I feel compelled, more so than I have in writing any previous entry, to emphasize that the following experiences are simply too rich and complex to sufficiently describe. In just nine days Kivunim’s trip to India expanded my view of the world in a more profound way than I have ever experienced. In nine days we visited eight dramatically different towns and cities, all in a country that is at once at the hub of the story unfolding in our world during our time, and seemingly as far as possible from the framework of our daily lives. The trip was a personal and group exercise in jumping clear of comfort zones and familiar frames of reference for the here and now. We were in a profound and sustained state of awe as each day brought us in contact with unique and unfamiliar people, places, and ways of life. Each moment of being in India challenged my assumptions about the world, facing life itself anew on every level, from spirituality to poverty. All the while, this trip was part of the powerful and emotional culmination of the entire year, a time when best friends were savoring an uncommon lifestyle, a series of exceptional experiences, and each other. The following is an attempt to put a first encounter with a new world into words.
As much as I have thought about and discussed over the course of the year the passage of time and the special human ability to look forward and backward in time, anticipation was something that we hardly had any time for over the course of Kivunim. After nearly half a year of looking forward to Kivunim, culminating in the grueling final month of nearly full-time anticipation before the program began, the year itself, as a unique and constant series of groundbreaking opportunities and eye-opening experiences, afforded abnormally little time for expectation in between each adventure. Of course, this might prove to be the best problem any of us will ever have in our lives; there was hardly ever any shortage of excitement about, or appreciation for, what we were doing in the present—even without the typical salivation over it in advance. Still, whenever we did any special program, whether it was a fieldtrip or a concert, an international trip abroad or a return flight to Israel, I tried to spend at least a few moments recognizing that in any other time of my life I would have looked forward to any one of these experiences for weeks or months beforehand.
That being said, the level of anticipation surrounding Kivunim’s trip to India was unprecedented. The idea of going to India held a certain climactic significance simply by virtue of the fact that as our final international trip it would be the last time during the year that we would all live out of our suitcases together, tour a new place, and see our education come alive. Over the course of the year, we had come to appreciate the international trips as unique opportunities for the group to grow together. Apart from the sheer privilege of the trips themselves, as we spent more time together on buses and airplanes, ate exotic food together, and lay awake in hotel rooms all over the world, discussing our experiences in active and energetic digestion of these often overwhelming experiences, travel had become an increasingly meaningful part of our lives together. It was at once familiar (packing up our rooms in Jerusalem and driving to Ben-Gurion airport together, often in the middle of the night) and confounding (finding ourselves in completely foreign places together), but always endearing, as our friendships—not to mention fresh connections to new places—were forged time and time again in the furnace of collective discovery.
We were also able to look forward to India for reasons that transcended our general excitement about traveling together. Our trip to India had been postponed indefinitely due to the terror attacks in Mumbai earlier in the year. We had switched Turkey and India on our itinerary, landing India at the very end of our calendar. Because it would be central to the culmination of the year, and we could never be sure if the unfolding security situation would allow us to go at all (this inspired many of us to pay more attention to India in the news, which supplemented our educational preparation for the trip in a special way), India had grown on the horizon of our minds.
Of course on top of all this, it was understood that India would take our encounters with foreign cultures to the next level. After traveling to unique and wonderful places all over Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, India represented an entirely new civilization, where we would find a society of untold diversity springing from antiquity outside our more familiar Middle Eastern or European frame of our roots. In our studies and sessions of preparation for the trip, there was a deep sense (even deeper than in our preparation for the previous trips) that there was no priming, from academics to packing lists, that could possibly ready us for how different and challenging the reality of India would be—from the scorching pre-monsoon-season heat and the overwhelming seas of people to the unique smells and the basic cultural phenomena that would blow the roof off of all previous experience with the human condition.
Still, beyond the fact that India was so different on so many levels from the other countries we had visited, many of us experienced heightened anticipation for the trip because India was endeared to us on a personal level too. In one of the most powerful personal examples of India’s importance to the Kivunim experience, I remember on the first night that we were all together in October, we were sitting in a circle at the Ein Gedi youth hostel on the Dead Sea, talking about why we came on the program, and my friend Anna talked about her grandfather, who had worked as a rabbi in Mumbai, and her desire to explore his legacy and continue his journey in India.
For me exploring the Jewish life in India represented a crossroads of culture in my own life. My parents raised me with a solid commitment to Judaism, especially in terms of its culture and history. Yet, especially in the spiritual and intellectual realms, I always felt heavily influenced by Eastern ideas as well. Both of my parents began learning about Eastern thought and philosophy in college when they were about my age. As undergraduates at Brandeis University, my father had his introduction to transcendental meditation, while my mother all but invented the comparative religion major there. Later he was one of Deepak Chopra’s first patients of Ayurvedic medicine, and also spent some time in a Yoga ashram; she went on to earn a Master’s degree of theology focusing on Eastern traditions, especially the intersection of religion and psychology. Whether it was my mother’s avid practice of yoga, my father’s chanting Hari Krishna (a Hindu mantra) in the hopes that a parking space would open up in Harvard Square, the Dalai Lama’s celebrity status in our household, or our almost divine inspiration to get a Tibetan Terrier, Eastern—specifically Hindu and Buddhist—thought featured prominently in our household throughout my childhood. In some ways going to India felt like a sort of personal pilgrimage, some thirty years after my mother backpacked through the country. I might not go so far as to call myself a Jew-Bu or Hind-Jew, but suffice it to say that before the trip I was very curious to see how much of India—foreign in a way that I could never imagine—might on some level remind me of home.
PART ONE
Finally, after an eight-hour plane ride from Tel Aviv, we began circling Mumbai. Even before we touched down, we could see the streets buzzing below with incomprehensible traffic. As we flew over the city, it seemed endless in enormity—physically ten times the size of Manhattan. We saw slums that in some cases crept right up to the edge of tarmac of the runway. This would be just our first taste of the overwhelming poverty and population that characterizes India, with over three times the population of the entire state of Israel living in Mumbai alone.
Once we landed and left the airport, we were hit with a heat that can only be described as brutal. (There was a reason why the trip was originally scheduled for February instead of June!) The heat was a perfect physical manifestation of the intensity of the cultural transition that India would present. After I un-fogged my glasses, I remember all of us just standing outside the airport, waiting for our tour guides to come pick us up, sweating, laughing, and living in complete shock. It was at that moment that we realized that, while much of what we had been told—regarding the heat and the population density at least—would prove to be true, no amount of anticipation could truly have prepared us for how real and different India would be.
Ironically enough, one of the most apparent differences was that people drive on the other side of the road, an import from England. Indeed, while India was in some ways the most distant and foreign country we visited, it was also a former British colony, so we found English more useful there than in perhaps any of the other countries. Still, the fact that many drivers don’t quite commit to either side of the road in India didn’t make the adjustment any easier—sometimes I wouldn’t realize that we were on the wrong (right) side of the road. When it comes to the roads, which we always get to know quite well on these trips, another image of India that I’ll never forget is the sound of the horns. They have much more variety of tones and even melodies, and are used much more liberally there than in any other country I’ve visited—not because of road rage or stubbornness, but simply as the easiest way to communicate on the sometimes overwhelmingly busy, confusing, unmarked, and unmediated streets.
After having a counterintuitive breakfast at a McDonalds of Mumbai (Maybe they were trying to ease us into the new culture…), we took a lengthy bus ride down the western coast of India, getting our first taste of the Indian countryside, and spotting more monkeys than chipmunks in the trees by the side of the road. Soon we arrived in a village called Al-Baug, where an old synagogue is kept in strikingly good condition. In this area rural Jewish communities—called the Bene Israel—are thousands of years old, claiming that they shipwrecked on the coast of India after sailing from Israel to escape the Greek king Antiochus’ persecutions during the time of the Maccabees. These communities were lost to the Jewish world for centuries, and many don’t celebrate Chanukah because, having left the Middle East due to Antiochus’ persecution of Jews, they actually missed the events that Chanukah celebrates! Meeting these communities epitomized the exercise in expanding our conception of the Jewish world that Kivunim presents at every step of our journey. In no other country was it so apparent, and yet difficult to imagine, our common Jewish roots; seeing Jews seemingly so far from our image of their natural context challenged us to rethink the framework itself.
After a lunch of traditional Indian cuisine in Al-Baug, on our bus ride back up the coast to Mumbai, we visited the site of the original shipwreck of the Bene Israel Jews, where there is now a memorial and cemetery. That evening in Mumbai we went out to dinner; already developing a taste for the classic paneer and dal on rice with the delectable naan flatbread, it was the first time in my life that I had eaten the same foreign cuisine twice in one day. As we walked the streets, the heat and humidity belying the set sun, we began to see Mumbai in all its diversity and contradiction. We saw a vibrant nightlife in a cosmopolitan city, with children begging in the streets, and slums literally piled up next to skyscrapers. We would return to Mumbai at the end of our time in India, but the next day we woke up early to head to the airport for the first of six flights within India over the next nine days. We were off to Varanasi, the holy Hindu city on the Ganges River, and one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world—a place that stands today as true as it stood during the time of the original agricultural civilization at Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia nearly eight thousand years ago.
PART TWO
For me Varanasi has held a special place in my image of India throughout my childhood. As a city that captivated my mother in her graduate studies of religion, it was always a cornerstone in her stories about her trip to India. As we drove through the crowded streets, lined with caravans of rickshaws and often blocked by groups of cows (we even saw signs for a Chabad House—in Varanasi, India!), amidst the novelty of the place, I thought of my mother and felt a sense that in some way I was adding on to a previous journey. On some level this would be a return trip to Varanasi.
Soon after arriving in the city, we had a meeting with Tarun Bashu—known more affectionately by friends and locals as Dada Ji—a wise and wonderful man, a friend of the program, and our host in Varanasi. Notably, as soon as we sat down we were served Coca Cola, in one of the most spiritually transcendent cities on earth—about as far away as possible from Coke’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia—reminding us truly how inexorably connected the world is, for better or for worse, no matter how disparate and distant the pieces may be.
Dada gave us a quick tutorial on the city, and Hindu life in general. As a seasoned tour guide, no doubt used to tourists coming with removed and idealized lenses through which to view his city, he began with a simple and down-to-earth request, encouraging us not to take Varanasi too seriously, to take it as life. This encapsulates in so few words the deepest characteristic of Varanasi, a place where heaven and nature seem to meet, where life is as mundane as anywhere else, yet consistently recognized as the miracle that it is. He extended the statement beyond Varanasi to Hinduism itself, as a way of life that cannot, he posited, be put into a rigid framework. One of the various major distinctions that he drew between Hinduism and other religions was that it is individualized as opposed to institutionalized, meaning that there is something for everyone, from the academic and philosophical love of knowledge and observation to the more common religious practices for bringing people together. He explained Hinduism’s “trinity,” if you will, of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—the Creator, Transformer, and Destroyer, respectively—representing the unity of birth, life and death with separate but combined roles, which embody the spirit of pluralism that is at the heart of polytheism. Finally, he introduced the central physical elements of nature in Hindu philosophy, which all of us appreciated; learning that fire is a purifying element seemed to suggest that the extreme heat of the Indian summer had redemptive philosophical value to its people—and to us.
By pure serendipity, our program directors insisted, we had arrived in Varanasi on Ganga Dashami, one of the most auspicious days of the whole year, when Hindus celebrate the descent from heaven of the goddess Ganga in the form of the river. It doesn’t take long in Varanasi to begin to appreciate the depth and weight of such a celebration. The Ganges is a river that is worshipped. It is appreciated for what it is. It is a life force, a resource (though increasingly diminished, damaged, and polluted), an ancient religious holy place, a goddess, a bathtub, a washing machine, and a mass grave. It represents the circle of life.
Never was the feeling of returning to the heart of my mother’s journey in India so strong as when we arrived at the ghat—the Indian term for a flight of steps leading down to a river—on the western bank of the Ganges. As we boarded a small boat on our way to another ghat where the celebration was in full force, I couldn’t help but take a quiet moment to myself and wonder, as I surveyed the scene on the riverbank, not only how I had gotten there, but how different it must have been for my mother, traveling alone without friends or a structured program, to find herself here and make a tour of her own. It was out on the calm Ganges, where the watershed and cultural center of a billion people converge in a cloud of humidity and color, further than I had ever been from home, that I found a connection to my most immediate roots in my mother. For the first time since arriving in a place more foreign and relatively distant from the framework in which I exist than anything else I had experienced, I felt India floating into context. The distance was breathtaking, but I also felt a calm familiarity and affinity for the place. I felt my family’s relationship to Varanasi take a new step forward, connecting the dots from one generation to the next.
In the context of Kivunim, this evening on the Ganges was groundbreaking. In two days we had traveled from Jerusalem to Varanasi, visiting two of the world’s major “final destinations”. Jerusalem is a place that people all over the world have dreamt about and yearned to see for millennia; it is a focal point of the heaviest of historical moments, and the site of monotheism’s most dramatic projections for cosmic events in the future. Varanasi is a place where gods settle, where millions of people hope to end up at the end of their time on earth in this life. It sat heavily with me that it had been barely a month since Kivunim had floated down the Danube, a river of a different kind of mass burial, in the heart of Europe.
That night we finally arrived at the ghat of the main celebration, where an entire stretch of the river was dedicated to a show of rhythmic dancing, elaborate costumes, fire, and lights of all kinds. We joined hundreds of other boats, all crammed up against the riverbank. It reminded me of a mosh-pit at a rock concert, with rows and rows of boats mixing together by natural pushing and floating, and ultimately just squashed together into a lawless blob of people held captive by the festivities. After the ceremony we edged our way out of the crowd, and cruised back to the first ghat.
The next day we returned to the river early in the morning to watch the sunrise, and also to see the daily life of the river in action. We saw hundreds of people along the river, swimming, bathing, praying, washing their clothes, and even delivering their dead back to nature. It truly was, as Dada suggested, simply normal life at its richest, an intersection of existence with the natural environment. Still, I cannot overstate how shocking it was to see a place accepted as a sort of all-purpose hub for a community. Especially when it came to the burial customs, and the delivery of the ashes of the dead to the river, just feet from boys swimming in the water and men tirelessly washing clothes in the river, while it was beautiful to see the sacred and the mundane together as inexorably connected parts of life, it was difficult for us to understand how the transition from death to recreation to business could be so seamless.
In fact, while we all walked away from the Ganges reeling from the power of the depth of the culture on the river, many of us also felt another underlying sense of shock in seeing the river as an environmental issue. Besides our almost instinctive western reactions to the sanitation issues surrounding the blend of bathing and burial in a river that is revered by over a billion people for its perceived purity, many of us also wondered if, like many other major rivers in the world, the Ganges is suffering from pollution and increased erosion caused by the rapid industrialization of the country. However vibrant and seemingly unadulterated the Hindu life on the Ganges remains after millennia, having a culture so conscious of its relationship to the natural environment seems at odds in some fundamental ways with the grueling growth process that is propelling India to the front and center of the world stage in the 21st century. Maybe innovation will prove that India’s growth and development is not necessarily mutually exclusive with the health and richness of its ancient cultures. Still, seeing this sacred and beautiful place made us more conscious of the difficulties associated with the largest democracy on earth rapidly developing under a basically western industrial growth model—one that without conscientious reform poses great risks to the health of our planet and its people. This was just part of a larger process of trying to digest a country with an incredible scale of complexity, and a uniquely challenging—if not promising—role in the modern world. As Dada said, it was nothing more than real life.
As we prepared to bid Varanasi farewell, Dada reminded us that one day was simply too short a time to even get a taste of the city. Many of us buzzed about plans to return, exhibiting the ultimate goal of Kivunim: to whet appetites. After visiting a silk shop and the Banaras (the British name for Varanasi) Hindu University, we made our way to the nearby town of Sarnath, where Buddha preached his first sermon after attaining enlightenment. A grandchild of the original tree under which Buddha allegedly attained Enlightenment stands there, reminding us of legends of people from Isaac Newton to Buddha, who have changed the course of history simply by sitting under a tree.
The shrine and museum there gave us plenty to think about as we began to process the religious diversity of India outside the pluralism of Hinduism itself. One of my favorite images from the museum was an old statue of lions with their tongues out. Built by Emperor Ashoka, who ruled India in the third century BCE, and converted to Buddhism, the statue was designed to show that Buddhism is so gentle that even lions will submit to it. Ashoka is revered today as a pioneer in advocating for universal human values and the idea that war is a tragedy for everyone. The statue has since become a national symbol of India, along with Ashoka’s Wheel of Law, which is on the Indian flag—interesting points of comparison to the Jewish symbols of the lion of Judah and the Star of David. We also saw some of the oldest statues of Buddha in existence. Dada explicated one statue, showing us the meaning behind Buddha’s posture and facial expressions.
Soon we arrived with all our belongings at the Varanasi train station, where we would board a sleeper train to Agra—the home of the majestic Taj Mahal. Kivunim had taken a sleeper train before in Turkey, but nothing could compare to the experience we were about to have. Not knowing what to expect, we moved through the outdoor train station. I can’t imagine what it must have looked like to the local Indian travelers to see a group of fifty North Americans lugging their suitcases through the crowd, trying to stick together, struggling in the heat, and feeling sorely out of place.
We finally found our platform, set down our things, and began to wait for the train. At this point it was clear that no train like one we had ever been on would be coming through this station. Some of us held out hope that there was one luxury car a day, but as we saw train after train pass, full to the brim with people peering out of the open-air barred windows, we slowly began to harden around the idea that this experience was about to take India’s other-worldly effect on us to another level.
PART THREE
After hours of anticipation, tired and ready to get out of the heat at the end of a day that had started with the sunrise—though not necessarily very hopeful that we’d find much relief—we boarded our train and found our compartments. We were placed in a sleeper car (with glass windows!), but the next challenge would be trying to negotiate with our Indian compartment-mates about whose bed was whose. In this particular province of India, English was less common, so while our tour guides had the transaction well organized, once everyone got settled it was up to us to figure out the terms of sharing the compartments with all kinds of interesting people. Some of us fell asleep immediately. Some of us slept with a family bringing their terminally ill father to a hospital. Some of us slept very little, stuck in a staring contest with our fellow passengers.
Personally, I met a talkative civil engineer from New Delhi, who was very interested our group’s presence on the train. We mainly spoke about politics; he was really the first local with whom I had had a serious conversation about India—especially regarding its extremely rapid rate of current growth and its extreme poverty. He spoke about education, the economy, infrastructure, and sanitation as the first priorities. The most interesting point he made was a critique of President Obama. He suggested that if Obama actually wanted to fight poverty and be a leader in the global community then he should stop talking about ending American outsourcing. (By the way, this was the day before Obama was set to deliver his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, so Hindus were especially suspicious about how this would affect Indian relations with the US—as if Obama might be siding with [Muslim] Pakistan when it came to their region.) For all the talk in the United States about the global community, it had never occurred to me that Indians—who, like people in many of the countries we visited throughout the year, feel personally invested in Obama’s presidency—might feel threatened or even betrayed by Obama’s promises to the American electorate to stop supporting companies that “ship jobs overseas.” Yet, in India it felt entirely understandable to hear this commentary on the ultimately national accountability that elected leaders have, even in a “global” society.
Toward the end of the ride, a few of us huddled around the open door of the train, and let the new day seep in with our next destination coming to life outside as we cruised by. The feeling of waking up en route, beginning the day’s travel before you even get on your feet, is something I will always associate with Kivunim. Clutching our suitcases, we watched the day begin as we rolled into Agra. We had just completed a night that we would remember for the rest of our lives. In just a few hours we would be standing in front of the Taj Mahal.
After reuniting on the platform and sharing stories from the past night, we stopped at a hotel for breakfast, and began to make our way to the Taj Mahal. After months of training ourselves to appreciate the moment at hand within the context of a year of consistent excitement—with just minutes to anticipate some of the most exceptional experiences in our lives—we soaked up every second of build-up available to us in preparation for seeing one of the most magnificent structures on earth. Our tour guide insisted that we would have to multiply our highest expectations by a million in order to imagine what we were about to see.
It was true. As we entered the courtyard of the Taj Mahal, any sense that the sight might be lost on us weary and over-stimulated travelers melted away in an instant. Armed with hats, multiple water bottles, clothes that held the sweat of days, and cameras of course (if we hadn’t shed the self-consciousness of being tourists by this time in the year, it was never going to happen), we savored the almost cinematic image of the Taj creeping up into view as we walked through the entrance.
The Taj Mahal is emblematic of so much of the Kivunim experience and philosophy. It exhibits nearly perfect balance of complexity, with its intricate carvings and inlay work that can be seen up close, and simplicity, with its elegant design. It is versatile and demonstrative of short-term and long-term change, as it shifts in color throughout the day, and has transformed from Muslim mausoleum to Hindu national symbol over the course of centuries. (This was especially significant to us after seeing the churches in Spain that had originally been mosques.) Still, perhaps more than in any other way it resonated with all of us as evidence of a love story; the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan built it as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. True to its raison d’etre as a testament to her inner and outer beauty, the Taj Mahal gives genuine and basic meaning to the word breathtaking.
Beyond the visceral emotional reaction that seeing the Taj Mahal inspires, as a Wonder of the World it inspires wonder on an intellectual level too. Our program director Peter Geffen joined us at this point in the trip, directing our focus to the fact that, like so many other structures we had seen throughout our travels, from the Parthenon in Athens to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the Taj Mahal strains our capacity to imagine how such feats of engineering and architecture could be accomplished without computers. Besides the fact that its construction is all the more breathtaking under these considerations, perhaps no other building in the world shows us how much we can take computers for granted—even as they surround us constantly in the modern world (and make Kivunim possible). Indeed, if we cannot imagine how it was built without computers, it is just because we don’t understand computers, or, really, ourselves. After all, the Taj Mahal and computers were ultimately made possible by, and even designed based on, the power of the human brain.
Reflecting on how the beauty of the Taj Mahal was brought into the world—especially as it stands amidst overwhelming poverty in the surrounding region—also raised some questions about the functional priorities of modern society. Standing in front of it, I tried to imagine anything like it being built today in the United States. I thought about the Lincoln Memorial and Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara as examples that people of modern democratic countries do invest in expressing their appreciation for beloved leaders. Still, I thought, even if the people really loved Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan didn’t need their permission to construct the Taj. Today’s architectural wonders include the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, along with a tunnel, a dam, and even a canal—structures for pragmatic uses in business, industry and transportation. Seeing the Taj Mahal as more than just a picture in a book makes one think about the priorities of a society in any time and place—not to mention what effects term limits and resource accountability have had on our ability to construct beauty on such a scale.
After we bid farewell to the Taj Mahal, we made our way to the Agra Fort, a red-stoned palatial city about a mile-and-a-half northwest of the Taj. Besides being a beautiful relic of India’s history, where many rulers and foreign dignitaries met during the Golden Age of the Mughals, it is also where Shah Jahan spent his last days, confined by his son. From Shah Jahan’s former quarters in the fort, we saw the Taj Mahal from afar. Trying to put ourselves in his shoes, and imagine what it must have been like to be kept at a teasing distance with a clear view of his life’s work, we squinted to piece together a glimpse of the mausoleum’s beauty.
After another long day, we began another bus ride to New Delhi, where we would spend the night. Arriving late at night, we checked into a hotel that put the whole trip up to that point into perspective. After sleeping on a train in the heart of one of India’s poorest provinces the night before, opening the door to what must have been our 100th hotel room of the year and getting ready to sleep in a real bed inspired a whole range of emotions. On one hand I was full of a warmness that I cannot explain. Feeling the fabricated familiarity and comfort of a hotel after four of the most culturally challenging days of my life made me appreciate why hotels exist. Being a tourist in India wasn’t like being a tourist had been in any of the other places we had visited throughout the year. We had barely seen any other tourists in India. After sleeping on the train with relatively local passengers, we didn’t feel entirely removed from the society—we weren’t merely observing. This hotel was in fact one of the nicest ones I had ever stayed in, but, beyond that, compared to where I had been for the last few days, it felt like home.
On the other hand, when I came out of the pristine bathroom feeling clean from a hot shower, and slipped under the cool, soft sheets, while my room mate watched TV in the background, I felt a deep sense of regret in my relief. Although I had been in culture shock, the discomfort of the train was the closest I had come to being immersed into Indian society. As the polished Indian news anchor, speaking perfect English, facilitated a debate between Indian versions of CNN’s political consultants about President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, I wondered where I was. What country did these people live in? Was it the same one I had been touring for the past four days? How could this TV, this hotel room, be so strikingly cozy and familiar, when just miles down the road it felt like Tel Aviv to Mumbai could have been an interplanetary flight?
In the past four days I had seen levels of poverty and inequality beyond imagination, from the slums creeping up to the tarmac even before we landed in Mumbai, to the strangely spiritual poor of Varanasi, to the emaciated children begging in the train station, to the rough-shod communities we passed by on the train (I remembered how my mother always spoke about how seeing the poverty of India from her own train ride to Agra had impacted her life.), to the people outside the Taj who would wait at the entrance to the bus, begging for business, and then hold onto the windows as it began to drive away. Seeing such poverty, not in an academic or internet context where it can be isolated from the rest of Indian life, but amidst its equally overwhelming cultural context, made it powerfully real in a way that I had never experienced before.
I was forced to think about it in a more holistic way, challenging my immediate reactions as a westerner, and tempering my critique of a society that could sustain such unconscionable levels of poverty with questions about how and why. I began to challenge the word “poverty” itself, acknowledging that our terminology simplifies the situation to its economic reality, excluding the dimensions of social and cultural richness of the people. I imagined the discomfort that they might experience in Acton, Massachusetts, after their hunger was alleviated. Wondering what it was like for the British imperialists who found themselves in India centuries ago, my mind raced with heightened awareness and consideration of western values and basic assumptions about life and the universe. From reincarnation to definitions of success and happiness, I realized that this was an incredibly important experience, but that I had (and still do, of course) a long way to go before I could have any integrity in speaking about poverty in India in more general and theoretical terms. It’s hard to think about changing a society when one doesn’t understand its fundamentals (or maybe too easy if we’re not careful). Especially with over a billion people to think about, one must have a robust sense of humility alongside any sense of empowerment when it comes to suggesting what is best for India. Indeed, few if any would argue that India should not be thinking about how to improve itself—and many Indian entrepreneurs and policymakers are making valiant strides in greeting the challenges—but how and who says it are key details in the conversation.
It is very easy to judge a country, culture or people from afar, based on percentages and one’s own disparate cultural framework. It’s only a little more difficult to operate from those insensitive assumptions in a foreign culture as a teacher, missionary or other type of social worker. Yet, having been on Kivunim, living in Israel as something between a citizen and a tourist, and especially having been in India, I have never had more appreciation than I do now for the value of action coming from personal immersion and investment in a community as a thoughtful participant—rather than as just an outsider with big ideas. Sometimes, if not often, having an outside perspective can be very useful and helpful; it can give one the clarity and emotional distance to challenge harmful traditions and envision a better future. Still, being face to face with some of the people behind the alarming numbers we hear so much about bolstered my belief that without the appropriate sensitivity for the insider perspective such utility and helpfulness will inevitably be handicapped by a lack of integrity in defining what is in fact harmful or better.
As I lay in that hotel room in New Delhi, reflecting on the disparities in the country, and my privilege to be able to escape to luxury, I was also preparing for the next day, when we would be traveling north to Buddhist India to spend Shabbat with the Tibetan monks in Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile. Further highlighting our visit would be a special meeting with the Prime Minister of Tibet. We would go from the architectural wonder of the Taj Mahal to the natural wonders of the Himalayan foothills. Indeed, if the difference between the train and the hotel could have been two different countries within India, then Dharamsala would prove to be a third.
PART FOUR
The following morning, after a scrumptious buffet breakfast, we headed to the New Delhi airport for our flight to Dharamsala. Because there is only one flight to Dharamsala every day, Kivunim chartered a flight for most of us, while some of us went on the regularly scheduled one. Those of us on the chartered flight had quite a time being on the first flight ever made up exclusively of Kivunim students.
Then the unthinkable happened. The normally scheduled flight, with eleven of our friends and most of our staff, was grounded due to inclement weather. After arriving in Dharamsala it would take a while before we heard whether or not the rest of the group would be joining us, but ultimately they stayed in New Delhi. We would be spending our last Shabbat—the beginning of our last week together on Kivunim—in two groups. Given the logistical and programmatic ambitions of Kivunim, the fact that we were basically able to get through the whole year until that moment without a hitch was actually incredible. We took the change of plans in stride, and looked forward to being reunited with our friends.
From the moment the plane touched down in Dharamsala, we could tell that it was a special place. Geographically, it was completely different from the India we had seen up until then. With its stony and green rolling hills, it reminded me more of my image of China than India. The air was cool, fresh and crisp in a way that we hadn’t experienced since before we arrived in India; perhaps needless to say, Dharamsala would provide a refreshing respite from the oppressive heat of the lower altitude. It began to rain almost as soon as we arrived, but as the misty clouds drifted over the already mountainous city, the tremendous, snowy mountains that frame the city’s backdrop slipped in and out of view, inviting us to imagine just how far up they went off in the distance. Like the pristine natural energy that we had felt six months before in the majestic Greek mountains of Delphi and Meteora, here too at the end of our journey was a place where it felt perfectly natural for a spiritual community to have settled.
Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, Dharamsala has been the home of the Tibetan government in exile for fifty years. After the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959, India allowed the Tibetan refugees to settle here. While it is said that Dharamsala is the closest one can get to Tibet while still in India, its refugee residents never forget that they are in exile. No matter whom you ask, whether it’s a Tibetan monk or a Kashmiri shopkeeper, everyone insists that their real home (Tibet or Kashmir) is the most beautiful place on earth, and that they always yearn to return.
The first stop on our journey would be the Norbulingka Institute, a center for Tibetan cultural preservation that was founded by the present 14th Dalai Lama. It had natural charm, with a lush courtyard and gardens, leading up to a beautiful Buddhist temple overlooking the picturesque vista of the surrounding mountains. All through the gardens were studios and shops of Tibetan art. With just the sound of the rain, we wandered through the center, watching the artists work in tranquil silence on Tibetan Buddhist mandalas and statues. On all the walls were Tibetan flags and pictures of the Dalai Lama. Walking among these workshops, we slowly began to realize the importance of the place we had stumbled upon. This was a nation’s oasis, a place dedicated entirely to the maintenance of a culture trying to survive outside its historic home—an idea that endeared the place to Kivunim’s exploration of Jewish communities spread all over the world. This was just the first way in which we would discover Kivunim’s core bonds to Tibetan narrative and philosophy.
After our tour of the Norbulingka Institute, we got back into our cars (the city would not be ideal for bus travel) and began the climb up to McLeodGanj, the town of Upper Dharamsala where we would spend most of our time, and where the Tibetan government is situated. As the car bounced up the steep and narrow streets, I began to feel the power of the experience personally. If Varanasi had felt like a return journey in my family’s story, then being in Dharamsala made me feel like a pioneer. As part of my family’s affinity for Eastern culture and Tibet in particular, one of the most memorable and informing experiences of my childhood was going to hear the Dalai Lama speak in Boston when I was fourteen. I was inspired by his ability to frame the most confounding and complicated issues of our time in profoundly simple terms of encouragement to strive for personal and collective improvement. He was authentically wise, with an unmatched appreciation for and understanding of the complexity of universal human concepts like happiness, compassion and humility that allowed him to speak of them in their deepest and simplest terms. Although he was out of town at the time, as we ascended through the narrow and crowded streets to McLeodGanj, I felt myself filling up with excitement to be there.
After checking in to our hotel, we spent a few hours exploring the town. Being in upper Dharamsala, at the top of a small mountain, McLeodGanj was a pretty small collection of narrow streets. Our hotel was about a block away from the main temple, the home of the Dalai Lama, and the seat of the Tibetan government. In between were streets full of restaurants and shops. We spent a lot of time going from shop to shop, trying out our haggling skills after learning the ropes in Middle Eastern markets all year. It was especially interesting to hear the stories of the shopkeepers, most of whom were Kashmiri. I will admit that it seemed a little ironic—if ultimately unsurprising—to have such a thriving tourist business, full of material items, in the heart of simple and modest Buddhist India.
One of the most exciting features that this tourist culture brought to Dharamsala was an Israel-friendly atmosphere. We had always heard that India was a favorite destination for post-army Israeli travelers, but we would never have anticipated that Dharamsala would be full of signs in Hebrew, and restaurants advertising Israeli food. Being a mostly vegetarian country in general made India one of the easier places in our travels to keep kosher by Kivunim’s standards, but Dharamsala brought it to a whole new level. However, most of us used being in India as an opportunity to eat non-Israeli food.
Eventually we made it back to the hotel to prepare for our final Kivunim Shabbat. We would be joined by a group of Tibetan monks. Praying in the presence of Buddhist monks proved to be a unique window into reflecting on our own traditions. From prayer to prayer, my friends and I spent more time than usual dwelling on the translation of the Hebrew words, and getting into the spirit of the singing and dancing involved in the Friday night service that welcomes the Sabbath. As we led these prayers, we began to appreciate where we were. India is the heart of polytheism—very far from our home base, the spiritual center of monotheistic tradition in Jerusalem. It was a wonderful way to bring in the final Shabbat of Kivunim, creating a powerful perspective of how far we had come over the course of the year, both in miles and in months, as individuals and as a group.
After a particularly uplifting prayer service we ate dinner at the hotel with the monks, exchanging questions, mostly about life and religion. The monk at my table seemed most interested in what Jews envisioned during prayer, being that there were no physical images to pray to. This cut to the core of our religious differences. He had a pretty impressive knowledge of the Bible, and asked us all kinds of questions about why certain people appeared in our prayers as opposed to others. It was very interesting to reflect on these questions, and to hear the different answers that we each offered in return.
The next day was momentous for Kivunim. After the Shabbat morning service we made our way to the center of the Tibetan government in exile for a special meeting with the Tibetan Prime Minister Samdhong Rinpoche. Perhaps needless to say, of all the moments of the year that we knew would only blossom in significance with time, we found ourselves challenged especially in this moment to soak in the experience to our fullest capability. In preparation for the Prime Minister’s arrival, we lined up and got ready to receive a customary blessing from him one at a time. We each received a ceremonial scarf called a kata, which he would use to bless us. As he entered the room with a group of monks, we saw an unassuming man with a big smile. He went to each of us individually, making eye contact and pressing together our hands, which were draped with the kata. We all bowed and showed our appreciation with a word or a smile.
Then we all sat down facing the front of the room, where some chairs and microphones were set up for the Prime Minister, Kivunim’s director Peter, and a few other high-ranking monks. Peter gave a short introduction, a powerful analysis of the significance of this meeting between Jews and Tibetans, united by unique yet related historical narratives, and common pursuit of ideals of freedom, compassion, and peace in the world.
As the Prime Minister began to speak, we all took a lesson in Buddhist thought and practice, and in Tibetan history and culture. He spoke humbly about his election to be Prime Minister—joking almost irreverently that he had hoped the people would elect a young, secular visionary, but instead they picked an “old monk.” He spoke about the political oppression of the Tibetan people at the hands of the Chinese government, but at the same time about the importance of hating an enemy’s actions, while still loving the enemy. Hearing what he was doing to work for Tibet’s political autonomy showed us how politics and Buddhist philosophy can mix.
During his talk and the following question-and-answer period, we all began to recognize certain parallels between the Tibetan story and the Jewish story. We began to see how our study of Jewish life around the world, in so many different broader cultural contexts, resembled the Tibetan experience of living in India. While modern Israel makes the conditions of Jewish “exile” today very different than the Tibetan presence in Dharamsala, our study of the Jewish Diaspora—the common yet fragmented dispersion of the Jewish people that defined us for almost two thousand years before Israel was established—certainly endeared us to the Tibetan story on some level. Hearing the Prime Minister’s Buddhist interpretation of what it means to be subjected to injustice offered a progressive perspective on conflict resolution in general. Especially when it comes to the Middle East, Jews and Palestinians alike might have related to his words. His vision for mutual respect, recognition and regard between Tibetans and Chinese resonated very deeply with many of us in our own views of conflict in Israel and throughout the world. We all walked out of this session with the Prime Minister deeply grateful for the opportunity to have had such a private audience. We felt humbled by his humanity, refreshed by his simple yet radical vision for his people and the world, and both intellectually and spiritually stimulated.
After thanking him for spending time with us, we were given a tour through the Tibetan museum and main Buddhist temple near the Dalai Lama’s residence. The museum was a shocking and painful look at the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and the past fifty years of exile and oppression. We got a great tutorial on Buddhism from the monk who guided us through the temple. I had never realized that Buddhism was in many ways a reform movement of Hinduism. It was designed to focus on compassion, and to put less emphasis on worshipping idols (though they eventually were introduced for meditative visualization). The most interesting thing he taught us was that Hinduism claimed Buddha as a reincarnation of Vishnu, essentially absorbing Buddhism. This struck me as I tried to imagine the equivalent in monotheism—if Judaism claimed the prophets of Christianity and Islam, as opposed to the other way around. This detail was particularly emblematic of how different the basic frameworks of these religious traditions are. We had stumbled upon our own organic experience of longstanding western fascination with eastern religion and philosophy. On a different note, we were surprised and intrigued to see all kinds of cookies piled up inside the shrines. Standing next to boxes of Oreos in a Buddhist temple in Dharamsala, some of us joked that this was the best form of globalization that we had seen yet.
After an evening out on the town, we gathered together to say goodbye to our last Shabbat on Kivunim. With an emotional reflection session on as many memorable moments as we could muster with a chunk of us missing, we made one of our last deliberate attempts as a group to gain some perspective from each other on the past year and prepare for the future. It was an uplifting and heartwarming session that culminated in a spirited havdalah service and the customary weekly rounds of personally wishing each other a shavua tov, or a “good week,” bearing heavily in mind that by a week from then we would be strewn all around North America, reminiscing about moments like the one at hand.
Still, it wouldn’t be over until the very end. Again, based on pure chance, just as we had stumbled upon the most auspicious day of the Hindu calendar in Varanasi, we found ourselves in Dharamsala on Saga Dawa Duchen, the day when Tibetan Buddhists would commemorate Buddha’s birth, attainment of Enlightenment, and ascent to Nirvana in death. Accordingly, many of us would wake up at 4am to walk to the temple for the start of the festivities.
The group of us who went found little more than a handful of monks and tourists walking to the temple in the middle of the night. It was a calm night, and once we got there, we watched as the observers walked clockwise around the temple. For the majority of us, the most eventful piece of the outing was meeting a couple of Israelis at the temple. I don’t mean to downplay such an occurrence of course; Israel is a country of about 7.5 million people, and yet Israelis can be found in the most remote places of the world. After watching a beautiful sunrise over the mountains, we were disappointed to hear from one of our friends when we woke up again a few hours later that he had followed the people walking around the temple as they left and filed into the woods, where there was a giant shrine to Buddha surrounded by hundreds of people. Still, having missed the core of the ceremony, we were glad to have shown up and tried to squeeze every last moment in Dharamsala out of our short time there.
A bit later in the morning we began our descent from Dharamsala. We took a bus all the way to a small city called Chandigarh. On our way out of the mountains, we slowly found the familiar heat, terrain and smell of India return to our senses. Dharamsala had been an incredible addition to our experience, bringing us into contact with an entirely separate nation of people in a whole different environment, and giving us the distance necessary to fully appreciate the rest of our experience in India, as our grueling pace through the country continued.
From Chandigarh’s small domestic airport we took a flight to New Delhi, where we reunited with the rest of the group. There were tears and general warmth as we caught up with some of our closest friends, whom we very seldom ever got the chance to miss. Soon we were on another flight to Jaipur, one of the primary cities of the ancient spice route in its heyday, sometimes called the Pink City. It had been a long day of travel, and the pace would continue.
PART FIVE
The next morning we went straight to the Amber Fort, which is actually just outside of Jaipur. The ancient citadel served as the capital of the region until Jai Singh II moved down the road to found Jaipur in the 18th century and build a new capital city from scratch. Combining Hindu and Muslim architecture, the fort is a unique piece of history that we had the pleasure of viewing atop elephants. After a tour of the incredibly elaborate and labyrinthine palace, we took a bus back to Jaipur. There we visited the city’s outdoor observatory, with the world’s largest sundial. When Jai Singh II moved the Rajasthan capital to Jaipur, he built the city with impeccable attention to detail even by today’s urban planning standards. On top of all this he built Yantra Mandir, or Jantar Mantar, which remains one of the most groundbreaking astronomy sites in the world. Adding to our list of India’s time-honored scientific and architectural feats, we were beginning to appreciate the roots of this distant civilization in some of its foundational contributions to human development in general.
After lunch we had a few hours to explore Jaipur’s busy marketplace. Again, we were overwhelmed by the level of poverty in the area, and the desperation of the shopkeepers to secure our business. Some of them lured us with declarations that Obama had shopped at their store. Others even tried using a little Hebrew on us—unbelievable! It was quite a way to conclude our year of perusing many of the world’s most popular and historic marketplaces. By the end of the day, we had been solicited nearly to our breaking points. If the pace of our trip was catching up with us, we would have to rally for another day. And even before this day was over, we would have a pool party on the roof of our hotel—a sort of celebration of our final night on a Kivunim international trip.
The next morning we woke up early to catch our flight back to Mumbai, our last stop before heading back to Israel. Having visited several other places around the country since our first day in Mumbai, we were able to take in a much more nuanced perspective of the city, seeing what makes it distinct amidst the country’s myriad of unique places. It felt particularly meaningful to be in Mumbai in the year that saw the city propelled into mainstream global consciousness. With the urban population officially accounting for more than half of humanity for the first time in history as of 2008, along with the tragic Mumbai terrorist attacks and the success of the film Slumdog Millionaire in the past year, Mumbai represents some of the most exciting progress and most overwhelming challenges facing the modern world. To be in Mumbai is to see the cutting edge of human civilization.
We were immediately reminded of its size. With a skyline that dominates the entire horizon, and slums literally packed into the spaces between skyscrapers, the city is simply enormous. We also began to appreciate Mumbai’s special identity as the former capital of India, when it was a British colony. From the architecture to the transportation to the distinctly British design of the city’s university, lots of old European influence contributes to the contrast between Mumbai and the rest of India.
One of the most exciting stops on our quick tour of the city was Mahatma Gandhi’s old residence in Mumbai, which has been converted into the Gandhi Museum. It was inspiring to be in the former house of this legendary change-maker. After seeing starving children on the street, one gains a deeper appreciation for Gandhi’s commitment to the pursuit of justice—even to the point of starving himself in protest. To have this be one of our last stops in a year that saw the election of an African-American president of the United States was extremely powerful. Our director Peter, who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, delivered an inspiring reflection on Gandhi’s profound impact on the history of the world. As the primary leader of the Indian Independence Movement, and a pioneer of satyagraha, the non-violent resistance philosophy that inspired Dr. King and many others in struggles for freedom all over the world, Gandhi was fundamentally responsible for sowing the seeds of possibility at the roots of Barack Obama’s story—a story that many of us tie deeply to our own, especially as we imagine the future that we are beginning to contribute to building. The dots of our generation’s bond to this place and its history were beginning to connect on a fundamental level.
After spending some time at the museum, we made our way to the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue for lunch. With its beautiful aquamarine blue exterior, it is a loud and proud expression of Jewish identity in the heart of Mumbai, celebrating its 125th anniversary, in fact. We were quickly ushered into a room in the synagogue where we ate lunch. As we sat around these tables, laughing and munching on our last proper Indian meal of the trip, there was an underlying sentimental vibe, a beautifully implicit—and sometimes perfectly explicit—acknowledgement that in our joy we were building some of the final memories of the year. The mood became even more heartfelt as we moved into the sanctuary of the synagogue—the last one that we would visit together all year. Over the course of the year we had stood in dozens of synagogues of all shapes, sizes and styles all around the world. We had brought each of them to life with song, paying respect to history by revisiting it in our own time. Now, in the sanctuary of the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue of Mumbai, we all stood in a circle holding hands and sung the moving and uplifting hymns that had become central to one of our strongest and most consistently practiced Kivunim traditions. I closed my eyes and listened to that unique collection of voices, picturing our growth as a group through the lens of each of the song sessions in our travels to synagogues around the world over the course of the year. We savored each beat as the last notes rang out—and finished on a good one.
We left the synagogue in small groups, free to roam the nearby sites of the city. We visited a few shops, tired but still shocked by the modern vibe of Mumbai amidst all we had seen in our time in India. We visited the Gateway to India, an impressive arch on Mumbai’s western waterfront that was built by David Sassoon, the Baghdadi leader of the Jewish community of Mumbai in the mid-19th century. Across the square we could see the Taj Mahal hotel, landing us right in the epicenter of the terror attack that ravaged the city while we were in Greece just six months earlier. When we all regrouped, we made our way to the Mumbai Chabad House, where the rabbis and community members continue to work on rebuilding since the attack.
Seeing all of this up close put in perspective how lucky we have been. Of course we postponed the trip to India after the attacks, and were given security restrictions during the war in Gaza earlier in the year. We had been shocked to read about the riots in Athens and Salonika, and the Ukrainian gas crisis that plagued the region just the week after we were in Greece and Bulgaria. There were tornados in southern Spain after our trip there, and we arrived in Berlin just the day before the May Day protests there would turn violent. Still, we had never come across danger during the year. In any case, it was very sobering to see how close all of these events came to intersecting with our lives. We were lucky to be able to simply read about these incidents—the trade-offs of living in an interconnected world where a program like Kivunim is possible—and adjust our schedule when necessary.
Over the course of the year, I have made it my business to try to take as little for granted as possible. In India, where hundreds of millions of people can’t even expect to have food and clean water everyday, one does not need to look very hard to appreciate even the most basic levels of privilege in life. Yet, beyond privilege, I found that just being in a place that was so different from anything I had yet experienced brought appreciation for life into finer focus. The trip to India was incredibly enriching not only in showing me images, ideas, and culture as I had never seen before, but also in providing a unique contrast with my own ideas and culture, forcing me to look at myself and my background in new ways. This speaks to the essence of the past year’s focus on routes to roots. Every moment held meaning and opportunities to learn and reflect on previous knowledge and assumptions. (Perhaps that can be blamed for the length of this entry!) Indeed, for much of the world we are the strange ones, and India is home.
Being in India showed us how little we had ever really known about a place we had always known about. India is a cradle of civilization where language and religion developed from scratch. It is a place where national identity can almost be confused with human identity, as diversity and unity are kept in a delicate balance on a scale not known anywhere else. Whether it is religiously absorbing Buddhism or politically accepting Tibetans, India is a country of integration without necessarily assimilation. India is dealing with many of the same issues facing the communities I have known, but in very different ways than what I have been used to. While it seems worlds away from the United States, or even Israel, its 1947 partition (corresponding with the 1947 partition of Palestine) reminds us how the world was once connected by English rule in the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia alike. Perhaps most poignantly, it is a place where neither the Star of David, nor the swastika, carry the same meaning as they do in the West. In India the Star of David, which actually pre-dates Judaism and recorded history altogether, is a symbol for the union of male and female elements, often associated with the “cosmic dance” of the gods Shiva and Shakti, while the swastika is merely a symbol of auspiciousness; fittingly enough, a significant position of Hindu nationalism has been the notion that the original Aryan race was indigenous to the Indian subcontinent.
Our trip to India embodied Kivunim’s goal of building “world consciousness” in a way that transcended the theory of any mission statement. I could feel my frame of reference expanding day to day. It was the best example of any experience all year of feeling that the more I saw the less I knew; indeed, often in India I felt less world-conscious than self-conscious. The trip was the epitome of a springboard, of a gateway to the rest of the world after Kivunim. While the trip was only a taste, we flew back to Israel with whetted appetites and more than enough to chew on at the same time. Amidst it all, we were preparing to go our separate ways. After a dinner from McDonalds (it was only appropriate as a bookend to complement our first breakfast in India) in the airport and the eight-hour flight back to Israel, we would have less than three days before finishing our journey around the globe together in New York.
