Machu Picchu: Wondrous Wonder of the World

On Nov. 5 on a bright spring day – this is south of the equator – I was chanting at Machu Picchu. I travelled to the Andes after a week-long press tour of the Peruvian north coast. Machu Picchu is truly stunning and majestic. The place is crawling with tourists and hard to find solitude. But I discovered a small cave on the mountainside and sat just outside in the shade. Before me were glorious green-clad mountain tops amid the clouds. I meditated for a while and then began chanting "Esa eynai el he-harim" (I lift my eyes up to the mountains), composed from Psalm 121 by my teacher, Rabbi Shefa Gold.

On a short hike from the ruins to the Inca drawbridge through jungle foliage and butterflies, I wanted to chant something that reflects the area but I know no Quechua, the native language. So I used a phrase of Spanish, the language of the Incans' conquerors, "Vaya con Dios" (Go With God), with a melody that owes a lot to "The More We Get Together". It was my intention to plant seeds for Shefa's pilgrimage there in March.

Northern Peru: Whacked out on huacas

After six days on a press tour of the north coast of Peru, my mind is reeling with the richness and complexity of the country's ancient cultures. Everyone's heard of the Incas and their most famous wonder of the world -- Machu Picchu. It's reached by turning south from Lima. But head north and there are many other civilizations that predate the Spanish conquerors with lost cities and buried treasure that will excite even the most jaded traveller. All from huacas, which look like large dirt hills but are so much more. Thanks to an explosion of archeological discoveries in the last 20 years, fantastic pyramids, temples and amazingly intricate artifacts -- many in gleaming gold and precious jewels -- are emerging from dozens of huacas.

Coming up for air after Yom Kippur

It's the day after Yom Kippur, a purposefully undemanding day after the intensity of the past few weeks. Intense because of preparations for the High Holy Days. I led some of the services at Ahavat Olam -- and new this year I was a baal tekiah, a shofar blower. What a thrill. It feels very elemental and grounded in the earth, almost shamanic.

For the third year at Or Shalom, I led "Chanting at the Gates," a chant workshop that comes at the break in the afternoon before the Minha service. The spiritual goal was to call out to God to keep open the Gates of Righteousness, which our tradition tells us close for another year at the end of Yom Kippur. The intention of the workshop was that the gates are always open for an open heart. And the opportunities for "returning" to our essential selves after missing the mark are always there.

The year ahead brings a focus on Jewish learning. I've begun a year-long course in Biblical Hebrew, and am contemplating enrolling in the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School to fill in some of the many holes in my basic Jewish knowledge. Anyone else have experience with that program?

I've begun assembling a team to organize the third-annual Vancouver InterSpiritual Chant Festival. We're looking at possible dates in February or March at the Centre for Peace.

Let Bob Dylan send your message

Press tour to China and Japan: Fuji from the air

As we flew from Shanghai to Tokyo on the way home, we passed Mt. Fuji. It looked very blue, as shown in the bottom photo. But when I ran the top photo through Photoshop, it took on an other-worldly quality.

Press tour to China and Japan: From Mao to Yao

Portraits of Chairman Mao have been common in China for decades. Now there's a newly ubiquitous presence: Yao Ming. The Houston Rockets NBA star's image is everywhere endorsing the Olympics and China Unicom, the state-owned telecommunications utility. It was big news when he got married this summer in Shanghai.

Press tour to China and Japan: Lijiang images

Press tour to China and Japan: Beijing images

Press tour to China and Japan: The travel story

August 26, 2007

Travel

China racing to rid its capital of gridlock and grime before Games

If you go for the Olympics, stay for the sights

By Lorne Mallin, Special to The Province

BEIJING – With the 2008 Summer Games less than a year away, China is running a marathon race to get ready for a tourist onslaught of Olympic proportions. A million visitors will descend from inside the world's most populous country with 500,000 more expected to land here from Canada and around the globe.

Will the capital city of 17 million be prepared? The Chinese sound certain as authorities spend billions of dollars to beautify and clean it up.

"I am confident that our government has the power to make sure it all happens," said the man in the next seat, a 30-year-old Shanghai banker, on a flight inside China last week.

The real answer seems to be up in the air -- literally. Beijing's air quality is atrocious. A World Health Organization expert has warned that Olympic spectators with asthma or heart problems could be harmed.

Three million cars and trucks clog Beijing's roads and an extra thousand more vehicles wedge into traffic every day. Just this past week, Beijing launched a four-day experiment aiming to take as many as 1.3 million vehicles off the streets each day and increase public transportation. While the penalty for ignoring the restrictions was only $14, traffic did flow somewhat more smoothly. And state media reported the test improved air quality, saying conditions were "fairly good" despite the grey haze.

Without some controls, Beijing's gridlock is extremely frustrating. I visited China and Japan this month on a press junket of Canadian reporters courtesy of those countries' national tourism offices to promote Asia travel during the Olympics. Some of the writers took a tour to the Great Wall. Generally 90 minutes away, the drive took about twice as long.

The part of the wall the reporters visited was far from where foreign activists, including two from Vancouver, earlier this month unfurled a banner calling for "Free Tibet 2008." I mention this to raise the ethical dilemma of having my cake and eating it, too: accepting a free trip to China while advising you might want to think twice about going to the Olympics in light of China's human-rights record.

China didn't make it easy to be enthusiastic. For a press trip designed to highlight tourism during the Games, we were given a briefing that revealed little about the preparations. We could see lovely scale models of the venues but none of the real ones from the inside. Only after persistent requests were we given any chance to photograph the two most striking structures -- Beijing National Stadium, known as the bird's nest, and the Water Cube aquatics centre -- from several hundred metres away.

On the other hand, Beijing itself is endlessly fascinating. We saw some of the standard sights, including massive Tiananmen Square, where students were massacred just months before I stood there in 1989 and where hawkers now sell $5 watches with Chairman Mao waving on the face. The adjacent Forbidden City is an extraordinary historical complex to explore. It now features some of the public toilets that officials have upgraded and awarded four-star status to respond to tourist complaints of foul facilities.

I also discovered that China has made great advances in its dentistry. I needed an emergency root canal in Beijing and got immediate and excellent service from Arrail Dental, with follow-up care in Shanghai.

In Beijing, we rode in pedicabs through one of the hutong, or alleyway, districts that are quickly disappearing as the city modernizes. Some of the hutong courtyards offer surprisingly cheap bed-and-breakfast alternatives ($17 a night at one place) to the expensive hotels popping up all over the city.

The most surprising sight in Beijing was the 798 Art Zone. An echo of Vancouver's Granville Island, it's a 23-hectare industrial area with more than 120 galleries. About 80 artists work in studios there, creating an oasis of freedom that you can feel in the air.

The air is radically different in Lijiang in southern Yunnan province, at the foot of the Himalayas 500 kilometres from the Tibet border. After sweating in Beijing, we relished the coolness. And the diversity. Twenty-five of China's 56 ethnic minorities have a presence in the area of about a million people.

That makes Lijiang culturally rich and a magnet for tourists. The focus is the 800-year-old ancient city, a 1.8-sq.-km. area of souvenir shops, cobbled streets and small inns that was largely destroyed in a 1996 earthquake and then rebuilt in the old style, with new ATMs for your shopping convenience. You can sample yak meat (a lot like beef). Or pose for pictures on one of the small but sure-footed horses that are used on the local snow-capped mountains.

The feel of the mountains is recreated in a spectacular outdoor show on the outskirts of Lijiang featuring 500 performers singing and dancing in ethnic dress. Impression Lijiang was created by a team including Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed Chinese filmmaker (Raise the Red Lantern) who is also co-directing the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Games.

If the Olympics bring you to Asia, consider stopping in Japan on the way. With my daughter Lisa, who works in Chiba City outside of Tokyo, I took in a Japanese professional baseball game that featured what was described as "kegs on legs" -- young women with 10-to-13-kg mini-kegs strapped to their backs who run up and down the stands dispensing $4 cups of beer. With the press-tour group, I experienced a morning in a sumo stable where we watched the large but supple wrestlers go through their stretches and practice bouts. Afterwards, we were served chanko nabe, the rich stew that sumo wrestlers consume in great quantities to purposefully put on weight.

A couple hours north on the Shinkansen bullet train brought us to the picturesque Sendai area and the jewel of the trip for me. The nearby Akiu hot springs is home to Hotel Sakan, an exquisite spa that has been in the same family for 34 generations over 1,000 years. I could easily have stayed a week, soaking in the baths and absorbing the serenity. But then I would have missed China.

IF YOU GO

• The Games are Aug. 8-24, 2008. The China National Tourism Office website, www.cnto.org, is an excellent resource, with links to the Olympics. Their Toronto office is toll-free 1-866-599-6636 or e-mail toronto@cnta.gov.cn. Canadians need a visa.

• Explore Lijiang through its tourism bureau website: english.ljta.gov.cn/.

• China's domestic airlines offer the most convenient way of seeing the country. They have greatly improved their safety record but be prepared for inconveniences. One of our flights was delayed almost six hours and another was cancelled.

• The Japan National Tourism Organization's Canadian website is www.jnto.go.jp/canada/. Their Toronto office is 416-366-7140 and e-mail info@jntoyyz.com. Canadians do not need a visa.

• Get a taste of Hotel Sakan at www.sakan-net.co.jp/english_001/index.html.

• For more words and pictures on China and Japan, go to my blog at www.lornemallin.blogspot.com.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

Sendai: Just a Shinkansen ride away

Canadian journalists Wes Lafortune and Carolyne Parent shoot the Shinkansen bullet train arriving in Tokyo Station to take our press tour north to Sendai.

Taiko group plays for the Natsu Matsuri (summer festival) at Akiu Onsen (hot springs) near Sendai.

Villagers and visitors join in on the Akiu Ondo folk dance.

My spacious and beautiful rooms at Hotel Sakan in Akiu Onsen.

The tokonoma (display area) in my rooms at Hotel Sakan.

Tsukiji: Gone fishin'

How about a little tuna sashimi at 6:30 a.m.?

Tokyo is the home of the largest fish market in the world.

There are many ways to slice into a frozen tuna. An axe and . . .

. . . and a band saw.

Shrimp, shrimp and more shrimp.

Wasabi in the raw. The bigger the more expensive.

Eggplant comes in all sizes in Japan.

Weird -- stuffed polar bear at a taxidermist's stall.

Sumo in the summer

Sumo wrestlers practise at the Arashio Stable in Tokyo.

Impressive leg lifts during morning practice.
These lifts are part of the ritual before each match at tournaments.

The flexibility of these big guys is astounding. This is called mata-wari (rip the groin).
If they can't do it, some 350 lb. guy will sit on their back
or push down on their head until they can.

Junior wrestlers prepare chankonabe for us. It's a protein-rich stew that helps sustain the wrestlers. Washed down with beer and followed by a nap, this diet helps them put on weight — a major goal.

Hanging out with the boys after practice.

For more information: Arashio Stable's website.

Gazing on the Ginza

I am amazed to find myself in Tokyo, courtesy of a press junket sponsored by the Chinese and Japanese national tourism offices. It just fell into my lap, thanks to Joe Kula, travel editor of The Province newspaper in Vancouver. I took early retirement from the paper at the end of the year to see what might open up for me as I turned 60. And here I am, wrapped in a yukata (light cotton summer kimono) and gazing out of my 25th-floor Imperial Hotel room on the Ginza shopping and entertainment district.

I arrived last Friday in time to celebrate Shabbat with my daughter Lisa, who is living and working in Chiba outside of Tokyo. She supplied the candles, and I brought a little bottle of red wine from the plane along with two mini challah from Sabra in Vancouver. I had feared it might be a year or more before I saw Lisa again after we said goodbye in Kiev in May at the end of our adventure on the Klezmer Heritage Cruise. (See my stories from that trip below and our pictures here.)

In the time we've had together this past week, we've marvelled at Chiba's annual fireworks display, enjoyed a symphony of eggplant dishes with Lisa's colleagues and families at a potluck, cheered at a Chiba Lotte Marines baseball game with its unique "kegs on legs" beer sellers, dined with Lisa's mother and old friends, sampled many treats from sashimi to okonomiyaki, and escaped the heat and humidity at an air-conditioned screening of Transformers, where we seemed to be the only ones getting many of the jokes.

Restoring a Jewish Presence in Ukraine

Published July 13, 2007

Streams of Judaism are competing for survival in Ukraine

This is the last in a three-part series on Jewish Ukraine.

By Lorne Mallin

Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny beamed from the bimah of the revived synagogue in the seaside Crimean town of Evpatoria as he looked out at pews full of local Jews and a boatload of foreigners from our Klezmer Heritage Cruise.

"Now we know that Jewish life is rebuilt here, and your trip here is another reassurance that synagogue buildings will never be closed again," said Dukhovny, who is Ukraine's chief rabbi of Progressive Judaism, a fledgling egalitarian movement in a country where Chabad-Lubavitch is by far the major player. Reform Jews in North America are part of the global Progressive Jewish movement.

The 97-year-old brick building is a symbol of the revival of Jewish life in Ukraine after the end of Soviet rule in 1991. Like hundreds of other synagogues, Ehiya Kapai Synagogue was closed decades ago by the Communist party. It functioned as a sunflower seed oil plant and was returned to the Jewish community in 1999. Local and foreign sponsors paid for the rebuilding and it was rededicated in 2005.

About 160 of us from the cruise ship Dnieper Princess, which was docked in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, came there for the dedication of an aron kodesh (the holy ark where the Torah is kept) that was financed by the Beth El Reform congregation in Virginia.

Arriving in four big buses, we caused quite a stir. Every police officer in Evpatoria was assigned to security for the biggest tour group ever to hit town. Even an ambulance was on standby outside the synagogue gates.

In an emotional ceremony, the head of the congregation, Raisa Shepavalova, carried a Torah scroll under a chuppah through the sanctuary as people reached out to touch it as she passed. After speeches, the community's lay leader, Evgeny Tzvi Perevozchykov, placed the Torah in the wooden ark.

"To see this tiny Jewish community ... continuing to fight to keep their identity, despite everything they must have gone through, was really an eye-opener," New York clarinetist David Krakauer later told me.

To celebrate, Krakauer and the rest of the professional musicians on the cruise played a concert, boogieing on the bimah in the synagogue and then leading everyone out into the courtyard, where we all danced.

Krakauer said it was the most moving concert of the cruise for him, and Dukhovny told the crowd it was a homecoming. "The music which your ancestors took from Ukraine to Canada or to the United States, this klezmer music, you are bringing back," the rabbi said.

Music plays a central role in Dukhovny's own congregation, Hatikvah, in Kiev. One Friday night service I attended was largely led by a lay cantor, Mike Urisman, 27, who played guitar and guided the 25 or so people there in prayers with tunes composed by such Jewish songwriters as Debbie Friedman and some of his own. It was a thrill for me to lead a chant during the service.

The Ukrainian capital is Dukhovny's home turf. He was born there 57 years ago. His mother was the daughter of a Chassidic rabbi and she taught Dukhovny and his brother to keep Shabbat. At 44, Dukhovny switched from a career in the sciences to attend Leo Baeck College in London, the Progressive rabbinical school.

His offices and synagogue are in a rented space a few steps below ground level. Dukhovny said that, with the formerly Jewish buildings in Kiev all claimed by Chabad and other Chassidic groups, it's difficult to attract wealthy patrons to his synagogue and help it prosper. "Rich Jews don't want to pray in a semi-basement," he said.

"Saying to business people in Kiev that the Reform movement in North America is the strongest and widespread and that Chabad-Lubavitch is a small sect - they do not believe me, seeing the gold, silver and marble of the Chabad synagogues.

"The constant challenge for the movement is that many of our programs are under-budgeted," Dukhovny said. The movement can financially support only 16 of its 47 communities.

Still, Dukhovny emphasizes the positive. "The main success of the Progressive movement in Ukraine is that the movement was able to build a strong presence," he said. "[It] presents another way how to be Jewish, opposite to the ultra-Orthodox view that there is the only one way how to be Jewish."

He explained that the constitutions of the congregations, which are part of the Religious Union for Progressive Jewish Congregations of Ukraine, open their membership to people who identify as Jews and can document they have Jewish heritage somewhere in the last three generations.

With an intermarriage rate of about 80 per cent, Ukrainian Jews are highly assimilated. Estimates of the Jewish population range from a low of 94,000 to as many as 500,000. Thousands emigrate every year to Israel and the West.

Dukhovny, one of only two Progressive rabbis in the country, said his movement, which serves about 15,000 people, has trained lay leaders and para-rabbis, built Netzer youth groups, opened eight pre-schools and six Sunday schools and owns six synagogue buildings.

Among the 240 registered Jewish organizations in Ukraine, there is a minor Conservative and Modern Orthodox presence, but Chabad is the largest, with more than 100 communities. Chabad moved quickly to revive Judaism in Ukraine and has opened thriving day schools.

There are Jewish community centres, welfare services, Holocaust memorials, museums and summer camps in Ukraine, plus a Jewish university in Kiev. When our cruise group visited the five-year-old Jewish museum in Odessa, it made an impression on Ronnie Tessler, who was the first executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and was instrumental in developing the new Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia.

"Visiting the museum was a very poignant experience," she said. "The sorry condition of the building the museum is housed in is disturbing. It is obvious from the size of the museum and the home-made appearance of the exhibits that their work is being accomplished on a very tight budget by a small staff."

Ukraine has a rich Jewish history, going back to the sixth century CE, when the Khazars ruled the region, with some evidence that predates the Christian era. The Polish-Lithuanian Empire governed from the 14th century until the expansion of the Russian Empire in the 17th century. To contain the Jews, Russia imposed a Pale of Settlement that included much of present-day Ukraine.

The rebirth of Jewish life has not been without tensions. There are rival Jewish umbrella organizations, even rival chief rabbis from Chabad, competition for Jewish facilities returned by the government, pressure from Messianic Jewish groups and rising levels of anti-Semitism, with increasing reports of violent attacks on Jews and damage to Jewish property.

Lorne Mallin is a Vancouver writer, editor, designer and Jewish chant leader. His website is lornemallin.com.

HOW TO HELP
• Odessa is one of Vancouver's sister cities and home to a struggling Progressive Jewish congregation, Emanu-El. Last year it received a Torah scroll from Chilean Jews, replacing a stolen scroll that had been donated by Temple Emanu-El of San Jose, Calif., with which it is twinned. There are almost 150 members and they need more help to secure a building and run programs. Contact spiritual leader Julia Grischenko at judith@mail.od.ua.

• Contact Rabbi Alexander Dukhovny at ravdukh@ukr.net.

• Learn about the Odessa Jewish Museum at english.migdal.ru.