The end.

This blog post is a little late.

It's January 4, and yesterday I turned 21, among friends from high school, in sunny California. Just three weeks ago, I was in Prague, deep in snow, surrounded by a pack of strangers from various nations with whom I had forged deep bonds. We had a lot of parties, right at the end, a Chanukah party, a pancakes party. We ate and laughed and cried.

I have never been good at goodbyes (who is?), but I am learning to appreciate transitions. I moved across the country for college, and then abroad, each time having the people and culture around me shift radically. Eating with my friends here, yesterday, trading barbs and telling our life stories, was deeply comfortable, but different: I met these people at 13, and now we're adults. The transition has been subtle -- though we've all experienced life-changing events, we still revel in our shared history. We've kept up favorite foods, hobbies, television shows, various little points of commonality. And yet sitting at that table, in a familiar rhythm, I was acutely aware that we were grown ups now, with the responsibility and excitement and maturity that entails.

This blog post is a little late because I've been transitioning. I got thrown back into the US on the day of my family's Chanukah party, and sleepily noshed on latkes, getting lost in the English, the traffic, the everything different. Then the series of holidays -- Christmas, New Year's, my birthday -- all occasions for parties, milestones, and promises. I have reconnected with so many people, told them fragments of what Prague was to me, but what can I say? The last few months are transitioning into memory and history. It still feels like the present, like I can hop on the metro and take a walk along Wenceslas square. It is hard for me to accept it's over, but it's nice to be home and decompress. I felt constantly challenged and changed by Prague, whether it was speaking with Holocaust survivors or just trying to make new friends.

When I left, I saw the whole city covered in snow, and hiked through Vysherad on my last day, the site of an ancient castle. I was told that the castle had been built there because it was a site of intense energy, one of just a handful of those places in the world. They say you can stand in the middle and recharge your spiritual batteries. I trekked through the snow and stood and breathed the air and stood up high and looked at a city I had grown to love in transition - from fall to winter, covered in white white snow, into a holiday rich with cinammon pastries and bright lights, into a new year in a long and winding history.

Wherever my life's journey takes me, I will carry Prague inside me forever.

Budapest! One month to the end!

a man with a bird of prey on the castle grounds! roaaaaaar.

Well, hello, my loving and devoted public (hi parents!)... I am back from Budapest (although, in what may be the worst decision ever, I didn't buy a T-Shirt with a mock Back to the Future logo that said BACK TO BUDAPEST) and I had a really unexpectedly fabulous time. This picture post is mainly synagogues, but they're quite nice. It seems most of my blog posts are about life outside Prague, which is mainly because Prague has become so much my home that it seems bizarre to take photographs.

It was a dark and stormy afternoon:

castle on a hill. the "buda" part of budapest.

We were armed with just our transport passes, how to say "Cheers" in Hungarian, and an arsenal of Jewish historical knowledge.

I don't know what this statue from the metro station means, but it makes me so happy.

We explored some really kickass synagogues...

A fantastically ornate synagogue. I sort of want to live there.

Inside the second largest synagogue in the world.

The barren remains of another synagogue, now with a half-made memorial and rubble on the ground. This was one of the most affecting parts of the trip, to see this place, which once housed a dozen Torahs, completely ruined, with no one to care about it. It was a stark contrast to the tourist hubs and gorgeous sanctuaries of the other synagogues, an emptiness that was a testament to violence and hatred.

more ornate Hungarian synagogue


more synagogue in desolate disrepair


outside of the 2nd largest synagogue in the world (the first is in New York)

I spent most of the trip exploring the streets, seeing the sights, and, notably, spending 3 hours in a cafe with my friends, drinking fresh fruit tea (liberated from teabags!) and chatting with the kind waitress. Budapest was very diverse, alternative, and hip -- we also went to a bar for a classmate's birthday, and it was a renovated apartment building, with strange found objects and labyrinthine rooms with music and lights and a mix of different languages blending together, finding commonality, enjoying difference.

I had the best time at the Judafest, a Jewish festival on Sunday, full of delicious Jewish food (I ate amazing falafel many times over the course of the trip!) and music and dance and crafts. There were adorable Jewish children running around everywhere, and it filled my heart with hope. After going to so many cities which spoke about the former glory of the Jewish people, and related tale after tale of destruction, it was nice to see a place where the Jewish community was thriving and growing and living. Hungary is by no means perfect, and anti-Semitism is alarmingly common, but on Sunday, there was a celebration of Jewish life and renewal. I talked to a theatre company producing the works of a fantastic Israeli playwright (Etgar Keret) in Hungarian, bought some Judaica jewelry, and enjoyed the company of my culture.

I am one month away from returning to America, and I hope to have more exciting adventures, but being at the Judafest was a welcome bit of comfort in what can be a lonely road. It's a bit hackneyed, maybe, but whenever I find a happy, singing Jewish community, full of food and people and laughter, I feel like I'm home.

remember november

Ahoj, and welcome back to blog-world. I'm still a little sick and cloudy, but I needed to blog!

Above is the film crew that followed my class this Tuesday, November 17th, which was the 20 year anniversary of an epic student march. My art history teacher, Otto Urban, was one of the thousands of students who took to the streets, only to be stopped by police officers. Many students were brutally beaten; my teacher managed to hide in a building for several hours. Young people, most of whom were tiny children or not yet born during the communist occupation, took to the streets again, this time for a celebration of Czech culture and freedom. The police were there, this time to protect the marchers.

I missed the bulk of the festivities, because we followed our professor and the film crew to artist Jan Hisek's studio. He talked to us about the repression of art and culture under communism, and clandestine Frank Zappa records traded in the forest, but mostly about art and angels and creating whatever your heart tells you to create, regardless of political atmosphere.

The cops, ready to break up any funny business. Apparently they beat up some neo-Nazi demonstrators. Czech cops get stuff done.


Candles in tribute to the 1989 march.


Artsy close up of candles.


The weekend before last, however, was spent far from the bustle of the city, in the Bohemian Paradise, Turnov, Czech Republic. One of my Czech friends took us to her hometown, nestled in giant rocks, autumnal beauty, and adorable small town atmosphere. Some highlights: salty, fatty Czech food, a long, epic hike through natural beauty practicing the language, and bowling. It was a comfortable, delightful trip, away from all the smoke and noise.


The golem and I are equally amazed and terrified by our hands.


just another run-of-the-mill gorgeous castle in the Bohemian countryside.

---

And a short note on Tuesday night karaoke, one of my favorite traditions here:

It's been a little hard for me to catch my breath --

the terrifying exhilarating newness,
the chronic sinus infection,
the smoke.

Smoking here is a national sport:
football
ice hockey
lung destruction.

It's a contact sport:
I have cigarette burns on my arms from shuffling in the street
and dancing too close to the sun.

This week, I sang karaoke, like every Tuesday,
(musical theatre, thank goodness,
is acceptable cultural currency)
and saw a lady through the veil of smoke
with a small Jewish star charm on a necklace.

"Your necklace!"

and she:
"It's small, because only my father is Jewish,
so real Jews think I'm dirty.
But my father was in Auschwitz.
My family perished in Auschwitz.
And they say I'm not a real Jew."

I tell her
I accept her
and she smiles

She is about to tell another story
express something profound

but she hears the opening notes
of a Czech pop classic

"This one's for me!"

And she hurtles herself toward the microphone
and sings and smokes
and smokes and sings

long trip 4 - Vienna

What can I say about Vienna? It was big, rich, ostentatious, under construction. The buildings were newer than Prague's, due to imperial money and rebuilding after bombings. The Euro is bank-account-cripplingly strong, and I've always liked modern art more than classical museums. So I sought, in 2.5 days, to find the people who occupied this large, glossy place, and enjoyed most deeply the market and the coffeehouse.


The Naschmarkt is an enormous market in the city center, full of restaurants, fruit stands, and bustling people. It was here I noticed the city's diversity, people of color in much greater number than mostly homogenous Prague. It seemed cosmopolitan and metropolitan. I tasted hummus and baklava, both out of this world, and marvelled as smells of curry and schnitzel intermingled. It was here, not the old, grandiose buildings, that people lived and fought and joked. It was divine to be in the midst of it, chatting with friends in English and Czech, hearing German and Turkish and the language-free joy of children with chocolate.





For a more traditional Viennese experience, my friends and I went to Cafe Hawelka, a coffeehouse in a grand tradition, with newspapers in half a dozen languages on wooden dowels, affectionately rude waiters,, and sugar cubes. We were surrounded by various eccentrics cutting paper, smoking, having vivid discussions. The walls were papered with a colorful pastiche of posters, cultural events and advertisements, a little charmingly run down. It was great to just relax and talk in a room charged with creative energy of so many years of coffee and conversation.

long trip 3 - Moravia

My lingering tastes of Moravia (the eastern region of Czech Republic) are wine and potato pancakes. In Olmouc, I sat with Czech students and practiced the language over fried cheese stuffed into potato pancakes. They called me "almost a real Czech girl" and I was flattered, digging in with no nonsense into my greasy food, attempting sentences, laughing and enjoying the college town atmosphere, the flush of youth and possibility.
In Mikulov, the potato pancakes were equally plentiful, all of us stuffed in a dark wine cellar, the crystallized sexism of the vinter awkwardly translated to a room of tipsy, angry women. The wine with dinner was nice, but I was too claustrophobic to go in for the tasting. I heard screams at flaming drinks, peals of drunken laughter, and felt the fuzziness of a countryside wedged into a bygone time.

We learned about a painting in art class called In Chlumetsky's Wine Cellar, which was considered revolutionary for its fuzziness, for its emphasis on something mundane, friends meeting for drinks. I felt like I was in such a painting, something lovely especially for its mudaneness. Moravia felt like a place where people lived -- sometimes extraordinary, but often just relishing the oily and the sweet, crude jokes, good food, and good company.

long trip 2 - aushwitz

I experience childlike delight when I see my bed at the hostel -- up a ladder, tucked in an alcove, up by a window looking over a roof and garden. On the roof, beer bottles, snack wrappers, signs of life -- but the window looks a little too small for me, and getting wedged in a window in Oświęcim (the town outlying the ruins of Auschwitz) is not my idea of a good time. But the air is fresh and I feel like a kid. I've always had a treehouse thing, a longing for the adventurous, boyish childhood I avoided inside books, and the experience of ascending a ladder and looking out over the world activates a primal, primate thing in me. It's a weird feeling to have in Oświęcim, a town still fully populated with people and pizza restaurants, but any feeling is weird because all you're supposed to feel is fear and sorrow.



It was a cold, wet day, mud on my boots and gloomy clouds, as though the weather adjusted to the visit (how inappropriate would sunshine and songbirds be!). As we passed through empty barracks, bombed gas chambers, rooms full of hair and children's shoes, all with the visceral narration of a tour guide, I forced myself to feel nothing but clouds and mud. It is impossible otherwise. Every thought, feeling, song that passes through my head is cruel, ironic, wrong, and I choose to feel nothing. I look at things. I shelve them. I supress. Should I prostrate myself in the mud, shouting to G-d about injustice? Should I sing with the Israelis bearing flags and guitars, AM YISRAEL CHAI, a triumphant shout of survival?

I eat soup, later, in the hostel. I am sensitive to the complexity of the taste, the warm salty broth, the texture of noodles, the recollection of the all-purpose Jewish medicine, chicken soup. I feel the warmth restored spoon by spoon, the thawing of a blank body, and by the time I see the room, I'm a kid. I play to reconnect with the self I left on the bus, anything to make looking at a boneyard bearable. I did not experience profound catharsis. I did not weep. I looked and I learned and I struggled to understand. What can a person do next?

Later that evening, we met a survivor, Helena Birenbaum, who lived through the physical denigration of concentration camps and the dissolution of her family. She was an amazing speaker. An old woman well-versed in several languages, with just 36 hours of English instruction, she used her hands and simple evocative words -- a misstep was especially touching: she called her sister-in-law her sister-in-love, then smiled at the mistake. Sister-in-love was closer to the truth. I found my numb muscles and bones further reawakened by her words, drawn as I have always been to a good story, and by the hope in her eyes and hands and words, her extraordinary survival. I listened for 2 hours rapt, caught in the voice, and here I felt the heartpound heartache heartwarmth.

I am amazingly blessed to live at a time when Holocaust survivors still live to tell their stories, stories I will tell my own children, lest anyone ever forget. The boneyard will last forever, those feelings of dull pain and misery and frustration, but life is what is delicate and temporary and beautiful. Meeting Mrs. Birenbaum was a revelation. That night, I climbed the ladder, got in bed, opened the window, and breathed in the clean, clean air.

long trip 1 - krakow

My memory of Krakow, a week since, percolating in my brain, is gray and sweet, funny in a topsy-turvy way. My favorite professor at Smith, Len Berkman, can't speak about Poland without strange gestures and racuous laughter. He speaks of Poland as a liminal space, everywhere and nowhere, where anything can happen. I felt this intense strangeness while there, as though I've been in another dimension. Prague is a realer world, and Krakow requires pixie dust and imagination to be summoned into existence.

We toured with a tall, sarcastic student, who informed us the city was once destroyed by flaming walnuts, and that a trumpet player sits in the clock tower 24 hours a day - 4 men in shifts - playing a regal, clipped tune in four directions several times an hour. The greyness enhanced the mystical feeling, neither light nor dark. The pigeons were comically fat, and we ran into the same old gentleman with a dog in a sweater over and over. A sign on the tram proclaimed you couldn't play the trumpet while riding. I ate rose ice cream.

We encountered a store called "More than a Cookie" - the "more" turned out to be Jesus. The cookie-seller, a pudgy Minnesotan with eyes begging trust a little too much, accosted us with Messianic Jew literature and asked us to raise our hands if we believed in G-d. "You guys are like celebrities to me," he said, gaping at curly hair and Mogen Davids. "The Jews are the Chosen People." As we left, he asked us if we wanted to be buddies with Jesus. We, noshing on cupcakes, politely ran away.

We went to Friday night services in an old Orthodox synagogue dedicated to Rabbi Remuh, and had to sit in the women's section, wood paneled and under construction, broken chandeliers and wobbly benches and droning Hebrew and an adorable baby wearing fluffy bear ears cooing during silent meditation. I always feel alienated by this sort of services, but the dinner at the JCC was awesome. The Prague JCC is under heavy security, and inside is somber, quiet, empty. In contrast, Krakow's JCC was full of light and song, happy people reconnecting to Judaism in a place that was once a terrible ghetto.

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A man stood and spoke in expressive Polish, a tale of surviving the Holocaust, building the synagogue benches, marrying a wonderful Gentile woman, and having lots of beautiful children. The rabbi, a jovial youngish man with a long beard and sparkling eyes behind glasses, preached emphatically about life, the first Torah portion of the year, to be fruitful and multiply. He engaged more song, more stories, more laughter. He reiterated the importance of taking responsibility for where you are.

The Krakow Jews are reclaiming a place, infusing it with music. I got an opportunity to speak, and I spoke about being where you are, a lesson I have been deeply focusing on in my own life. In the story of the burning bush, G-d calls Moses, and Moses says "Hineini -- here I am." And in that room in Krakow, I felt quite profoundly that I was there, in this strange, liminal, fantastic place. It rekindled a wavering dream about maybe become a rabbi someday -- or at least, creatinga table with food, song, people, and learning. That, to me, is Judaism. That, to me, is the sweetness of life.