Yay Bread!!

While I surprisingly did not get completely tired of matza I have to say I am quite excited to start eating a little more than tuna, tomatoes and our bread of affliction. The remaining days of my pesach celebration were spent at the house of a friend's family in Rondebosch which is a really nice suburb close to where I live. We successfully spent the weekend continuing to discuss the relevant topics that one is supposed to speak about during this time. The constant connections made between the exodus from Egypt and liberation struggle of apartheid South Africa and its remnants have really forced me to forge links between two completely different histories and people. I believe that the dimensions added onto this holiday have helped me understand how to merge my Judaism with how the history of South Africa can be relevant to my life. I think that understanding the suffering and oppression of one people or situation within the context of a different one that includes these two things can humanize and shed light upon each. Both stories create a larger framework for comprehending what we all deserve as humans regardless of our titles and loyalties, because that is our ultimate distinction; being human connects us all to one another and establishes a mutual responsibility for each other.

Ultimately, I think that the slavery of and exodus from Egypt are not vague memories that we must acclimate ourselves with every year, but rather a reality that continues to present itself in various regions. We only have to open our eyes to the unfathomable horrors and simultaneous glimmers of hope that continue to emerge manifest in the contemporary histories of others; for example the continued recalcitrance of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe that has undermined a supposed democratic process that voted him and his oppressive, corrupt ZANU-PF government out of office. It is quite clear to me that he continues to in effect mimic the egoism and cruelty of Pharoh through his contemporary translation of “no I will not yet your people go.” Exodus is not only a keystone of the past but a necessary emergence in our future. By our, I mean that we cannot distance ourselves from the suffering of others, because continued oppression lurks everywhere and deems everyone vulnerable, and thus we are not free until all members of humanity are.

I think that the reason why these various oppressions are able to take form and produce such uneven hierarchies is rooted in an idea that I learned in my awesome archeology class last week. When Iron Age societies in sub-Saharan Africa were infiltrated by new peoples there was a pattern of dynamics that would follow this new reality, this new interaction between those who inhabited the land, the first-comers, and those who settled in the same areas later and integrated into the cultures of these first-comers; these groups were referred to as the new-comers. The new-comers would initially hold fast to their own beliefs and practices while simultaneously submitting to the governance and spiritual connections of the first-comers in their own territory. But as time would elapse, the new-comers would introduce their ways into the cultures that were present before they lived in the area. Soon they would begin to influence the first-comers and convince them that their technologies, norms and practices were superior, were more civilized. The new-comers would begin to take over the power structures of the cultures by claiming their superiority and their civilized contributions to the people and the land. They would no longer allow the way of life of the first-comers to hold any value among the merged populations and started to see themselves as the true inhabitants of the land. Soon the culture of the first-comers would dissipate and the remnants of it, whether existing in tradition or people, would move down the cultural ladder. Then a new people would move into the land recreating the process and deeming themselves the new-comers and the initial new-comers the first comers. This progression seems to me to be the original imperialism that has become more complex and multifaceted and continues to plague the world on a grander scale, for it has and will remain a justification for oppression and the establishment of hierarchies of belief and practice. It seems the vertical nature of social relations has been in existence for quite some time and that the need for a paradigm shift to horizontal relationships has been just as necessary in the past as it is today.

Since being here, I have been so blessed to have exposure to different topics in my classes and different ways of thinking that have all allowed me to fuse different worlds together and learn about them individually and also as a collective reality. Through archeology, the history of Southern Africa, the existence of global poverty and development, volunteer opportunities and exposure to the Jewish community, I feel as though I have activated a new passion for understanding the world around me through facts and hands-on experience and not just observing from a distance, which is a reference to the sociological lens I so often employed prior to this new life. If you have not noticed, one of the main outlets that have facilitate this process has been reading, specifically finding refuge in works of non-fiction. I find that reading is an amazing way to bring words and ideas to life within the physical world around me. As a result, I have often found that my taste in books is limited and does not include fiction, and I have often voiced this preference. Well, this past yom tov, this unwarranted hierarchy within my own life was broken down. The friend whose family I stayed with opened up a new world to me in the form of books about things that have never happened but are still profoundly relevant to reality.

My introduction to fiction came in the form of Ernest Hemmingway’s short classic The old Man and the Sea. The book was quite easy to read and seemed to have quite a simple plot. Old fisherman seeks to legitimize his life by catching the fish he had always hoped for. Yet the complex, but effortless naturalness of the old man’s thoughts mixed in with the development of the love-hate relationship with his prized fish during his journey adds new meaning and uniqueness to such a bare narrative. As my friend explained to me, the magic of fiction lies in its ability to elevate such simplicity, to take normal events, characters and circumstances as a collective entity and transform them into something greater than what it is, something extraordinary. Yet it is not unrealistic to think that the wonders of the completeness of the story are present in the simple parts of our own lives; it is not unrealistic to think that the hard-to-decipher, bittersweet ending would come about from such a routine fishing trip (or whatever that may be representative of in our own experiences). Life is complicated, the relevance and significance we attach to the situations that construct our identities are real and literature that never happened can help us filter them out and help us place the purpose of our various experiences in the larger framework of our lives. I feel as though my experience in South Africa is true proof of this.

Stories like this can teach us so much about humanity and situations that can be metaphors for those we experience in our own lives. This was insightfully articulated by my friend's little sister as she announced a quote from a different work of fiction, “history is a lived novel while a novel is history not yet lived” (or something like that). I think that fiction can be as helpful and relevant as non-fiction because it teaches us about the realities of the human state and how we function in normal as well as abnormal situations. It pulls significance and worth out of places in which one would never think to look for these things. I am quite excited to continue to develop my relationship with fiction and find new ways to relate it to the realities of the word. Next up: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic One Hundred Years of Solitude. Don’t worry though, I still plan on reading plenty of ‘lived novels;’ I just want to mix things up a bit.

Just to once again reassure you that I do not sit locked up in my room reading and doing homework, I continue to travel around Cape Town and build relationships, it just seems to me that the adventures of my mind are easier to articulate in a way that might be interesting because, in my mind, they fuse all of the individual experiences i had had into something greater, something that i hope will continue to impact my life far beyond leaving Cape Town in mid-June.

South African (cultural) Ulpan:

Biltong – noun – a dry jerky that can be made from a variety of animal meats (beef, buffalo, springbok, antelope etc.) loved by citizens of south African culture

When Josiah became a vegetarian, it was quite difficult for him to give up his beloved biltong..I don't know how necessary that sentence was but I really wanted to use the name Josaih.

Enjoy your leavened products. Cheers!