{"id":82050,"date":"2020-01-17T19:42:14","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T02:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=82050"},"modified":"2020-01-17T23:38:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T06:38:20","slug":"a-couple-of-songs-from-my-first-residence-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/01\/a-couple-of-songs-from-my-first-residence-in-the-middle-east.html","title":{"rendered":"A couple of songs from my first residence in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Shankbone's<\/a>
A view of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem, roughly a mile or a mile and a half from the Old City. In the background are the highrise buildings of modern Jerusalem. The area has built up a bit since I lived there in 1978.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph by David Shankbone)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since my teens, I\u2019ve enjoyed and been interested in folk music. \u00a0And one of the towering figures in the preservation of American folk tunes, a person whose name I ran into over and over again, was the ethnomusicologist\u00a0Alan Lomax<\/a>. \u00a0You can, if you will, regard this blog entry as a tribute to him and his work.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

My first stay in the Middle East was six months with a BYU study abroad group in Israel. \u00a0For roughly the first half of that 1978 program \u2014 just eleven years after Israel had seized control of East Jerusalem (and the West Bank and the Sinai and the Golan Heights) during the Six-Day War of 1967 \u2014 we were housed (and had our classes) in the Vienna Hotel, a Palestinian establishment in an Arab neighborhood called Shaykh Jarrah. \u00a0(The building has long since been demolished.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Vienna Hotel wasn\u2019t exactly the Ritz Carlton. \u00a0Here\u2019s a song that my roommate and I (mostly my roommate, if I recall correctly) made up in honor of that august place of lodging:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

V is for the vermin in the bathtub.<\/span><\/p>\n

I is for the instant milk we drink.<\/span><\/p>\n

E is for the broken elevator.<\/span><\/p>\n

N is for that nasty sewer stink.<\/span><\/p>\n

N is for the nutrients we\u2019re lacking.<\/span><\/p>\n

A\u2019s for Abu Fu\u2019ad slinging slop.<\/span><\/p>\n

Put them all together, it\u2019s \u201cVienna.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For refugee camps, it\u2019s the top!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Kibbutz<\/a>
The kibbutzim Deganya Alef and Deganya Bet \u2014 Deganya A and Deganya B \u2014 at the southern end of Lake Tiberias (i.e., the \u201cSea of Galilee\u201d). \u00a0Deganya Alef is at the upper left, directly on the shore of the lake. \u00a0The earliest socialist Zionist farming commune in Israel (it was founded in 1910), it is sometimes called \u201cthe mother of all kibbutzim.\u201d
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Somewhere near the midway point of our program, we spent a couple of weeks up north in the Galilee, first at the collective farm Kibbutz Deganya Alef\u00a0or Deganya A (\u05d3\u05b0\u05bc\u05d2\u05b7\u05e0\u05b0\u05d9\u05b8\u05d4 \u05d0\u2019<\/span>). \u00a0The permanent settlement was established in 1910, making it the earliest\u00a0socialist Zionist\u00a0farming commune in Israel. \u00a0It\u2019s sometimes called \u201cthe mother of all kibbutzim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

We were essentially agricultural workers, spending much of our time pruning banana trees. \u00a0(In order to escape the banana-tree pruning detail, I volunteered to spend most of one night loading geese onto trucks. \u00a0They bite. \u00a0I went back to pruning banana trees. \u00a0They don\u2019t bite.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s a story for another time. \u00a0Anyway, here\u2019s a little piece that my roomate and I made up, to be sung to the tune of \u201cGo Down, Moses.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 I would sing it, with choral response, while we were working in the fields. \u00a0Galbraith<\/em>, of course, refers to the director of the BYU Jerusalem Program at the time, David Galbraith (later a friend and BYU faculty colleague). \u00a0Izzy<\/em> (presumably short for Israel<\/em>) was one of the leaders of Kibbutz Deganya Alef, and the person most responsible for our group\u2019s being there:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

When BYU was in Israel land<\/span><\/p>\n

(Let my people go!)<\/span><\/p>\n

They worked so hard they could not stand.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Let my people go!)<\/span><\/p>\n

Go down, Galbraith! \u00a0Go down Deganya way!<\/span><\/p>\n

Tell old Izzy, \u201cLet my people go!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Since my teens, I\u2019ve enjoyed and been interested in folk music. \u00a0And one of the towering figures in the preservation of American folk tunes, a person whose name I ran into over and over again, was the ethnomusicologist\u00a0Alan Lomax. \u00a0You can, if you will, regard this blog entry as a tribute to him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7800,1152,1149,7797,3325,1561,446,7794,7803],"class_list":["post-82050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alef","tag-brigham-young-university","tag-byu","tag-deganya","tag-galilee","tag-israel","tag-jerusalem","tag-kibbutz","tag-songs"],"yoast_head":"\nA couple of songs from my first residence in the Middle East<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Since my teens, I've enjoyed and 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