of embracing complexity and commonality, as much as I find my experiences reaffirming these broad conceptions about the world, I have never been so challenged in my life.
I will admit that during my time in Morocco it was more difficult than ever to keep complexity and commonality in balance. In Greece it was easier to see how significant and eye opening the experiences were. To look at the Parthenon is to see the foundation of an entire culture that is very much at the roots of the context in which I have lived. When I looked at the columns, I saw the White House. Morocco is full of sights, smells and sounds that simply don’t fit into that context as easily. On the one hand, thanks to Kivunim I could read the Arabic in Morocco better than I ever could read a sign in Greece or Bulgaria, and the markets in Morocco showed me a new side to the shuk (market) atmosphere that has come to feel familiar to me during my time in the Middle East. I also saw another side of the Atlantic Ocean and it snowed while we were in the mountains, which made me feel right at home. However, on the other hand, many of the experiences felt like they were just bouncing around in my mind without any hope of finding traction. I realize that these experiences are exactly what one needs to have in order to grow and gain new perspective, but they also made me more aware of what it really means to travel beyond the United States, Israel and Europe.
Morocco has a history that overlaps with the United States less than any country I have been to yet. Still, it does overlap—in completely unexpected ways! Morocco was actually the first country to recognize the United States as a country. It is a country that is in the thick of one of the most intriguing modernization stories I have ever heard. Its motto is “God, King, Country.” Its constitution calls for a democracy, but all power (including the ability to appoint the prime minister and the cabinet, and to dissolve Parliament) is concentrated in the king, who serves as the religious and political authority. And here’s the kicker: the current king is a vigorous reformer. He’s all about human rights and basic freedoms. Of course the reforms are imperfect because, among other things, they aren’t democratically enacted, and to the extent that they do liberalize they are on some level in direct contradiction to the integrity of the monarchy as an institution. One wonders how long the Moroccan people can rely on the king to lead (or shall I say, order?) such a revolution, but somehow it seems altogether logical—and remarkable—that Morocco has found a way to achieve systemic change that is true to its roots.
Morocco is an Arab Islamic country that is geographically closer to New York than to Mecca. Thirty percent of the population is of the native Saharan Amazigh ethnic group of North Africa, and the short period of French colonialism, from 1912 to 1956, (and really short distance from Spain) has left in indelible mark on society. Most Moroccans speak at least Arabic and French, but still around half of them are completely illiterate. Almost half the time we were in the country was spent on 8-12 hour bus rides. (In fact, so far on Kivunim we have traveled by bus, plane, taxi, train, horse-drawn carriage, camel, ferry, Jeep 4x4, and foot.) We were in the Atlas Mountains (the second highest peaks in Africa) and watched the sun rise in the Sahara Desert. We saw the ocean, the sea, the plains, and the cities. We visited the biggest mosque I will ever see (because the only one in the world that is bigger is in Mecca, which non-Muslims aren’t allowed to visit). We saw snake charmers in the famous Djamaa El Fna square in Marrakech. We visited Quarzazat, the desert location where Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, and Gladiator, among others, were all filmed. Of course the most powerful parts of our week in Morocco were spent with local people. We stayed in the mountains, in a town called Talouet, where we became spontaneous participants in a rhythmic Moroccan song-and-dance tradition in the middle of dinner. One of our tour guides also invited us into his (big) house one night, where his wife taught us how to make the Moroccan delicacy pastiya, and introduced us to the wonderful Moroccan tradition of greeting guests with tea and cookies before the meal. In all seriousness, being invited to do havdallah (the service that ends Shabbat) in a Muslim home was a very powerful experience for the group.
The Jewish content in Morocco was no less profound than in Greece and Bulgaria, but sometimes it was so deeply entrenched in the broader culture that we didn’t initially recognize it. Jews came to Morocco after the destruction of the First and then the Second Temples in Jerusalem. That means that they arrived about 2000 years ago, predating Islam by 600, and in some cases 800, years. Today the Jewish community has just a few thousand members, because about a quarter of a million moved to Israel between its establishment in 1948 and the 1960s. While our trip to Greece and Bulgaria opened us up to new clusters of Jewish roots, showing us centers of Jewish culture that had thrived for five hundred years until very recently, Morocco challenged us to connect to an entirely different avenue to the roots of Jewish antiquity. In Greece the Jews were split into Romaniotes, whose history was considered to begin there during the Roman Empire, and Sepharadim, who came to dominate the Romaniote Jewish culture after being expelled from Spain and spreading all over the Mediterranean in 1492. In Morocco the Jewish community was split between Magorashim and Toshavim: essentially, Jews who had stayed in Morocco since the destruction of the Temples, and those who had gone to Spain and then were forced to return to Morocco in 1492. The idealism that was afforded to Spanish Jewry in Greece was muted in Morocco, as historians see the culture of the golden age of Spanish Jewry all but sprouting from the same group in Morocco. It is so interesting to see where the lines are drawn…
Our first contact with the Jewish story in Morocco, after a month of studying it in Jerusalem, came on Day 1 of the trip, in Casablanca. First we visited a remarkable museum of artifacts that have been recovered from restored synagogues all over the country in the past fifteen years (an initiative mostly led by our guide Raphy). Then we saw one of the four Jewish schools in Casablanca in action. We visited an old synagogue in the city of Errashadiya. Its state of horrible disrepair, we learned, is mostly due to a roof collapse in 2006, which, needless to say, made us wonder how long it had been intact before then. The countless kasbas (old desert hospitality palaces) that we saw by the side of the road on our hours of driving all had Jewish quarters. This presented another side of the ancient Jewish contribution to international trade, which was so pronounced in the Mediterranean communities of Greece; in Morocco the evidence lies not in the sea, but in trade routes of the desert. Case in point: while the port in Salonika, Greece used to close early on Friday and stay closed through Saturday for the Jewish stevedores to observe Shabbat, in Morocco the traveling souks still have no business on Saturday, even though no Jews live in the desert regions of the country anymore. We spent the first two weeks of Kivunim exploring Israel’s desert as the birthplace of the Jewish people. Now, in the Sahara Desert of Morocco, we recognized why this place could feel so at home to Jews. We visited a positively expansive Jewish cemetery, and spent Shabbat in Marrakech, which was shocking in how similar the prayer service was to that in Greece—except that here the prayer books were in French instead of Spanish.
In all honesty, I am still having trouble digesting the week I spent in Morocco. It was an adventure that truly does lie outside the framework of my limited experience. Now I can say that Morocco is part of my experience, but I expect that as I continue to grow, the connections between all the dots of my life experiences will continue to mature. As my sense of what it means to be Jewish and to be human continues to broaden this year, I know that although the week in Morocco has come and passed, it will continue to change my life. I hope that it will continue to serve as an example, a springboard, for the challenges and rewards of establishing familiarity with places in the world that our radar really must stretch to see. It is indeed an endless journey in our short time on earth, but as long as these dots keep appearing on my radar screen, and the screen itself continues to expand, I will not fear the dots that don’t so easily connect. After all, as much as I came to Kivunim for some pretty specific reasons, what I looked forward to most, and what continues to embolden me, is the relevance and enrichment of the experiences I did not expect.
As we crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, from Tangier, Morocco to Tarifa, Spain, we felt in between worlds. The mood was slowly shifting, from Arabic and French to Spanish, from Africa to Europe, from Islam to Catholicism. The ferry ride was only about 45 minutes, but Spain is an hour ahead of Morocco. After the 8-hour bus ride from Marrakech to Tangier, followed by the ferry ride, Spain felt like some kind of dream world.
Hearing Spanish was sweet to my ears, after six years of studying the language in school—and after months of experiencing all kinds of brand new languages—I was finally in a country where I felt I could begin to communicate on a higher level with the natives. While Morocco is definitely the most foreign place I have ever been, despite the fact that I could read the language, Spain felt more familiar than any of the countries we’ve explored, because of the language.
We began our short visit in Granada, exploring the Alhambra, the old Moorish fortress that served as a city hundreds of years ago. The similarities to the palaces we had visited in Morocco were striking. Before we knew it we were back on the bus to Cordoba. On the way we took a trip through time, seeing the old windmills of Don Quijote, and then the modern windmills of Spain’s alternative energy industry. As I watched the sun set over the seemingly endless hills of olive trees we passed, I closed my eyes and transported myself thousands of miles west, where the same sun was lighting up the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States of America would be in just under two hours.
When we arrived in Cordoba, we ran through the streets with our backpacks bouncing up and down and the wheels of our suitcases buzzing on the ground. We were a hoard of eager patriots flocking to witness history from afar. We piled into the bar in our hotel, which conveniently enough had a big-screen TV set to BBC. We gasped with joy and anticipation as we shared in the energy radiating from the millions of people on camera in Washington. We waited with the rest of the world, feeling the distance and the proximity at the same time. We watched each of the former presidents slowly emerge from the Capitol building, and then Barack appeared. His faint smile and resolute gaze felt perfectly appropriate as we all shared the moment. Then came the opening prayers and remarks before he took the podium. Watching that speech made us feel powerful. The words were beautiful, and while he outlined anything but business as usual, Barack was all business. Later that evening, after enjoying an authentic Spanish meal, we watched as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer talked over footage of the Inaugural Parade. He mentioned the hard work the CNN staff was doing to bring the coverage to people all over the country and the world. I have never been more aware of the fact that I was watching TV.
The next day before leaving Cordoba we toured around the city, visiting the home of Maimonides, the foremost scholar and Jewish thinker in perhaps all of history, and the Cathedral of Saint Mary, which is also known as the Great Mosque. Having changed hands a number of times, this religious center, just across the street from our Maimonides hotel, is a keystone of art history that also stands as testament to the rich religious history of Spain—including the peaks of coexistence and the depths of intolerance.
In Toledo I was able to survey enough natives to find the best restaurant in town for the best price. Then my friends and I caught a cab back to the hotel, and I reveled in the opportunity to chat with the driver. The next day we headed to Madrid, where half of us would catch a plane back to Israel and the rest would stay a day, exploring the city. In Madrid we visited the Prado art museum, which holds one of the most historic art collections in the world. From El Greco, to Velazquez, to Goya, the Prado is as much about appreciating that these paintings so seldom seen outside of textbooks are real, as it is about recognizing that the images they portray are not; the canvases are so grand that sometimes you feel like you could just walk into the paintings.
Earlier in that last day, we visited with the Israeli ambassador to Spain, who talked to us about the gifts and perils of representing Israel—especially in light of the recent escalation of violence—in a country that before 1992 hadn’t held a single Jew in 500 years. Sitting in that room, we felt how appropriate it was to finish the first half of Kivunim there. While Morocco provided a unique perspective on the golden age of Spanish Jewry, without the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 we would perhaps never have visited Greece or Bulgaria. The Sephardic Jews hold their origin in their name (Sepharad=Spain), but Spain is a distant root, like many other places we will visit this year, that simply does not play the central role that it used to, but somehow reaches to the core of us. Being there didn’t just add to our sense of the international nature of the Jewish people; representing a chapter in Jewish life that shaped the other communities of our studies so far this year, Spain put in perspective how much what we have learned this year has already become a part of us.
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