In the beginning...
Posted April 23rd, 2007 by tal
My name is Tal.
It's a Hebrew name. It's not short for anything, it's just Tal. I am the eldest of two daughters
and the first in my father's family to be born in Israel (on mum's side, a few cousins have beet
me to that title).
My name means 'dew drop' or 'morning dew', if the poetic spirit grabs you.
I often get asked why I came to New Zealand. Basically, it's the farthest away you can get from
Israel before hitting Antarctica, and I desperately wanted to get out.
In all my twenty years growing up in Israel, I never felt part of it. New Zealand, from all
of mum's stories (she grew up here), sounded like a quiet, peaceful place where I could enjoy life
with the bonus of getting to see my grandparents more often.
Am I going back to Israel? Yes, for visits: for as long as I have family there. Would I raise a family there?
Absolutely, positively NEVER!
In joining the Peace Foundation, I wanted to work with members of the Welllington community on
conflict resolution and mediation - especially with school kids. But as soon as I started volunteering
Katrina shared with me her vision of a youth project based on some form of artistic collaboration which focused
on issues surrounding a multicultural society. Our conflicting backgrounds seemed the perfect premise on which
such a project could be started. This was the conception of The Babel Project.
It's amazing how in the six months that have since passed Babel has grown and come into being.
I'm personally very grateful for the opportunity to be part of such an exciting project, and to meet
such amazing individuals as Babel has been so forunate as to attract.
Being a co-facilitator does no in any way mean I won't learn as much as our artists may. I'm here to share my experiences, just as Katrina is here to share hers, but I'm young and this is a great journey for me.
Already it's proven to be a challenge, as I have been reading books and articles, listening to individual accounts and
watching footage of the conflict back Israel/Palestine and I've had to question many elements of the society I'd grown up in.
I hope my education in all this will continue to challenge me, because in the end it will only make me the wiser.
So, shalom friends, and welcome to my path.
Go Tal!
I admire your bravery, it takes courage to step back from where you are from, and reflect on it from a common humanity.
"A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself (or herself), his (or her) thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature."
-- Albert Einstein
Art can be a short -circuit to subvert this lens, this illusion, a way to express things that can't be put in words. as if words themselves thrown like dice on paper, spilt like milk, can ever rearrange themselves into a whole truth. Looking beyond the texts of any major religion, the truth is clearer in the smile of a child. As a flatmate recently said to me, "we can make this into such a wonderful world", and i agree
i just wish everyone felt the same.
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