04/06/2024
TL;DR-- but please do!
A friend called me during my lunch break when I worked at the National Library’s newest cafe as a lettuce washer and cucumber chopper. I was waiting for the Messiah through the flames and destruction in early November, a light at the end of the dark tunnel which I still have not found, after volunteering for weeks with 120 displaces people from Kiryat Shmona out of the 20,000 In Jerusalem, and this was my way of making a few shekels and keeping my sanity-- low impact work, comfortable clothes, and being surrounded by people making it work.
I was standing under the Jerusalem sun at the turn of the chilly winds of winter when a friend called and asked to schedule a time with me to go over how to pass his upcoming written exam to become a certified tour guide.
“Yeah! Of course!”
“Oh! I just got a message from a friend--can he join?”
“Yeah! Sure! Of course!”
“Oh! One more, actually Maya…Maya?”
“I’ll give you a trial run. Tell your friends to be in touch with me tomorrow, and if it goes well with you, maybe I can start charging them.”
By mid-March, I had quit working in the basement of the National Library and spent my time at Aromas all over the city and at my desk in Jerusalem, tutoring 12 private students from the two English-speaking schools (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv) that offer a course to certify tour guides for Israel. The course itself is intense. And it’s challenging, to say the least. And people studying in English likely do not have the same tools that native Israelis have-- like names, references and even geography, so it makes tour guide school, while supposedly easier because of the English, so much harder because the Ministry of Tourism does not know how to fit themselves to the mold of Olim (New Immigrants), Arab/Palestinian-Israelies and other populations that can very easily fall through the cracks of Israeli society, and we see that throughout history. I took the course in Hebrew and I had to work 4 times harder than everyone else to fill those gaps that I still fill every. Single. Day. English-speaking (or, better to say, students in tour guide schools who choose to do the English courses because English is easier than Hebrew for them, and it can be their 4th or 5th language!) students who want to learn the culture and complexity and core of the Land of Israel need to work on their foundations amidst the regular curriculum that a tour guide learns in their 1-2-year long certification processes.
That’s where I come in. I had to build my foundation from just above zero. I received a great Jewish education with all the resources my parents gave me, so I knew how to draw the map of Israel, but did not know what was what; I could tell you that Herzl was the father of Zionism, but nothing about what the heck that means and the context from which it sprouted; I could tell you about Jesus and his disciples that they existed, but not that that happened in the Galilee and in the 1st Century AD; or that the Temple Mount was a controversial place, but not that it’s a pillar of Islam and Judaism, and there is an overlap of what is sacred to both peoples. And I can go on-- and that is without the nuance and diversity that studying to be a tour guide in a mosaic and maze of a place that forces you to understand its components as a human and memorize its elements for the exam as a student. And you can’t forget about how the rocks here were formed, and that, I am still working on understanding ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
By the end of March, I had 12 students where 80% of them passed their written exam because I gave them a foundation and much more -- the tools to pass the exam. Soon after, I accompanied them in passing their oral exam, and 100% of them passed that. Those are the tools I received at Yad Ben Zvi with Itai and Gil, my amazing teachers and mentors and now colleagues.
Come June, today, I have 17 students studying for their written exam that will take place on July 25th. The passing rate for the English-speaking courses is 30-50%. At Yad Ben Tzvi, where I studied, it’s at least 95%. I hold private sessions, weekly and bi-weekly. One-on-one sessions, with built lesson plans and tools and facts and a hand to hold so they can pass their exam to bring the tourism that this country needs in all their native languages that they speak, since it is the populations that are weakest and forgotten by the Ministry of Tourism, in some ways, hold the most power in this country. To bring tourists and money into this country. To make us feel normal, whatever that may mean, once again.
Yesterday, I taught my first group-session, with 10 students who failed their exam in March; they recognized a gap in their understanding that I was privileged to receive and address as an emerging Hebrew-speaker a few years ago. To go over the basics (which, of course, is not only not basic, but also very convoluted with political, social and geological boundaries that influence what each region is) and what they should have received as their first lesson in their course--the geography of the State of Israel.
Is this the light at the end of our collective tunnel of darkness? Absolutely not.
This is just my way to show the world,
amidst EVERYTHING going on in our personal and public dimensions--
in the Upper Galilee, in and out of Gaza, in the US and in Europe and in Jerusalem--
that as an Israeli, I know how to make things work amidst the wandering. As Israelis we make things work amidst the world’s wonder of our future and bear witness to the wilting of all what we believe is just in the world. I, while weary about my future as a tour guide, I am thankful to be a proud Israeli and make things work in the darkest times.
As a student in university, a soon-to-be Eshkol driver, a teacher for future tour guides, amidst war and whatever else going on in all of our worlds, although weary about my future in mine, I am thankful my wandering and work has gotten me, wildly, here.
