What Does the Word Lesbian Mean in 1923?

I attended a talk with this title at a seminar in the UCLA department of Jewish Studies.  The speaker was a historian from Tel Aviv University Ofer Nur. 

I did not expect much from the talk so I was really surprised as to how the talk progressed and especially the comments from the diverse audience. We started talking just about the word lesbian, but the discussion evolved into cultural differences and human attitudes toward unusual and misunderstood behaviors.

The actual topic was: “What Does the Word Lesbian Mean in Palestine in 1923?”

This was how the seminar was advertised:

“This seminar is based on an unpublished manuscript of a novel, written in 1923 by Sara Rappeport (1890-1980) member of kibbutz Beit Alpha, entitled: “The Wives of Sheikh Husseini.” This exceptional novel describes a love affair between a kibbutz member and an Arab Sheikh that ends in marriage, a baby boy named Ishmael, and membership in the Haifa branch of the Palestine communist party. The word Lesbian appears in the novel and Nur explores its meaning and context. The use of the word “Lesbian” in Hebrew in Israel begins in the late 1950's. Going back to an isolated use of the word in 1923 can teach us something new about same-sex relations in the imagination of those who lived in Mandatory Palestine and in Israel. Dr. Nur will reconstruct the context in which this exceptional novel was written and the relationship of the writer with her literary mentor at the University of Gottingen during WWI: the German thinker Lou Andreas Salomé (1861-1937). Rappeport’s novel realizes the particular variety of feminism that Salomé espoused.”

Sara Rappeport, the writer of this novel is described as progressive/radical Bohemian, German feminist asking the question: “How do women live in Patriarchy?”

While at the university Sara studied chemistry and her husband studied mathematics/philosophy.  They also belonged to a literary club named “Salome,” lead by Lou Andreas Salome.  The book “The Wives of Sheikh Husseini” was written as a poly-amoric fantasy. We saw the quote from this 1923 fantasy including the word Lesbian: Women used to pick wives for their sons and nephews by talking to the girls and even touching and fondling them with “almost lesbian thoroughness.”

The discussion was around the history of the word homosexuality, which was coined in 1860 in medical and literary publications.  Any previous references in the bible and other sources refer to specific unusual behaviors that were not referred to as homosexuality.

One of the questions asked referred to sheikhs and their harems: “How common was it among their “wives” to be lesbian?”  Dr. Nur stressed that this is a “loaded” question and it is certainly “politically incorrect” to ask.  However he himself did ask this question at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva.  A female Muslim professor answered yes, it is common after much hand wringing.

The following discussion was about East/West differences in the attitudes toward touching, hand holding, fondling among friends and relatives.  One guest commented that American Indians refer to trans-genders as “Two Spirits” and they are considered higher spirits and are given male/female names simultaneously.  Another comment: In French the word lesbian could be “Les Bien” meaning The Good!

This was a surprising seminar as one narrow topic in Jewish history turned into a survey of humanity, east west attitudes toward touching and public displays of affection, and global progress of understanding behaviors such as homosexuality or mental illness.  

About the speaker:

Ofer Nordheimer Nur teaches at the Multidisciplinary Program in the Humanities and the NCJW Gender and Women’s Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. Primarily a historian, he received his PhD in 2004 at the department of history at UCLA. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre d’Études Juives at the EHESS in Paris from 2003-2005 and at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 2005-2007. He’s the author of Eros and Tragedy: Jewish Male Fantasies and the Masculine Revolution of Zionism (Academic Studies Press, 2014).

The Ego-Self and the Higher-Self

We learned a mantra at my Naam yoga class that has to do with the ego.  It is one of my favorite mantras as it is meaningful, it has a great melody and personally it is powerful. The purpose of the mantra is to balance the chatter and voices in your head.  On one hand, our ego has a loud voicd that keeps on chattering and directing our thoughts.  On the other hand we all have a "higher self."  Many cynics laugh at this concept of a "higher self," simply because it is very quiet.  It is no more than a whisper.  This is why this mantra is so important.  For a minute or two we sing the mantra and try to quiet our thoughts and carefully listen to that whisper of our higher self.  It is not always rewarding, but once in a while we do get a new insight, a new idea or a thought that enlightens us: Aaahhh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25YCfRo2b3E

At the religious school where I teach the Rabbi was teaching the kids about the Ego-self, the Higher-self, the soul and experiencing the love of God. 

My colleague who attended this teaching wrote to me: “It was fascinating and I personally came out of it as a better person.”

I am asking myself: What is a better person?  What makes you a better person?

Personally I am happy to be aware that there is a higher-self somewhere in my identity.  I am happy to know that it is possible for me to listen to it’s quiet whisper. Little by little I may get a glimpse at the higher qualities within me that I can utilize in my life.

Attachments area

Preview YouTube video Guru Brahma Guru Vishnu - Guru Mantra With Lyrics - Sanjeevani Bhelande - Devotional

The caterpillar

This is the story of my small ecosystem on my 3rd floor patio.

The first plant that my friend got me as a gift was a one gallon yellow hibiscus.  The specific variety with a bright red dot in the center of the large yellow flower.  

This small hibiscus plant grew up really fast on my patio, facing the sunny south
side of the building.  Soon I had to move it to a larger and larger planter.  It is now taller than me!

I often see a visitor flying in to suck the yellow flower, an amazing humming
bird.  It is absolutely stunning to see this tiny little bird fluttering in the air!

I had other plants on the very same patio: a red geranium that I had to cut back, a rose Bush that did not last, a white jasmine. 

My new friend Gail moved to the area a few years ago.  She told me she moved
in with her daughter who has a large corner house.  They have a large
garden with many trees and a vegetable garden.  I am so envious of people
with gardens!  In front of the house they have a bunch of milkweed plants.  You know these long green leaves that monarch butterfly worms like to feed on.  Generous Gail gave me a small pot with a milkweed plant one day.  I happily brought it home and transferred it to a planter, added extra soil and watered it.

The milkweed grew and grew and looked beautiful, until one day I noticed the fresh
green leaves were almost gone.  On one of the eaten branches I saw a large
beautiful striped caterpillar!  

Perfect stripes of curling yellow black and white. It was fat and quite amazing.
I got so excited I immediately took its photo and sent to all my friends and my
sons.  I kept on going out to the patio and checking on it.  A few hours later I saw it crawling out of the planter and this was also such a new sight, a fat beautiful striped caterpillar crawling around with its antennae’s moving up in the air. What was it looking for?  Later on I saw it up on the patio wall.  In the end it disappeared.  I never saw the chrysalis or the butterfly.

Did the humming bird have a feast?

Moonlight Sonata

My stream of consciousness rambling.

You know how the people at Google say they know what you want before you know it yourself.  As I just read the biography of Elon Musk, Google keeps suggesting to me any articles about Tesla and SpaceX.  A few days ago Elon Musk posted on Instagram photos of earth from his satellite.  In the caption he just wrote "Moonlight sonata."  You can hear the soft piano music as you are watching photos of our planet from space.

A new friend I met told me he practices transcendental meditation two hours a day. After years of practicing Iyengar yoga I only got to do some visualization and guided meditation.  My curiosity led me to the trusted YouTube.  I typed TM in the search.  The first video that showed up was introduction to TM.  The music was the soft piano melody of moonlight sonata.  The instructions were to do absolutely nothing. No effort in trying to focus on anything just be quiet in the moment hear the soft music.

I never learned to play music and I cannot carry a tune.  I was wondering about all the students of piano who worked on playing Moonlight Sonata for hours and hours.  My friend who loves music claims that it is like oxygen for her.  For her there is no life without music.  It gives her a high like some people get from alcohol or drugs.

Personally I get a high just thinking about my knowledge of protein chemistry.  I am thinking of the building blocks of proteins as the alphabet of life.

The alphabet is what helps us write and communicate our knowledge to the future generations. 

In Hebrew there are 22 letters and they are classified by the part of the mouth that produces them: Guttural letters, letters made by the lips, teeth or tongue.

Similarly proteins, the language of life, are made of 22 amino acids.  The amino acids are classified by their chemical properties: Acidic, basic, neutral or hydrophobic.  (They attach to fat or lipids and not the water medium.)

Some of the longest words in English are made of 15 to 22 letters.  On the other hand proteins have a much more complex task and some are as long as 5,000 amino acids.

What about music?  As far as I know there are 8 musical notes.

 And the combinations of melodies and songs and symphonies are

 staggering!  Just listen to the Moonlight Sonata!

The Future of Food

The world population is about to grow from 7b to 9b.  We keep hearing and wondering about this question:  Can the earth sustain such a large population? 

There are many people who are certain that we need more wars to kill some people.   These people cannot comprehend that it is possible to feed everyone.  There are also those who demand less cruelty to animals.  The most convincing advocate that I enjoy reading and listening to is the Israeli historian who wrote two international best sellers: Yuval Harari.  I followed many of his lectures and that is when I first heard of 3D printing of hamburgers.  Searching for the latest data in 2017 I found a 2013 Guardian article Titled:

Google's Sergey Brin bankrolled world's first synthetic beef hamburger.

The article states: 

The man who has bankrolled the production of the world's first lab-grown hamburger has been revealed as Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The internet entrepreneur has backed the project to the tune of €250,000 (£215,000), allowing scientists to grow enough meat in the lab to create a burger – as a proof of concept – that will be cooked and eaten in London on Monday.

Brin's money was used by a team led by physiologist Dr. Mark Post at Maastricht University to grow 20,000 muscle fibres from cow stem cells over the course of three months. These fibres were extracted from individual culture wells and then painstakingly pressed together to form the hamburger.  The objective is to create meat that is biologically identical to beef but grown in a lab rather than in a field as part of a cow.

The world's first lab-grown beef burger was cooked in London in 2013. The in-vitro burger was cultured from cattle stem cells.

In experimental biology the jargon is: IN VIVO- experiments in the whole living animal.  IN VITRO- experiments in the test tube using tissue or cells from the animal.

The impact of meat consumption from raising cows is immense:  It produces 18% of greenhouse gases.  70% of antibiotics used in the US are used on cows.

"Cows are very inefficient, they require 100g of vegetable protein to produce only 15g of edible animal protein," Dr Post told the Guardian before. "So we need to feed the cows a lot so that we can feed ourselves. We lose a lot of food that way. With cultured meat we can make it more efficient because we have all the variables under control. We don't need to kill the cow and it doesn't produce any methane."

Then I found another article from 2015 by a New Zealand blogger repeating the same facts and talking about 3D printed food:

In 15 years' time, there's a chance some of the beef you consume will have been grown in a test tube. The cow never would have had a beating heart, nor a brain, nor would it have seen a paddock or a feedlot. It would just be a bunch of cells and tissue.

Not in 100 years, not 50 years, but 15 years. Perhaps even less. Known as "cultured meat" it's just one of the ways scientists are trying to solve a very global problem. Namely: how do you feed a population that doesn't stop expanding when there's a finite amount of farmable land in the world?

Meat, particularly grain-fed beef, is also a massive contributor to global warming. Thanks to factors like methane emission, deforestation to create more grazing land and the amount of energy it takes to harvest corn and other grains for feed, the livestock industry produces more greenhouse emissions than every mode of transport on earth combined. 

The bottom line is if we keep eating meat in the manner we do and don't invest in more sustainable farming solutions, the world as we know it is likely to end. This isn't hyperbole. And scientists the world over are working on some far-out solutions that are close to becoming real.

Cultured meat

If we all started eating more vegetables grown with solar power instead of fossil-fuel draining livestock, things would start to turn around for the environment in a big way. Unfortunately, experts say world meat consumption shows no sign of slowing and demand for it is expected to increase 73 per cent by 2050, even though 70 per cent of farmland is already used for livestock.

Test tube meat could be a solution to the globe's insatiable appetite for protein. In 2013, Professor Mark Post, of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, presented a burger made of cultured beef to an audience in London. Made using stem cells harvested from a cow's shoulder, the burger took three months to grow and, by all reports, tasted much like a normal burger, if a little less juicy.

According to the Maastricht University's website, cells taken from just one cow could produce 175 million burgers.

"I expect cultured meat to be available in 10-15 years," says Canberra-based science writer and author Julian Cribb. "It is likely to catch on as it will be cheaper, use far fewer resources such as water, land, nutrients and pesticides, and can in theory be tailored to the precise dietary requirements of the individual. Synthetic clothing is already universal and food is likely to follow."  

Cribb says cultured meat will end the reign of industrial meat by replacing it. "It will ensure the production of real meat from animals goes upmarket and farmers receive a much better price for it, as happened with wool since synthetic fibres arrived, enabling them to care for their land better," he says.

As for consumers possibly not wanting to eat a cow that never went moo?

"If it's cheap, healthy and tasty, people will eat it even if they don't know how it was grown," Cribb says. "Do you really know what's in your snack food today?"

Other subtitles in this article:

3D Printing

Soylent

Personally and genetically modified food

More current articles:

Ten Food Trends that will Shape 2017 - Forbes

There is a 2017 publication from FAO:

The future of food and agriculture in the US: Trends and Challenges

Naam Yoga Meditation in Sanskrit

I stumble upon this class at my local Senior Center: Naam Yoga.  Two mornings a week.  My knee is still recovering from my broken patella back in November.  I figured as easy as it may seem, I should attend this class. 

I am surprised by the new knowledge I gain in each class in an area that I knew nothing about.  I am meeting new people from all nationalities and walks of life.  Older people with canes and walkers mostly sitting in a chair.  Our teacher Allyn Cioban is bringing us all together and making sure we never forget to smile and laugh.  The class combines the various exercises with breathing.  The words of the mantras in Sanskrit are displayed on the screen and we chant them to the sound of rhythmic music.  Very often there are hand movements called mudras and they use the tips of the fingers and parts of the hands in meaningful forms. 

I will try and describe some of the exercises.

We begin with rubbing our hands together to create heat.  Then we hold our hands in prayer pose and chant the first mantra to help us create our intent for the class.

Then we chant the triple mantra that helps with protection.  We use various hand mudras for this mantra.  The mantra has 3 verses and I am happy to say that although I don’t understand it I managed to memorize it.  In the last two verses each line ends with the word SUCH.  As you say such, you have to hold your tummy in.  We chant this mantra for 3-5 minutes.  Believe me, after saying such and squeezing in your lower belly for 3 minutes you get a work out!  And you have to keep smiling!

At the end we are instructed to take a deep breath, raise our hands up and shake them, and laugh out loud!

One of my favorite mantras is the one that helps you listen to your inner voice.  The inner voice is a mere whisper compared with your ego that keeps on chattering.  The melody is beautiful and the lyrics begin with Gurur Brahma.  We hold our hands with Venus lock mudra:

The name Venus Lock is derived from the connection between the negative and positive sides of the Venus mounds. These are located on each hand and are the fleshy areas at the base of the thumb (which represents ego).

Venus represents sensuality and sexuality. This Mudra channels the sexual energy while balancing the glandular system. If you place both hands in this Mudra on your lap, you will be able to concentrate better.

This Mudra is done by interlacing the fingers. For women the right pinky stays on the bottom, while for men, it’s the left. One of the thumbs touches the fleshy part between the other thumb and the index finger.

We do an exercise to get rid of any negativity.  For this many people in the back of the room stand up.  We use the Middle Pillar mudra: Hold the hands six inches apart, palms facing each other, at the heart center. This creates a healing space within the aura and breaks through challenges.  The exercise is to keep chopping away with your hands.  We all laugh when we do this.  We look at each other and try to keep up with the pace.

Some other interesting mudras: 

The Gyan Mudra is considered one of the most important mudras. It has been practiced in meditation for thousands of years, and continues to bring peace, calm and spiritual progress.

Known as the “mudra of knowledge”, it evokes the most expansive version of the self, so you can flow through your life lessons with ease and calm. It stimulates wisdom and knowledge.

The Gyan Mudra is good to do when speaking to someone so you come from your highest self.

Hand Position: Gyan Mudra - Thumb pad to index finger pad - Traditionally speaking, Gyan mudra expands our consciousness and promotes self-wisdom. It also helps to break through life challenges. This mudra also stimulates the lung meridian.  

An interesting exercise to hear your voice from within: Close ears with your thumbs and eyes with your fingers.  Chant mmmm and feel how it sounds. 

Try to chant Ohm Ohm Ohm Ohm squeezing your belly on each Ohm.

The class always ends with a prayer for love, peace and light all around us and our surroundings. 

NAMASTE!

Costa Rica Trip: History

My trip to Costa Rica was most amazing.  I did not know much about Central or South America.  I learned so much from this organized tour to tropical Cost Rica mainly from the tour manager Jonas Gonzalez, a native proud and knowledgeable of his country.

Costa Rica is a nation with 5 million people.  Nicaragua is to the north and Panama to the south.  Costa Rica has no army and is a strong ally of the United States.  They support the United States in the area of democracy and human rights.  Both countries also share concerns for the environment.  Jonas talked about these two areas throughout the 9 day tour.  Costa Rica enjoys free education and healthcare for all citizens.  Minimum wages are higher that in the two neighboring countries.

We heard stories about the "Octopus" of Costa Rica Minor Cooper Keith whose railroad, commercial agriculture and shipping enterprises much influenced the economy of the country. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Cooper_Keith

We all heard of names such as Del Monte, Dole, Chiquita.  We saw the fields of bananas, pineapples and papaya and we had them for breakfast each morning.

We heard stories about Oscar Arias Sanchez.  He won the Nobel prize for peace in 1987 for his part in achieving the peace agreement in Central America in that year.  It took an 85 hour (!) meeting to sign the peace agreement.  I am going to look for his biography made for TV.

We also heard stories of the drug trade moving drugs from South to North and money from North to South​​.
The Pan American highway is a four lane highway being completed now. 
Here is our bus:  We spent many hours on this bus listening to our tour manager Jonas and asking him any question we could think of.

I now know so much more about this part of the world!
Thank you Jonas Gonzalez!