TravelStream™ news feed for member shneer on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/shneer en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:17:39 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219575780/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219575780/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219575780/tpod.html Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:17:39 -0400 Davai: Russian Jews Taking Spain By Storm

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Tangier, Morocco

Our last day was spent in Tangier, Africa, an old busy trading port on the northern coast of Morocco. We woke early, took a bus to Algeciras, Spain and then a ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar, thus crossing two international borders to reach the promised land, a country that still has a decent sized Jewish population and good shopping. The group from Kiev did not come along due to delays in visas. Instead they sat on the beach in Gibraltar.

It surprised me how much apprehension many members of the group had about going to Morocco. After all, among Muslim countries Morocco has some of the friendliest relations with Jews and some of the least hostile relationships with Israel, which is home to the largest Morocco Jewish community in the world. People were worried about crime, about dressing immodestly, about gypsies, and about standing out as Jews. It also reminded me that many of these Russian Jewish immigrants have not had extensive travel opportunities outside of a birthright Israel tour, a free 10-day trip to Israel from young Jews age 18-26, who haven't been to Israel before. The thought of a busy, crowded African country, and a Muslim one at that, made many of them nervous.

Our tour guide, Muhammad, took us on a brief bus tour around town with a quick "drive by" of the functioning synagogue in Tangier's French quarter. Our tour leader hadn't made arrangement for us to get into the synagogue in advance, and the bus driver was adamant that there was no place for us to stop. So we flashed our cameras as we drove by. But Muhammad got the point that as long as we were in a country that had a Jewish population ranging from 10,000-30,000 depending on whom you ask and a city with an official Jewish community, we wanted to see something, anything...Jewish. We got our wish.

We pulled up next to a run down building of the city's Jewish old folks home. That's right, we decided that if we couldn't get into a synagogue, at least we would meet the community's elderly. A gentleman, who seemed to be staff, greeted us at the door and welcomed us in, while an older woman sat by the front door, clearly a resident. Above her hung pictures of King Muhammad VI, Rebbe Schneerson, the now passed Lubavitcher rebbe, and an picture that was probably Baba Sali, the praying father of Morrocan Jewry. Because our trip was so quick, we never got to talk about how different Moroccan Judaism was from anything we had seen on the trip, complete with local saints and pilgrimages. The wall in the old folks' home, then, was a pastiche of images that defined Moroccan Jewry better than any lecture could have done. It is a Judaism deeply interested in local holy figures, a community that has very strong relations with the central government, and one that, like many smaller communities around the world, has strong connections to Chabad Lubavitch Judaism.

At that moment, another person who clearly worked at the home came out screaming at Muhammad in Arabic, at which point Muhammad turned to me: "David, the head of the Jewish community is on the phone, and he wants to speak to you. He is not happy." How did I get dragged into this! It turns out that the first old man, who had greeted us, was just an elderly resident with a mild case of dementia, who had no authority to let us wander the building. I would now be reprimanded for this violation. I asked Muhammad in what language I should speak. Morocco, after all, is a multilingual country with Arabic the main language of the street, French an official language and a colonial legacy, and widespread use of Spanish. David, speak French.

Dear readers, I must let you know that although I am good at languages, French is not one of my better ones, and I was not relishing the opportunity to have it out with the community's leader in my broken French. It seemed an unfair fight. "Bonjour. Il y a une probleme?: (Or is it un problem...gender always caused me problems.)" And then I heard crackling static. I turned to the guy in the office, "Sir, I can't understand him." "OK, try Hebrew." Of course, the new international language of Jewish communication. So I asked in Hebrew, "Shalom. Yesh ba'ayah?" More crackling. "Sir, I still can't understand him." Well, then why don't you just try English. After all of that, the guy speaks English! Finally I heard through the crackling, "Vous etes juives? Atem yehudim? Are you Jews?" Three in one. Yes, yes, of course we are a group of Jews from America. Oh, then there's no problem. Enjoy yourself. That was the extent of his concern. But despite the community leader's blessing, the local administrator wanted us out, so we high tailed it back to the bus and headed for the old quarter, the medina.

We briefly wandered the medina, whose primary feature is a beautiful 15th century fortress built by the Portuguese. Jews lived in their quarter in of the medina and after a fun lunch with drum entertainment we wandered through that area searching for remnants of mezuzot on door posts and the old synagogue and cemetery. Again, arrangements had not been made in advance to get us into the non-functioning synagogue and a very old cemetery, but at least we got to bear witness, for the first time on the trip, to the layers of Jewish history on the lanscape. We saw the 1920s synagogue of the French quarter that houses the contemporary community, the old folks home from the turn of the century, and the old Jewish quarter, long since in active.

Our return ferry was at 3:30pm, leaving us little time to do much more than wander back through the medina to the ferry. The ride back was full of those last day conversations: what will we do back home, how tired we all were, and how amazing this experience was. It was also full of much more self-disclosure than had been the case earlier in the trip, at least with me. I learned from a couple of participants that having traveled with my husband had opened their eyes to gay couples, and two other participants talked to me about their gay relatives.

We had a great dinner at the hotel, one last closing circle, and then a 3:30am wake up call to catch a bus back to Malaga airport to fly home. It will be interesting to see how many of the amazing ideas this group generated come to fruition. Will they start study groups, host film nights, organize Shabbat dinners, bring me to Chicago to do more learning? But what is clear from my vantage point is that this is a group of 50 people, who have a much deeper body of knowledge about the Jewish past and present, which will empower them to think about how they can be part of the Jewish future.
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Gibraltar, Gibraltar

After our eighteen hour visit to Seville, the group bordered the bus and headed as far south on the Iberian peninsula as one can go, to the British colony of Gibraltar. The giant rock looms on the horizon for miles and guards the entrance to the Mediterranean, making it very valuable military territory in the days when naval power was power (before planes, trains, and automobiles).

The group of Russian Jews thought the addition of a British military garrison with a tiny tourist beach resort was an odd place for a Jewish study and identity tour. But in a few hours on the Rock of Gibraltar, we quickly convinced them that our arrival in Gibraltar on Friday afternoon to prepare for Shabbat was brilliant.

The group had a two hour tour of the Rock's limited tourist sites-a few cool military buildings, great views of the Straits of Gibraltar, and the infamous apes of Gibraltar, cute but so aggressive that they will jump on you and take a bag right off of your shoulder. The town is a two street strip of duty free shopping and unimpressive British pubs. It begged the questions, "What were we doing here?" I already knew the answer (one of the privileges of being the trip educator).

I stayed behind to prepare for Shabbat with Nadya, who was helping me lead our Shabbat group that was putting on a simple Friday evening Kabbalat Shabbat service, creating Saturday morning activities, organizing optional afternoon studying, and leading Havdallah. Remember that this is a group of Russian Jewish immigrants, who had little exposure to Judaism as a religion, and if they did have exposure to Judaism it was generally an Orthodox Judaism, what most Russian Jews see as the only "authentic" form of Judaism. Davai's Gibraltar Shabbat would be an amazing pastiche of the Orthodox and the very unorthodox. Pluralistic, post-denominatinal Judaism at its finest.

So why were we in Gibraltar? Nadya had been in Spain last September, studying in a Flamenco school in Seville. She happened to be there for the high holidays, and she had heard that to find Jewish community in Spain, one had to actually leave Spain and go to Gibraltar. She spent three days with the Gibraltar Jewish community, made up of about 1000 mostly traditional Sefardic Jews (out of a general population of about 30,000). On Friday afternoon, as we sat in the main square preparing for Shabbat we saw no fewer than 15 obviously Orthodox Jews wandering the streets of the city preparing for their Shabbats. We had tried to arrange Shabbat lunch home visits for our group in advance, but it turns out that many Gibraltar Jews leave the Rock during the month of August for holiday. But if this was the reduced community, it was still impressive, even moving, especially after having traveled for five days in places where "Jewish" meant an old building and a text study, not living Jewish community.

Our Shabbat leadership group convened at 7pm to set up, choreograph, prepare, learn, and get in the mood. We began at 8pm as the sun began to drop over the horizon, as we launched what one participant - a formerly observant woman - said was the most moving Shabbat experience she had had in many years,.

Shabbat was by no means traditional, although David Lawrence, our tour company operator, had worked with the local kosher caterer, Sam, to prepare traditional kosher Shabbat food-from salads and chicken on Friday night, to Shabbes lunch and seudah shlishit the next evening at 6pm. Sam had arranged for us to use the Garrison Library for our day of Shabbat ritual. The building, an 18th century house that was once Lord Nelson's place of residence, is now one of the oldest libraries and military archives in the British empire and has on display Napoleon's letters from Elba and Nelson's telescope, among other treasures. We were surrounded by hundred-year old leather bound volumes, rich wood shelves, and beautiful ceilings, and in back, a gorgeous courtyard with date palms that would be our home for the next day.

Our formerly frum (observant) participant led the candle lighting blessing. She had wanted to teach the group that Jewish women light the candles, while I had encouraged a more expansive understanding of the candle lighting, so we compromised by having everyone who wanted to do so (men included) light a candle. We had singing, accompanied by guitar (something we will come back to), Lcha dodi, that included an introduction to Kabbalistic mysticism that had its origins in medieval Spain, Barchu, Shma, and Amidah. We then went inside for Kiddush, handwashing, motzi, and delicious food...lots of it, that kept coming late into the night. After dinner, about ten of us took a bottle of vodka out on the main plaza and I held a "vodka tish," an evening of learning, conversation, and self-revelation that outlasted me as I went upstairs at 1:30am.

After having seen many of the Orthodox members of the local community wandering the streets and meeting a few while buying Shabbat supplies at one of several kosher groceries, we were joined for our Shabbat meals by a newly-arrived local Sefardic family (husband, wife and their five kids) that had just moved to Gibraltar and had not yet kashered their kitchen. In need of a place to partake of kosher Shabbat meals, Sam, our caterer, invited them to come dine with us. Honoring the tradition of welcoming guests on Shabbat, we were happy to have them, even if they set themselves at a table a bit apart from the group. The patriarch of the family, a patent-lawyer who was coincidentally originally from Chicago (the same city as our group) seemed perfectly comfortable being surrounded by our not-so-traditional Shabbat observance, presumably familiar with American traditions of pluralistic Judaism. His wife, however, appeared visibly uncomfortable the moment our song leader, Misha, pulled out the guitar and begin leading us in rousing renditions of "od yavo shalom aleinu" and classic Shabbat songs. Although guitars are now not only mainstream but expected in more liberal Jewish circles, traditional Jews still shun the playing of musical instruments on Shabbat.,

For Shabbat morning, our group had created three options: going to one of the two local Sefardic synagogues, doing a Torah study with my husband and Esther, the formerly frum woman, by the hotel pool (which sits on a beautiful roof deck overlooking the city), or going on a hike to the top of Gibraltar and studying Kabbalah and the Zohar with me. Our group, about 15 strong, was surprised at the rigor of the hike, which went more or less straight up the mountain. We found a great look out overlooking the harbor and pulled out our texts, a section of Zohar that deals with creation. None of our hikers had experience with Kabbalah, so we started by defining mysticism, talked about why text is at the center of Jewish mysticism, asked why the Zohar might have been produced in medieval Spain, and then broke up into hevruta. And then the monkeys came.

We had seen several of the beasts lurking in the trees as we hiked, but as we sat studying, several of them came up to us and stole the show. Our uninvited guests didn't prevent us from having a great hevruta about how light created humanity, as we sat under the blazing Mediterranean sun. We hiked down, cleaned up, went to lunch and had afternoon free time. I led a more in depth Zohar text study and then a group of fifteen people was taken to the local yoga studio by one of our participants, who teaches yoga, as we were led in an afternoon yoga class-a perfect way to loosen up for the evening. David Lawrence also taught us Qi Gong, as our very unorthodox Shabbat observance moved into the evening. Three women from Kiev led our Havdallah observance as we closed what everyone agreed was the most meaningful experience of the trip.

In retrospect the experience of seeing empty synagogues opened the group up to having a real Shabbat experience. In their closing circles that Saturday night, at which they were asked to talk about something they gained from the trip and what they might do when they got back, several people mentioned Shabbat as an experience they had gained.

Closing circle also proved to reveal how effective the trip had been in prompting deep self-reflection, all through a framework of Jewish history and Jewish text study. The overwhelming consensus was that there had been too much touring churches and not enough Jewish study. There was also a deep appreciation for having learned about the diversity of the Jewish experience across time and place. They learned about Sefardic Jews, about medieval philosophy, and, most interestingly, several commented that "we are so grateful to learn that Jewish life doesn't just happen in Israel. It happened and is still happening here." And for me, our Russian Jews are coming away from this trip knowing that Jewish life happens wherever they are.
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Granada, Andalusia, Spain and Canary Islands

Granada is beautiful and its main tourist site, the Alhambra, is an
impressive mini-city/fortress that protected the Muslim state of
Granada until 1492 when Isabella and Ferdinand's army finally conquered
the city. The story of the Alhambra is much more about Arab life in
Spain than about Jews, so we took time on the grounds to do a poetry
reading of Shmuel Ha-Nagid, the chief Jew of Muslim Spain in his time,
military leader and poet (yes, imagine if the American
commander-in-chief was also the poet laureate!) It turned out that
despite the awesome spectacle of the gardens and buildings, which we
toured in the blazing heat of day and under the stars at night, the
poetry reading that we did sitting on the floor of a mini-coliseum was
the most meaningful part of the visit.

Poetry reading is
something I do with all of my students, but Russians have such a rich
tradition of poetry as part of both their culture and identity, that it
seemed imperative to make Shmuel Ha-Nagid's poetry, read on the grounds
of the Alhambra, the centerpiece of our visit to Granada. We read a
short poem about a gazelle in hevruta and then the questions started:
"What is the gazelle?" asked one group member. "Clearly his lover,
because she comes in the middle of the night," responded someone from
across the courtyard. "Wait a minute," interrupted another. "It says
'he,' not she. Who is Shmuel Ha-Nagid writing to? Is this an issue of
Hebrew grammar or, um, um..." Shmuel Ha-Nagid's poetry, so deeply
shaped by Arabic poetic forms, provoked these kinds of amazing
conversations about homoeroticism in medieval Hebrew poetry.

But
perhaps the most interesting conversation of the day happened when one
of the participants from Kiev and I started talking about the future of
Judaism and Jewish life. I already knew that most Russian-speaking
Jews have little experience with the pluralism of American Jewish
life. For Russian Jews, as for most Jews outside the U.S., Judaism is
an all or nothing affair-one is either Orthodox or secular. This model
makes little sense in an American Jewish context that is now defined by
terms like "post-denominational" and "Do-It-Yourself" Judaism that puts
the individual, rather than the collective, at the center of Jewish
identity and practice. But what was so striking about this
conversation was having secular Russian Jews so adamantly argue that
Judaism has no future outside of Orthodoxy. "So then you, and all of
our group, is part of the problem of Judaism." "Yes," as he began
railing against Reform Judaism, which "isn't Judaism at all."

The
questions about what is "real" or "true" Judaism came up in our bus
conversation about planning for Shabbat. Here I was with a group of
six Russian-speaking Jews, most from Chicago, not Kiev, who kept
"wanting to do it right. So a man does Kiddush and a woman will light
candles." This from Jews who today have little regular Jewish practice
in their lives. Despite ten or twenty years of life in America, these
Russian Jews are so disconnected from American Jewish pluralism that
doing it right means replicating Orthodoxy's gender hierarchy. "Do you
want to do a halachic Kabbalat Shabbat, with all of the zmirot and
prayers and choreography?" " No, no, no, David...It's too much for
this group. But we should at least teach them that men make Kiddush
and bless the challah; women light candles."

It turns out that
Do-It-Yourself Judaism for Russian-speaking Jews is two parts
Chabad-style Judaism (which picks and chooses, but does so in a
traditional gendered way), one part radical secularism (which thinks
that Jewish ritual like kashrut and full Shabbes observance makes no
sense), and one part disdain for American notions of Jewish pluralism
(which thinks that women shouldn't be rabbis and Reform is the death of
Judaism). This is a group that isn't into saying blessings over meals
but insists that if you write the word "G-o-d" that it be G-d and that
a genizah be on hand at all times.

And note to reader: we have
not even talked about the fact that I, the official voice of Jewish
wisdom on this trip, am traveling with my husband (sic), who will be
leading Saturday morning Torah study (at least he's a man!). See
future entry for that conversation!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219337820/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219337820/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219337820/tpod.html Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:02:04 -0400 Davai: Russian Jews Taking Spain By Storm

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Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain and Canary Islands

We paid homage to Maimonides at his statue in the Juderia, the old Jewish quarter of Cordoba. In the 10th century, when Cordoba was at its height of influence in the Muslim world, there were 30 synagogues in the city, of which only one remains. We wandered through the synagogue, noted that the Hebrew inscriptions on the wall closely resembled those from Cordoba and ended up outside in front of Rambam's visage (The Rambam is Maimonides' "nickname," a common practice for referring to Jewish sages - in this case, it comes from Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, thus RMBM or Rambam). The group leaders had suggested that our 45 Russian-speaking Jewish travelers wanted to spend more time connecting their personal Jewish experiences to the medieval Jewish thought and history that we were studying. So after talking about Maimonides as a doctor, philosopher, and writer who wrote in Arabic and Hebrew and straddled two worlds, we stood in front of him and talked about what it meant to be a Russian Jew, someone who in one context sees himself as Jewish, in other contexts as Russian. It was exactly the kind of conversation we were hoping to generate as this group began wrestling with their own sense of self.

One student had a crisis of identity when we talked about the number of Jewish practices that have folk or pagan roots-things like breaking glasses at weddings or hanging mezuzot on the right side of the doorframe. Jews got very good at adopting such popular rituals from pagan or folk traditions and then investing themwith significant meaning and supporting the practices with textual references thereby rendering them Jewish. For some, this forced them to ask, "If so much of 'Jewish' practice is based on other people's customs, what is, in fact, Jewish about them?" Is Jewish anything that Jews, as a group, do? Is it Jewish if there are Jewish texts to support a practice? Is being Jewish simply about being different? How much of Jewish self-understanding is based on how others perceive or label the Jews?

In the end it seemed appropriate and almost subversive to question whether anything is essentially Jewish beneath the watchful eyes of Maimonides, who wrote the Mishneh Torah, an attempt to codify and rationalize Jewish law. After visiting the Mezquita, the beautiful mosque-turned-church that sits at the heart of the old city, we took the bus to Granada for our second tour of what would prove to be the longest day of the trip.

Granada is beautiful and its main tourist site, the Alhambra, is an impressive mini-city/fortress that protected the Muslim state of Granada until 1492 when Isabella and Ferdinand's army finally conquered the city. The story of the Alhambra is much more about Arab life in Spain than about Jews, so we took time on the grounds to do a poetry reading of Shmuel Ha-Nagid, the chief Jew of Muslim Spain in his time, military leader and poet (yes, imagine if the American commander-in-chief was also the poet laureate!) It turned out that despite the awesome spectacle of the gardens and buildings, which we toured in the blazing heat of day and under the stars at night, the poetry reading that we did sitting on the floor of a mini-coliseum was the most meaningful part of the visit.

Poetry reading is something I do with all of my students, but Russians have such a rich tradition of poetry as part of both their culture and identity, that it seemed imperative to make Shmuel Ha-Nagid's poetry, read on the grounds of the Alhambra, the centerpiece of our visit to Granada. We read a short poem about a gazelle in hevruta and then the questions started: "What is the gazelle?" asked one group member. "Clearly his lover, because she comes in the middle of the night," responded someone from across the courtyard. "Wait a minute," interrupted another. "It says 'he,' not she. Who is Shmuel Ha-Nagid writing to? Is this an issue of Hebrew grammar or, um, um..." Shmuel Ha-Nagid's poetry, so deeply shaped by Arabic poetic forms, provoked these kinds of amazing conversations about homoeroticism in medieval Hebrew poetry.

But perhaps the most interesting conversation of the day happened when one of the participants from Kiev and I started talking about the future of Judaism and Jewish life. I already knew that most Russian-speaking Jews have little experience with the pluralism of American Jewish life. For Russian Jews, as for most Jews outside the U.S., Judaism is an all or nothing affair-one is either Orthodox or secular. This model makes little sense in an American Jewish context that is now defined by terms like "post-denominational" and "Do-It-Yourself" Judaism that puts the individual, rather than the collective, at the center of Jewish identity and practice. But what was so striking about this conversation was having secular Russian Jews so adamantly argue that Judaism has no future outside of Orthodoxy. "So then you, and all of our group, is part of the problem of Judaism." "Yes," as he began railing against Reform Judaism, which "isn't Judaism at all."

The questions about what is "real" or "true" Judaism came up in our bus conversation about planning for Shabbat. Here I was with a group of six Russian-speaking Jews, most from Chicago, not Kiev, who kept "wanting to do it right. So a man does Kiddush and a woman will light candles." This from Jews who today have little regular Jewish practice in their lives. Despite ten or twenty years of life in America, these Russian Jews are so disconnected from American Jewish pluralism that doing it right means replicating Orthodoxy's gender hierarchy. "Do you want to do a halachic Kabbalat Shabbat, with all of the zmirot and prayers and choreography?" " No, no, no, David...It's too much for this group. But we should at least teach them that men make Kiddush and bless the challah; women light candles."

It turns out that Do-It-Yourself Judaism for Russian-speaking Jews is two parts Chabad-style Judaism (which picks and chooses, but does so in a traditional gendered way), one part radical secularism (which thinks that Jewish ritual like kashrut and full Shabbes observance makes no sense), and one part disdain for American notions of Jewish pluralism (which thinks that women shouldn't be rabbis and Reform is the death of Judaism). This is a group that isn't into saying blessings over meals but insists that if you write the word "G-o-d" that it be G-d and that a genizah be on hand at all times.

And note to reader: we have not even talked about the fact that I, the official voice of Jewish wisdom on this trip, am traveling with my husband (sic), who will be leading Saturday morning Torah study (at least he's a man!). See future entry for that conversation!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219748100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219748100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219748100/tpod.html Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:01:37 -0400 Davai: Russian Jews Taking Spain By Storm

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Seville, Andalusia, Spain and Canary Islands

From the seat of Muslim Arab power, we traveled west to Seville, a river port city with a long history of commercial and Christian power. After a sumptuous lunch in an elegant restaurant off of the main square-our first lunch to include wine-we met our local guide under the watchful spires of the largest church in the world...at least by square footage. The edifice is impressive and took three hundred years to build, unless one considers the unfinished sections still being worked on today.

Our group had just come from Granada's Alhambra, the Spanish Muslim's empire's greatest surviving architectural wonder. Its lush gardens and intricate wall mosaics inspired awe and fear in any official delegation arriving at Alhambra, and today it is such a popular tourist site that visitors visit the complex into the wee hours of the night. The Seville church's size and grandeur, the sheer money, power, and time that went into its construction, dwarfs that of the Alhambra. Although the Alhambra's intricate wall decorations of Arabic script proclaim the Muslim testament of faith, "There is no God but Allah," it is a seat of secular, political power. The cathedral in Seville projects a political power of a different order, one meant to impress its worshippers through the grandeur of its architecture and bring them closer to God. Going from the Muslim political seat of Granada to the church that was one of the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition reminded our group that Christianity in Spain had a different relationship to power and domination than Islam did, even if Islam demanded subjection from its Jews and Christians and if certain Muslim conquerors like the Almohades sacked cities and deported populations. It was the first time our group felt the bravado of medieval Spanish Christian power.

We spent nearly two hours in the structure, examining its fine stained glass windows, climbing to the top of its turret that looks out over the city, and hearing from our guide about the minute details of its inspiring sculpture. We heard about the 500 year old paintings that adorn the church walls, glorifying saints and edifying those in the church with stories of the Gospels. It is breathtakingly beautiful (literally, the climb to the top of the spire caused some in our group to vow to hit the gym) and at the same time, this group of Russian Jews finally started to understand why the Rabbis told Jews that they were not allowed to enter churches.

Traditionally Jews are not supposed to enter a church, but are allowed to enter a mosque. In fact in Cordoba at the Mezquita, our guide, who clearly had experience with Jewish groups, asked us as we entered the edifice if we wanted to go as far as the altar area of the church or if we wanted to remain just in the inactive part of the building that had been the mosque. Some of our group had found the idea that Jews could go into a church, but not a mosque, unequal or unfair. Neither medieval religion treated its Jewish population especially well, after all. But the differential relationships Jews have to a church and a mosque is not, at it core, about politics, but about theology. In the Seville cathedral, our group saw what it meant for a Jew to be tempted and awed by "avodah zara," foreign or idol worship, and shamed by the grandeur of the church in comparison to the modesty, simplicity and lack of adornment of medieval synagogues. Like Jews, Muslims shun human representations in their religious iconography. The art and beauty in a Mosque comes not as much from iconography as from arabesque design, micrography-when the writing of letters becomes an aesthetic design-carvings, geometry, symmetry and simplicity. In Seville, the pictures, the crucifixes, the gold, glitter, and ceilings higher than any other in the city left our group in awe. And this awe made many of them uncomfortable.

After leaving the church, several participants accosted me to complain about how long we had stayed in the church (mind you, less time than in the Alhambra), to challenge things the guide said about Christianity and Judaism, and to reflect that they hadn't felt more Jewish than in that church. A Christian visitor, one hopes, would have a very different reaction to the beauty and wonder of the art and architecture of the cathedral-one of awe, respect, spirituality, and a sense of being in the presence of the divine. And one of our participants talked to me about feeling spiritually elevated in any house of worship. But those who enjoyed the church did so despite the fact that it was a church, not because of it. They talked about being able to separate the beautiful art on the walls from the divine inspiration that put that art there in the first place. And most of our group was emotionally overwhelmed.

So it didn't help that we left the church for the former Jewish quarter, called "Barrio de Santa Cruz," or Holy Cross Neighborhood. Whispers ran through the group-why is the Jewish quarter called "holy cross"? In every other city we had visited so far, the Jewish quarter had an old synagogue in it, a Jewish street, and other signs marking the space as having been Jewish. The site of the main medieval synagogue of Seville, located at the center of Plaza de Santa Cruz, Holy Cross Square, has no such markings. Our guide, in fact, wondered why we were so obsessed with seeing the former Jewish quarter, which he correctly noted, had little to offer the tourist. He gave a brief speech on the site of the old synagogue that went something like this, "The old synagogue was here, then the Christians tore it down and put up Holy Cross church, and so the square is called Holy Cross church. Let's move on." As he left, I decided it was time to intervene, so we began a discussion in that square about history and memory, about how we mark our landscapes, about how any place is defined by the tensions between what happened there in the past and what went on in the present. Gregg Drinkwater -- my husband who traveled on the trip as 'rebbetsin' -- expressed an angrier sentiment. "For me, the renaming of the site of the old synagogue as Holy Cross square is Christianity's ultimate act of violent domination. It says, 'We drive our cross through the heart of your synagogue and community just like we drove a spear through the pomegranate that represents Islam,' an image we had seen in the church as part of a statue dedicated to Christopher Columbus.

It is moments like this in teaching, when a sensitive educator recognizes that one needs to intervene. So as our tour guide left us in the square and we started running after him, I decided that we would have a conversation on the bus about the emotions the church and square elicited and ask how we can turn those toward positive change, rather than letting the anti-Christian sentiment that had built up fester. But I didn't have to wait that long.

About 30 minutes later as we were boarding a bus for a brief tour of the whole city, a participant pulled me aside. "David, you know that square back there where the synagogue used to be. Well, we were just thinking that maybe as a Davai group, we could work with the city of Seville to put up some kind of memorial in the square to the medieval Jewish community of Seville." It's one of the teaching moments when the students act in inspiring ways, doing those things that you are deeply wishing will happen, but don't want to push too hard in a classroom. It is that student who challenges another student who said something problematic, so you don't have to, or the one who's paper topic comes out of left field and ends up changing how you teach a concept. Later in the trip, the same participant and I had a longer conversation about how the group would actually go about putting up such a memorial. How does one finance such a project? What are the politics of memory on a city's landscape? How would the few Jews of Seville feel about a group of global Jews coming in and building something that they may feel ambivalently about? Is putting up a memorial the best thing or should it be something more contemporarily engaged, like sponsoring a library, school, or something like that?

No matter the actual outcome, our visit to the Seville cathedral and the former Jewish quarter left the group profoundly changed. During our closing circle that took place the Saturday night before we left, one participant boldly proclaimed that the climax of the trip for her had been the visit to the cathedral, because, in her words,

For me, it was as powerful as leaving Yad Vashem [Jerusalem's Holocaust memorial museum] and left me thinking never again. And this means, guys, that we have an obligation to build our Jewish community, to be proud, strong, and visible, so that 500 years from now, a visitor to Chicago will not come to our neighborhood and hear from a local tour guide, 'once there was a Jewish community here.'
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219240680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219240680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1219240680/tpod.html Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:24:29 -0400 Davai: Russian Jews Taking Spain By Storm

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Toledo, Castile-La Mancha, Spain and Canary Islands

Toledo is just a short drive, but light years, away from Madrid. If Madrid is contemporary, cosmopolitan, and pumping with energy and industry, Toledo revels in its days of former glory. Once the capital of the Kingdom of Spain, today it is home to a small Spanish population and a large number of tour buses, including ours.

We began the morning with a bus and walking tour of the city with an excellent local guidewho knew much of the Jewish history of Toledo. He spoke honestly about the Muslim-Jewish convivencia, or "coexistence" of the Middle Ages, a time when Jews and Muslims lived together tolerantly. (He also railed against the high property prices in the city.) Once we got off the bus and wandered the cobblestoned streets, the journey became magical. Toledo is home to two of the three synagogues that serve as testaments to medieval Jewish history in Spain. We passed by the statue of Shmuel Ha-Levi, aka Shmuel Abulafia (not Abraham of Kabbalistic fame), the great financier and medieval oligarch, who commissioned the building of one of the two surviving synagogues. The Abulafia statue, erected in 2002, sits in the middle of a Spanish plaza but bears more resemblance to a character from Fiddler on the Roof , than a medieval Sefardic Jewish communal leader. It seems that Jews through time and space have always worn long beards, peyes, and kippot and had rather impressive noses. Or at least the artist who crafted this bust seems to think so. After paying our respects, we made our way to the synagogues. For me they felt haunted, but in a good way. Although the synagogues are not active, I felt presence, enough presence that I had a desire to put on a kippah. After hearing about the architecture of the building, we went out onto the synagogue's terrace and began our first text study of Maimonides.

Many in the group were unfamiliar with the Jewish tradition of studying in hevruta, with study partners. In our pre-trip meeting we had introduced them to hevruta, but there was something significant about doing Jewish learning in the place from which it came (more or less...Maimonides was from Cordoba where we will go tomorrow). The act of doing a text study of Maimonides gave presence to this place long absent of active Jewish practice. In fact, bringing our group of Russian-speaking Jews to the synagogue to study Jewish philosophy was itself active Jewish practice rendering what had been turned by the government into a museum to Spanish Jewish history into an active bet midrash.

We also brought up the history of anti-semitism in Spain and how, right there in Toledo, was born the idea of limpieza de sangre, purity of blood laws that excluded "new Christians" (recent converts from Judaism) from public political life. Some scholars call this the birth of modern racial anti-semitism, when Jews are no longer defined by their community affiliation, belief systems, or deeds, but by whom their parents and grandparents were. It was this law that marked Jews who had converted to Christianity, either under coercion or by choice, as less and unworthy Christians.

We left Toledo behind for an epic bus ride filled with Russian singing and a brief wrap up conversation about Jewish life under Christian rule. We arrived in Cordoba at 7pm, a city still roasting under a 100 degree sun. It's a beautiful medieval city that served as the capital of the Caliphate in the 10th century. If Toledo's grandeur is clearly Christian, Cordoba's is Arab and Muslim, and so its Jews lived in an Arabic-centered world. Even its literature and text looked to the Arab world, like Yehudah Ha-Levi's poetry, which he modeled on Arabic poetic forms, and Maimonides' texts, many of which were written in Arabic and inspired by Greek philosophy.

Maimonides haunts the Cordovan landscape and its tacky gift shops. A colleague of mine back home had one request-to bring back Maimonides memorabilia. I ducked into a few shops and then, looming on a shelf at about eye level, I saw it.-the poorly modeled, cheap Maimonides bust, the turbaned Jew sitting on his royal throne with the name Maimonides etched on the pillar on which stood his throne. The sales woman was very happy to show me her entire line of Maimonides kitch, a sadly limited selection of busts made from plaster and bronze. After choosing the most perfect likeness of the great philosopher, I went to pay and found myself in a Spanish-language conversation about how important Maimonides was to Cordoba and how important it is for a man to find a woman. The shopkeeper's lecture on human truths included a stern reprimand to women for fighting over men, and for children who ignore their parents and don't study. I understood "padre" "ninos" and then she took off her shoe and started beating in the air as if a father should beat his son if he was a poor student. I'm sure Maimonides would concur....fortunately he's barefoot in the statue.

ps - we all just heard about the plane crash in Madrid. Everyone here is fine.
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Madrid, Spain

"We imagine her reading Cervantes, not the Gospels." So explained our tour guide in Madrid as we bore witness to a statue of Isabella II, perched atop a likeness of Cervantes, the patron saint of prose and a national hero in Spain. In fact, Isabella is reading the New Testament, not Cervantes-a fitting symbol of our first day in Spain.

We arrived in Madrid on Monday, each straggling in from the four corners of the earth. We weren't sure if the group of participants from Kiev was going to make it to Madrid, after the Spanish embassy in Kiev confiscated their passports-a "flight threat" they said. Mind you, our Kiev group is a bunch of over- educated 20- something Jewish professionals, but EU countries have, apparently, become less generous in dispensing visas to people from the former Soviet Union. A few days before the tour began, and after the entire board of the sponsoring organization began a mass letter writing campaign to the embassy, Spain changed its mind and gave them visas. (And because our tour goes to Spain, Gibraltar, and Morocco, the Kiev participants needed not one, not two, but three visas, while the American citizens needed none. Talk about the importance of citizenship and belonging.)

Our Madrid tour guide tried her best to keep a jet-lagged group of Jewish tourists interested in the history of Madrid - a history that has almost nothing to say about Jews. Madrid was made the capital of Spain in the 16th century, almost 100 years after Jews were expelled from the country by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. In fact, Madrid's Jewish history is really a 20th century history, making it an odd beginning to a tour that will be focused on the rich medieval history of Sefardic Jewry.

(PS - I feel it imperative to mention that I am writing this on the long bus ride between Toledo and Cordoba as our group belts out "Od Yavo Shalom Aleynu" (a popular Hebrew song in American synagogues and at Jewish camps worldwide, not least because of the refrain that switches out the Hebrew "shalom" for the Arabic "salaam") and an assortment of slightly schmaltzy Russian tunes. I have no idea what our Spanish bus driver is thinking at this moment.)

The problem with the tour guide was not the lack of Jewish content in Madrid history. It was the fact that she sanitized the version of history she told. Now mind you, I imagine that tour guides get into the business, because they are proud of their local and national history. But there was no mention of the Expulsion, Inquisition, and only cursory mention of more modern tough times in Spanish history, like the Fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco. To those of you who know my writing, you know that I am far from one to revel in the lachrymose reading of Jewish history (they chased us, they killed us, we survived, let's eat). But not to explain why there's no Jewish history to Madrid seemed more than a simple oversight. My opening anecdote about Spain's Christian rulers spreading the "light" of Cervantes rather than Christ was just another example of storytelling that elided the violent Christian past of this beautiful country.

In the evening, a group of us sat in the garden and attempted to craft a more complicated history of Spain and also one that connected to the Russian Jews who were on the tour. I told them the story of Mikhail Koltsov (nee Fridlyand), a good Jewish boy from Kiev, who became the most powerful journalist in Stalin's Soviet Union. He was sent to Spain in 1936 to cover the Spanish Civil War for the Soviet press and was purged in December 1937. Why? In general, there is no way of explaining why one person was purged and another spared during the bloody years of 1936-1938. Many great writers were purged in 1937, so Koltsov's story is just one of many. But the connection to Spain of this Russian Jew, the man who made he Spanish Civil War a huge media event in the Soviet Union, seemed relevant to the group.

Dinner proved to be the most interesting part of the day, because of a visiting speaker and a fight over fish. When I was invited to design an engaging educational program for Russian Jews to Spain, I resisted. As a historian, I always try to see Jewish history in conversation with contemporary Jewish life and when designing Jewish travel I always encourage engagement with contemporary Jews in the places visited, even in places where the dominant Jewish story is one of persecution. (Remember that any place that has a Jewish history of persecution also had - or has - a history of vibrant Jewish life.) To that end, in Spain although we would talk about the Expulsion and Inquisition, we would spend most of our time reading medieval Jewish philosophy and studying Hebrew poetry. But how to connect to contemporary Jewish life? After a bit of research, I discovered that there is a small and growing Jewish community in Spain, estimated at 10,000-15,000 registered with the official community and 40,000-50,000 total Jews. And I found a government funded initiative called Casa Sefarad that promotes Sefardic Jewish culture throughout Spain. I invited one of their educators to come tell the group about Casa Sefarad to connect the past to the present.

Casa Sefarad educator Yessica San Ramon, an avid hiker, who had just returned from a trip to Georgia (dodging Russians bombs) was delightful, informed, and passionate. Although not Jewish herself, she spends much time in Israel working with Yad Vashem on Holocaust education in Spain. She talked about Spanish-language Jewish radio, available streaming on the internet, the birth of state-sponsored Holocaust education in contemporary Spain, and about the fact that Sefardic Jewish culture is becoming more and more trendy throughout Spain.

The other interesting conversation happened over a piece of less than tasty fish that was served for dinner. One member of our group jokingly reminisced that the fish tasted like "that old crappy cafeteria fish back in Russia." Two parts mocking, one part nostalgia, the comment elicited a sharp defensive reaction from another member of the group. She was offended at the seeming class privilege the statement implied-now that we're American Russian Jews we don't have to eat such cheap nasty fish. She also argued that the comment about "cafeteria fish" missed the point that even if poorly prepared, fish for many Russians in the past and even now might be a privilege. It prompted me to think about young Russian Jewish immigrants' relationship to Russia and the Soviet Union, which like the original comment, is at once distanced mocking and intimate nostalgia. Unlike the first wave of Jewish immigrants from Russia to America at the turn of the last century who saw America as di goldene medine, tended to cut most ties with the homeland, and saw Russia primarily through the lens of anti-Semitism, the current wave has a more nuanced, complicated, and connected relationship with their Russian past. That said, based on my initial conversations, although they all speak Russian, feel nostalgically about Russian culture, sing Russian songs on the bus, and see themselves as culturaly Russian, very few of them has ever been back to Russia.

Once the tension over fish passed, the group retired to the garden for beer and conversation, nearly all speaking to one another in Russian, as I passed out under the happy influence of jet lag, exhaustion from teaching...and half an ambien.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1218662820/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1218662820/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shneer/1/1218662820/tpod.html Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:29:12 -0400 Davai: Russian Jews Taking Spain By Storm

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Who are Our Russian-Speaking Jewish Travellers?: A Night in Northeast Philadelphia

On Tuesday I flew to Philadelphia to do a pre-trip educational program with the Russian Jewish travelers from Philadelphia who will be joining the Spain trip. The program organizers selected Chicago and Philadelphia as the launch cities for Davai, because as it turns out, both cities have a good infrastructure for Russian-Jewish programming. We also wanted to make sure that participants in Davai felt like the trip to Spain was embedded in a year-long program of learning and community. After all, the uniqueness of Davai lies in its three goals combined in one program: personal transformation, key to so many Jewish identity travel programs' success, community involvement, which requires extensive follow up after the trip, and leadership development, which demands significant investment in time and resources down the road. So with these lofty goals in mind, I designed a pre-trip evening of learning that exposed them to questions of contemporary Jewish identity and to Spanish Jewish history and, I hope, to begin to create a community of life-long learners.

After meeting up with Nadya, our program director, and Misha Zilbermint, whose job is to make sure these 80 Russian Jewish individuals from Philly and Chicago become a community of young Jewish leaders, we took a cab to the Russian neighborhood of Philadelphia, Northeast Philly. I knew the area from my childhood, as the place my mother's relatives lived, and from which my mother herself fled forty years ago for sunnier climes in California. I had forgotten how far out from the city center Northeast was, but it makes sense that immigrant communities, which used to be located in impoverished urban centers like the Lower East Side of New York, have been pushed out of those gentrified areas and are now located in relatively run-down 1950s suburbs. These are places that in the 1950s had been the great hope of the white (Jewish) middle classes and now serve as an inexpensive immigrant soft-landing.

Unlike Chicago, which was an all-English language affair, the Philadelphia group definitely felt more at home in a bi-lingual world, with the local coordinator, Vika, working with us almost exclusively in Russian, and some of the participants even introducing themselves and conducting their hevruta text study in Russian. When we had begun plans for the trip, the organizing team decided on an English-language approach, since many of these "Russian-speaking Jews" really grew up in the U.S. as primary English speakers and are, more importantly, literate only in English. But after meeting with the travelers, it is clear to me that creating a travel program for global Russian-speaking Jews demands a bi-lingual approach and, if Israel gets included in future programming, a tri-lingual approach. Working in both English and Russian would make many of the participants feel more confident in their ability to interact, but it would also give us the opportunity to show these 20-something immigrants that Russian is a language of Jewish culture - a message not always reinforced by their families, friends or communities.

The group warmed up quickly as we debated the merits of the Russian Jewish immigrant writer Lara Vapnyar's short stories and whether or not the Spanish Golden Age was really golden for Jews or whether retrospectively Jews have created a mythology of better times when Jews and Muslims got along. The group is smart, engaged, and very excited to learn. In two hours, we did five different texts studies (from Vapnyar to Maimonides and back), shared stories about our pasts, including one participant telling us about how the school leaders of his hometown in Ukraine created an all-Jewish "magnet" school so that it would win regional educational competition. Ah, the myth of Jewish intellectual superiority. But PS, they did win.

As we left, Nadya, Misha, and I did a high-five, because the evening had gone so well, but also because we could see transformation happening before our eyes...both among the participants and in ourselves. The work was starting to feel real. Next entry from Spain...
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Denver, Colorado, United States

Dear Readers,
In one week, I head to Spain, not revolutionary news coming from someone with a gold card on United Airlines. But this trip is unlike all others I have done. I will be the historian-in-residence for the first ever trip of Davai, a new experiment in global Jewish identity travel.

Six months ago, I got a call from Nadya Strizhevskaya, program officer of the Jewish Funders Network and Genesis Philanthropy Group, inviting me to become the designer of a travel program for 20-something Russian Jews from the U.S. and Russia.

I have spent my life researching and writing about Russian Jewish history, on the one hand, and contemporary Jewish identity and culture, on the other hand. I have written critically about Jewish identity travel, and here I was being given the opportunity to design my own, to think about what Jewish identity for Russian-speaking Jews might look like, to combine experiential learning with rigorous text study, and to bring my various areas of research interest together.

I will be writing regularly from Spain to talk about both the history and culture that we are studying and about the questions of contemporary Jewish identity that come up during our long bus rides or in late night song sessions (if I, the old man on the trip, can stay up). I have incorporated hevruta text studies in cafes located in places where the texts were produced, a brilliant idea I learned from my colleague Robby Peckerar, with whom I did a Yiddish culture travel course to Ukraine. We will be studying Maimonides notion of the self just meters away from his statue in Cordoba, reciting Shmuel Hanagid's poetry in the shade of trees on the Alhambra in Granada.

I have done my share of travel writing, most recently from Jerusalem during the 2006 Lebanon War and about Jewish life in Buenos Aires. I'm always looking for interesting leads, so please feel free to write back, give ideas for places to go on our itinerary, which is posted, and think about what your fantasy travel/study program might look like.

We are hoping to start up travel programs in my new job as director of Jewish Studies at University of Colorado, so your ideas today may be next year's summer travel courses.

Here is Our Itinerary (taken from the Jade Expeditions website):
Spain Itinerary

Day 1-2: Northern Spain - Madrid / Toledo
Madrid:
Hemingway called Madrid "the most Spanish of all cities, the best place
to live in, the finest people..." Madrid symbolizes the New Spain -
busy and active. With a triad of truly great art museums that includes
the Museo del Prado, and buildings like the Palacio Real that span the
centuries, plus lively plazas, mighty boulevards and neighborhoods brimming with character, Madrid has plenty of sights to keep the eyes, ears and mind occupied.
Toledo
Like Florence in Italy, the city is a preserved museum. A medieval city
of narrow winding streets perched on a small hill above the Río Tajo.
The city is crammed with fascinating museums, galleries, synagogues,
churches and castles. Toledo is one of the few towns in Spain where
remnants of Jewish edifices have been preserved. We explore Toledo's
ancient synagogues and Jewish quarters.
Day 3-7: Southern Spain - Granada / Seville / Cordoba / Gibraltar:
Granada:
During the period of Muslim domination of Spain, Granada was the finest
city on the peninsula. Today it is still home to the greatest Muslim
legacy in Europe, and one of the most inspiring attractions on the
Continent - the Alhambra. Rich in a prosperous Jewish past it was once
called "Gharnata al-Yahud", Granada of the Jews." Here we explore the
city including the Alhambra and Generalife.

Seville & Western Andalusia:
The Capital of Andalusia is a city of poetry, romance and art. All who
visit are captivated by its exuberant atmosphere - stylish, confident,
ancient, proud, intimate and fun-loving. In keeping with the slow-burn
nature of the city's charms, two great monuments - the Muslim Alcázar
and the Christian cathedral. These, along with many other buildings and
areas around Seville are part of the World Heritage Sites. Explore the
wonders of this city including its fascination Jewish history as we
tour the Jewish Santa Cruz Quarter.
Cordoba:
Cordoba is a Moorish city with narrow winding streets, gardens, olive
and orange groves. Famous for its libraries and bookshops, Cordoba was
the high-water mark of Arab civilization in Europe. The past and its
rich cultural mix can be seen in the La Mezquita building. The cities
old Jewish
quarter evokes memories of a brilliant Jewish intellectual center in
the Golden Age of Spain. Three ancient synagogues still stand, gaze at
the statue of Maimonides in Tiberias Square, walk the narrow alleys of
the famous Juderia, or explore the shops and cafes in the Plaza de Juda
Levi.
Gibraltar:
Where else would you find a town that is also a country? Gibraltar is
only 5.8 sq. km (2 1/4 sq. miles) in size, but it has its own airport,
currency, postage stamps, naval and military garrisons, two cathedrals,
four synagogues, its own newspapers, radio, and TV -- and a casino.
"The Rock" enjoys a pleasant climate and has a recorded history dating
from A.D. 711 and traces of cave occupation 40,000 years ago.
Jews
have lived in Gibraltar at least since the 14th century. Historical
records reveal that the community issued an appeal for help (1356) in
ransoming a group of Jews taken captive by pirates. Another extant
document indicates that a number of secret Jews, fleeing persecution in
Andalusia, sought permission to settle on Gibraltar in 1473. Today, the
Jewish community of Gibraltar numbers 650, which constitutes about 2%
of the total population. Almost all are Sephardim, Jews of Spanish
descent, who originally came from the settlers of Tetouan on the
northern coast of Morocco. The sense of Jewish identity in the
community remains strong to this day. Parents invest heavily in their
children's Jewish education. There is a Talmud Torah, which educates
children through eighth grade, and boys' high school and a girls' high
school, as well as a small kolel (post-high school yeshiva). Shabbat,
too, is observed in the city center, with all Jewish-owned shops closed
to patrons. After Friday night services in one of the four synagogues,
Main Street becomes a sort of promenade where friends and relatives can
greet each other before heading off to a meal. A strong support for
Israel also remains evident in the community.
Day 8: North Africa - Morocco / Tangiers
At the crossroads of
Africa and Europe, the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, Tangier is
one of the oldest cities in Morocco. The Phoenicians
and Carthaginians established trading posts here. The Romans made it a
capital city. It was occupied by the Arabs and invaded by Vandals and
Visigoths. Before the Spanish, the Portuguese controlled the town. In
the early part of the 20th century, Tangier was an international city
whose tax-free status and cosmopolitan image attracted European and
American artists and writers. Jewish presence in the city dates back to
the Carthaginian era immediately after the destruction of the First
Temple. A crossroads of many civilizations and cultures a day in
Tangier is truly a unique experience. Explore the old town with visit
the kasbah (fortified area). Descend through the labyrinthine roads of
the medina through the spice markets, the Berber markets and amongst
the craftsmen. Visit the Grand Socco and the old & new synagogues,
quietly nestled off the busy market square.
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