A friend invited me to Rosh Hashanah dinner with him. Deciding it would be both an interesting experience and a sort of spiritual dedication to my Bubby, I put on my shabbat best for a service and dinner at the Chabad Jewish Center of Cambodia. The Chabad is located in the nice part of Phnom Penh (ie. very far away from where I was staying) and is housed in a beautiful Mediterranean style house. We took a tuk-tuk to the Chabad with an Israeli couple from my friend's hostel and upon arriving at the gate of the Chabad (armed guards surrounded the entrance), the Israeli man looked at me and said, "We speak Hebrew tonight, I hope you're ready." I responded that that was the norm for me, having been raised with an extended family of Israelis whose presence was ubiquitous at all of the high holiday meals. We were welcomed into the Chabad by a small-boned Woody Allen doppelganger and a Christian woman from Canada (possibly of the Eat, Pray, Love type with Cambodia as her eat/pray stop) who introduced herself as "the gentile of the high holidays."
After meeting an assortment of Israelis, Americans, Brits, and a very uncomfortable Thai woman dressed in a skintight leopard print dress and five-inch studded stiletto heels, we sat down to the service. Rather, the women sat at the dinner table facing one another while the men, separated from us by a partition, sat in rows of seats facing the rabbi. We (the women) were given xeroxed copies of the texts used in the service; the men were given actual books. I sat next to a French woman working in an investment bank in Phnom Penh and we bonded over knowing that our Jewish heritage would always guarantee us a good time and great food no matter where we were. Any pauses in the service elicited fast-paced, across-the-table shouting/conversations among the Israelis all of whom seemed to know one another or to know the cousin of someone's boyfriend's sister. A cantor from Brooklyn was shipped in for the occasion, so the service was rather beautiful and although it was in Hebrew, I followed along on my xeroxed English version.
After the service, the meal began. By "meal," I mean the ensuing three hour feast. Excellent challah (the first bread I'd had since getting to Asia) dipped in honey was followed by apples dipped in honey and a salad of pomegranate seeds with lemon. Then came the eggplant dip, the tomato and green pepper dip, the salmon "fish head" (gefilte fish is apparently not too popular with the Cambodian Israelis...I must say I was sort of looking forward to it), and more challah. Next came a corn, avocado and tomato salad (the first fresh vegetables I'd eaten), an actual chopped salad with delicious mustard dressing (yay for green vegetables), roasted chicken and beef, rice and mushroom pilaf, sauteed carrots...the list continues forever.
I was secretly hoping some kasha varnishkes would appear but, alas, I satiated myself with the endless challah and the bottles of vodka and whiskey that were brought out. I should explain that these bottles were brought out in tenfold, with each of the three tables receiving approximately one entire bottle per Israeli. The rabbi filled his glass up with whiskey so, being the dutiful Jews that we are, we emulated his every move and did the same. Then, he began to tell his story about the shofar (the horn used for various religious ceremonies, specifically on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur...thanks Wikipedia!).
So here's the story. (Those of you who know me will know that I'm not exactly religious. The merit of this story for me is the "life advice"--see italicized part.) A king has a son and he gives him everything available to facilitate an upbringing replete with advantages. He receives the best teachers, the best food (obviously, he's Jewish), the best art, the best books, etc. And so, the prince grows up to be a perfect young man: a generous, polite, intelligent son of whom any parent would be proud. But the king is not impressed (again, he's a Jew). He says to his son, "Son, you are a generous, polite, intelligent young man. But that is not enough, for you have grown up with the advantages of every possible privilege. To see who you really are, you must go to a foreign land where no one will know that you are the son of a King and where you will be a stranger to the people, to the language, and to the culture. Go there, young one, and see how your gifts fare." So, the Prince hops on his camel and crosses a desert (or three) to reach the foreign land, sure that he will be met with the adoration and respect he has grown accustomed to because, after all, he is the prince! And he is so very gifted!
But alas. When he arrives at this foreign land of the unknown, he is faced with a language he cannot comprehend and people who not only do not recognize him but who hold customs, thoughts and habits with which he is utterly unfamiliar. And, as the rabbi put it, "The shell of his education began to crack to reveal the shell of his soul." (That is my new motto for my year in Asia, btw.)
So, the prince struggles in this new and unfamiliar place for many months and many years until he slowly becomes a part of the people. One day, he yearns to revisit his home (for, after all, we will only ever truly have one home). So, he gets back on his camel, re-crosses the deserts, and arrives at the gates of his father's palace. Only, alas! He has forgotten the language of his home! He is no longer recognized as the Prince! "Woe is me!," he exclaims at the feet of the guards, who neither understand nor recognize him. Faced with an inability to communicate through his now-forgotten native language, he does the only thing he has left to do. He screams. And way up in the palace, the King hears the scream and instantly knows that it is his son (just go with it). He comes running down to the palace gates, throws them open, and falls into his son's embrace. That scream is the shofar.
It's funny to think that Cambodia was the place where I had my first "Yeah, that makes sense!" moment concerning a story of Jewish tradition. For me, that scream is not the scream of an individual who is weakened by an inability to communicate but a voice that seeks the recognition of familiarity that comes only from family. For some, this family comprises immediate relatives; for others, "family" means those with whom bonds have been formed over years of shared memories. I left the Chabad house full of food and of the realization that my shofar will reveal me to the extended, awesomely eccentric, passionate group of people with whom I associate the word "family" regardless of where I am or how much I have changed and grown in adapting myself to new surroundings.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Angkor Wat
Disclaimer: I took 275 pictures over the course of the Siem Reap/Angkor Wat weekend...so this post is mainly composed of those pictures. If you're looking for some extensive prose, you'll have to wait till my next post (about my Rosh Hashanah dinner in Phnom Penh).
Little kids playing in the fields before the enormous thunderstorm.
The actual color of the fields a second before the storm.
Our drive also included stops at some rest stops that offered the usual gas station fare...
(Live tarantulas and a very badass little boy.)
A bag of sliced up dragon fruit (probably my favorite snack) = $0.50
After sampling the local fare, we continued north to Siem Reap and woke up at 4:30 on Saturday morning to start our epic journey by watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Over the course of the next hour, I watched the sky melt from pitch black to midnight blue to royal blue to sun-filled...
(5 AM glamour shots in 90 degree weather are always cute.)
The rest of the day consisted of touring the 4 other temples that make up the Angkor Wat compound. The first two we visited were Bayon and Bapoun, which are unfinished playground-esque structures that are essentially endless mazes of hallways and atria.
King Louie's palace in The Jungle Book? I think so.
It was about 99 degrees and full humidity so...excuse the excessive sweat.
This begins the "Really Awesome Trees" section of this post...
This mossy, algae-filled pool used to be the bath for the king's harem.
Aside from the completely awe-inspiring ruins, the best part of Angkor Wat was the number of dragonflies that appeared out of nowhere and clouded the sky. Right before one of the torrential downpours that I've grown accustomed to being a staple of life in Southeast Asia, a swarm of about 60 dragonflies flew right in front of me.
Look really closely...all those tiny black dots are dragonflies guiding me on my adventure (ask my Mom for further clarification).
(It's really hard to capture 60 dragonflies on camera so...just pretend there are 58 more of them in this picture.)
After the dragonflies arrived, the rainstorm pushed us under a thatched roof hut conveniently located off the trail through one of the temples.
The huts sold neon rain ponchos...a very necessary purchase.
The hour-long rainstorm not only provided some much needed escape from the heat/humidity, but it also brought out the kids. Some of them took off all of their clothes and stood, barefoot and naked, in giant puddles with huge smiles plastered on their faces. Others took the opportunity presented by the poor drainage system to dive into the rapidly enlarging pools of rainwater.
They also try to sell the tourists everything from woven bracelets to bags of pineapple.
After a two hour lunch (the restaurant service here will be the focus of another post because...it is completely ridiculous), we headed to Ta Prom (aka the Tomb Raider temple). To say that this ruin is anything other than magically incredible would be depleting its awesomeness.
The pre-lunch rain collected in pools across the paths...wooden walkways and Indiana Jones jumps were utilized often.
The entire temple is covered in moss and giant tree roots grow up and over the stones.
The band of blind men who serenaded us on the walk to Angkor Wat (the main temple).
Did I mention that the temples are literally in the jungle?
This was probably the best tree I've ever seen. Peter Pan's lost boy world meets Indiana Jones is the only way to describe Angkor Wat.
At the main temple (Angkor Wat).
Close up, just in case you needed a Becca:Angkor Wat scale.
Jungle rain is unlike any other kind of precipitation...no way to describe it other than that it necessitates one of those aforementioned neon ponchos.
The last section of my pictures from the Angkor Wat trip are from the Beng Mealea site. The ticket to this temple reads "Welcome to Beng Mealea site, one the most mysterious temples of Siem Reap Province." (Grammar aside, that is the only way I could think of articulating the essence of Beng Mealea.)
Our tour guides through this most mysterious temple were barefooted children who held our hands and showed us the best ways to jump/slide/run/climb around the temple.
The sunset over the Cambodian rice paddies.
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