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Stage Play: ON THE HOLY TRAIL
Staged By: The Mustard Seed Art Company
Where: Kala Academy - Mini Open-air Auditorium
When: Dec 20 & 21, 2007 @ 7pm
Read a Review at:
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2007-December/066558.html
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=a12JnKt1Pwlc&refer=uk
Karma Kosher Conscripts in New-Age Diaspora Seek
Refuge in Goa
By A. Craig Copetas
Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Gupta the swastika salesman
arrives at sunset, fires a kerosene lantern and
displays his gold- painted trinkets on an Indian beach
filled with hundreds of young Israelis dancing in a
fog of hashish.
Draped in garlands strung with jasmine blossoms, the
pulsating Israelis are freshly decommissioned from the
military and seeking a cheap retreat to unwind from
their obligatory two- to-three years of safeguarding
the Jewish state. The conscripts find sanctuary in the
thousands of dilapidated wicker seaside shacks and
dozens of isolated jungle ghettos that weave along a
78-mile coast and snake up treacherous dirt tracks
into the impoverished mountain villages of Goa.
According to Israeli and Indian officials, between
40,000 and 60,000 young Israelis have either
permanently moved or established long-term residence
in India. They have created new lives for themselves
alongside the country's 900 million Hindus and 150
million Muslims and caused tension among the local
population because of the widespread use of
recreational drugs.
``Our souls need a permanent break from Israel,'' says
army veteran Tomel Basel, 24, pocketing one of Gupta's
10 cent charms, the ancient cross with bent arms that
is venerated by Hindus as a lucky adornment.
``We're all runaways,'' Basel says before filling his
lungs with potent smoke and exhaling his separate
reality on the squalor of Anjuna Beach. ``There's
nothing for us back in Israel.''
Karma Kosher Trail
What began in 1994 as the great post-military escape
to India has turned into a new-age Diaspora of young
and embittered men and women looking to flee what they
say is their country's armed turmoil with the
Palestinians and the spiritual emptiness of Judaism.
Many of the revelers on the sands of Anjuna Beach and
elsewhere along what's known as the Karma Kosher Trail
say they have no intention of returning to Israel,
despite the efforts of four local rabbis and a
$200,000 joint government-private sector campaign
funded by Israeli banking and telecommunications
magnate Nochi Dankner, a devotee of the Dalai Lama and
chairman of IDB Holding Corp.
Shlomo Breznitz, a director of the campaign and
founder of the India-Israel Parliamentary Friendship
Group in Israel, says the exodus is worrisome and
potentially tragic. ``Karma kosher is much more of a
widespread phenomenon than Israelis want to admit,''
says Breznitz, 71, a retired member of the Israeli
parliament and former president and provost of Haifa
University.
India Trade
``India is about to become one of Israel's biggest
trading partners,'' Breznitz adds. ``And we have
40,000 kids down there who have no idea when or if
they will come back. Their attitude has already fueled
very real anti-Israeli elements within the Indian
government and created sufficient motivation for
people in Israel and India to harm our bilateral trade
agreements.''
Between 1992 and 2006, trade between Israel and India
grew to $2.7 billion from $200 million and is poised
to top $3 billion annually.
``Forty thousand over-enthusiastic Israelis in India
are not going to get in the way of more than $3
billion of bilateral trade,'' says Indian Minister of
Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath. ``And there's
enormous scope for increasing that trade.''
Military Dropout
``Too much is at stake,'' Breznitz says. ``India has
the world's second-largest Muslim population. There's
a strong symbolic element to these youngsters, so it's
not a question of if something might happen, but when
it will happen. I read the security reports.''
Leanna Peled-Rosen, 27, doesn't care. She stripped the
sergeant stripes from her sleeve in 2000, abandoning a
promising military career as a self-defense instructor
and anti-terrorist specialist to become a ballet
dancer and live a Hindu lifestyle in Israel.
She is in Tel Aviv, saving money for a likely trip to
India and aware of the growing economic ties between
Israel and India in telecommunications,
pharmaceuticals, construction, real estate and
military hardware.
``The trade will further speed up the process of
integrating Indian culture with Israeli society,''
Peled-Rosen says at the Sub Kuchmilga (Anything Is
Possible) Indian restaurant. The sign on the door
reads ``No Elephants Allowed.'' There's a bottle of
bourbon on the bar and, on the jukebox, Bob Dylan is
singing ``Changing of the Guards.''
`No Clue'
``The government has absolutely no clue why we go to
India,'' Peled-Rosen laughs, pointing to a group of
uniformed Israeli soldiers huddled in a corner. ``The
politicians will tell you that we live in a bubble,
but it won't burst. Our spiritual lives are beyond the
politics and religion of Israel.''
Peled-Rosen gestures toward a picture of Ganesh, one
of the Hindu gods that decorate the restaurant.
``Those who have been forced to return from Goa
because they've run out of money are vocal critics of
the political and religious status quo,'' Peled-Rosen
says. ``We won't back down.''
Two hours south of Tel Aviv, along the hardscrabble
frontier of the Negev Desert, retired flower grower
Rachamin Efraim pours a sweet drink on the Moshav
Nevatim farm and smiles at the thought of young
Israelis roaming the land of his forefathers.
``India is calm, a good place for young people who
have grown up in a country where everyone is going
crazy,'' says the 71-year-old Cochin Jew, one of some
70,000 Indian Jews Breznitz helped repatriate in the
1950s, more than 2,000 years after the tribe first
arrived in southwestern India from Jerusalem.
`Paradise on Earth'
Accompanying Efraim on the trip home to Israel in 1954
was Esther Atraham, then 18. Now 71 and living in the
moshav's nursing facility, Atraham says it's foolish
to begrudge the young Jews who have settled in Goa.
``Southern India is paradise on Earth,'' Atraham says,
tugging the sleeve of her sari. ``I understand why the
children go. They had a difficult time in the army.
They want joy.''
Just how a disparate group of former Israeli soldiers
over the past 13 years managed to build a stronghold
in India without government oversight remains a
mystery. Why they're leaving Israel is no secret among
those preparing to head south from the 26 Rupee
restaurant on the roof of a Tel Aviv warehouse.
``The war with the Palestinians never ends,'' says
Smadar Waisman, 26, an Israeli Defense Force
intelligence analyst who left the barracks to join an
ashram in Israel.
``Military service turns good young Israelis into
corrupt and insensitive people,'' Waisman says.
``We're forced to follow orders and do and see
horrible things that no young person should be
involved with. If you want your soul to survive the
anxiety and depression of Israel, you leave for Goa.''
Jerusalem to Goa
The long march from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to
Curlie's bar in the rocks overlooking Anjuna Beach
would probably challenge Moses. Lapsed Israelis say it
often requires skirting Indian visas, residency
permits and making side trips to ``friendly'' Indian
consulates in Beijing and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Some
fly to Sri Lanka and jump a boat for the short ride
across Pamban Channel, blending in among locals who
are mostly exempt from Indian immigration checks.
``It's easy to pull off,'' says Anjuna Christian, a
66- year-old Frenchman who renamed himself after the
beach he has lived on since moving here in 1977. ``The
Israelis are Goa's next generational wave. They're
coming no matter who likes it or not.''
Those who manage to secure a legitimate visa from the
Indian Consulate in Tel Aviv pay $629 for a round trip
that begins with a rickety bus ride to Amman and a
Gulf Air flight to Bahrain and Mumbai. From there it's
a sweltering and crowded nine-hour train ride to
Panaji, Goa's capital.
`Empty Place'
The cost of deliverance is initially underwritten by
the Israeli Defense Force. Combat veterans leave the
army with a maximum cash bonus of $2,100. Combat
support staff walk away with $1,800. Everyone else
pockets $1,452.
On the beach, life is cheap and flea-ridden.
A room with a plank bed and a pink mosquito net costs
$5 a night or $11 for three people. Sleeping under a
fragrant cashew tree is free. Kitchens with names like
the Outback Indian Israeli Restaurant come with
Hebrew-speaking Hindus who ladle vegetarian fare for a
few cents a plate.
``A lot of us either never served in the army or left
it more than a decade ago,'' says Asaf Rottenberg, a
30-year-old waiter who abandoned his job at Tel Aviv's
LaLa Land restaurant. ``People my age come here
because Israel is an empty place.''
Drug Use
Historically, foreigners looking to sate their
spiritual appetites begin at STARCO, an Anjuna hotel
and restaurant that for 30 years has been celebrated
as Goa's hippie headquarters. The sign on the roof
still advertises ``Booze, Food & Shelter,'' dished out
in that order by Swedish Maggie, who arrived in Anjuna
from Stockholm 24 years ago and never left.
``You must respect the people in the country where you
go,'' Maggie says while a young Indian boy massages
her feet in the garden. ``The Israelis don't. They're
real bad, causing trouble and getting too heavy in the
drug-smuggling scene.''
``I'm not concerned about the drug use,'' says Indian
Industry Minister Nath. ``The presence of Muslims in
India is also not a concern. India is not just the
world's biggest democracy, it's the world's rowdiest
democracy.''
For Breznitz, a psychologist who once worked for the
U.S. National Institutes of Health, karma kosher is
more than a curious national crotchet with stark
parallels to the American and European hippies who
preceded the Israelis to Goa during the 1960s and
early 1970s.
Brooklyn Connection
``It's dangerous,'' Breznitz says. ``There are hordes
of young Israelis moving around India and too many of
them fail to blend in and look down on the locals.''
Breznitz's apprehension can be heard during
conversations on the porch of a crumbling stone villa
in Anjuna. It's from this old Portuguese house where
Rabbi Meir Alfasi, 22 and an envoy of the powerful
Brooklyn-based Hassidic group Chabad- Lubavitch,
cheerfully spends his days tending two goats, three
chickens and riding a motor scooter equipped with
walkie-talkies around Goa, trying to bring Jews back
to Judaism.
As Alfasi sees the scene, the 40,000 Jews wandering
through India are prisoners in a new Babylonian
Captivity.
``India is the lowest place on Earth, an impure place
in the middle of idolatry'' Alfasi says. ``Lots of
idols and lots of Jews looking to be assimilated in
the local culture. Our mission is to prevent that from
happening.''
`Big Draw'
The Chabad outpost, which includes a kosher kitchen
and a room for a synagogue that holds Goa's only
Torah, opened its doors in 2000. A dozen Jews for
Saturday service is considered a good crowd. The
chocolate cake is delightful.
``It's a big draw,'' Alfasi smiles.
Alfasi says Israelis generally remain in India for
five to 10 years, adding that the Indian government is
now quietly trying to help him reduce that time by
limiting the number of visas it issues to Israelis and
the period they can legally remain in the country.
``It will be hard for them to find us here, Meir,''
says Yomtov Yoni, 23, an air-conditioner repairman and
Israeli air force fireman whom Alfasi is trying to
bring back into the fold.
``India is huge,'' Yoni adds, straddling a motorcycle.
``Israel is the size of Anjuna Beach. We are free
here, Meir.'' ``You see, the situation is not so
good,'' Alfasi says, stringing flower necklaces around
a 12-foot-high menorah and preparing a Friday Shabbat
dinner under the stars.
Goa Gil
Dancing alone atop a hill behind the nearby village of
Arambol, 2,500 miles (4,022 kilometers) south of Mount
Sinai, a young Israeli man with a mane of curly hair
quotes the scripture according to Goa Gil, a roadie
for the San Francisco band the Sons of Champlain who
landed here in 1969 and transformed himself into a
guru.
``The psychedelic revolution never really stopped,''
reads the gospel according to Goa Gil. ``It just had
to go halfway round the world to the end of a dirt
road on a deserted beach, and there it was allowed to
evolve and mutate, without government pressures.''
As dawn breaks on Saturday, holy cows, Toyota taxis
and sacred elephants clog the filthy, packed-mud path
that coils through Arambol's slums, market stalls and
genuine Indian massage parlors. The vapor of beer,
saffron and breakfast hashish overwhelm the human
chaos in the early morning heat.
Indian Healer
Near the bottom of the beach road, a few dirt alleys
down from an Israeli tattoo parlor, is the crisp white
tent office of Ashok Kumar, a fifth-generation
ayurvedic Indian healer.
The marquee above Kumar's turbaned head guarantees a
remedy for a long list of afflictions that range from
``leprosy'' to ``typhoid.'' There are potions to
relieve ``sexual disorders'' and spices to cure
``madness.'' The line of patients is long.
``I see two or three Israelis every week,'' the
28-year-old Kumar says. ``They all have the same
problem: madness. Their nervous systems are spent and
they need their brains rebalanced.''
The cost of sanity is $16 to $35, depending on
severity.
Back in the cool of his Haifa home, Breznitz likens
the treatment to emancipation.
``They feel entitled to clean their heads from
Israel,'' Breznitz says. ``I hope that those who come
back return with a desire to change Israel, but a lot
of people don't like new ideas and are frightened
about what these youngsters represent for the
future.''
To contact the reporter on this story: A. Craig
Copetas in Goa, India, at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cip
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Spread the Christmas Cheer, even when you're not here!
Send classic greetings to your loved ones in Goa.
EXPRESSIONS - 2007 Christmas Hamper
Visit http://www.goa-world.com/expressions/xmas/
Or e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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