Shalom Mic

I had a great summer - spent most of August on the West coast of Ireland, between County Clare and Donegal.

Congratulations on the success of your studies - where were you actually studying, in Tiberias? and what are your plans once you get your diploma?

Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, right? What insights did you have? Perhaps you've come up with something useful I can learn from...

What's the Feast of Tabernacles all about?

I'm glad you found my thoughts on Exodus of interest. I don't think Bob Marley was referring to the Exodus 1947 - simply to the Bible story as there is such a strong link between Rastafarianism and Judaism. Have there been anniversary celebrations this year for Exodus 1947? Have you ever met anyone who was on the ship?

Come to that, have there been celebrations for the anniversary of the 6 Day War?

I guess I won't be able to see 'The Band’s Visit' for a good while, if ever. Maybe it will make it to subtitled DVD at some point. I just saw 'Michael Clayton', a very good American movie written & directed by the fella who wrote the Bourne trilogy.

I'm delighted you're getting to London. Hopefully we'll get a chance to hook up in the real world when you're here - or does that spoil the whole idea of a 121 blog (co-authoring with a person you've never seen or met)? It's difficult to know where to start with regard to sight-seeing. I'll splurge a few things here:
* the East End around Brick Lane for a taste of London's multiculturalism, formerly a Jewish area, now predominantly Bangladeshi
* the London Eye for a spectacular overview
* Frederick Leighton's studio in Holland Park (Leighton House) - see picture above
* Tate Modern
* a trip down the Thames to Greenwich
* Hampstead Heath / Parliament Hill - for country in the city
* the Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley - the oldest cinema in the UK (art deco style)
* I could go on & on...

I know Moblog very well - the person that set it up is a friend of mine and I have been using it for a couple of years. It's a lovely community.

Let's try for shorter posts more often - and in that spirit I'd better hit the sack.

Happy Feast of Tabernacles (whatever that involves!)
A

Good evening A,

Great to hear from you again after all this time, how was your summer?

I’ve enjoyed reading your essay about exodus but I will get to that in a min.

Would like to start with a small update, since the last time I have written an entry, I have finished my studies in very good marks, I still must go through a small internship to receive my diplomas and that will be it.

Holiday season was really busy in here; I have been away a lot (thus the late response to your entry). Jewish new years was really enjoyable and relaxing, Yom Kippur was a time to think and to reflect about things, and now we are in the middle of Feast of Tabernacles holiday.

Now to the subject of your entry. It was really interesting to read the comparison you made between the history and Bob Marley’s song.
I remember studying about the Exodus ship at school and now I think of it and wonder how could the world be so blind, and when there is someone needing help everyone shut down maybe due to rules & birocracy .
On the other hand, Bob Marley’s song after listening to it and reading the lyrics, I can see how meaningful those words can reflect on the people journey, they simply want to go back to their land.

Do you think Marley was inspired by those events to write the song?

The picture I posted above is taken a new Israeli movie I watched yesterday, it is called “The Band’s Visit”, about an Egyptian police orchestra band who arrived to Israel to honor the opening of a new Arab cultural center. The band got lost on the way and arrived to a small deserted city in south of Israel and made friends with a woman and her neighborhood friends. The story evolves over a night time, and it is a heartfelt, sweet and funny story.

I am happy to write that i will be visiting London very soon, in December to be exact. I'll be visiting the city for a 5 days and i am very excited. It will be my first time in England and i don't know what to expect. Do you have any recommendation site seeing in London? i would love to read any suggestions.

Have you ever heard of a website called moblog? I have recently developed a hobby for taking random photos with my mobile phone and i started posting them there, there are not so much as i joined it only today but i'll keep it updated as often as possible.

That’s it from me for now, I do hope to hear from you soon

All The Best
Mici

Hi Michal - hope you've had a good summer. I've been reading a lot over the holidays about Israel and I've just written this which I'd like to share with you. I'd love to know what you think...
Happy New Year (5768 - I'm impressed!)
A



Exodus: Movement of Jah people

1977
Bob Marley recorded Exodus in punk London (he referred to London as his “second home”). He took refuge in the city after having been hit by a bullet the previous year in a politically motivated assassination attempt. The record was released on 3rd June 1977.

1947
The ship Exodus 1947 sailed from the small port of Site near Marseilles on 11th July 1947. On board were 4,515 immigrants from post-war Europe, including 655 children. It was heading to British Mandate Palestine.

As soon as it left French territorial waters British destroyers shadowed it. In the wake of the Second World War, the British had severely restricted immigration to Palestine and eventually decided to stop illegal immigration by sending ships running the gauntlet of the British patrols back to their port of embarkation in Europe. The first ship to which this policy was applied was the Exodus 1947.

We know where we’re going
We know where we’re from
We’re leaving Babylon
We’re going to our Father’s land

On 18th July 1947, nearing the coast of Palestine but outside territorial waters, the British rammed the ship and illegally boarded it. Two immigrants and a member of the crew were killed defending the vessel, bludgeoned to death, and 30 were wounded. The ship was towed to Haifa and the immigrants were deported on prison ships back to France at the suggestion of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (better known for his role in establishing the NHS).

Men and people will fight you down

1977
The Exodus recording sessions, produced by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, took place in two west London studios: a converted Victorian laundry at the back of Island’s headquarters in St Peter’s Square, Chiswick, and the Basing Street studio, a former church in Notting Hill.

The nightly recording sessions were attended by a sizable rotating posse including the young members of Aswad and their manager, Mikey Dread (who I saw perform with The Clash at the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town); Delroy Washington; and Lucky Gordon (of Profumo Scandal notoriety). Journalist Vivien Goldman remembers the sessions as being recorded “in a mood of exuberant creativity”.

1947
At Port-de-Bouc in southern France the Exodus passengers refused to disembark and remained in the ships’ holds for 24 days during a heatwave - this despite a shortage of food, the overcrowding and dreadful sanitary conditions. The French government refused to co-operate with British attempts at forced disembarkation. Eventually, the British decided to return the would-be immigrants to Germany. These people were mostly survivors of the concentration camps and Nazi German persecution.

So we gonna walk - all right! - through the roads of creation
We the generation
Trod through great tribulation

They were shipped to Hamburg, then forcibly disembarked and transported to two camps near the German port of Lubeck on the Baltic Sea.

World public opinion was outraged by the callousness of the British behaviour and the British were forced to change their policy. Illegal immigrants were no longer sent back to Europe, but instead transported to detention camps in Cyprus.

Open your eyes and look within…
Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

The escorting British soldiers never returned to their units in Palestine. The ordeal had such an impact on them that a near mutiny erupted among them. The British army decided not to press charges and closed the matter quietly.

The events convinced the US government that the British mandate of Palestine was incapable of handling the issue of post-war Jewish refugees and that a United Nations-brokered solution needed to be found. The US government intensified pressure on the British government to return its mandate to the UN.

1977
Throughout the recording sessions, Bob continued writing songs - Exodus itself emerged quite late and, as Vivien Goldman recounts, “there was a fizzing excitement around that track from the moment it was first laid down.”

Many of the musicians were exiles. Beyond their Jamaican roots was the urge to return to Africa, a desire central to Rastafarian belief. Bob and the Twelve Tribes (a Rasta organisation to which he belonged) were actively exploring the possibilities of land made available by Haile Selassie in Shashamane, Ethiopia.

Goldman recalls: “When the night came to finish the Exodus track, the Basing Street studio was alive with excitement. From the start, the song had its own impetus … at four o’clock in the morning a moment hit when the whole room knew that this one was it.”

1947
Within a year, over half of the original Exodus 1947 passengers had made another attempt at emigrating to Palestine - most found themselves detained in camps in Cyprus. One witness describes the DP (Displaced Persons) Camps on Cyprus thus: “a hot hell of desert sand and wind blowing against tents and tin Nissen huts, a hell circumscribed by two walls of barbed wire whose architecture had come out of Dachau and Treblinka”.

Eventually, after the events around May 1948, the majority of the Exodus exiles made it back to Israel.

Exodus, all right! Movement of Jah people!

2007