October 26, 2003

Bethlehem Olive Harvest Festival

[Bethlehem, West Bank] Nothing brings out the best in Bethlehem like our annual Olive Harvest Festival. Yesterday Manger Square was alive with the sights, sounds, and tastes of traditional Bethlehem. Excellent! I spent almost all day hanging out with old and new friends listening to both the Artas Group and the Dar Al Kalima School choir, watching traditional Dabkeh dancing, and tasting various olive treats.

I think tourism was the number one industry in Bethlehem -- but not now. In the last few years, income from tourism has hovered around $0. That means that other businesses must support the community. Businesses like olive farming. Almost every family has some sort of olive grove or farm. These old trees are vitally important -- for olives, for olive oil, and for olive wood products. Unfortunately, the past year has seen a lot of these trees uprooted for one reason or another -- the Israeli security wall, land confiscations, home demolitions, settler road building. Whatever. I don't want to dwell on the negative, though because yesterday was a celebration!

If you missed the Olive Harvest Festival, I'm sorry. Maybe you can catch it next year. Here's what you missed:

This is my friend MC Carol from the ICB. Here she sings "All My Loving" from a Hard Day's Night. She was milling around through the crowd, interviewing folks, and letting everyone have a good time. She did a nice job. I was hoping she would not interview me. But I was ready if she did -- "anna baheb zatoon" -- I like the olive. I figured I could say that regardless of the question. Under the pressure of a live interview, I doubt I could have mustered "zatoon sadeeki" -- the olive is my friend. But both are useful phrases around here, and I try to sprinkle them in my daily conversation. I'm not very good at live interviews. They make me nervous. Last year at Christmas a Bethlehem TV station asked for an interview on the street. I said sure, thinking that I was in for a few softball questions -- like did I enjoy Christmas in Bethlehem or how is the food at Christmas? Instead the interviewer asked me why America supported the racist policies of Ariel Sharon. I mumbled something about Christmas being a time for peace and oooh -- look at the cool Santa in the store window -- then I excused myself and promised never to do another interview again for the rest of my life. Anyway, If you're hanging out in Bethlehem for a while, try to get an invitation to a Carol and Andre party. They are some of the finest hosts I've ever met. Good vibe, good space, good food, good drink, and Carol usually leads a Beatles song or two sometime during the evening.

Artas Group performs in the shadow of Nativity Church, site of Jesus' birth. These local Artas guys were triple-threats -- singers, dancers, and actors. I'm told they are available for private functions.

Everyone got into the Dabkeh dancing.

Local craftsmen displayed their works. There was stained glass, olivewood products, Cremisan wines, olive oil, falafel with olives, honey and olive oil soap, clothing, handbags, mother-of-pearl, and my favorite -- the mosaics. I really like the mosaics. I've purchased quite a few of them. If you're interested in Palestinian handicrafts -- dresses or olivewood products, contact me and I can give you a lot of names of friends and students -- including the Bethlehem Christmas Market. Christmas is just around the corner, and these locally-made gifts from Bethlehem are very cool.

More excellent Dabkeh dancing on Manger Square.

Traditional dance by the Artas Group. If you were here you would have seen them live! I'm not kidding, these guys were great. Some of them were old enough to be my grandfather, but they were singing and dancing and jumping around better than I could. I'm thinking about hiring Artas Group for my next birthday. My favorite bands are now U2 and Artas Group. And I've met the member of Artas Group! They take interest in their fans. (They wanted to know what the heck I was doing there.) Still would like to meet Bono though. I'd like to get him together with Artas Group and hear his take on God and the Middle East.

Here's Artas Group Live! (be patient, about 4Mbytes, right-click and "save target as" to download the file to your computer.)

George directs the Dar Al Kalima School choir. You remember George -- the lesser-known fourth tenor ?

My new best friend, Yvonne (center) was visiting Bethlehem. Yvonne introduced herself and told me that she was a regular reader of this website. And she told me that she passed along my site to other friends in Germany, because she thought I was doing an OK job. Thank you, Yvonne. You made me feel pretty darn good. Usually when people come up to me, I owe them money, so this was an extra nice surprise. Yvonne (and JZ) must have a lot of good friends because German readers are some of my most regular visitors. So far this month I've had visitors from 72 countries and Germany ranks number 11. (The top ten visitors are fairly consistent -- US, Israel, Canada, Australia, France, UK, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, and Sweden. This month shows Nicaragua at number 14! Wow. Bienvenido a mi website.) So some of you-- unlike Yvonne -- might be using this site as a substitute for visiting Bethlehem. Forget that. This site is a darn poor substitute. Get yourselves on over here. And buy a lot of stuff.