Selected Farewell Party Photos

The Cult

38 days till departure

Yesterday was Purim for Jews and Holi for Hindus. These holidays have some similarity in both their season and their rituals. On Purim, the tradition is to get so drunk that you cannot differentiate between Haman the Wicked and Mordechai the Righteous. On Holi, you are supposed to drink bhang lassis and throw colored powder and paint at others. I still don’t know the religious significance of Holi, but I’d really like to celebrate it just the same.

Alas, commonality in religious traditions across the most disparate and diverse cultures is as human marriage and funeral rites. Many religions celebrate both the winter solstice and spring equinox. Bodhi, Christmas and Hanukah come to mind for the former; Easter and Passover, while hardly exhaustive, make the point for the latter.

Reflecting on the likeness of various faiths in their beliefs, one can also discern a common thread regarding human religious institutions. Using the formula, I could give flight to my just-so-barely suppressed lust for ultimate power by starting my very own new age religion. This could go over particularly well in India, where so many travelers go to find Answers. What are the things I need to get started?

Charismatic Leader
All such movements revolve around a charismatic leader. The Rebbes of various Hasidic courts enjoy almost slavish devotion. Sometimes smallish movements venerate their law-givers even more. Heck, Juche as a religion made Kim Il Sung into a quasi-deity.

The charismatic leader inspires devotion through his greatness, wisdom and holiness. People cleave to the big daddy who promises rewards to the good and punishment to evildoers, and of course attention to the disquiet of the individual follower. As the Messenger, I do feel that a proper personality cult is the order of the day. And I can do the charismatic thing without much ado.

Message of Enlightenment and Salvation
I’ll offer my acolytes a vision of a better world. People are searching for answers. Invariably, over the course of this spiritual quest, answers are provided by those who purport to bestow wisdom. Yet so often, these answers come up short. They are not articulated in a sufficiently accessible manner. They conflict with the vestiges of belief systems ingrained from childhood. And so on.

My doctrine will shorten that cognitive gap between the end of rationality and the beginning of faith; the leap will not have to be so great. You can find the answer through joy. (Breslev or Osho, anyone?)

It goes without saying that achieving the ultimate wisdom, inner peace, and overall enlightenment requires a lifetime of devotion to the cause. Since the doctrine is a rather central element to a religion, obviously I’ll need to flesh this one out a bit. But you get the general idea.

Group Speak
In putting the aforementioned doctrine into practice, I will make an effort to coin neologisms for common use among devotees, thus creating a wink-and-nod bond among the group. This is coupled with the next element.

Distrust of Outsiders
While intolerance of other belief systems is not my style, it could certainly prove handy to employ the former element and others like it to foster a certain distrust of other, let’s say, approaches. That said, I don’t envision any enforcement regime.

Inner Circle or pseudo-Clergy
I finally get it. The entire hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church now makes perfect sense to me. If the clergy can make itself into the kind yet authoritative big daddy, bolstered by an aura of holy infallibility, assisted by a coterie of handsome young men who are not supposed to have sex ever, the senior clergy can pretty much cherry-pick from all the earthly desires it can manage to lust after. Vast wealth helps, too.

I’m not so ambitious as to aspire to the Church of Rome. But a coterie of 20-30 well groomed disciples would certainly fit the bill.

Alternative Career Change
Who am I fooling here? Whatever religious doctrine I could come up with, fertile imagination notwithstanding, would be a load of bunk in the final analysis. Without meaning disrespect to anyone’s beliefs, at the end of the day, isn’t it all? Don’t we all cozy up to those particular parts of religious doctrine that appeal to us most? And downplay the more bothersome bits (until we are exhorted to rely on faith in the face of it)? I could not be the leader of a movement whose doctrine I did not fully subscribe to, even if I invented it myself.

Fortunately, there will soon be a job opening which has all the romantic ideological trappings of my misspent youth. As we all know, Fidel Castro is on the ropes. How agreeable to be the benevolent dictator of a pleasant Caribbean island!

A little analysis brings me rapidly to the conclusion that I am eminently qualified for the position:

• I speak Spanish
• I can do the charismatic leader shtick
• I like the tropical climate
• I like to eat yellow rice, black beans and pork
• I can dance salsa
• I think that some modified version of socialism, while having its costs, is a just and utilitarian economic model
• I wouldn’t mind thumbing my nose at the current world order
  

Indeed, I could get used to being addressed as El Presidente. It becomes me. And I get all the perks of power, without feeling sheepish about it.

Any advice on how to proceed?

Farewell Tour

46 days till departure

I’ve recently ramped up my social schedule in order to touch base with all my friends before leaving. There’s a priority on those with whom there’s been less contact in recent times. Everyone deserves a farewell in person. It also increases the likelihood that they’ll come to my farewell party on March 23. Dear Readers: please note the date in your calendar and consider yourself invited.

It already feels like I’m traveling, in a way. I didn’t bother with any errands or chores this weekend, except for a polio inoculation, and my second of three shots for Japanese encephalitis. I just hit the open road, also in a type of farewell bid to my beloved Mazda 6, helpfully provided by Attunity. My first stop was to Noa, who was part of my first group of friends when I first arrived in Tel Aviv seven years ago. We referred to ourselves as the Mishpukhe Kookoo, and we did nearly everything together, including a crazy trip to Sinai with five of us in Liora’s 1989 Peugeot 205, plus the dog Shelly, who found a new home among the Bedouins as a result. Fast forward to today, and Noa now has her own successful architectural practice as well as two adorable toddlers. A special bonus was seeing Yoni, Noa’s brother, with whom I traveled in Goa on my last trip to India.

From there, I went to spend Shabbat with my friends from Brazil, Tali and Avram, who, for inexplicable reasons of their own, now live in an illegal outpost in the West Bank settlement block of Gush Etzion. These are old friends of mine; we went to the same crazy Chabad synagogue on Sao Paulo’s Avenida August back in the mid 90s. And we’ve been close friends ever since. They are what I would call Modern Orthodox, with a strong emphasis on the modern.

In the event, I got stuck for two hours in a heinous traffic jam on the way, and nearly ran out of gas. As it turns out, they are changing the (bypass) road because of accelerated construction of the euphemistically named Security Barrier.

Folks on the extreme Left and Right are against the barrier. The Left hates it because it puts Palestinians in a pen, further exacerbated the hardships brought on by the IDF’s cantonization of the West Bank. The Right hates it because, with adjustments, this is going to be the border of a putative Palestinian state, if our neighbors can ever get their act together enough to put their house in order, sit down at the negotiating table, and make an updated version of the deal that the world community has been inching towards since 1947. A real state. Not the failed state that would be stillborn now if it came into being.

The vast and sensible majority in Israel realizes that the barrier has the dual advantages (for us) of effectively keeping out suicide bombers and drawing a border etched by extensive Supreme Court rulings.

Thank heavens for the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the last solid pillar of our democracy. That’s probably why the extreme Right vilifies it. It has been a reliable bulwark against a Halakic Republic. What’s more, it is responsible for some of the Western world’s most progressive rulings and precedents on all manner of issues. Whatever you think of Israel, you have to admire the Supreme Court. So it is reasonable that if anyone draws pre-negotiation borders, it should be this venerable institution.

Nevertheless, seeing that eight-meter high wall with its watchtowers snake across the landscape is daunting, to say the least.

Tali and Avram’s children are adorably affectionate, and we had good food and good conversation in the spirit of Beit Chabad na Augusta. I’ve always prided myself on the variety of ideologies and worldviews held by friends of mine, even and especially when they theoretically clash with my own deeply held opinions. My view is that I don’t care what your opinion is, as long as you have one. Peace comes when we see the human beings beyond the espoused lifestyles and opinions. True to form, we managed to get onto the topic of homosexuality and Judaism, and a spirited discussion ensued.

Tali’s basic argument was premised on the idea that sexual orientation is somehow volitional, i.e. you make a conscious choice. Even if it is difficult, and you’re confused or willfully sitting on the fence, so to speak, you should endeavor to marry and have children as per Jewish law and tradition. I emphasized that sexual orientation is in no way volitional. How could it be? Who in their right mind would choose to be gay? You face rejection from your family, friends and society, not to mention the task of resocializing yourself to accept a worldview that is fundamentally opposed to everything you were brought up to think and believe. Show me one person who would consciously make such a decision.

Rather, it exists in nature as part of the evolutionary process. As proof, it is far more prevalent in the animal kingdom than most people would care to realize. This was new to her, and so this morning, I did a quick search on Google, and netted the following sites of interest to support my claim, to wit:

• National Geographic
• BBC
• “Crime Against Nature”
• The Gay Animal Kingdom

In any case, it was a lovely weekend, full of fruitful discussions, joyful children, and good cooking all around. The primary motivation for this upcoming sojourn in India came back to me. When released from underneath the weight of responsibilities regarding home, career, finances, staying in shape, and other such burdens of the rat race, you have time not only to enjoy yourself, but to see your own true objectives more clearly. What are we here for anyway? Just to work and pay off the mortgage? I hardly think so.

Ultimately, my dream is to be on the perfect tropical island, without a financial care in the world, so I can enjoy the surroundings and fire off these cyber-rants to you, my beloved readers. My only hope is that you will enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing them.

To get from A to B is no trivial feat. Short of miraculously striking it rich, I have no choice but to slog it out in hi-tech to hopefully get to the point where I can do exactly what I’m going to do this coming year. Of course I’d like to do this forever. Wouldn’t we all? But my head says that it would be unwise to mortgage the quality of the aforesaid dream. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait another thirty years to have even just a taste of it.

This year will be the spiritual preparation for hitting the ground running and taking my hi-tech career to the next level to make that cold hard cash to reach that Ultimate Island sooner rather than later. Life is too short to do it any other way.

Inoculations

50 days till departure.

Preparations for my departure have begun in earnest. I’ve resigned my position at Attunity. I’ve notified my landlord. I’ve arranged for my stuff to be shipped to my sister’s place for safekeeping. And, this past Friday, I went to the tropical diseases clinic at Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center for inoculations.

At first blush, I thought that it would only be a question of whether or not to take malaria tablets. Conventional wisdom dictates that, in spite of the side effects of frightening nightmares, an ounce of prevention is still worth more than a pound of cure. Before I left for a year in Indonesia, back in 1994, I went to Toronto’s tropical diseases clinic and got immunized for everything under the sun, including rabies of all things.

And do you think it helped me?

Hah! I was sick as a dog. After my inoculation for typhoid, I got paratyphoid. I even remember the meal that gave it to me. It was at a street stall restaurant. I had deep fried cows’ lungs. I know that probably sounds revolting, but it was actually one of the tastier things I ate in that country. After incubation, I had a high fever, simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea, loss of appetite, accompanied by the standard aches and pains of such ailments. I lost 10 kg.

At risk of blowing my own sanctimonious horn, it is very much worth mentioning that I didn’t miss a single day of work at the Indonesia Australia Language Foundation. In retrospect, far scarier is the fact that none of the doctors could figure out what I had. I took traditional medicine. I took other regular medication. I even submitted to an HIV test. Until finally, after about three weeks of visits, some bright spark of a doctor at a very exclusive private clinic figured it out, and gave me the requisite antibiotics. And I got better. Well, mostly.

I never regained the weight. I had some liver damage. And diarrhea of varying degrees of severity accompanied me for most of the remainder of my Indonesia sojourn. When I went back to Canada, I went straight to the emergency ward. They offered me an appointment with the specialist in November (this was in August). So I explained that I had just returned from Indonesia, and then listed all the ailments I had suffered from over the course of that year of living dangerously. I got an appointment five days later.

It was interesting. The specialist stuck a tubular camera up my rear and I got to see it in real time on the monitor by the gurney. Each time he couldn’t push any further, he called on the nurse to “irrigate”. I won’t elaborate on that point. But one final element to the consultation that I remember was that the nurse was Indonesian. At that time, being FOB, I was able to banter away with her. She said my Indonesian was better than her own kids’.

That’s one thing about the Indonesian language. It never fails to impress people at parties. In actual fact, it is the easiest language I’ve ever come across. I had a basic level of fluency, up to and including reading the newspaper and simple novels. Not that I remember very much anymore. But people never fail to be flabbergasted to find out that I actually know (or rather knew) Bahasa Indonesia. If truth be told, they should be far more impressed by my Portuguese, which is flawless, and a sophisticated language on every level, if ever there was one.

In the event, the medication I was prescribed consisted only of three pills, which had to be released by the Ministry of Defense in Ottawa. Happily, I gained back all that weight. In recent years, I’ve gained some more.

But back to the clinic at Dizengoff Center. Wouldn’t you know it, I needed a booster for hepatitis A, another for hepatitis B (I was inoculated 20 years ago), typhoid (only good for three years as it turns out, and only with 80% effectiveness), meningitis, polio (go figure), and (you gotta love this one) Japanese encephalitis. What is that? Who’s ever had it? No travelers I’ve ever met.

I always have a nasty reaction to these injections. I had a tetanus booster last summer which made me sick for three days. Understandably, I was nervous. But guess what? Other than sore arms, nothing. The thing that hurt the most was the 400 shekel bill at the pharmacy for the malaria tablets (may as well go all the way) and antibiotics to keep on hand in the event of nasty tummy upsets.

I’ll conclude by mentioning that on my last trip to India, I caught nothing in terms of illness. Not even a minor tummy-ache. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I even had so much as a headache while I was there. I attribute this to Skye Frontier’s Rules of Eating in Dirty Countries:

1. Only drink bottled water with the seal intact. Use it to brush your teeth.
2. No ice in drinks.
3. Don’t eat on the street. I’ve been told that if you see it boiling or frying in front of you, it’s OK. Maybe for the person who suggested it.
4. Eat pineapple centers. Apparently this has preventive medicinal qualities.
5. Enjoy fruit with thick peels that require lots of work for waiters and other hotel staff.

It worked in India the last time. It worked in Thailand (although probably wasn’t necessary). By gosh, it even worked in Mexico, home of Montezuma’s Revenge.

Now let’s see what actually happens.

Getting Out

It is now a question of time before the U.S. exits the Iraq quagmire that it so incompetently created. Long before this happens, we should think about the ramifications of this now inevitable withdrawal.

Why did they invade in the first place? Revenge. Short-sightedness. The Bush Administration cynically capitalized on the shock and anxiety that resulted from the 9/11 attacks to simply settle an old and personal score.

Here in Israel, smelling an opportunity to exact direct vengeance for the Scud attacks of 1991, the government of Arik Sharon actively abetted the Administration’s efforts. But as true friends and allies, it should have been done differently. Untold damage was done to Israel’s reputation. While there will always be voices that blame the Jews and Israel for all the world’s ills, we should have pointed out what we knew even back then: that Iraq wasn’t the major threat in the region. To be sure, Saddam was rabble-rouser-in-chief. But it has been common knowledge for some time that the real danger comes from the Mullah regime in Iran. Perhaps we could have brought our influence to bear and saved political capital to face the truly existential menace. Of course no one was sorry to see Saddam go. However now we have a completely different geopolitical reality to deal with.

The fall of the Baath regime strengthened the Islamic Republic’s hand immeasurably. What’s more, after seeing governments toppled in two immediate neighbors, Afghanistan and Iraq, by a U.S. that was lashing out like a frightened rabid dog, they drew the conclusions that any empathetic mind would also come to. The mullah regime faced an existential danger on its doorstep and had to ramp up its political and military capabilities to stave it off.

Acting on this, Professor (yes, in Engineering) Ahmedinejad was groomed for and catapulted to the presidency. They almost certainly didn’t realize at the time that he would be like the golem run wild.

Ahmedinejad is a messianist. He believes that the Twelfth Imam is about to reappear in the context of cataclysmic events to bring about the Reign of God on Earth. I have a severe allergy to folks of this ideological ilk Furthermore, it is totally reasonable to group this evil professor with messianic Christians who keep looking at their watch wondering why the Rapture hasn’t yet occurred, as well as those jovially misleading types in Chabad Lubavitch. They will only bring us death, destruction, war and misery. Forget that their spiritually compelling arguments fire off extra special synapses in the portion of the brain that generates spiritual ecstasy. They’re wrong. They’re bad. They must not be allowed to wield political influence in such a way that it endangers the world.

Iran is well on its way to producing nuclear weapons. That doesn’t mean to say that they’ll use them. As a matter of fact, they probably won’t. It is safe to assume that for all their fiery rhetoric, they are still basically rational players on the international scene. Nevertheless, as we watch them take over effective influence in Iraq, as well as engender a Hizbollah-led coup in Lebanon, fund the monstrous Hamas, muse out loud about closing the Straits of Hormuz and stirring up sectarian tensions in other Middle Eastern states with Shiite minorities, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that once armed with nuclear weapons, the Islamic Republic’s ability to project its power and zealotry around the region will be pretty much untrammeled. Add to the mix Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and God knows who else racing to obtain nuclear capabilities of their own, and we have a foreboding scenario indeed.

What can be done? Basically nothing, if you think in terms of realpolitik. The American public doesn’t have the appetite for another military adventure in the Middle East, especially after the Bush Administration foolishly blew all its chips in Iraq, with Israel and some of the Anglo countries acting as cheerleaders. For all the mystique of the Israeli Air Force, Iran’s nuclear sites are too spread out and well protected to do anything more than temporarily and partially cripple them. The only real solution would be sustained bombing of all critical military, Revolutionary Guard and Bassij installations. The regime doesn’t need to be toppled. That task is for the Iranian people. But it definitely needs to be defanged.

*********************

Whenever I go visit Yotvata, the kibbutz where I made Aliyah eight years ago, I truly get a sense of how long I’ve been in this country. It seems like it has all passed in the blink of an eye. I spent a little over a year there. Now in the dining hall, I see babies that have become children, and adults who have gone grey and gained weight. Some people have even passed away. Life continues there, and I can see it in snapshots, giving me a better perspective of the time that has elapsed.

What have I been doing all this time? I’ve lived in a beautiful apartment. I had a fulfilling relationship that lasted five and a half years. I’ve built an impressive career. On that score, the last two years at Attunity have been the best ever. I’ve never been in any organization where everyone, without exception, was so nice. And not just nice and friendly. Nice and professional. Nice and cooperative. Nice as mentors. Nice as friends.

And all the while, I have dreamed about India. I’ve been everywhere else in the meantime, because I always knew that India would be a special and long sojourn. Ever since I came back from there in January 2002, to the worst portion of the Al Aqsa Intifada, I knew that my mission there was incomplete.

So I want to put all my achievements in my back pocket, and with a smile on everyone’s face, go and fulfill this mission. Any way you slice it, there really is no alternative to the working world and the rat race. It is against the order of nature to obligate a human being to sit and concentrate for ten plus hours a day in front of a computer. And I have another thirty years of this to look forward to? If so, then a sabbatical is definitely the order of the day.

And I want to share the experience with you.

If you’ve always thought I was crazy (in the mental state sense of the word) about Bollywood, well then get ready for The Dream Factory. You know all those movies about the young country bumpkin that takes the Greyhound out to Hollywood to make it in the movies? Well, this is the middle-aged computer professional taking El Al to Bombay to do just that.

Ever wondered how it is that curious Jews somehow manage to square non-theistic Buddhism with archetypally theistic Judaism? Get ready for the theological face-off with the followers of the Dalai Lama and Beit Chabad of Dharamsala in The Supermarket of Spirituality.

How long can one laze around on the most perfect beach in the world without going stir crazy? Longer than you might think. We’ll find out for sure in Andaman Adventures.

And there’ll be an ongoing series of food, book, art and film reviews in Bag of Culture.

*********************

Just as the U.S. is getting out of Iraq, now seems like a logical juncture for me to spread my wings and get out of Israel, for the trip of a lifetime to India. After the Passover holidays, on April 12, 2007, I am closing the beautiful apartment, leaving the excellent job, and bidding farewell to such dear friends who have never let me know a single day of loneliness. For all of this, I am expansively grateful. However, unless my digestive tract definitively gives out or I run out of money, both of which are unlikely, the sojourn will be for a year.

Welcome aboard.