Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: israeliani all'estero

Persino in Nepal si resta israeliani. E c'è da essere orgogliosi,
davvero
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1219913206858&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
Jewish Journey
Eetta Prince-Gibson , T
"Namaste," the women say shyly, their hands pressed together, palms
touching and fingers pointing upwards in the traditional Nepalese
greeting as they slowly fill the room. Outside, cars honk, motorcycles
whiz, peddlers shout and dogs bark on the dusty, crowded Kathmandu
street. But inside, the women shed their shyness as they would a
sweater after coming in from the cold, and the room fills with happy,
excited chatter and laughter.
"Look, they've all come, they're all here," says Esther Ben-Ari, 52,
an artist from Ramat Hasharon, tears in her eyes.
Some thirty women, ranging in age from 16 to 38, have come to a drop-
in center for women who work in the infamous Cabin Restaurants in
Kathmandu, where the waitresses serve sex à la carte. The center,
organized by a local non-governmental organization, offers them an
opportunity to learn sewing, basic literacy, and other skills that
might help them find a better life.
For the past three months, Ben-Ari; Tome Lev Dekel, 23, a dancer from
Tzuran, a moshav in central Israel; and Carmel Pelunsky, 36, an
organizational consultant from London, have been meeting with these
women three times a week to offer them an opportunity for meditation,
creativity and self-respect. The three Jewish women are volunteering
with Tevel b'Tzedek, a program launched two years ago to expand
Israeli and Jewish consciousness about globalization and tikkun olam -
the concept that it is incumbent on mankind to "repair the world."
This will be the group's last meeting. Dekel guides the women through
a few moments of meditation, then Ben-Ari says, "It's hard to leave. I
hope we can remember the times we laughed together." They have
prepared folders for each of the women, containing their drawings and
the photographs they have taken during their sessions together. They
have asked each woman for her favorite color, and tied the packets
accordingly from spools of thread.
The three volunteers know some basic Nepalese, and communication also
takes place in the women's broken English, with smiles and mutual
goodwill. "Rangy changy," Ben-Ari says. "Colorful. Remember to use
colors and to love colors." "Balio, balio," Carmel adds. "Strong
women. Don't give up the fight. And let's all applaud ourselves."
They clap and laugh for a long time, their bangles twinkling. They
have brought bright powder to give Ben-Ari, Dekel and Pelunsky each a
tikka, a sign of blessing, on their foreheads, and they have brought
traditional scarves to give them as a parting gift. And when it is
time to leave, they don't want to go, and file out of the room slowly,
sadly, back to the street.
Tevel b'Tzedek (the phrase is from Psalms, 96:13, loosely translated
as "the Earth - with Justice") has just completed its third four-month
session in Nepal; the fourth session is scheduled to begin in early
September. The program was conceived and developed by Micha
Odenheimer, a rabbi, journalist and writer from Los Angeles now living
in Jerusalem, who believes that the program can tap into young
Israelis' treks through southern Asia and infuse this cultural rite-of-
passage with Jewish meaning and universalistic significance.
Some 50,000 Israeli backpackers pass through south Asia every year,
most of them just after discharge from their military service, forming
the largest group of travelers per capita of any nationality,
anywhere. They come, often for months at a time, to trek, to take
advantage of the cheap drugs, and to transition into adulthood by
escaping from the responsibilities that they shouldered during their
military service. They talk endlessly about how happy they are to be
away from the tensions of life in Israel and how excited they are to
experience life in countries that are neither Jewish, Christian,
Muslim nor Western. But they trek through the exotic scenery in an
Israeli bubble, following routes marked out for them by Israelis,
eating at restaurants set up by fellow Israelis, and meeting other
Israelis, ignoring the culture and people that surround them.
Yet in his own travels through the East, Odenheimer says that he
sensed that some of these young trekkers were seeking something more.
"I sensed a thirst to connect, to touch the societies around them, to
understand themselves and their own society better. Above all, I
sensed that they are looking for a way to make the world and Israel a
better place."
Odenheimer, 50, is a graduate of Yale University and received his
(Orthodox) rabbinic ordination from the renowned scholar and halakhic
authority, the late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. A follower of the neo-
hasidic rabbi and singer Shlomo Carlebach, Odenheimer came to Israel
in 1987. He has retained a charismatic, American 60s-like off-beat
manner. Always curious, with a bashful smile, Odenheimer sometimes
seems naïve; at other times, his questions are searingly, almost
brutally, incisive. It is easy to understand how his sense of purpose
and certainty pervades the group of volunteers that he has assembled
and why these young Israelis, most of them secular, trust him so
implicitly.
Tevel b'Tzedek is one of the boldest and most comprehensive programs
among the many new Jewish social justice projects that embrace the
concept of tikkun olam. Participation in the program is free;
participants pay only for their plane tickets, health insurance and
visas. Most are in the early to late 20s, although some, like Ben-Ari
and Carmel, are mature adults with specific training and skills. Most
are Israelis, but in each session there are also a few Jewish
participants from English-speaking countries, some of whom are on
their way to immigrating to Israel, others who will return to their
native countries. Some join up with the group while on their trek
through Nepal; others will continue on the trek afterwards. In Israel,
volunteers hear about the program through word of mouth and
networking; Odenheimer and a team of volunteers interview each
applicant.
"The meeting between the Israeli and Diaspora Jews," says Odenheimer,
"is an important aspect of the program, because it reinforces the
concept that what what we are doing here is part of our responsibility
as Jews, wherever we live."
For four months, participants in Tevel b'Tzedek live together, commune-
like, in a four-storey house in Kathmandu. During the first month,
they study Jewish texts on social and environmental justice, learn
about Nepal's language, culture and politics and about the effects of
globalization on the poor. Then, for the next three months, they
volunteer in a variety of projects, most of them run by local NGOs.
Each of the projects - including, among others, empowerment for the
waitresses at the Cabin restaurants; informal education for abandoned
street children; community organization in the slums along the
toxically polluted Bishnumati river; organic farming on an orphanage
farm outside the city; a theater group for working children in the
Kalimati vegetable market; teaching English in a remote village six
hours out of the city - has been selected by Odenheimer and his team.
"We want to make sure that the projects are worthwhile for the
Nepalese and for the volunteers," explains Yotam Pulizer, 25, from
Mitzpe Harashim, a community in Israel's north. "But we don't want to
impose our own ideas on the Nepalese, either. We want to work with
them, and we know that they have what to teach us, too." Pulizer, who
calls himself a "committed secularist who cares about being a Jew,"
had participated in a previous session of Tevel b'Tzedek and now works
as a project coordinator and counselor for the program in Nepal.
On a cloudy Friday morning, standing on the rooftop of the Tevel
b'Tzedek house, Odenheimer, incongruously and serenely wrapped in his
tallit (prayer shawl) and wearing tefillin (phylacteries), recites his
morning prayers against the backdrop of the deep green mountains that
enclose Kathmandu as the smog mixes with the mist of the early monsoon
rains.
Then he joins the 16 Tevel b'Tzedek group members, who are sitting on
cushions on the floor, eastern-style, in the common room, ready for a
seminar on Jewish thought. Odenheimer divides the group into smaller
break-out groups, handing each photocopies of texts from the prophets
Isaiah, Amos and Ezekiel. In one small group, Dekel reads the Hebrew
from Isaiah 58 aloud, helping Simon Kaye, 28, from Manchester,
England, with the complicated Hebrew.
Odenheimer has chosen the passages carefully. "What is the prophet
trying to tell us? There are powerful, universalistic concepts here -
can you articulate them," he prods them. "How do they relate to our
lives here and in Israel today?"
The discussions continue heatedly. "As Jews, it is our responsibility
to repair the world," Odenheimer says. "This is what the prophets tell
us - and it is even more true now, in this time of globalization, when
so many people are injured and there's so much to repair."
Globalization has been a central focus of other seminars during the
session. "As the world economy becomes more interconnected, the
poverty in the third world becomes our problem, too. There are some
10,000 Nepalese people working in Israel as caregivers right now. It's
important that our volunteers understand why they are working in
Israel and how this is connected to global processes," Odenheimer
explains.
Eran Ben Yaminy, head of the Environmental Fellows program at the
Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Tel Aviv,
is one of several speakers that Odenheimer brings over from Israel to
Nepal to lecture to the volunteers. "We try to teach them to think
critically about globalization and neo-liberal economics," Ben Yaminy
tells The Report in a conversation back in Israel. "They learn, for
example, that the industrialization of agriculture means bigger
businesses but fewer, and much more wealthy, stakeholders; that's why
the villages in Nepal are collapsing and that's why Thai workers are
brought to Israel and the smaller agricultural businesses are
collapsing. They learn that they will have to make choices as adults
living in Israel. Not everyone will be a professional activist, but
everyone can contribute to making the world a better, more just
place," he says.
With a population of just under 30 million, Nepal is one of the
poorest states in the world. Devastated by a Maoist insurrection and
civil war that have led to the establishment of an unstable democracy
plagued by infighting, Nepal's annual gross national per capita income
was under $300 in 2007, according to World Bank figures. Nepal was
only opened to the outside world in the 1950s, after a century of
government-imposed isolation, and since then has been torn between
tradition and breakneck modernization.
Kathmandu, Nepal's only large city (pop. 700,000) is an intoxicating
and dizzying mix of modern and ancient, transcendently sacred and
crudely mundane. Throughout the city, there are thousands of temples,
monastries, pagodas, votive pillars and fountains, together with feral
dogs, wild monkeys, roaming cows, Internet cafés, people chatting on
mobile phones, taxis speeding around hairpin turns and motorcycles
zigzagging at breakneck speed. The air pollution can be suffocating,
the views of the mountains awe-inspiring and humbling.
Social organizations report that in Kathmandu there are over 1,000
ragged children that no one wants between the ages of 4 and 16 picking
through the garbage or the ashes of the bodies cremated along the
rivers, searching for something they can trade or sell. Most of them
come from nearby towns or villages, but no one is looking for them.
They sleep on piles of uncollected garbage that provide a foul, soft
warmth or sell their bodies to any bidder; most of them are addicted
to drugs or glue-sniffing.
Tevel b'Tzedek volunteer Tamar Priel, 25, from Yesod Hama'alah in the
Galilee, works with these street children, some of whom have been
persuaded to come to the drop-in centers organized by field workers
from Nepalese NGOs. "These children are miniature adults who have to
fend for themselves, but they are also little children who want to be
hugged and to give love back, but nobody wants them. The drop-in
center gives them safety, clothes, a hot meal, but it doesn't provide
them with any organized activities. So in our project, we organize
daily, fun activities and work with local volunteers and help them
build ongoing projects for these kids."
But there are street kids in Israel, too, aren't there? Their
situation may not be as dire, but certainly in Israel there are
children who also need the love that Priel and the other volunteers
are offering. After all, Jewish tradition teaches that aniyei irkha
kodmin - the poor of your own city come first.
Priel answers thoughtfully. "In many ways, we all live in one big
world city. Social justice isn't about the particulars of this place
or that place. Once you learn to draw on your own self to give and not
run away from the pain - then you can give that anywhere."
"There are several ways to think about the concept of 'the poor of
your own city,'" Odenheimer says. "Caring about the world in all its
brokenness does not mean that we are abandoning Israel or Jewish
identity or Jewish solidarity. But we can't work for social justice in
Israel without understanding the other half of humanity, the so-called
Third World, because we are all interconnected."
Joining with socially minded Nepalese to help the some of the poorest,
most oppressed people of the world is "an utterly Zionist, totally
Jewish endeavor," he continues. "Zionism was founded by idealists who
wanted to create a just society. We wanted to be a light onto the
nations.
"In the past, because we were a powerless people, Jews had to maintain
our insularity, our particularity," Odenheimer observes. "Because we
are no longer powerless, because we have a state, we can unite the
particularistic parts of our people with the universal aspects taught
by our prophets. There's no contradiction anymore. Judaism and Zionism
must have meaning for the world - the idea of Holocaust and Redemption
is simply not enough to sustain us as a people, cannot provide meaning
for us in the 21st century, after the State of Israel is already a
reality."
In Tevel b'Tzedek, he says, volunteers can become simultaneously more
Jewish and more universalistic. "They will develop a deeper sense of
Jewish identity because they will understand that Israel is part of
the world - the global markets, and the food crisis, the ecological
crisis. And they will learn to position themselves, as Jews and as
Israelis, in this matrix."
The communal home is the comfortable base from which the volunteers go
out to their projects. The large house is located in the Kimdol
section of Kathmandu, near the Swayambhunath, one of the world's
oldest Buddhist sites, built high on a hill, presiding over the entire
city. An unpaved, uneven path, lined wth wild marijuana, past feral
but docile dogs and often aggressive monkeys, leads up to the house.
The neighbors, like most Nepalis, string Buddhist prayer flags from
wall to wall, so that the winds will carry their blessings to the
gods.
House life is Israeli-style, seasoned with Nepalese. A local woman
cooks lunch and dinner - usually daal bhat, the national dish of
sticky rice, lentil soup and cooked vegetables. But the volunteers
make their own breakfast (French toast is a big hit) and ask visiting
Israelis to bring tehina and chocolate. Sometimes some of them break
away in search of a Diet Coke or a western-like sandwhich in one of
the restaurants in Thamel, the area in Kathmandu totally dedicated to
tourists, a 20-minute, harrowing cab ride away.
They live three to a room, dormitory-style. Conversations are open,
informal and spontaneous in a typically Israeli way; their rich
language and articulate expressions reveal that this endearing group
is made up of well-educated and highly intelligent people. When the
lights go off at night during one of Kathmandu's frequent "power
shedding," the guitars come out together with shared bottles of wine.
Most of the men and women wear harem pants and most of the young men
either grow their hair long or shave it close.
Dudi Kaufman, 23, from Nahariya has posted a sign on one of the
bathroom doors. "Remember the Baghmati," he urges, referring to one of
Kathmandu's dangerously polluted rivers, attempting to convince the
group members to make use of "all their waste products" by using the
compost toilet. (Not all of them do.)
In deference to Odenheimer and the other religious members, the house
is kosher-vegetarian and "Shabbat-friendly," with optional Friday
night services that everyone attends willingly, even though most of
them are self-proclaimed secularists. On Shabbat, when they cook for
themselves, they are encouraged to invite people they have met at
their projects to join the group for services and dinner.
Watching the group, and the way that the younger Israelis interact
with the more mature members and with the Jews from abroad, Odenheimer
comments parentally, "These Israeli kids have grown up in groups, from
early childhood. They are amazingly flexible and spontaneous, with
that special Israeli ability to 'just get things done.' This is
'Israeliness' at its very best," he beams.
And he knows that for most of these volunteers, this is also a crucial
time in their lives as they move from the pre-determined courses of
school and army to the decisions they will have to make for themselves
as adults. "This is the developmental period when most Israelis are
more open than ever before in their lives," he says. "They have a
natural sense of justice. If we can give them the fuel to inflame the
passion for tikkun olam, then that passion can burn for the rest of
their lives."
Close to 2,000 people squat in crowded
wretched huts fashioned from bamboo and cardboard in the Balkhu slums
on the foul banks of the Bishnumati river. They have come to the city
from distant villages to escape the poverty and the insurgency, but
too-rapid urbanization, combined with waste mismanagement and
bureaucratic incompetence, have turned Kathmandu's once flowing,
sacred rivers into turgid pollution. Raw sewage oozes in the mud,
seeping into the makeshift shanties.
Tevel b'Tzedek volunteers, Ben Tzur, 23, from Tel Aviv, and Eli Elias,
25, from New York, working with local NGOs, have created a project to
provide basic health care and services for the hundreds of children,
some of them showing the unmistakable signs of malnutrition or
parasitic diseases. They have convinced pharmaceutical companies in
Kathmandu and Israel to provide vitamins, calcium, toothpaste and
toothbrushes, pre-measured portions of medicine against worms and
parasites and colorful nail clippers, which the volunteers back at the
house have packed into zip-lock bags. They have persuaded Nepalese
public nurses to give them lectures on basic preventative health care.
And while they anxiously wait for the people to file in, Elias reads
Ralph Ellenson's 1950s classic, "The Invisible Man." Many of the slum
dwellers, Tzur and Elias learn, have been summoned to the courts; the
municipality may be preparing an eviction case, since they are
squatting here illegally. But slowly, several dozen people, mostly
women with young children, gather together here, in the largest, most
substantial structure in the slum - the straw and bamboo church built
by Christian missionaries.
Intuitively, Tzur and Elias have applied the best principles of
community organization, learning also that "Third World" societies are
no less complex than the societies they come from. Even in these
destitute slums, they work with the NGOs to avoid the missionaries,
sex traffickers, drug dealers and landgrabbers, who know that some
day, this riverside property might be worth real money.
Two projects operate outside of Kathmandu, and the volunteers come
back to the house only on weekends. Newlyweds Simon and Aviva Kaye
volunteered in the remote village of Sispa, northwest of Kathmandu, a
six-hour bus ride followed by a two-hour walk away. In Sispa, Simon,
28, from Manchester, England, and Aviva, 25, from New Jersey, taught
English, started an English library for children, and offered informal
English activities along with helping with the agriculture and regular
daily chores. Religiously observant, they lived in a house without
indoor plumbing or electricity, counting only on themselves and the
villagers for daily needs.
In the next session, Tevel b'Tzedek will also bring in volunteers to
help the villagers develop more efficient and organic modes of
farming. As this group of Tevel b'Tzedek winds down, the Kayes made
the long trip back to Kathmandu for the last time. After continuing to
trek through Asia for a few more months, they will return to
Jerusalem, where they have been living for several years.
Aviva is excited, because she has convinced a Jewish day school in New
York to donate books to the library as part of their hesed (charity)
program. Thoughtfully, almost wistfully, she adds, "As I left, I
couldn't say, 'I love you.' I don't have the words in Nepalese and
anyway, it's not the way they express themselves. But maybe that's
even more cool, because they knew. They knew what I felt and I knew
what they felt."
At the farm in Panchkal, a two-hour bumpy ride from Kathmandu, Tevel
b'Tzedek works with children in the Bal Mandir boys' orphanage and
farm, established by the Nepal Children's Organization, a non-
government body initiated by (the recently deposed) royal family in
1964.
Throughout Nepal, "orphanage" is a loose term - many of these
children's parents are not dead; they have been abandoned because
their parents didn't want them or perhaps couldn't afford to educate
or even feed them. Here, the 47 boys range in age from 4-16; for
another three adult men who are severely developmentally delayed, the
farm is the only home they have ever known and will be their old-age
home, too.
In Panchkal, the three volunteers, Racheli Halbertal, 23, from
Jerusalem; Yonatan (Jon) Ziv, 22, from Rosh Pina; and Yoel Werte, 23,
from Klil, a community in Israel's north, have taught English in
classes and informally and worked with the children to create a
student council. The day before, the younger children banded together
to propose a law: "The seniors must understand the problems of the
juniors." It didn't pass, but in a compromise, they passed another
law: "The seniors will have to prepare football practice for the
juniors - at least once."
Towards the end of their stay, the volunteers ran a summer camp for
the children. How do you say summer camp in Nepalese? "Summer camp,"
Halbertal replies in English. "It's not something they have a word
for." Bringing the kids together in a crowded, almost unbearably hot
room, Ziv strums his guitar and the kids sing their really favorite
song - "We are going to take over the world," to the tune of the
Beatles' "Yellow Submarine." Ziv smiles a bit sheepishly, "It's not
very 'politically correct,' I know…. But they're having so much fun."
They have divided the kids into two teams for a rousing, raucous game
of Capture the Flag. The flora, fauna and poorly constructed
dormitories and school house look different, but from afar, this could
be summer camp in Israel or the United States. Laughing, principal
Bhimsend Dhakal looks on. "We provide what we can for our children.
But these Israelis, they provide happiness and fun," he says. And then
more quietly he adds, "We will miss them."
And while the men and boys play, Halbertal visits with four very
disabled children, who appear to be about 10 or 12. They can neither
speak nor sit up and must be propped up in makeshift highchairs. But
there are only three chairs. Halbertal sits on the floor, cradling a
young boy, tickling his contorted body as he gurgles and giggles with
pleasure.
The Israelis have also worked on a program to implement sustainable
agriculture on the farm, as a model for local farmers. During the next
session, Israel's Foreign Ministry, through its Department for
International Cooperation, will be sending over Israeli agricultural
experts to work with Tevel b'Tzedek and the local residents. And they
hope to use the farm as a base for shorter-term work with other
backpackers who "pass through" Nepal, adding, even briefly, another
dimension to their experience.
Odenheimer and Pulizer come out to Sispa and Panchkal several times
during the session, to ensure that all is well with the volunteers and
the projects. Halbertal, Ziv and Werte "host" them in their room, in a
formerly abandoned two-storey shack, which they have cleaned up and
rebuilt. For three months, they have slept on tufted mattresses on the
floor in one large room, without indoor plumbing, and they have made
their "home" comfortable in a 1950s kibbutz sort of way, with packing
crates for bookshelves and Hebrew novels next to their beds.
Says Werte, "It'll be hard to leave. I don't know what I'll be doing.
I was a law student. Now, I'm a confused student. But I'm a more
committed person."
As they prepare to leave, the volunteers assess the contributions they
have made through their projects. Says Dekel, "In one of my projects,
I worked with girls in an orphanage. We put on a play with dance
sequences, in which they pretended to be sleeping and then got up to
act out their dreams. At the beginning, they couldn't do it. They
didn't know what I meant - the most they could say is what they are
afraid of - being trafficked, being hungry, being sick. But little by
little, they opened up. One of them wants to be a teacher, another a
singer, a third a social worker. They may not all achieve their
dreams, I know. But they had a chance to dream, and I think that
matters, too."
Says Ben-Ari, "I look at the women from the Cabin restaurants - what
are their lives like? What do they have to do to survive? I know they
might not be able to rebel against the men who abuse them or against
fate or the world. But they've been empowered enough to laugh and have
a bit of fun. And that matters, too."
And what Tevel b'Tzedek does, says Israeli Ambassador to Nepal, Dan
Stav, matters for Israel. "There are Nepalese activists who remember
the training programs in agriculture and early childhood training that
the Foreign Ministry used to offer, especially at the Mount Carmel
Training Institute in Haifa. It changed their lives. When Israel was a
small, fledgling country, we were involved in tikkun olam through
training for Third World countries. When we were poor, we were
generous. I hope that as a nation, we are becoming generous again."
Tevel b'Tzedek volunteers work with civil society, in a way that
diplomats could never do, Stav continues, and so create genuine
relationships that, indirectly, contribute to Israel's image in Nepal.
"True, Nepal is hardly a world power that is likely to play an
important role in Israel's security," he says. "But we must not base
everything on realpolitik. We must also take the humanitarian and
human dimensions of nations into account when planning our nation's
foreign policy."
Perhaps above all, Odenheimer remarks, the experiences matter for the
volunteers themselves. Says Priel, "I learned a lot about
globalization and Nepal and about street kids. And I learned to see.
When I first came to Nepal, I wanted to run away from the pain and
injustice, but I didn't. So I learned to see. And when I go home to
Israel, I hope I'll continue to look and see."
Observes Jon, "In Nepal, it's easy to play the 'colonial white man'
and expect people to bow down to us because of all the material goods
we have. Some of the Israelis do that. But I've learned how
complicated this world is and how much we, the white people, have made
life difficult for other peoples. Here, I feel very small, because I
know how little I understand. That's part of the reason I want to go
home, to my own society, where I understand things better, so maybe I
can do more. I'm a secular man, and I haven't become religious here,
but I know I've become a deeper Jew."
Tevel b'Tzedek is growing rapidly. For the next session, beginning in
early September, Odenheimer has accepted 20 volunteers, among them a
man and wife in their 70s, out of more than 60 applicants. With
funding from numerous foundations - including the Schusterman, Pears,
Rochlin, Wolfensohn, Blaustein, Slifka, Shapiro and Orion foundations
- as well as from the UJA Federation of New York, he is hopeful that
the program will continue to develop sustainable projects, work on
short-term projects with more Israeli backpackers, and branch out into
additional areas outside of Kathmandu. And he's already planning
"Stage 2," providing ongoing connections in Israel and building a
network of activism.
Not all of the graduates from the previous sessions have returned
home, and some are continuing their treks throughout the world. But a
few have already returned, and while Odenheimer's hypothesis that the
experience in Nepal would shape them as Israelis has yet to be proven,
it would seem that at least some of the graduates are choosing
involvement in social activism. One graduate has continued her work in
Nepal by working with Nepalese foreign workers in Tel Aviv. Others are
working or volunteering with non-profit social change groups, such as
the Movement for Equality in Government and Ethiopian groups.
As she contemplates her return to Israel, Halbertal concludes, "I have
been a religious Jew since birth. But this experience has penetrated
into every level of my experience, and I have found a fuller way to be
a Jew and a human being."

 Persino in Nepal si resta israeliani. E c'è da essere orgoglios
quale cittadino occidentale rinuncerebbe alla propria cittadinanza per
quella nepalese? C'è da essere orgogliosi a non esportare i matti?