What Is Normal?
Today was our first real day off— no rehearsing, no shows. We had planned to go to the Dead Sea and Jerusalem but the recent invasion of Gaza caused us to change our plans. In reality, it seems from here that both those places are actually safe to visit but the concept and perception of driving 3 hours closer to the conflict just really made no sense. Despite the young people being disappointed, we had a great day with alternative activities.
I hope you are visiting www.Facebook.com/circusharmony for the companion photo albums to this blog. Today, we visited the Yodfat Monkey Forest (great pictures of the monkeys on our performers!), swam in a cistern on a hillside, swam in the Sea of Galilee and went to Tabgha (the place where Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes). If a picture is worth a thousand words and I’ve taken over 2000 photos since we’ve been here….well, you do the math.
It is hard to believe that sitting by the Sea of Galilee while waves gently lap along the shore and families picnic at the water’s edge that just a few hundred miles away bombs are falling and homes are being destroyed. Israel is a place of disparate juxtapositions. At the Church of the Multiplication, there are incredible ancient mosaics and a little café that sells candy, bottles of date syrup and bottles of whisky and other alcohol.
As far as I know, the kids don’t talk much about the conflict between themselves, But many of the host homes in both the Jewish and Arab villages have the TVs on a lot these days for updates. In at least one of the Arab homes, one of our students said the older women in the home were crying,
While people feel safe for the moment in the Galilee, everyone here realizes that can change in an instant. The house where I am staying still bears the marks of bombs that came from Lebanon in 2006. The bomb shelter in this home doubles as an art studio but it is here, it is a bomb shelter and there are still boxes of gas masks stored on the shelves.
I grew up in New York City. My childhood concept of ‘normal’ was different than friend’s who grew up in Middletown, Connecticut. Circus Harmony’s students from North St. Louis have a different idea of ‘normal’ than our students from West County or Imperial. What is ‘normal’ here in Israel is not the same as where you are from — unless you’re from Israel and even then it depends on when and what part!