Cute story about Lev, and Chicken Manure news for those who persist to the end

I mentioned that I am reading Harry Potter in Hebrew. It is going well and Harry is now at Hogwarts, now, but my feeling that I could be reading this in any language generally continues. It is as if the story were being sent directly into my head without the pesky medium of language. Occasionally though the fact of Hebrew intrudes on me. This is probably largely a personal matter that has to do with knowing the original pretty well and the idiosyncrasies of learning a language as an adult. When you learn a language as an adult you actually often can remember the first time you came across a word and this sets up a whole associative network which is hidden from view or buried when the language in question is one you have spoken since childhood. For example, I was curious about the origin of the word shakshuka which is a tasty egg-in-tomato-sauce breakfast which I first enjoyed at Tmol Shilshom here in Jerusalem. I assumed shakshuka was a loan word from Arabic but came across variations on the root shakshek in several places meaning something like "shake" or "mix-up". For example, when Harry and Hagrid visit Gringots and they first get out of the cart at Harry's vault, the narrator says "He [Hagrid] indeed looked a little green and when the cart finally stopped next to a little door in the wall of the tunnel, Hagrid got out and leaned against the wall until his knees stopped "leshakshek."
Still, I recently read a letter that Gershom Scholem, the renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism sent to his friend, the philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig and which is published in the collection On the Possibility of a Jewish Mysticism in Our Time, in which Scholem says (in an uncharacteriscally overheated sort of way) that "This Hebrew language is pregnant with catastrophe; it cannot remain in its present state -- nor will it remain there. Our children will no longer have any other language... One day this language will turn against its speakers -- and there are moments when it does so even now; moments which it is difficult to forget, leaving wounds in which all the presumtuousness of our goal is revealed. Will we then have a youth who will be able to hold fast against the rebellion of a holy tongue?" What Scholem was exactly worried about, he leaves tantalizingly unspecified, but it seems that it has to do with an inextricable bent towards messianism and eschatology somehow inherent in the Hebrew language itself. Given that you would think that Harry Potter would have a more pronounced messianic or apocalyptic flavour to it in Hebrew than in English but I have to say that in general that is not the case. The translation like the orginal is sort of eerily pelucid. However I found a few oddities. One is the translation of Halloween as "layal hakadoshim" or literaly "the night of the holies." Kadosh, of course has a strong redolence of the biblical and makes the non-religious, magical holiday of Hogworts seem very close to its Christian/Pagan roots. I'm not sure how Halloween general gets translated but I think a transliteration might have been more apposite. Another spot where the language's theology sort of jumped into the driver's seat unexpectedly was when Snape puts Harry on the spot on his first day of Potions class by asking him, among other things the difference between "choneq hazaev" and "bardas hanazir." Now, I have already packed up my dictionary so it is a little hard for me to confirm this but I think the translator -- Gili Bar-Hillel -- has come up with two Hebrew neologisms having translated wolfsbane and monkshood more or less literally. Neither variety of aconitum grows wild in Israel as far as I can tell from various plant websites (plant sellers just call them aconitum) so it is not so odd that the translator would simply use a direct translation from the very evocative English common names. But I would imagine that with a little work one could find a Hebrew name in a medieval Hebrew herbology. What is funny about the translation of monkshood to "bardas nazir" is that it relies on imagining the "nazir" as a Medieaval christian monk -- in which case the hood follows naturally and the flower really does look like its namesake. But if your referent for a nazir is the biblical nazir, such as Samson, the "bardas", the hood seems like a bit of a non sequitor.

The other day I told Lev that curiosity killed the cat. He said, "Really? How?"

Finally since I have touched on the agricultural and this is really mor or less just for my mom, there was an article in this morning's Haartez about flies, chicken manure and compost, topics all dear to her heart. It also highlights the benefits for people from all over the region to co-operation in this case on ecological issues. I can personally attest that 18 years ago when I was on kibbutz not far from the Jordanian border the flies were Biblical and plague like, though I never thought to blame chicken manure or the Jordanians and I remain skeptical on this point.

Jordan bans chicken manure as fertilizer over fly infestation

By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: fertilizer, Jordan

Jordan has banned the use of chicken manure as fertlizer, as it has been responsible for widespread infestations by flies for many years on both the Jordanian and Israeli sides of the Dead Sea. In future, Jordanian farmers in the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea area will be required to use only compost. Chicken manure both attracts and nourishes flies, and the profusion of the insect has been a blight to life on both sides of the border for years. Recently, authorities in both countries teamed up, with the mediation of the environmental organization Friends of the Earth Middle East, to deal with the problem.

Post Script to my last

1. This AMs conversation with Lev
ME: I really liked getting to spend time together, just the two of us.
LEV: What?
ME: I really liked spending time together, you and me, together.
LEV: (Suspicious now) What?!
ME: Benjy and Imma are away and that is a little sad. But I am also happy that we are together just the two of us.
LEV: I want a toilet paper roll for my wrist.
ME: Of course.
LEV: I need weapons (walks away muttering 'weapons' under his breath).

2. I am reading Harry Potter in Hebrew. I am on chapter 3. Reading the book in translation makes me realize something about it and its allure and failings. The book seems to be all story without (or beyond or behind) language. I swear you could take 72 Hebrew speakers and put them in different rooms each with a copy of Harry Potter in Hebrew and have them translate it back into English and get the same book (and one that would be practically identical to the original). It is uncanny. Martin Amis has a hysterical bit in one of his books, I think it is London Fields, where his novelist character complains about how hard it is to get your characters from one place to another. There is a certain dreariness for writers with aspirations to being literary in writing things like "James got on the subway." "Felicia walked across the park to Alice's house." If Faulkner ever wrote a sentence like that I can't remember it. In J.K. Rowling every sentence seems to be like that. And yet they add up to a really good story. Language versus story.

3. I just finished reading "The Swimming-Pool Library" by Alan Hollinghurst. Ariela gave it to me when she'd finished it. It is a great book very beautiful and elegaic and at the same time quite cutting (and takes a tremendous delight in language). It is all about the gay cruising scene in London in the 80's right before the awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Given the subject matter it is no suprise that Ariela gave it to me with the warning (recommendation?) that it is really dirty. And it is. Why I am telling you this is because I took it on the bus the other day when I went to pick up Lev. I was nearly finished and couldn't leave it unfinished in the appartment, so I grabbed it and read it on the 74. I didn't get cruised or gay-bashed by a very well-read homophobe or anything like that. But at one point I looked up and realised that -- and this will be familiar to those of you who have taken the bus in Jerusalem before -- while lots of other people had books on the bus, almost all of them were reciting Psalms.
Which leads me to a reflection I had been meaning to share but hadn't gotten around to; one of the things that Jerusalem does, for good or bad, is it puts "Sin" as a category in your mind. In Montreal or Vancouver or New York you might think about Good and Bad but unless you are a very religiously inclined person, you won't (at least I don't) think about SIN much, which was after all a category that dominated people's thinking for hundreds of years not so long ago. Yesterday, I saw a cute teenage couple necking in the park. No surprise, nothing you don't see a dozen times on a nice day in Montreal, even in Jerusalem. But she was wearing a hijab! I was scandalized by that. SIN! Before my very eyes. How weird is that?! It's not even my religion and I was shouting SIN at them (internally, you understand). While I don't think I would ever want to get to the point where SIN became an unrecognized category of my thinking, which I suppose could happen if you lived here long enough, I do enjoy having it in my face and it makes reading a book like The Swimming-Pool Library, on the bus, amidst all the bus-y passions, political, national, religious and sinful, all the richer.

O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me.
Thou knowest my sitting down and my rising up, thou understandest my thought afar off.
Thou hast measured my going and my lying down, and thou art acquainted with all my ways.
For no word is on my tongue yet, and lo, thou knowest it all.
Thou hast beset me behind and before and laid thy hand on me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high and I cannot attain it.
(from Psalm 139)

Lev and Jeremy unplugged

Ariela and Benjy are off in Egypt with Menachem, so Lev and I are holding down the fort here. Lev is a person of strange proclivities and I am not entirely sure it was wise to leave me under his supervision. Sometimes I question his judgement. His speech can be disjointed (I was relived when some friends showed us their son's hearing test -- perfectly normal -- which they had undertaken because he, too, is constantly saying "What?" What?"). "Do birds really know everything?" he asked me the other day, as if in reference to some previous conversation. Sometimes, his speech is whatever the opposite of disjointed is -- but weirdly so.
Two days ago he said, "Maybe you'll never die." I said I would die but I hoped it would be a long way off. Yesterday he told me he did not think I would die before Ariela and Benjy got back from Egypt. A child's loyalty is a little mercenary. He hopes I won't die, and if I have to would I at least stave it off until his mother, who knows how to buy things he likes to eat at the grocery store, comes back.
He mutters a lot.
Lev has clothing rules. Shirts cannot cover his pockets or his bum. Pants must be "softie" pants ie. sweats or fleece, preferably with pockets for putting all the weird treasures he finds with friends at school. I scored a huge parenting victory the other day by cutting the legs off an old pair of sweat pants which had too many holes in them to be acceptable anymore and presenting them as a new pair of shorts. "Softie pants with pockets!" he said with reverence and delight. You can see them in the picture. I don't think Benjy ever had such a strong tastes in clothes but maybe I have blocked it out. After all it makes the mornings more challenging.
I have been trying to find adventurous things for us to do so Lev won't be too sad about missing out on Egypt. We went to Hezekiah's Tunnel two days ago. Lev started complaining about getting car sick after thirty seconds (which explains why he was not invited on the twelve hour bus ride to Cairo.) "Ir David," is the name of the metastysizing archeological park where Hezekiah's tunnel is located. It is in Arab East Jerusalem, in Silwan three or four blocks from the walls of the Old City. It is run putatively by the Israeli National Parks Authority, but the work of digging in the site and managing it is subcontracted to a right-wing, religious private foundation (see one organization that is trying to draw attention to this). In some cases the excavations have been carried out under the homes of Palestinians, literally undermining their houses and often without permits. It has excited some controversy and in addition to seeing Hezekiah's Tunnel I wanted to see what the fuss was about. We went in and I bought tickets for Hezekiah's Tunnel and they had a 3D movie, so I figured we'd check that out too. In the meantime, Lev had a slushie. He asked me what flavor it was and I told him "red". Then we got our 3D glasses and watched the video which is called "Where it All Began" but should be called "Arabs? What Arabs?" since it is at some pains to ignore the fact that David's City is underneath a busy Arab neighbourhood. One sequence seemed particularly odd from an ideological perspective. At the end of the film, the narrator talks about how there are so many buildings from so many different historic periods in Jerusalem today and a fancy computer generated video shows a bunch of architectural landmarks. Given the bent of the movie, I didn't expect to see the Dome of the Rock or the American Colony hotel or anything like that but I was suprised by two things they did show. One was the King David Hotel. The King David is definitely a Jerusalem landmark. It is a beautiful building from the late twenties located right across from Lev's daycare. But what's weird is that the King David is perhaps most famous for is getting partially blown up by Jewish terrorists in 1946 when it was the headquarters of the British administration and military in Palestine, an attack which killed 91 people (the Irgun always claimed that they called to warn that an attack was imminent and that the building should be evacuated and that the call was ignored) not exactly an association you would want to make, I'd think. The other thing that jumped out was the way the Western Wall was presented. The Western Wall is the big kahuna of Jewish religious and nationalist iconography. Of course, it was notably shorn of its Golden Yarmulke, the Dome of the Rock, which is creepy, for sure, but no surpirse. But it was also presented as sort of second fiddle to Ir David, WHERE IT ALL BEGAN. It is pretty cheeky to put your Jewish monument standing higher (of course, it is actually quite a bit lower geographically) and glowing (?!) brighter that the Western Wall. I am curious if this reflects some subtle ideological rivalry that I am missing. Anyway, with both our slushy and our indoctrination finished we went down to Hezekiah's tunnel.
It is a hand-carved 500 something meter tunnel which brought water from the Gihon spring inside the city walls of Jerusalem during the time of the first temple built by King Hezekiah to ensure water supply in case of seige particualrly by the Assyrians. Water still runs along it from the spring and it is pitch black; a perfect place to take a four year-old. When we first went in the water was belly high on Lev and I had to pick him up and I thought there is no way I can shlepp him for forty minutes. But soon enough the water levelled off at about ankle depths. We trudged through the low narrow passage in the dim light of our flashlights and sang "Dark as the Dungeon" with great accoustics. It was fun although about ten minutes in Lev said "I want to go home." I pointed forward and said "Home is that way." He did great in the tunnel though he did tend to loose focus (amazing since all there is to do is walk and that only in one direction, but such is the power of a four year old).
When we got out of the tunnel we hiked up the steps back to the entrance which was longer than I had bargained for in the full heat of the day (the tunnel was great for a hot day, the walk back up the hill, not so much). The one good thing (or not depending on your take) is that as you walk back up the hill (shlepping a screaming 4 year-old) you get to see the amount of Jewish-Israeli settlement that has gone on as part of "Ir David," often on land/houses expropriated by the government from Palestinians. The film had boasted in a weirdly National-Geographic-sort-of-way about how Jews were now living once again where they had so long ago. Aside from the political piece of this settlement activity, which is meant to "Judaize" the eastern part of Jerusalem both as a nationalistic and religious enterprise and, practically, to ensure that the city will never be home to a Palestinian capital, it sounded from the video almost as if the settlers were caracals or ibex which had been reintroduced to their natural habitat. It seems to me indicitive of the way in which, when you view people strategically, as ideological assets rather than as individuals, you end up de-humanizing even "your own."
Finally, ruffled feathers smoothed, mine and Lev's, we got in a cab and headed home. Not quite Egypt, but plenty to think about.