A Touchy Subject

This past semester of teaching “American Itineraries: American Novels that Mooove!” (italics mine) has been a sensitive one. Just about every class has ended with an expression on my students’ faces that most definitely read: wow, are those evil paleface Americans ever so racist. Lucky us, that we live in Norway, land of… paler faces. Er, what you mean we, kemosabe?

It all came to a crux for me this week after Lene, UiB professor of Amlit, recommended Lilyhammer, a TV show about a Mafioso (Silvio Dante from The Sopranos) who hides out in Lillehammer for his witness protection program. In the second episode, there’s a moment when Silvio’s crush, his Norwegian culture teacher, tries to introduce herself to a man in the class and extends a hand to shake. Of course the guy is a Muslim immigrant who mutters something about not touching women and whose sister translates apologetically. Later, our hero beats him up a bit until the Muslim guy apologizes and insists that the teacher shake his hand. I’d love it if I could say this was an effort to think critically about some of the issues in Norway today, or even to make fun of American Mafioso violence. But it was so clear that Silvio is the good guy, watching out for his gal, that the feelings of a person who is forced to humiliatingly transgress what he believes in got completely lost. Granted, the Muslim did not refuse gracefully. There are polite, kind ways of explaining that your religion restricts you that show it is not a reflection of the other person. But he ought not to be forced to violate his values. Not shaking someone’s hand does not impinge on their rights in any way. Forcing someone to make contact does. Norwegian distrust of difference is upsetting even as it is expected. Protesting that people must learn to integrate into society without bothering to negotiate their values as well just smacks of selfishness.

Along the same lines, after a long class today discoursing on American racism and the limited understanding of American nationality as discussed in the novel Tripmaster Monkey (read the line “Call me Ishmael.” You pictured someone white, didn’t you?), Lene tried to explain the word “liminality.” This was her example: “in Norwegian culture, people are confirmed, then baptized. That stage in between is liminal.” I grinned with glee at the textbook example of what students had accused Americans of all class long (yes, Kerouac was a trifle racist, and So. Are. You). So, Norwegians are Christian, eh? Christianity is an integral part of Norwegian culture? Part of what it means to be Nor-wee-geee-ahn? Well, I bet the thousands of Muslim, Sami, and secular Norwegians would beg to differ. Gotcha!

Not that this is a race over who is more racist—it just struck me as entertaining matter for a blog post. 

On a side note: in a recent skype conversation, my sisters revealed that they’ve taken up environmentalism and are now conserving on toothpaste. Don’t ask why. Just, for one tiny second I’m glad we’re all living on different continents this year. 

Bergen in spring

The Boy that Talked on the Bybanen

The other day, I got on the bybanen on my way back from the city and sat down without checking out the person sitting across from me. I was settling my bags (10 kroner shirts from Fretex, heck yeah!) when a soft voice said, “hei.” My head shot up. Strangers never, but never, speak on the bybanen. Across from me sat a little boy, regarding me gravely. “Hi,” I answered, and smiled out the window. He had one of those faces that already look grownup and filled with heavy care, only unmarked yet by any truly serious worry. We sat that way for a bit, until a large grizzled gentleman sat down next to him.

“Hei.” I stared determinedly out the window and waited. After a pause, the man responded. “Hei.” I couldn’t help it, I turned and smiled at the grownup. Grinned, really. He smiled back. This boy had broken through bybanen etiquette, and now we were allowed to smile at each other. After rolling through the bystation, the kid asked him, “hva heter du?” “Steven.” Really, I thought? That’s not very Norwegian. “Hva heter du?” the man continued. The boy answered, and another pause ensued. Then, “hvor gammel du?” I couldn’t understand the man’s response, but the boy’s proud “jeg er åtte” warmed the cockles of my heart (this was right before he asked "hva er du?" Ah, the myriad funny responses that one could come up to that one with for an eight-year-old). Periodically, the kid looked down at the floor, then back up at the man and ran through more of the rudimentaries of introduction. I spent the whole ride grinning out the window as the chubby boy pumped his neighbor for information and showed him pictures of his family on his phone.

Well, I finally planned my presentation for the Fulbright seminar. Friday afternoon, I started cooking for shabbat and sat down to make my powerpoint. There’s such a wealth of joy in looking back over what I’ve done and trying to figure out how I’m going to explain it. Anyhow, I got so into it that the buzzer going off scared the bejeezus out of me without my properly awakening to the fact that it meant the food was ready, and only twenty minutes later, with the smell of burnt wafting through the apartment, did I realize that my rice was now smoking cinders. I’m thinking of taking a picture of it and adding it to the slide show.

Lene let me know that there's going to be a Fulbright ETA in Bergen next year. I happened to know they are cutting it down to two in Norway (from three this year) because of budgetary constraints, and since this is the first year they've ever had one in Bergen, I figured my position was the goner. But nope! I'm so glad, both for Bergen and the lucky ETA who gets this spot next year. It's a dream job. 

I gave a guest lecture on the American election yesterday at Katten. The kids were pretty smart, and asked really great questions, like, “if the Republican party is in favor of small government, why do they want to regulate things like marriage and abortion?” Hmm. Good question. They all lined up on the side of high taxes and high government spending, beating up on America’s military, and pro-choice. A few were in favor of a moon colony, as well (we discussed all the really salient issues). One said that government of course means a contract in which people work, and the government takes care of them, so what’s up with America, and I explained how a minimalist government that simply allows people to go about their business is an alternative model, one especially appealing if you don’t trust your government as much as you trust market pressures.

I had a fun time showing some of the utter ridiculousness of this election (the Cain Train stuck on foreign policy “uhh, Libya… Libya…”), but I also allowed myself to get patriotic and defend the American mindset. You see, these kids never meet conservatives, and don’t understand the idea of small government, or fear of big government, or policy motivated to protect religious faith, and so I tried to give them some concept of an America that means something, an America that Americans would die to defend. It wasn't about giving biographies of the candidates so much as talking about the American dream and independence and of course football. 

Afterwards the kids burst into spontaneous applause for so long that I got awkward and turned around to fiddle with my computer. There’s something heady about the sound of clapping; I think I might understand why some of those slightly humanoid politicians stand up in front of a crowd again and again.

Aaaand… off to Oslo and then Lillehammer for Fulbrighter weekend! 

Valentine’s Day in Bergen: raindrops on roses

Still facing a butter shortage: the top sign says "we have butter"

Trolljegeren

I saw Trolljegeren tonight with three friends: the German who lives down the hall from me, a German I’ve hiked with before, and his Polish friend. On the bybanen on the way into town, while the Polish guy introduced himself, I asked him which city he comes from. His eyebrows shot up, so I told him that yep, I’d been to Poland.

“Really?!” I assured him I wasn’t kidding.

“But why?” "School trip." After more pressing, I reluctantly told him that my tour of his country had been mostly a visit to concentration camps and cemeteries. He nodded.

“You know that we’re not really the ones responsible?” He made a funny jerking movement towards the Germans, which I didn’t get, and a humorous eyebrow wiggle, and then suddenly, in a brick-in-the-face kind of way, I realized he was trying to tell me that the Germans, not the Polish, were responsible for the Holocaust, and was doing so by gesturing to my two friends. I managed to smile and crush the instinctual recoil from Holocaust jokes, trying to figure out a way to respond lightheartedly and clear the air.

“Erm, yeah. You know I come from a country that actually was built on slavery, right?” I answered. “How ‘bout we let individuals not suffer for the sins of their countries' pasts?” Then I told the story about how I fell asleep in a cemetery in rural Poland and got left behind by my bus. To lighten the mood. But weird to think this guy lives in a country that to me means pretty much nothing but death and destruction. And to realize that Germany's associations in my mind manage to encompass the Holocaust without being overwhelmed by it, while Poland seems built entirely on it and of it. 

They're so cute!

Both the Polish and the German guy are big, seriously tall men, with hair to their shoulders. Stephan, the German, is a sweetie, but to look at him you’d think he was tough. They decided we should get off at Nygård and go through the park. Since I’ve never been through at night, and normally don’t have such bulky bodyguards, I agreed. We talked about how the drug addicts are meant to be mostly harmless anyhow, on our way up the slope. As we reached the square where they congregate, I saw a large clump of people. A woman stood in front, and as we approached, asked “hvor er narkomen?” Swiftly we passed her, though she followed us, and headed through to where men were standing, arms crossed, in front of us. For a sickening second, they formed a human blockade, and I thought they were not going to let us through. The Polish guy was at my elbow and steered me firmly beside him, and the men parted. Caroline maneuvered around to between him and Stephan. Whew! That’s the last time I go through Nygårdsparken at night, even with muscle backup.

Trolljegeren is fun, and I highly recommend it for not only a glimpse into Norwegian culture, but also snippets of this country's great natural beauty. On a hike this morning, I left the trail and after wandering under snow-laden pine trees and past delicately etched twigs, thought perhaps I might have left reality behind entirely and see Mr. Tumnus trot out from behind a hillock at any moment. But then realized that in Narnia, they never fell into snow drifts up to their tushes.  Totally worth it.

The Innocents Abroad

We haven't learned this move yet

I went to my second salsa class. It’s such incredible fun; both silly as we all step on each other’s feet and bang elbows, and exhilarating to actually get the movements right. Somehow just sliding my legs in the right direction manages to feel sexy. Whirling around the room as we "dame!" from one partner to the next gives me an unfamiliar yet not unpleasant sensation of lack of control. Rarely do I cede power to anyone and say, “sure, just spin me in whatever direction you will, I’ll follow.” But there’s a rush that comes with this sort of dancing surrender, a heady capitulation to music and partner. It’s also fun to make snap-second judgments as I twirl from one partner to the next—is he on beat? Does he make eye contact? Can I make a joke, or does this one take it too seriously? Accent German or Austrian? Swiss or French? Where are that guy’s hands heading? And so on.

The master’s seminar I’m meant to be TAing is currently turning into a processing session for my American-identity crisis. Today, as we crunched through Absalom, Absalom!, the students stupidly silent in the face of Faulkner’s big fat F-the-reader attitude, I epiphanized for a moment.

Faulkner blabbers on about how Sutpen, his hero born in the mountains of West Virginia, was a blessed innocent, pure as the mountain stream of any knowledge of how wealth and caste operates in America, and even once he discovers it by having a door slammed in his face, his innocence teaches him not to subvert the system but to join it and create a wealthy dynasty himself, to support the whole money-grubbing people-as-property (both women and men) endeavor. I’ve been to the mountains of West Virginia. We backpack there every summer. And yet we manage to avoid all knowledge of the inhabitants (my parents’ view of a successful backpacking vacation is one in which we meet no people), so I can’t tell you whether they avoid all knowledge of the world. But I can tell you that almost all of the people we see there are white and the region is not overly gifted with the material things of this world (besides incredible measures of natural beauty), and could possibly have grown up without needing to ask themselves the questions other parts of America must.

Match that to Melville’s Benito Cereno, which we read last week, and in which the American captain of the ship is so convinced of black servility and natural docile cheeriness that he can’t comprehend for a moment that they’ve actually staged a mutiny on the ship, and innocence begins to seem not just wrong, but willfully evil. A sort of assumed innocence, an American project to pretend that everything’s fine when in fact it isn’t.

I remember sitting in a Ho-Hum class at UMD, listening to the one black girl talk about racism in America, and thinking that I grew up in an upper-middle class Jewish-and black neighborhood and didn’t even know that racism had survived into this decade until I left for college. We had all been minorities, all comfortable. What a nice thought! I wished I could return to that. Since, as my knowledge grew and I learned racism, not to practice but to understand the baggage we were carrying around, it complicated my relationships with people. I began to yearn for the innocence when I didn’t know that skin color gave one any kind of history, when I joked with my mom’s medical assistant about how her skin was purple (as a five year old, I saw colors I can’t today).

When I was out with a friend last week, she mentioned the way a group of kids hanging out at night in her neighborhood had been viewed with suspicion by her friends. I thought I’d take their part. It would make me nervous to walk past a group of youth at night. Just as I am faced with flurries of nerves when I pass a cleaning person; should I say hi? To prove their personhood in my eyes? Or do they not want to be used as a tool by which I can prove my humanity by acknowledging theirs? Would I say hi to them if they were just another person passing? As I mulled it over, I realized that, though born free of the intricacies of racism (it was taught me later in a multitude of complicated ways that don’t dictate active oppression so much as acknowledgement which is yet fraught), I am most definitely classist to the core. Or, as I express it to my sisters, odorist. Same difference. I feel a strong knee-jerk reaction against poverty or anything which threatens comfort. A sort of guilty blaming of the guy sleeping in the doorway for reminding me of his existence, a feeling I try to tear down constantly and that yet springs up anew.

The way I try to escape is to remember childhood. Innocence. Back when the only classification I made of people was either big, or my size. When I didn’t pay attention to other humans, didn’t notice smells. And yet, as I listened to Lene attempt to extricate Sutpen’s story from the rest of the wilderness of Absalom, Absalom!, and link it back to Melville’s arrogantly innocent American captain, I began to appreciate the evils of such innocence.

I think Americans prize their innocence even as they consider themselves to know more about these issues. Europe is supposed to be contaminated, prejudiced, filled with a disgusting history it can’t escape, and Americans seek their solace in naivete, in saying “but I see no difference in you, I don’t even see you as black/Muslim/gay/blond.” Trying not to acknowledge the stereotypes, not to confound a person with one part of their identity as token. But it doesn’t work. It makes us worse than them—at least the Europeans aren’t subtly hiding their prejudices (well, okay, the Norwegians are, but I think they got that from us). Innocence, in this case, is akin to ignorance. Which can be just as damaging, if not more, than blatant prejudice. I have used my innocence as a shield against understanding.

So where to from here? I’m not sure. I’m not sure how to move from trying to actively backpedal from the things I wish I didn’t know, into accepting them and working through them into a prejudice-free world in which difference means dignity and yet the history is not extirpated from the human as though it didn’t matter. How to both remember slavery and not make any person bear its brunt, to smell homeless men on the bus without flinching, to greet the house cleaner without needing a session with a shrink. It’s going to require a whole new level of sophistication instead of that desperate naivete. It's going to require processing ideas like this without worrying about the fact that I'm embroiled in first-world issues while elsewhere, people would laugh at me for my privileged white girl problems. That's still no reason not to try to solve them. But I think I’m beginning to understand the way this course will develop me as a person. Moving from Rowlandson’s view of the Indians to Delano’s of Africans and Spaniards to Faulkner on the whole twisted mess of the South, and the ways those writers buried and layered and nuanced their meanings, forces my understanding to expand, forces an unpacking of all that innocence until by the time we reach Tripmaster Monkey I’ll be way beyond the point I’m at now. Maybe even ready to come home and rewrite America. 

In case anyone thinks the word "innocent" still means anything other than manipulative, willful ignorance

Trolls in the lakes of Landås

Yesterday I went into the city to teach my writing workshop. As I bounced around the whiteboard, watching the students carefully scribe “Purdue OWL” and “no subject headers” in their notebooks, I felt as though every batch of kids that sits in there is one more buttress against the grammatically inventive, meandering, plagiarism-pocked papers bound to turn up in a month.

I was meant to check out a class on Norwegian literature, but I couldn’t face it. Instead I went up Landåsfjell, to gain some perspective and a view of the western edge of Bergen’s fjord. I climbed up and sat by one of the frozen lakes, dusted with snow, until a terrifying burbling noise startled me down the mountain like a jackrabbit. In afterthought, it must have been the ice settling. At the time I thought there was surely something under there trying to get out.

Wednesday evenings there is an organ concert at Storetveit kirk near Fantoft. I’ve only been once before, but the swell of solemn sound in that great stone kirk floods my imagination with Viking triumphs and troll invasions and faery dances. The solemnity with which everyone sits, head tilted, in their pews, bowed or uplifted beneath the weight of the music, gives a social quality to what is yet solitude. Walking home after through crisp frozen air, the bell tolling the hour behind me, I once more breathed the mixture of contentment and heroism that steals through life.

Today Anita brought marmite in for the class to eat, as a taste of Britain. She also brought me a Daim Freia bar. Now that is love.

We didn’t teach our adult class today—there was a presentation on students’ mental health that we had to attend, instead. I understood about forti prosent of the lecture, and just about all of the slide show (luckily, I’ve been reading a Norwegian book about a depressed writer this past week and had the vocabulary). It didn’t help that of the two psychologists presenting, one spoke a rapidfire Norwegian that bubbled out of him with little pause for breath or moments of clearsighted translation. And the other was Swedish. Still, I got the gist: fifty percent of Norwegian high school girls are dissatisfied with their bodies (so, glass half full or empty), tips on identifying depressed students, and there will be a special meeting for teachers of Uttøya survivors after. Tusen takk, UiB Norskkurs.

Movie recommendation: Upperdog. Intense, honest look at Norwegian life.

Låndasfjell

אז למה את לא גרה בארץ? The Land.

טוב לזכור שאני לא היחידה בעולם. טוב ליראות כיפות, ונרות חנוכה, והשמש ירושלמי. טוב לשמוע עברית. טוב להיות בארץ

Absurd and utter culture shock. Icy winds of 5° changed to balmy breezy 15°. Political politeness shifted to fanaticism-driven lawbreaking. Passersby transformed from reserved strangers to rollicking, friendly family. Even the moon is in the wrong place, and has climbed higher in the sky, aloof above the palm trees.

At the Kotel (Western Wall)

Arriving in Israel was comfortable, and familiar, and a good regular mind blip. I arrived at 2 am to a country that speaks my language, shares my religion, and gives me my history. The nesher (cab) driver shocked me completely—when the guy sitting in front of me tried to offer him payment, he turned and said, “can’t you see I’m driving?” Granted, he did turn around completely, but the refusal to multitask while driving represents a complete shift in Israeli cabby mentality. We drove through Ramot and Geulah first, and I got to remember the uncomfortable part of Israel too: huge signs saying “Women and girls, please dress modestly” (can you think of a more subtle way to tell someone they’re only a body? The advertisers who use women's curves to sell beer and charedim who insist women cover up every last inch of skin possess one thing in common-- they both think of women only as sex objects. They just have different reactions to it) and smaller signs saying “No Zionists.” Well, I don’t like you either. 

Disclaimer: I thought about translating and explaining every piece of this to those not familiar with Israel or Hebrew, and then gave a huge mental shrug and decided it would lose some flow and integrity if I did. המבין יבין. And everyone else is free to ask questions in the comments which I will answer thoroughly.

Hooded against the Israeli sun

We pulled up at my Bubby’s apartment and I woke my mother and got the hug I’ve been missing for four months. She did a quick check for new piercings and then returned to sleep.

Friday was lovely—my parents, baby sister and I went down to the biblical zoo, where they only host animals mentioned in Tanach. Lots of antlered creatures that would have been bloody sacrifices 200 years ago. We had sufganiyot (jelly- and caramel- and chocolate- filled donuts) as a pretaste of Chanukkah yumminess. Then our cousins from Ramat Beit Shemesh came in, and the apartment devolved into pre-shabbat chaos.

The kids have had a bit of trouble placing me this year when we skype. My aunt asks them:

Do you know where Hannah is living this year?

Blank stares.

Norvegya!

More blank stares.
אמא, איפה נורווגיה?

בצפון.

Oh! Suddenly they get it. על יד החרמון?

Face-palm.

Moriah, six-years-old-going-on-twelve, asked me how long it took to get to Israel from Norvegya.

“ten hours,” I told her.

“אז למה את לא גרה בארץ?” she asked. She’s been well-trained. Cue the guilt trip.

Shabbat was full of the zemirot and chicken/cholent/beef and family that I’ve been missing. I bumped into old Bnei Akiva friends, and walked with my family down to Gan Sacher past the old monastery, and up into the Hebrew Museum’s sculpture garden, and checked out the Ramat Gan campus of Hebrew University (where my baby sister may live next year). Sunday my middle sister came in from the States, and we did a mid-intersection sisterly hug smack in the middle of Emek Refaim. Monday we headed down to Eilat for our vacation. We meant to stop for a hike on the way, but as we were about to drive down the dirt road, we saw a sign that said “shetach aish” (firing zone). After a lengthy family discussion about the age of the sign, the likelihood that the Israeli army would actually be practicing here, and something from my mom on how she’d do it if it was just her and my dad but with the three of us the risk was too high, we decided not to hike. Which turned out to be a good idea, judging by the herds of tanks engaged in training exercises that we passed as we continued. Instead, we stopped at Timna Park and  walked through and up and between all the strange rock formations.

Tuesday we hiked Emek HaNeelam, the Disappearing Valley (is that it? No, I think it’s that one. Wait, this one! They were all disappearing valleys). We wound between the red, purple, white, and black mountains of Eilat and up and down its fantastic rock formations and tried out the echoes. We skidded down futuristic moonscapes and sent cascades of rock showering down to join its brothers. My dad told me not to climb so much, I was destroying the nature, so I explained to him the law of conservation of mass and that all of it would still be here for future hikers, and that his attachment to surface appearance is troubling and indicative of the influence of shallow materialistic society. Then we headed back to the shore where we swam by the coral reef. A fish bit my leg so that blood poured down whenever I left the water. Still worth it. And kind of cool to have a battle wound from coral reef gazing. 

That night I finally got around to checking what I need to apply for my Canadian passport next year (born in Montreal, I of course have citizenship, but a Canadian passport will come in handy as a student at the U of T). I ended my frustrating search by sending an email to the embassy that ended with “How can I apply for my social number so I can apply for my ClicSEQUR account so I can apply for my birth certificate so I can apply for my passport?” It was with great difficulty that my sisters restrained me from tagging an “F you” onto the end of that, but I think it may have been implied in the question.

Wednesday we did the hike we wanted to do on Monday, Nachal Adah. My dad called the IDF and checked, and they said there’d be no firing practice during Chanukkah. You’ve got to love a country that runs on the same schedule as you. Anyhow, the first ten minutes of the hike was a hellish jog through increasingly narrow canyon walls which I don’t remember scrambling out of but must have practically spat myself out through onto a plateau way higher than the actual trail. Once they caught up, my parents talked a bit about paying for therapy to help me with my claustrophobia, but since the only big problem it causes is them having to hurry along a trail, I really don’t think it’s worth it (plus, wouldn’t they put me in small spaces to accustom me to it?). And at least I could stride along the narrow ridge of the mountains for several hours afterwards, relieved and relaxed while several thousand meters in the air.

At the restaurant that night, chabadnicks entered and lit a chanukkiah with the waiters, singing “haneirot halalu” with off-key energy. A young girl in tight jeans jumped up and started to sing and bounce by the candles. Te looked and said “uh-oh,” and we all burst out laughing.

Shabbat in Jerusalem again. Friday night we davened at Shirach Chadasha, and it was the first time in six months I was actually in a synagogue. European shuls usually relegate their women to balconies in the manner of an audience at the Globe Theater; they haven't quite reached the twenty-first century yet (to be fair, neither have some shuls in the Gush). Shabbat morning we went to Yakar, which I love for the melodies and the mix of Israeli-American-young-old-shtachim-styles-conservative-dress, and the break for shiurim after Torah reading.

There is a peculiar magic to Jerusalem. You bump into your entire past here: friends from high school, Bnei Akiva, midrasha, university… Normally this drives me crazy, but the gods of serendipity must have been watching out for me, because I ran into the best of every era of my life: my closest friends from Maryland, favorite Orot Israeli, funniest Bnei Akivaniks, and the Nishmater with the driest sense of humor. Thank you, ye gods.

After my parents left the country, my sisters and I went up to Haifa to see our favorite Israeli family friends. They’re highly educated yet super-chill. Yoni’s a prof at the University and gave us a tour, showing us the 400 BC Phoenician boat that was dragged up from the harbor and now sits in the archaeology museum, and the view of all Haifa from the university tower. U of Haifa held streams of students that filled a gap that nags at me in Bergen: diversity. In Haifa, students in hijabs passed the students tanning in mini skirts while students holding their kippot to their heads rushed between the two. I heard Hebrew, Russian, French, and Arabic, and skin colors ranged from pale pearly to deep bronze. I’m not usually acutely conscious that Bergen lacks this kind of human mix, but some part of me keeps scanning the crowd for the normal difference that I’m used to.

A Bahai friend of mine from college is in Israel for two years volunteering at the Bahai temple in Haifa. When he heard I was coming, he offered a private tour through the gardens. We got to pump him with questions about the Bahai faith (no ritual, a goal of working to create spiritual communities regardless of their being Bahai or other faith, no women on the Justice Board (!), international presence, and the thing about only Bahai walking up the terraces is a myth, we walked upwards). Ben would make a good representative of any religion. He’s composed and kind, quiet and yet unpretending and casual. He showed us the Ark, the gated section where the four buildings that world Bahai work in stand: the archives, education center, textual study, and justice building. I like that as the core of a nation: all the world really needs are schools, courts, and libraries. We also went into the shrine at the bottom of the gardens, which was closed to visitors just then. I asked Ben first if there were any statues in there, and it turned out it was simply an utterly serene space. In the center were different kinds of flowers and lights: trailing plants, blooming petunias and planters of roses, and candelabras of flame or electric light. A delicious aroma perfumed the air. We stood respectfully as Ben sat cross-legged and prayed. A prayer on the wall seemed a blend of the stereotypes of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: it had one God, sacrifice, and infidels in it. The bit I like best was about God’s creation of humanity. “Be Thou,” He said. And we were.

 

It struck me, as I moved to sit cross-legged on the carpet, that Bahai is the perfect religion for a twenty-first century human. Individualistic prayer, communal social action, based on a desire to help all people achieve spirituality in whatever faith they choose—it contains the perfect amount of world-optimization and nonjudgmental tolerance. Closing my eyes to the symbols of human hope—light and greenery—I breathed in peacefully for a moment, holding only serenity in my mind. Then I thought of the mess that is Judaism, the halachic tangles and the misogyny and the in-fighting and men spitting on little girls in Ramat Beit Shemesh and price tag attacks in the shtachim and women’s faces vanishing off billboards in Jerusalem, and breathed in deeply once more, and walked carefully backwards out of the room. 

 

That night I met up with the Lewis twins and Thea from Nishmat and we went to a concert by an Israeli singer (Amir something). Think Mizrachi rock. He sauntered up to the mike as though it was just luck it happened to be there, and belted out Biblical ballads and love songs. He stopped singing at moments, stroking his beard or adjusting his cap, and let the crowd roar out the words instead. It was half concert, half sing-along. Very Israeli, and we danced in the aisles and pretended to know the words.

My last night in Jerusalem, Te and El and I went to see the second Sherlock Holmes. It’s more fun than in an American theater, because everyone’s whispering, not just us. On the way back we had a loud altercation about the female characters’ relative depth and the feminist response to a cardboard femme fatale, which must have woken every protestor sleeping in a tent in Gan Sacher.

My nesher back to the airport was as positive an experience as my nesher there had been awful. We wound through my favorite streets in Rechavia and Bacca, past balconies of clean Jerusalem stone climbing up the slope, then into an area lost somewhere between the picturesqueness of Nachlaot and the shuk, and finally went down from Yerushalayim by way of Shaar HaGai. Bab El Wad. The Gate of the Valley. Gate av Dalen. My favorite route, that passes the beit knesset that looks like the Beit Hamikdash, and my sabah’s kever on Har HaMenuchot and the memorial to the convoys from 1948. A good way to leave Yerushalayim.

My Abba has this thing about moving big rocks so my Ima can sit comfortably. It's cute, but dangerous.

In Eilat 

Nachal Adah

Kenyon HaShechoret-- Black Canyon

Our lovely penthouse apartment with private pool

Gan HaBotani-- Botanical Gardens

Speak no evil, smell no evil, pick your nose

Five again

The First Snow

Ruth and I made Thanksgiving dinner for a bunch of our European buddies at Fantoft. We made it a week late, since I didn’t have any time to spare last week, and as we’d guessed, none of our European friends actually knew when Thanksgiving was anyways. It was the first Thanksgiving many of them had ever had, and we made a nice spread, albeit turkeyless: stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce, and apple pie. Of course someone asked, “what does this celebrate?” prompting confusion. Ruth answered, “The pilgrims survived their first winter in America” at the same time as I tossed off, “we killed the Indians.” Then we settled down for a long history lesson.

The thing is, sitting around that huge table with a kooky Frenchwoman, blunt Australian, reserved yet polymathic Mexican, rarely sober Russian, gorgeous German, quiet German, evasive Norwegian, perky Russian, and my American friend who keeps me grounded, it really felt like Thanksgiving. All together, they created a nutty, warm atmosphere that flooded through the homesickness I’d felt since seeing everyone’s fb statuses about heading home for Thanksgiving. 

Afterwards, people peeled off to finish studying for exams, and we were left with a core group discussing contemporary American politics. I felt guilty for not finishing my grading instead (I set myself the same deadline I give my kids—by the time they’ve turned in their next assignment, I have to have handed back the first), but realized this: Fulbright is paying me just as much to cook a Thanksgiving dinner and sit around with my European friends talking about American politics as it is to correct English essays. Wheee!

We started reading Of Mice and Men with my high schoolers. It’s not my favorite book, or rather, Steinbeck isn’t my favorite writer, but I dislike this one less than all his others. I noticed one of the brightest girls in the class seemed rather unenthusiastic, and cornered her after class.

“Did you like it?”

“Not so much.”

“Okay. What do you like to read?”

She gave an impish smile. “Harry Potter.”

“Yeah, well, me too, but Of Mice and Men has its points.”

“I’d rather read a classic.”

“This is a classic. It occupies a pretty important spot in American literature.”

“No, I mean…” She looked at me a moment, and then I got it.

“You mean, a British book?”

“Yes.”

 Ooooh! That’s a challenge if ever I heard one. When Anita and I got back to the staffroom, I told her, “Listen, I’m going to do something very un-Norwegian, and I know Fulbright doesn’t want me to, but you have to let me.” The teacher who’d been about to leave the room came back in and waited at the door to hear, making me laugh.

Holiday cheer in the Torgalmenningen

“I’m going to come in for an extra day next week, and I want you to book me an empty classroom. I’m going to kidnap the most intelligent kids in the class for a session. The rest of those kids are using the book to learn English, but these guys can use it to learn how to do literary analysis. They may not like Of Mice and Men, but goddamnit, by the end they’re going to be able to explain why in literary terminology.” Anita laughed, and said something about Fulbright forbidding overworking (you know, I need plenty of free time to cook Thanksgiving for the descendants of European imperialists), but finally told me it was okay, and actually got enthusiastic about it. I hadn’t been sure how much the Norwegian instinct to level the playing field would make her uncomfortable with pulling out a group for advanced study. But, it’s all engines go, and now I'm rereading Of Mice and Men and foraging through JSTOR and my college AmLit notes, and writing down everything relative to the latest article I've read on education, as I try to figure out exactly how I’m going to plan this lesson. You'd think teaching would get easier with practice, but actually it just gets more complicated, as I'm aware of more and more factors. 

I’ve learned a new phrase in Norwegian: “Jeg gidd ikke.” I can’t find a perfect colloquial equivalent in English, the closest I get is “can’t be bothered,” but the Hebrew “lo bah li” seems to cover it better. I’m also most of the way through Pike med perle ørdebobb, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and my ability to read the language is growing in leaps and bounds. Just wish I could understand it spoken, but Norwegians talk too fast and with too many different dialects. 

View from my apt window

First snowfall in Bergen! Every morning for the past week I’ve woken up without turning on a light, and tiptoed to my window to peer out at the day, because sometimes, just sometimes, it’s a fresh sunny blue-skied one and then I rush to get dressed and out walking before the hail comes. Friday morning, I woke up late, and gave a satisfied stretch because it’s a day off, and went to peek through my curtains. Snow! Snowy heaps with spikes of hunter green on the grass in front of Fantoft, and white roofs on the little red wooden houses, and Løvstakken not just snow-capped, but snow-sloped, each tree along the mountain delicately etched out in the thinnest of frosted lines. And the sun was shining! I can’t begin to explain the feeling of wellbeing that subsumed me as I ate breakfast.

Shabbat starts early in Bergen now, so I had a lot to cram into my day. I started a load of laundry, began to cook for shabbat, and then, halfway through both, cut out joyously into the snow. I wanted a view of Bergen in the white. And so I headed up Fløyen, and paused at every turn of the switchback trail to gaze in awe at the landscape. The haze lifted over the fjord, and I could see sunlight flooding over the water as it stretched towards the Atlantic. The skeletal rawness of trees against snowy skies always sends me into agonies of pleasure. At the top, I looked around me quickly, stood a moment, and turned down again.

As I swept and cooked and folded laundry and generally readied my apartment for shabbat, I hummed to myself the joy of this season. Now, I’m not crazy. I know I’m supposed to be depressed now. Like all the other Fulbrighters, I got the pamphlet on SADD and almost daily I hear Norwegians kvetch about the rain. But something about this climate makes me happy, deeply, ridiculously soul-happy. I’ve heard that moods are dependent on weather, and it’s true, only mine seems backwards—I love this winter. I can’t get enough of the snow and the rain and the winter night. And when the sun peeks through, everything glitters, sleek with the latest hailstones. And said sun doesn’t burn, or beat down, or invade your clothes with sticky sweat, but provides only a clean, clear light. The whole land here is clean, constantly bathed in rain and washed fresh each day. Well. Enough panegyrics about the rain. I’m going to go out walking in it.

How can Norwegian kids not be your favorite?
Look how cute they are in their little snow outfits!

View of the fjord from the top of Fløyen

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

“What do you want to learn today?” My class stared at me blankly, trying to figure out what I wanted from them.

“Um, weren’t we supposed to start the American political campaign?” asked A.
“Yes, but we’re trying something new first,” I answered.

In the back, H raised his hand. “political system,” he said. I don’t think they were quite getting the exercise.

“Okay, good,” I wrote it on the board, “what else? What would you like to learn that you think we might not cover? What have you spent your lives wondering about?” With a bit more prompting, they began to suggest things: cultural norms in America, food, singers… still, they played it pretty safe. Nobody shouted “hang-gliding” or “how to paint one’s nails” as I’d expected. Finally, A raised her hand again.

“But aren’t you, the teacher, supposed to decide what we study?” Thank you for playing my straight man, A.

“Yes. We could decide that way. Anita, the head teacher (let’s call her the president) and I (VP, okay?) could decide. What would be good about choosing that way?”

One of the Sara’s decided she had had enough. “Well, obviously, you know how to teach us.”

“Good,” I said. “That’s true. On the other hand, we’re not the ones actually learning, so there’s a downside; we don’t properly represent your interests. How else could we decide?”

One girl answered, “vote.” H suggested, “class council.” We went through different methods of governing the class, debating the pros and cons of each. The Norwegian reluctance to break traditional class norms slowly gave way under our probing discussion. They thought about the result of anarchy, matched individual choice against expert opinion, discussed the need for representation of everyone, and learned about how majority rules means forgetting the minority. Finally, I stepped back to the front and made the connections between American democracy and our exercise. 

For the next two weeks, the kids are going to be doing a project on the American elections. In groups, they’ll research a candidate and then present him/her. As I presented the Republican candidates and we discussed the situation in America today, it became clear that it’s going to be very difficult to explain how conservative the States are. Even the strongest American liberals are ten times more conservative than Norway’s most rightwing group. Things like having a female president, abortion, and healthcare are non-issues in this country—they can’t understand how they can be so divisive in the States. As I listed the candidates’ stances, their faces knotted into confusion. Finally, as though to pick at least one issue to understand thoroughly, they requested an explanation of Obama and healthcare; why would anybody be against national insurance? I labored to explain how sketchy the actual proposal was, and that people were frightened that they wouldn’t have control over their own health care. I told them about fear of “death panels,” where doctors would decide who lives and who dies. Very different from nowadays, where money does. (I may have leaked a little of my own political stance into the class discussion. I’m going to have to be more careful).

After the class, A and two other girls called me over to ask about the death penalty. They were shocked by American standards. A explained,  “even the… man… who, at Uttøya, on July 22, yeah? I sometimes wish he would die, but I couldn’t condone a death sentence.” Another of the girls agreed, “that would bring us down to his level.” I wanted to applaud. These high schoolers give me hope for humanity’s future. 

As they walked out, A turned back to me. “You know, it’s so hard for us to understand the American system. Because here, the government makes sure everyone has free education, and there’s almost no unemployment, and health care for all. And the thing is, it really works. So we can’t understand anything else. Because it works.” That, I think, may be the final word in favor of the Scandinavian system: it works. More than that, it’s starting to seep into my psyche. The desperate clawing to the top of the heap seems less and less important as months go by, and I'm beginning to understand that rather than become something extraordinary, there's something to be said for being simply extraordinary at the ordinary.

There are downsides to Norway’s safe, equal lifestyle. People don’t need to push themselves, they’re not as competitive, and they don’t smash their way to the top with the glorious heroic desperation that Americans evince. It makes masters literature classes much less exciting. It ruins elections (where was the drama? the tv mockery, the nasty slogans, the backbiting?). It doesn’t make for good movies.

At the end of the day, it comes down to this: Norway has free healthcare and education, while America rivals that with its free public bathrooms. So, to put it bluntly, Norwegians prioritize their longevity and their children’s futures, and America cares about shit.