The Wandering Who: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics Read Free Page A

after two years abroad). All the while, I had also been developing as a musician, becoming a major session player and a musical producer. I wasn’t really involved in any political activity, and though I scrutinised the Israeli leftist discourse I soon realised that it was largely a social club rather than an ideological force motivated by ethical awareness.
    At the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I saw that Israeli ‘peacemaking’ was nothing but spin. Its purpose wasn’t to reconcile with the Palestinians or confront Zionist original sin, but to further secure the existence of the Jewish State at the expense of the Palestinians. For most Israelis, shalom doesn’t mean ‘peace’, it means security, and for Jews only. For Palestinians to celebrate their ‘Right of Return’ wasn’t an option. I decided to leave my home and my career. I left everything and everyone behind, including my wife Tali, who joined me later. All I took with me was my tenor saxophone – my true, eternal friend.
    I moved to London and began postgraduate studies in philosophy at the University of Essex. Within a week, I managed to obtain a residency at the Black Lion, a legendary Irish pub on the Kilburn High Road. At the time I failed to appreciate how lucky I was – I didn’t know how difficult it was to get a gig in London. In fact, this was the beginning of my international career as a jazz musician. Within a year I had become very popular in the UK, playing bebop and post-bop. Within three years I was playing with my band all over Europe.
    Yet it didn’t take long before I began to feel homesick. To my great surprise, it wasn’t Israel I missed; not Tel Aviv, not Haifa,not Jerusalem. It was Palestine . It wasn’t the rude and loud Israeli taxi drivers at Ben-Gurion Airport, or grimy shopping centres in Ramat Gan, but the little place in Yefet Street, Jaffa that served the best hummus money can buy, and the Palestinian villages stretched across the hills amidst olive trees and sabra cacti. Whenever I fancied a visit home, in London, I would end up on the Edgware Road, spending the evening at a Lebanese restaurant. Once I started to fully express my thoughts about Israel in public, it soon became clear to me that Edgware Road was probably as close as I could ever get to my homeland.
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    When I lived in Israel, admittedly, I hadn’t been at all taken with Arab music. I guess that colonial settlers are rarely interested in the indigenous culture. I loved folk music and had already established myself in Europe and the USA as a klezmer player, and over the years I had begun playing Turkish and Greek music as well. Yet I had completely skipped over Arab music, and Palestinian music in particular. In London, hanging out in those Lebanese restaurants, it began to occur to me that I had never really explored the music of my neighbours. More worrisomely, I had ignored and even dismissed it. Though it had been all around me, I had never really listened to it. It had been there at every corner of my life: the call to prayer from the mosques, the voices of Umm Kulthum, Farid El-Atrash and Abdel Halim Hafez. It could be heard in the streets, on TV, in the small cafés in Jerusalem’s Old City, in the restaurants. It had been all around me – but I had disrespectfully never given it any notice.
    In my mid-thirties, away from the Middle East, I became drawn to the indigenous music of my homeland. It wasn’t easy; it was, in fact, on the verge of being completely unfeasible. As much as jazz was easy for me to absorb, Arab music was almost impossible. I would put the music on, grab my saxophone orclarinet, try to integrate my sound with it and come out sounding utterly foreign. I soon realised that Arab music was a different language altogether. I didn’t know where to start, or how to approach it.
    To a certain extent, Jazz music is a western product with an extensive Afro-Cuban influence. It evolved at the