Honor Role for the Kyle Strang Memorial Fund

It is still hard for me to believe how many people contributed to make our trip to Israel and Palestine possible. Here is the complete list of all those who donated money. It is a staggering list. I've been meaning to post it for months. Today seems like a good day. Thanks to all of you. Kyle would be so proud.

Kyle Harty Strang Memorial Fund Donors

Foundations, Organizations & Businesses

The College of Exploration

East Bay Family Practice Medical Group

East Bay Jewish Federation

Inverness Research, Inc.

Lutsko Associates Landscape

National Marine Educators Association

Olive School Student Council

Samuel Rubin Foundation

Singer-Vines Family Foundation

Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation

Truitt & White Lumber

Individuals

Regina M. Acebo & Thomas Morse

Anne Alcott & Barry Fike

Anita Amirrezvani

Barbara Ando & Jerry Booth

Anonymous (X2)

Rasool Anooshehpoor

Emily Arnold

Maren Aukerman

Lisa Haderlie Baker & David Baker

Jacquey Barber & Steve Sutcher

John & Kathy Barber

Jessica A. Barksdale

Kathy & Reg Barrett

Christine Bartlett & Mark Janer

Kevin Beals

Kimberly Beeson, Rebecca Abravanel

John Beiers

Keith & Christine Beury

Ellen Blinderman

Joanne Bowsman

Rachel Brodie

Sheila & Richard Brossman

Verna Brown

Charles & Yvonne Cannon

Laurie Cannon

Nancy & Louis Caputo

Mary Carleton & Lloyd B. Ferris

Ian Carmichael

Diane & Alfred Carnahan

Kevin P. Carroll

Paul Cerami, Debbi Green & Family

Teddy, Bunny & Brenda Chang

Bernadette Chi & Raymond Sheen

Jerry Chin

Barbara Choppin de Janvry

Susan & Clayton Cook

Patricia & Christopher Cooper

Ann Frannie Coopersmith

Terry Cort

Claire Crews

Tim & Sarah Crews

Robert Cullin

Louise Daum

Rita Davies & Barbara Phillips

Elizabeth Day-Miller

Roberta Dean & Bruce Stewart

The Degoff Family

Linda DeLucchi

Rebecca Deutscher & Chris Bishop

Kathryn DiRanna

Diane M. Doe

Patricia Donnelly & Devah DeFusco

Rena Dorph & Peter Wahrhaftig

Sally Douglas & Francisco Arce

Ania Driscoll-Lind & Jan Ostman-Lind

Mary Duchene

Emma Duran Forbes & Gary Forbes

Maurice Ensellem & Amanda Berger

Timothy Ereneta & Deirdre Nurre

Vikki Essert

JoAnn Evangelista

John & Shirley Farrington

Tara Fatemi & Jeff Walker

John & Kate Faust

Estrella Fichter & David Freeman

Steven & Helene Fisher

Jennifer Flood

Robin Fragner

Dolores Franco

Kerry & Dale Freeman

Toni Garrett

Maryl Gearhart & Geoffery Saxe

Laura Gerdsen-Widman

Justine Glynn

Julie Golde

David Goldstein

Alan Gould & Diane Tokugawa

Solange Gould & Russell Bayba

Neil Gozan & Gale Antokal

Carrie & Oliver Graham

Kathy Graham

Edward Grant

Ina & Alfred Green

Robert Green

Amy Grisby

Stuart Gustafson

Dennis Hall & Carolyn Dobson

Ringo Hallinan & Anne Bernstein

Catherine Halversen & Brian Gibeson

Tissapeh Hami

Bill & Theda Hastie

Christen Herren

Lauretta Higgins

Judith Hirabayashi

Emily & David Hoffer

Nancy Hopkins & Stuart Cuttriss

John Hornung

Kimi Hosoume

Sherry Hsi & Per Peterson

Clinton Huey

Debra Hunter

Janet & James Hustler

Robert Iezman

Alireza Javaheri

David Jacobs-Pontecorvo

Mary & Marc Jacobs

Grace Jenner

Meriwether Jones

Rosie Kaplan & Harvey Goldenburg

Evelyne Karim

Felix Karim & Libby Craig

Zander Karim & Laura Harter

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet

Christopher J. Keller

Peter Kfoury

Daniel & Christopher Killian

Gordon Kingsley & Laura Wheeler

William Klitz

Robert Knapp & Muriel Sutcher Knapp

Miho Komai

Jaine Kopp & Alan Goodfried

Charles Kress & Arisa Tono

Molly Lambert

Becky Lange

Kai Langenberg

Callie Lapidus

Cary & Denise Lapidus & Family

Nancy Larson

Mary Law

Lawrence Hall of Science PSC Staff

Shirley & Taeku Lee

Judith & Angel Lemus

Paul Leonard

Marla Lev

Mark & Peachy Levy

Kathy Long

Suzanna Loper & Andreas Schmid

Eleanor Lovinfosse

Laurie & Billy Lowery

Rosa Luevano

Vanessa Lujan & Kevin Sanders

Tami Lunsford & John Carter

Sandi & Ron Lutsko

Chris Lutz

Claudia Maiero

Lawrence & Sheila Malone

Mojdeh Marashi & Ali Ebtekar

Charles Marston

Hossein Massoudi

Claudia & Roger Martin

Kathleen Martin

Paolo Martin
Ingrid & Octavio Martinez

George & Kirsten Matsumoto

Moira McChin

Jacob & Kimberly McCoy Wade

Janice & Lawrence McDonnell

Bill McGregor

Michael Meeks & Rosa Barbara-Meeks

Margie Mendez

Dzovag Minassian

Hasmig Minassian

Heather Mitchell

Marie Monrad

Meneejeh Moradian

Dana Moran

Joseph & Carol Moran

Michael Moran

Sanjiv More

Mary Kate Morris & Dan Werthimer

Stephen Mungovan

Barbara & John Nagle

Scott Nelson Windels

Irma Newman

Phyllis Norris

Nancy Oken

Ellen Osmundson & John Allenberg

Paula Pardini

Leslie Parker

Mikel, Victoria & David Parraga-Wills

Chris Parsons

Adina Paytan & Ron Caspi

Cheryl Peach & Neal Driscoll

Anne Peacock

P. David Pearson

Colleen & Matthew Peterson

Lisa Piccione

Ina Potter

Sherry Potter

Kevin Powell & Melanie Goldfield

Caitlin Blair Pratt

Michael & Kristina Radke

Iraj Isaac Rahmim

Sanaz Raji

Flori Ramos & David Allen

Lynn Rankin & Robert Semper

Connie & Michael Real

Edward Reiner

Gladys Reverditto

Robert Rice & Esther Railton-Rice

Sydney Ridgway

Selma & Harold Riskin

Edward & Jeanette Roach

Veronique Robigou & Bruce Nelson

Bob Rocha & Kristen Leotti

Barbara Roesner

Ann Rojas-Cheatham

Elizabeth Rom

Melissa Roman & John Alexander

Lenore Ross

Karen Rothblatt & Mary Lynn Morales

Luba Rothblatt

Fran Rozoff

Laura Ruberto

Laura Rutherford

Vicki and Gary Salzman

Beebe Sanders & Dawn Finch

Sarah Schoedinger & Kurt Heckel

Bethany Schoenfeld

Sarah Elizabeth Schroeder

Peter Schwartz & Audrey Jaffe

Pasquale Scuderi

Julie Searle

Kim Seashore & Jeff Hobson

Karen Seideman

Jeff & Patricia Self

Susan Shillinglaw & Bill Gilly

Barbara Shulgold & Richard Albert

Jordan Smith & Xochitl Oseguera

Thad & Lucy Smith

Jed Somit

Lundie Spence

Carole Springsteen

Tamara Springsteen & Michael Brown

Elizabeth K. Stage & Henry Telfeian

Sandra Stier

Craig Strang & Persis Karim

Gary Strang & Gayle Tsern

Sharon Strang

Nancy & David Stork

Carrie Strohl

Sarah Sullivan

Janis Sutcher

Vernon Sutcher

Joan Tal & David Lerner

Drew & Theresa Talley

Pamela Tambe

Lenny & Linda Thal

Sam Thal

Stephen & Britt Thal

Jennifer Lee Tilson

Lucas Tobin

Robert Trachtenberg

Jerry Travis

Tracy Trumbly & Jim Nielsen

Rebecca & John Tsern

Peter Tuddenham & Kristina Bishop

Carole Ungvarsky

Elizabeth Valoma

Soo & Raj Venkatesan

Maureen & Robert Vieth

Chaghig Walker

Sharon & Bill Walker

Lilly & Jack Warnick

Mark Warnick

Rene Weilmann & Frank Lawrence

Danny Weiss & Anne Stewart

Janet & Ronald Weiss

Ingrid Hougen Welti & Doug Welti

Jenny Wenk

Maia Werner

Jenny White

Lynn Whitley & Richard Hoops

Alice Wilkens

Carolyn & Dwight Willard

Eugene & Linda Williamson

Lisa Wilson

Bruce & Margaret Winkelman

Dennis Wirzig

Risa Wolfson

Clarice Yentsch

Barbara Young

Honorary Gifts

In Honor of Alex Flood-Bryzman

Eric & Anne Carlson

Audrey D’Andrea

East Bay Family Practice Medical Group

Jennifer Flood

Adele Rosh Bryzman

In Honor of Ben Cerami

Jenny Chatman & Russell Barnett

Marianne Burkhead

Catherine & Oren Cheyette

Terry & Lenore Doran

Joanne Feinberg

Laurel Fletcher & Jeffrey Selbin

Jane Sari Friedman

Ina & Alfred Green

Dayna Grubb & Terry Stotz

Mary Hill

Joel Ben Izzy

Betsy Lieberman

Robin Rene Louise

Megan Leah MacMillan

Berous Parish & Wendi Morin

Gary Parsons

Michael Pollan & Judith Belzer

Laura Raboff & Barry Gordon

Timothy Roemer

Michael Ross

Lynn Signorelli & Tomas Schoenberg

Jerry Sontag

In Honor of Callie Lapidus

Wendy Bartlett

Donald & Jill Birnbaum

Loren Corotto

Linda Druschel & Bruce Brody

Anita Goldfeld

Craig & Linda Griffin

DY & KF Matsubara

Jean & Kiyo Matsubara

Ray & June Matsubara

Tammy & Dale Matsubara

Earl & Cynthia Nakahara

Mary & Daniel Nakahara

Janet Omoto

Kazaharu & Lillie Omoto

Nadine & Jerry Penick

Mary & Edward Ralston

Mark Sass

Robert & Carol Setoguchi

In Honor of Eli Schwartz

Israeli & Judith Jaffe

In Honor of Gracie Mungovan

Stephen Mungovan

In Honor of Hasmig Minassian

Lori Berlin & Michael Stephens

Andrew Budker

Shara Cohen

Marissa Dennis

Jennifer & Daniel Firepine

Sheryl Fishman

Andrew Gordon-Kirsch

Charles & Susan Halpern

Rachel Hamburg

Lisa Jacobs-Pontecorvo

Silva Katchiguian

Erin Miller

Noel Morrison

Deborah Nicholas

John True & Claudia Wilken

Raffi & Carol Veghiayan

In Honor of Leib Sutcher

Carol Barber

Ben Fajen

Edward Matsuishi

Wendy Morrison

Burton Wolfman

Pamela Woodbridge & Elliot Davis

In Honor of Marina Franco

Rosa Monroy

In Honor of Siena Meeks

Pamela & David Bluhm

Carol & Thomas Borst

Lisa Cohen

Christine Essex

Richard Gelber

Leslie Gould & Howard Varinsky

Janice Meeks-Boriss

Daniel & Caryn Newbrun

Carol Piccione

Matthew & Jennifer Plunkett

Paul Rice & Marisol Aguilar

Julia Schachter

In addition to those listed above, approximately 275 people contributed cash at the Bungee Jumping Cows concert, the screening of the film, My So Called Enemy, and the Valentine’s Day Raffle at Berkeley High School.

Reflection By Hasmig

I have this photograph from the night after Kyle died of all of his friends hovered on my couch eagerly looking through pictures of him. Gone only 24 hours, they were searching for some signs of his life, desperately grasping memories that they worried would slip away as quickly as he did. Similarly, I started ransacking my own brain for memories that, like a vivid dream, disappear as I try to describe them. But my last interaction with Kyle is fortunately fully in tact for the re-telling.

It was the Friday before Spring Break and students were in the computer lab getting help with next year’s schedule on line while I was writing passes to the counselor so they could set up their initial “college talk” appointment. I wrote one out for Kyle and he rejected it. “I’m not going to college,” he stated bluntly. And then proceeded to orate his well-rehearsed spiel about his calling toward the Israeli army. I retorted with my now-broken record lecture about politics, options, and his safety, both physical and emotional. I knew he’d be forced to make decisions that were counter intuitive to his sensitivity and deep loyalties to fairness. Born in the sign of Cancer, Kyle is a water baby: emotional, committed, and loyal to his cause. “I’d be safer there than I am here,” he said to me. Born in the sign of the Taurus, I am stubborn. “Take the pass,” I said to him with stern eyes, as I shoved it towards his chest. He grinned and shook his head sideways at me, stuffed it in his pocket, and walked away.

We watched headlines for weeks leading up to March 31, 2011, looking for signs that a surge of violence in Israel/Palestine would postpone our trip. Several times, we were on very close watch, emailing several times a day with our partners in Colorado as news from the region was tenuous. My last conversation with Kyle was never far from my mind as I balanced my concerns for our kids’ emotional safety with my fear that we might accidentally find ourselves in a physical situation I couldn’t get them out of. My adult responsibility suddenly weighed heavily and there were moments when I doubted. “Were we being impulsive?” Once on the ground in the country, there wasn’t this constant dread of attack or anxiety that some of the kids had predicted might exist. We felt safe and protected, not only because we were Americans after all, but also because our hosts had gone to great lengths to plan every moment of the trip with our students’ security in mind.

However on four occasions, mostly in the second half of the trip, we had piercing jolts of adrenaline course through our bodies that reminded us that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, nor Berkeley for that matter. The photograph on page of Leib holding hands with the Bedouin school children is arguably one of the sweetest in the collection. It captures an innocent playfulness that we brought with us in our 14 participants and met all over the country.

Illustrative of the harsh contrasts in this region, not 5 minutes after that photograph was snapped, we witnessed a forcefully loud explosion, close enough to marvel at the mushroom cloud it left in its wake, close enough to have the innocence and playfulness from moments before rapidly replaced by fear, curiosity, and shock. But that was Israel and Palestine. In exactly the same moment, you were looking at both the photograph and its negative.

The entries and photos that follow, chronicle the conclusion of our vivid dream realized on this soil of intrepid beauty married to cruel injustice.

Dreams of Kyle

Leib and I were very clear that we needed to leave one of Jacquey's 16 silver hearts for Kyle at the Western Wall. The first time we came to the Wall was on Saturday, the first full day of our trip, but since it was Shabbat, we couldn't take any photos, and we were committed to documenting each of the locations that we left a heart. So, Leib, Hasmig and I returned today (April 7), cameras in hand. It turns out that each year prior to Passover, all the notes that have been left at the Wall over the course of the year are carefully removed with a special stick dipped in a ceremonial michvah and buried. Many of the notes we had left on our previous visit were now gone. I was disappointed at first that their residence had been so brief, but then felt somehow comforted knowing that our messages couldn’t simply fall out of their crevices and blow through the streets of Jerusalem as litter. They were safely and ceremonially buried away. We left some additional notes from BHS CAS students deep in the recesses of now cleared crevices. I'm certain they will now remain for a year or more.

Leib scoped out a ledge quite a ways up on the Wall, too high, we guess, to ever be removed by those cleaning the wall. Leib tossed the heart up onto the ledge, about 10 feet above our heads. I think it will be there, out of reach, for a very long time. I said Kaddish at the Wall directly underneath the ledge that holds Heart #8. While I stood there, eyes closed and touching the Wall with my hands and head, I had a flash of understanding.

On August 21, 2010, nearly five months after the accident, I had my first dream of Kyle. We were in the desert and he was a toddler but we were talking as if he was sixteen. Gary, my brother, and Niko were there, too. Kyle was in a form that was practically transparent. Sometimes he was more solid than others and then he’d fade a bit. Sometimes when he was further away from me—a few feet—he was more solid and then when I’d try to pull him close to me or when he’d come closer, he would fade. He gave me a hug at first and he was in his 16 year old body and neither of us had on shirts and I could almost feel his skin on mine when our chests met.

Two months later, I had another dream of Kyle on October 31, 2010. I was sitting on a stone bench, a large rectangular slab of stone with legs but no back, facing an old stone wall. It seemed to me to be an old school or some old institutional building, but I didn’t recognize it and I didn't know where I was. Kyle came up behind me, wrapped his arms around me, his left arm around my waste and his right arm around my shoulders and chest and put his right cheek against my left cheek and said, "Can you feel me this time? It's me. It is me. I'm OK." I reached back with my right hand and grabbed the back of his neck. I could feel his course, curly hair, and his neck neatly shaved above the collar the way he liked it. And then he turned into Niko and I could feel Niko's thick, softer black hair and smaller neck. Every night since October 31, 2010, before I go to bed, I close my eyes and visualize, replay, re-live that dream of Kyle hugging me from behind and me being able to feel his embrace and his face against mine. On this day, at the Western Wall, I had a sudden flash of understanding that that dream was here in the Old City of Jerusalem. It might have been right here at the Wall or somewhere else in the Old City, but I'm certain that the ancient stone wall I faced was somewhere here in Jerusalem.

I Hope We Did It Big Enough

Our last moments in Israel, we spent on the beach in Tel Aviv. It was a beautiful, clear, crisp, sunny day, just barely warm enough for a couple of bathing suits to appear, a couple of t-shirts to come off. For the first couple hours we relaxed in the sand, played a little but not too vigorously, talked, and ate a picnic lunch of all our now-favorite Israeli/Palestinian treats. Bamba. Lots of Bamba. It was perhaps our first un-rushed moment, a happy, fulfilled moment, but also thick with the underlying seriousness and anticipation of the moment ahead. We were there to reflect on what this trip has meant to us, to commemorate the ending of this profound experience that has changed us, that w

e will never forget. We were there to perform the third and final Memorial for Kyle. The first, The Funeral at Tem

ple Emanu-El in San Francisco, filled with shock and love and chaos and a bleeding, raging, crying sky, represented Kyle’s past, his brief timeline, his Jewish heritage. The second, The CAS Memorial in the Little Theater at Berkeley High, fille

d with poignant, open-hearted narratives from friends, teachers and family, painted a portrait of the present that Kyle was living, of all that was important to him, at the moment of his death. The third, The Tel Aviv Memorial, private, intimate, naked, unsc

ripted would be the proxy for the future that Kyle didn’t get, the piece of his future that these amazing, loving, loyal young people chose to live for him.

We dug a hole in the beach, a meter deep, one handful at a time. We gath

ered a few steps away at our picnic site, and sat in a circle under our little wood gazebo on the beach. Out of backpacks and bags came small treasures that each person had brought to leave here for Kyle. Hasmig brought out the bracelets she designed and had made by the Armenian jeweler in Jerusalem. We each cut off the yarn appreciation bracelets we had wrapped and tied around each other’s wrists months ago at the closing ceremony of our first retreat with Stephen and Jamie. That day had ended with me engulfed at the center of a long, spiraling group hug that renewed my courage and strength. On the beach, we helped each other to solemnly fastened onto our wrists the new silver clasp on the leather thong adorned with silver Hebrew letters for Chai or “life,” the root word of Kyle’s Hebrew name, Chaim.

The circle grew quiet. Sarah from the CAS Class of 2010, now living in Tel Aviv had joined us. She and Max spoke for a few minutes about their experiences in Israel over the last year. Quiet again. At that first retreat, each person had brought an artifact to share that represented why we had chosen to participate in this program. It had been a long evening, filled up with tears, stories, anguish and hope that together we could soften some of the

pain. On the beach in Tel Aviv, we went around our circle again. Each person described what they brought to leave for Kyle:

a rose from Beebe

the baseball that he hit for his first homerun from Leib

a DVD with the film she made for Kyle from Siena

a batting practice baseball he had pitched many times to Kyle from Craig

a wallet from Ben

a coin and a wish of peace for both Kyle and Craig from Alex

a glass heart given to her by Kyle’s aunt from Hasmig

a friendship bracelet from Callie

a stone from the spot where her father's ashes are spread from Gemma

a poem composed and bravely read from Marina

a baseball card given to him by Kyle from Evan

a tear-stained handwritten note from Gracie

spoken tributes from Eli and Nick

Each person spoke a little about what the trip meant to them, what they want to bring home from it, and something about Kyle. Then we each said an appreciation for someone in the group. When everyone had finished, we got up and re-circled our Memorial Pit. We tossed in our yarn bracelets. One at a time, we each tossed our offering into that hole. We lit some ceremonial cigars in honor of Kyle’s experiments with contraband, tossed them in, too, and then together, we used our bare feet to gently push sand to the center, covering the hole. We hugged on top of it, and wondered, would tide ever reach this high.

On the bruised baseball of Kyle’s that I left in that hole, Ben wrote:

Dear Kyle,

I hope we did it big enough for you.

Much love,

Ben

Written by Gracie

This was written and read aloud on June 6, 2011 by Gracie for the Exhibition of Projects related to the Trip

The wall has notes coming out of the cracks like dirty white birds singing as they fall. The paper is stained with ink and pencil, tangles of English and forests of Hebrew, dark lashings of Spanish or light Arabic dancing across the folds. They call it the Western Wall but I've only ever been able to connect it to its second name: the Wailing Wall. Being close to it is like being imbued with ghosts, shivering oceans breathing out from the stone, tapestries of air sewn from the frantic tears and gliding prayers, righteous joys and tender wishes that have fallen at it's feet over thousands of years. It's unnerving. Just as prayers coo fervent calls from the paper spills, it feels as though my own cells twist in the presence of the stone, allowing space for wails to emerge from wherever they have slept under my skin.

It is a different time zone, a quality of air tinted with naked dreams and hollow pain, a place where words emerge coated in the dust of the most secret and heartfelt chambers of the self. The women who are around me clasp their hands and pray, swaying back and forth as if counting the beats of the wind that wails around their hair, their eyes closed in communion, foreheads pressed against the stone. Our feet below us make tangled crowds, ankles bumping ankles and toes brushing the sides of feet as we all struggle to fit into the small space, to be immersed in the air and breathe each other’s tears.

The women's portion of the Wailing Wall is tiny compared to the men's side. The men for the most part don't overlap, they have many feet in which to pray in solitude. For the women it a tangle of bodies, of hands, of prayers.

Before going to the Bedouin village we were forewarned.
"It will be really different from what you are used to" our various group leaders said. "It may be shocking." We had indeed seen a Bedouin village perched in a hill during one of our long drives. It had looked like a few planks of wood and a tin roof. We had indeed been shocked. "You need to bring really warm clothes" we were told, "it'll be very cold at night and you may be sleeping outside. I'm sure they will offer you a pillow but the blankets might be very thin, so you should bring all your sweaters." We nodded. "We don't know what they will eat. They might have very little food but they are generous people so they will offer you a lot. They might build a fire and roast a goat. Just be prepared to eat whatever they offer you." Alright, we said visualizing the goat being slowly cooked over a meager fire. "I don't know what they do with bathrooms. It could be a hole in the ground. Just go with it." Slightly reluctantly we nod. "And last but not least, do not take a shower. They will offer. Say no. Whatever you do, do not take a shower."

We arrive at the Bedouin village prepared for a long night ahead of us, bags full of sweaters in preparation for our cold and showerless night.

When we first step into our host sister's house the first thing I see is glitter. The windows are coated in drapes that are a deep purple and overflowing with sparkles. The floor is covered in purple cushions sewn with sequins that glimmer and fade in contrast to the flowers that overflow from vases beside the TV. "This is your house?" We said. "Yes, this is my house" our sister says, staring at us curiously, "what did you expect?"

We are indeed shocked. Later in the night when visiting one of our sister's many aunts, totally entranced by the elaborate color coordinated rooms which look like a combination of a Middle Eastern Ikea magazine and a glittery coloring book, our sister would struggle to translate her aunts words for me. "The women in this village they…ah..they like things that…sparkle."

They feed us many feasts, the first on the floor of our sister's house. We devour plate after plate of chicken and rice and sauces and Bedouin bread while being thoroughly entertained by our sister. She calls herself "crazy" because she breaks down into laughter so frequently, leaning over to hug her ribs as she giggles. She is the only person in the village who speaks English because she taught herself from English sitcoms and movies. Later in the night when falling asleep to an obscure Quentin Tarentino movie she would exclaim, "You've never seen this! I've seen this at least ten times!"


Although the insides of houses were vibrantly decorated the streets were filthy. This particular village was recognized by the government, but still had infrequent garbage pickup. The streets are coated in coca- cola bottles and dirty cardboard, moldy socks and candy wrappers. Little children run through the trash in barefoot, their faces coated in dust. We literally run from house to house with our sister holding our arms and giggling in excitement. Everyone we meet is her aunt. Entering a house we are told that it is her aunt and uncles, walking through the street we constantly pass her aunt and her uncle. Eventually we are able to point into the fading light at twisting shadows and say, "Hey, is that your aunt and uncle?" at which she claps excitedly and says, "of course!" We are surrounded by villagers no matter where we go. They chase after us on the streets and swarm the houses we enter, flowing through the doorways and peeping through windowpanes. We even sit on chairs in the front of a room for about twenty minutes while villagers sit and stare at us in silence since we suffer a language barrier. Eventually they open up and start shouting questions at our overworked sister who is forced to translate quickly. However, most of the time they just ask us if we are married and then why aren't we. Our sister eventually stops translating.

Each house we get to overloads us with more food. It got to the point where the sight of food is alarming. As our new hostess would emerge from the kitchen we would shrink back from the tray of freshly cut apples, the bowls of candy, the endless cups of sugary Bedouin tea. We would try to hide them in our sleeves, or create sudden distracting events so that we could leave them behind. I tried offering them to my sister who would shake her head and say,
"No. That's yours. You have to eat that. I'm full." followed by the next very frightening sentence, "besides we're eating again when we get home."

The concept of eating scraps of a roasted goat was laughable as we walked home through the dark with swollen bellies, hardly able to walk straight under the loose glow of stars. Our night was equally swollen with uncompromising kindness, graciousness that overflowed from every kitchen in the village.

The next morning after gorging ourselves on Bedouin bread at breakfast we are eating a coconut cake. Our sister emerges from the bathroom clouded in steam, having clearly just taken a shower.

"Okay, your turn" she tells us. Alarm bells go off. We look at each other and then put our forks down.
"No no no!" we exclaim in a tidal wave, "we don't need to shower."
"Come on, I insist, take a shower" Our sister says persuasively.
We are confused. It's hard to tell if the rules have shifted now that we are in a sparkly house with Quentin Tarentino movies and coconut cake. We haven't even seen a goat. I can still hear Rebecca's voice foreboding in my mind, "They WILL offer. Say no!"
"No thank you" we say, "we really don't want to shower. We're fine."
Later before leaving the house our sister would tell me, "you girls are very weird. The sink is over there if you would like to wash your hands."

Although I experienced much kindness in the village, there was a deep and disturbing shadow. The Bedouins are polygamous, so the houses are separated in such a way that each wife has her own stomping ground. There are children everywhere running barefoot through the trash, their faces coated in dust. Our sister's mother had nine children and I could feel her tiredness coming off her skin. Her shoulders look like they were sketched in fading pencil, her eyes weary. In this particular village it was not uncommon for girls to get engaged and start having babies at age fourteen, hence the continuous questioning we received about our marital status. The boys and girls in the village were unable to touch each other although they were all carrying to a strong degree the same blood. The tension that existed between them was fuzzy static that charged the air like comatose bees. There were whispers about a girl in a different village who kissed a boy she was not engaged too. Her father went to her school and killed her. It was startling for me to realize that to my sister this was not some foreign boogeyman invading her perspective, it was simply a sad story built of components already present within her life. A Jewish volunteer at the Bedouin school would tell me two things she had heard a teacher say about women, the first is that women are like food and no one wants it once it's already been touched. The second is that women are like diamonds, meant to be locked up.

Just as Israeli soldiers brandish thick black guns as a symbolic threat against Palestine, is there a not a threat embedded in the psychic infrastructure of the lives of these women? No machine gun could be more threatening then the idea that holiness is a portal that you do not naturally fit through.

My cells shifted once again as they did at the wall, and there is a ghostly wail calling underneath my skin. They are so strong they echo the rumble of the low flying planes that frequently soar over the village, causing all of us American to jump as if feeling a gunshot in our pulse. The persistent aches within me are streadily increasing as I understand that I as a person, as a girl, would not have enough room in this village. There is not enough psychic space for the expansion of anyone, for the questioning or growth of anyone, but especially not of a girl. If the whole village is held in the inhalation of the desert, I feel like an exhalation existing as a crossing breeze creating turbulence.

"What will you do with your life?" I ask my sister.
"I want to travel, to go everywhere. I want to go to America where people speak English. I want to see everything."
The prospect excites me. "That's wonderful" I say, "how do you plan to do this?"
"Well I can't leave until I get married. I'm not allowed to go anywhere without a husband. Then we will travel."
This prospect excites me a bit less. "What if you found a way to make money on your own and you didn't need someone to pay?"
"I still couldn't go" she says, "I do not leave without a husband. The money does not matter." When she sees my face she rushes in encouragingly,
"I will get married someday. I will have babies. Then I will be allowed to leave, do not worry."

I understand in that moment that she will probably never leave. If I was to return in ten years I would most likely see my sister and all the little girls at the school still held within this deep inhalation, having grown around the cultural distortions to the point that they are now twisted versions of their own potential, tamed by a fear that is hard to place, that whispers in the edges of the dry desert wind and cuts through the bottom of conversations.

I can only hope for these girls that if they fold themselves up in order to fit into the tightness of the system, their internal origami will be loose enough to allow epiphanies and miracles. While dipping their fingers in Vaseline in the morning and staring into the mirror, it would take only one moment, one jarring arrow from across both their village borders and their own internal lines to strike them softly in order to cut loose the dreams they have buried. To the little girls I see studying in the school house, who will grow up believing that their worth is a complicated comparison to both food and diamonds, I can only hope that one day they recognize that the glitter that sparkles on their walls is just a cheap mimicry of what sparkles in the rivers of their own blood, in the voices that call to them deep inside. However within even this wish, there is fear. Having stepped into the village myself and felt the tightness of the circle close around me I am aware that if these women were able to unwind themselves from the strictness of the culture they would be at odds with everything. They would be a mighty exhalation creating turbulence that has been held back for centuries. They would be in danger. I leave the village entirely confused.

Being in Israel was being immersed in tension. The tension between Israelis and Palestinians, between religions, between men and women. Most importantly I think, it was to be standing at a point where perception and misperception directly cross.

It was shattering to observe the endless projections of people throughout history; to witness them misplacing their attention from their own existential fear to seeing it reflected in the faces of people who are foreign to them. The crudeness of this misplaced attention has created so much violence, so much suffering. It is clear that until man has sufficiently looked towards the darkness within and made peace with the mysteries that churn under his skin he will look outwards and fear the unknown so ferociously that he will have to kill, to oppress, to control. Afraid of his own death, his own life, his own pulse, he must conquer another to avoid facing his own. Even the face of God has been colored for so many people with the intricacies of their own angst, painting pictures of a ruler who judges them as harshly as they judge themselves, who controls them to the extent that they try to control their own mysteries, whom they fear just as much as they fear their own selves.

It seems to me that the greatest revolution that could occur would be one where each person was able to fearlessly encounter their internal terrain, to accept both the darkness and light that sleep in the infinite fields beneath the skin, to experience themselves in their wholeness, resistant of nothing.

If such a thing would occur it would allow the veils of projection to drop, to expose truth in it's completeness. It would alter the face of God.

What to do with so much pain, with so many questions tugging at every corner of my mind? I face a mighty wall, an ancient one. Built of the psychic stone of hundreds of years of repression and oppression, heavily sunk into the ground. I left Israel but the wall is still in front of me. I suppose the only thing that can be done to melt it's defense is to allow the wails that sleep under my skin and within our culture to emerge, to allow the naked dreams and bleeding wishes and strangled cries to fall at the feet of this wall until it is permeated with my own truth. Perhaps in doing so the air around it will shift and a new time zone will emerge, a sacred one imbued with ghosts. I can then stand before it with my forehead pressed against it's stone in communion with the truth that wails within me, swaying in rhythm to this mighty prayer.

Reflections: Evan's Trip Project

Over the spring break of 2011, I took a trip to Israel with 14 members of the Berkeley High School community. The trip was conceived after a close friend and classmate, Kyle Strang, passed away in a car accident in 2010. After high school, Kyle planned to move to Israel in order to continue his education, and possible join the Israeli military. After his death, Kyle's family and friends began to plan the trip to honor him. Our mission was to learn more about the Israel/Palestine conflict, and to learn more about ourselves in the process. The trip was facilitated by an organization called Seeking Common Ground.

On the trip, I took many pictures. Although we saw many beautiful sights, I found that the majority of photographs I took were of the students I was on the trip with. Their passion for life, exploration, and discovery amazed me. At the risk of sounding cheesy, each and every one of them was inspirational. I asked each one to reflect in some way on the physical and metaphysical journey we had taken together. Evan

Israel is such a beautiful place, not only because of its culture, but because reality is at its worst over there, and yet, you meet these people that were all about peace, and believe so much in change. It inspired me and warmed my heart more than I ever would have expected.

Marina Loren

My experience was more amazing than I ever expected.

I learned more in that one week than I would have learned in a yearlong class about the conflict. Being in Israel and meeting with Israelis and Palestinians showed me how hard it is to compromise and live among people with such different views, yet how important is it to be able to do those things. It helped me reflect on what’s going on in America and how we influence many countries. Our world is not so simple, but we can make is easier to understand by opening up our minds. I'll never forget our ten special days in Israel.

Beebe Sanders

In the Old City we saw many old historical sites. I found it very interesting that there were so many interpretations of the same or similar situations. Part of stories would overlap while others conflicted and contradicted greatly which caused disagreements between religions.

Callie Lapidus

When leaving for Israel, I naively assumed by the end of the trip I would further understand the two-sided conflict we had studied in class. In fact, the only thing I understood is that the conflict is not something you can learn about in class. By the end of the trip, I had only started to grasp the many sides and emotions of the conflict that affects so many different people. One of the things I walked away with is a deeper understanding of what “conflict” is. I learned conflict is never as simple as it is made out to be; conflict has many different layers and emotions running through it. I learned that there is a history to everything. I learned that your government doesn’t always portray your opinions and act as you wish. And I learned that your “enemies” and “friends” are more similar than you think.

Leib Sutcher

This trip changed me as a person in so many ways. It altered my perceptions of the world and other people, and the way I relate to others. A lot of what I brought back from Israel is intangible, which is why I have so much trouble explaining to people “what we did” or “what we learned from the experience.” Any explanation I could give wouldn't do it justice. Israel has definitely been a huge part of defining my junior year as a time of changing, expanding my view of the world, and growing up.

Eli Schwartz

I learned that I have a tremendous amount of privilege being an American and that I need to learn the most effective way to use my power to create positive change on the planet.

Gracie Mungovan

“We pictured Kyle walking alongside us, confident, with his head held high in his leather jacket, checking out the Israeli girls we passed along our way, slick, trying toget their attention. We talked and we fantasized, and while Kyle wasn't physically walking beside us, he was there. He was there through the 13 of his classmates, he was there through Craig, and there through Hasmig, and he was there through Israel, there through the land that he loved, the land that he never got to go to, and the land that we walk on today to honor, to remember, and to connect to our friend.”

Siena Meeks

“I can really feel it. Like it almost brought me to tears. You know that feeling like when you're running or riding a bike really hard, that feeling right when you stop? That's how I felt [at the Western Wall]. I don't really pray; I'm more of a meditation guy, but whatever, I can really feel it right now…this is the highlight of my teenage life...”

Nick J Nunez

“We are at the Wall. Renana warns us to be quick as we pull out our huge Nikon cameras and begin to snap pictures of the graffiti covering this large segment of the wall. ‘Imagine. War is Over.’ and ‘One Wall. Two Jails.’ are two of many lines that stick with me … we scramble back on Yusefs trusty blue bus and wind our way to the Palestinian Municipality Building where we are greeted by our first Palestinian soldiers. After approaching Arafat's tomb and snapping some photos with the guards we get back on the bus and head towards Ramallah's old city…We meet the guide who will take us on our hike…After an alleged 10 miles we arrive back at the cobblestoned old city where a feast of barbecue lamb and chicken awaits us. It is ever amazing that so much beauty and hope can be intertwined with the pain and reality of the conflict.”

Gemma Searle

“As I climbed Masada (I was the first one up, by the way), I felt a huge sense of motivation within myself, then satisfaction when I reached the top before sunrise. As I arrived at the top of the mountain, panting, I stopped in the midst of a group of Israeli children in vocal prayer. It was so powerful, so perfect. The sun rose, the children chanted, and I felt a little more connected with the universe.”

Evan Neff

This trip has changed my life. I experienced the world in a completely unique way. It showed how much I have to be thankful for in my life; how lucky I am. In many ways Israel was the place where I realized “we have the power to make a difference in this world.”

Alex Flood-bryzman

This trip has changed my perspective in terms of taking my "peaceful" life for granted. It is not a luxury that anyone in Israel gets to have. It was extremely eye opening to see how people in a conflict area live, and how that life differs from our own. I would not trade the experiences, nor the life lessons Israel gave me, for anything in the world.

Ben Cerami

The trip to Israel/Palestine was a completely life changing experience for me. It presented a perspective I had never known to think about and made me care so deeply about something that was so far from my own reality. The people, the food, the sadness, the happiness, and the am

ount of pride really captured my heart to explore the world and the different people that come with it.

Jasmine Wirsig

I spent a year in Israel studying at Tel Aviv University for the majority of my duration there. I learned the language, the cultures of Israel, Tel Aviv, and Jews), studied the history, economy and politics of the region, and was lucky enough to study under highly accomplished and objective professors, who all made grand efforts to show more than two sides of the conflict. Yes, surprisingly enough, it's not just a black and white conflict with shades of gray, Palestinians vs. Israelis - the conflict delves even deeper! I learned many lessons that I use in everyday life on a wide array of diverse topics. Some of the lessons, in concise versions for the purpose of briefness, are; 'two opposing sides can both have valid views and reasons for their actions' and 'any situation can be looked at from a multitude of various angles'. It is important to add that 'some views are more valid than others' and 'a singular truth does not necessarily exist' apply to both 'lessons' listed. My year in Israel proved to be my most eye opening experience in regards to how the world and humanity operates. At least this conflict has some good effects. I was lucky enough to join this trip of thirteen CAS students during my time there. Despite spending just ten short days in Israel, this CAS crew went through a life changing course. At the end of the trip it became apparent to me that this crew had grown an appreciation for the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an understanding that perpetrators and victims live on both sides of the wall, physical and ideal. Only after reading some of these responses, of which the one you are reading accompanies, did I realize that this crew took the lessons from their trip to Israel and further applied them in the various domains within their lives. By the end of the trip, they had reached previously unimaginable conclusions through their determination to raise the funds to fly a troop halfway across the world for ten sleep deprived, information overloaded, and culture shocked days in the ME. I admire such beings, that without strong direct connections, devoted such time and energy to understanding in an objective manner, one of the most controversial and in-depth conflicts of our time.

Jonas Maximilian Sota, March 19, 2012