Dancing in the Dust

One year, during the dog days of summer, helicopters circled, flags undulated and tefillin straps sashayed, dry trees rustled, huge speakers blasted out the music from a little booth. The music was a compilation of Middle Eastern dance tunes, called Middle East Grooves*, sung largely in Hebrew with a smattering of Spanish and rap and who knows what else, thrown into the mix. I bought the CD at the Israel Independence Day Festival in Los Angeles. You can't listen to this music without rising from your waking sleep and taking a spin. Even if you are by yourself in a small, cluttered room somewhere in the soggy Diaspora. I especially love a rockin' multilingual fusion cover of The Animals' Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood**.

I remember that festival well. That one year, we were 50,000 strong and there was almost no write up about it in the LA papers. You have to be there to appreciate the intense liveliness of the gathering. Firstly, how often do we in the Diaspora get to experience such a massive number of the tribe all in one place doing our Jewish thing? Out of the masses, this little booth was manned by a few young men, browned and gleaming from the sun, who would take turns dancing in the dust. Dancing for their lives. Once in a while others would shyly join in. The beat was contagious for those few hardy souls who would twirl and dip and sweat some more and for the rest of us standing, mesmerised, just sweating.

It was difficult to leave, hard to tear my eyes away from the fire, the energy, the life inside this dirtbowl. It's like being at the ocean and watching the light play over the waves, and the endless surf rushing in, infinite and varied, the mercurial changeableness of its colour riding the waves,and somehow you cannot break away from it. Meanwhile, over in the distance, a green oasis- in the welcome shade of some trees, people danced the hora, ever so lightly, barefoot. No matter where you stood, you couldn't help but glow, couldn't help but sweat, and swallow gallons of sweet water, even the recently introduced magical-Kabbalah-water which, at that time, the Kabbalah Centre acolytes were handing out freely and generously. Or the bottles of water handed out anonymously by Messianic "Jews" before the gates, while we snaked along in ribbons of waiting, our throats parched. All the while flags fluttered and snapped in the breeze and helicopters circled beating the air with their wings.

I remember how amazed I was by my first experience of the Galilee in Israel. It was so lush, so impossibly green, so fertile- black soil, verdant hills, and cows (photo)! More than a gentle, pastoral land, it positively raged with life. My ignorance of Israel was monumental (still is)- I expected desert everywhere. On our return from the charcoal iron plains (photo) in the Golan Heights we stopped at a kibbutz where once again we were being shepherded in to view one of a seemingly endless stream of films- this one about the human legacy of the wars. But before that we lingered in the shop which served up food, drinks, and souvenirs. I was getting desperate to buy something . I hate dwelling on the politics and war- I don't deal well with any of it. I found myself a soft, green, hooded IDF sweatshirt; this was the first time that I noticed the emblem: a sword entwined with an olive branch. I wear it proudly.

I was the last person left at the shop, deliberately straggling, and the fellow at the counter indicated that I follow the rest to see the movie. I refused, saying I could not do it. That I could not watch. He quietly placed his hand on the counter and gestured side by side, saying in broken, accented English, that Israel is both things, the beautiful, yes, but you cannot dismiss the terrible. For Israel, they go together. That Israel cannot have one without the other. I could only agree with him. He saw the truth of it.

I remember the very first Jewish festival I attended, a couple of years before. It was held on a college campus in the San Fernando Valley. It was relatively small in size, with the requisite little booths from synagogues and lots of brochures, and enough food and music to satiate the belly and the soul. Neshama Carlebach was playing that year. My friend and I sat way up on the hill, under the feeble shade of some palm trees and watched and listened. The heat was intense, the earth was bone dry. I really didn't know who Neshama Carlebach was, and it was the first time that I heard Am Yisrael Chai.

Soon, a hora line magically appeared down below, increasing dancer by dancer, then, spiralling inwards. The music was slow, hypnotic, almost hushed, and kept building and building. Am Yisrael Chai repeated over and over again. Until the music and the movement turned to fire, until, dead centre in a wheel of people, a huge blue and white Israeli flag ballooned out above the crowd, floating and fluttering. Several dancers had also covered themselves with flags, like a tallit, like capes that supermen and wonderwomen wear. They danced and they danced on the parched ground, like dervishes, like I imagine David danced, until human and flag dissolved into each other. And there was a moment, in watching them and a sea of Jews, when all sense of place and time became lost, a blur, and I was there with them, everything was one- and we were dancing at Sinai, proud, ecstatic, joyous, unquenchable, Am Yisrael, and it was a moment when I knew exactly why I had become a Jew.



*Described as "The Best of Israeli, Moroccan & Middle Eastern Music". None of the music is labelled.

**I tracked down the unusual cover to a group called, Alabina; the track is called "Lolole".

Coming soon: Dancing in the Dust II- The Word Jews Toss Around Promiscuously. (I figure if I announce it, then I will have to make it so.)