in which K. gets pulled into a vortex of Panamanian Jews for Jesus - and sundry other goings-on en la vida

well (insert hearty chuckle here), little did i know that "messianic jews" were jews for jesus. and to be perfectly honest, i don't see what's so bad about it - it just seems like a lot of silly people trying to get in on the jewish fun without technically being one of the 'chosen' people. it definitely stretches the hermeneutics of things, and that's healthy in a way, although radical subjectivity is always a bit disorienting...okay, let's back up to the backstory. so i've been doing these preliminary interview-type things, you know (don't want to incriminate myself any further with the IRB by calling them interviews), and one of them was with this guy who's afro-panamanian, jamaican in origin, and was telling me that he's recently become interested in judaism and has been attending shabbat ceremonies at the house of a jewish friend.

he wanted to know if i was interested in accompanying him to this thing. well, to be honest, i'm usually not, but 1) being an MOT myself, i like the songs/food/jewishy things that are done on this occasion; and 2) he seemed really fascinated by my jewishness, so i felt like doing shabbat would sort of ingratiate me with him and guarantee more interview-esque chats, with questions and answers, sitting in chairs, etc. anyhow, what could be wrong with that?

well, as we were driving to this fête, he casually mentioned that these were 'messianic jews,' and that they believed in jesus-the-messiah, who they called 'yeshuah' or something. so i was like, 'hm' and really wanted to jump out of the car, rolling on the ground like a rugged fireperson, and go to this other, much more pleasurable appointment that i had foolishly turned down in favor of the jews for jesus. so but i arrived at this apartment - one of these new high-rise condos coming up like hideous, dark-windowed fungi along the panamanian pacific coastline - and was greeted by this smiling, jewed-out couple, the roly-poly man wearing a yarmulke and the lady with some sort of fiddler-esque babushka. the woman was especially scary: with every sentence, she trailed off into a softly emphatic purr, a sort of verbal coo that gave me that fuzzy-brained feeling (not good when in a room full of jews for jesus). wet-eyed and intense, she sang in a warbling voice and strummed the guitar solemnly, making all the most rollicking shabbat songs into doleful ballads. there was no brisket or kugel, per se, but rather a spare table set with empty plates and cups; the point was not to socialize but to defend this motley religious sect formed like twenty years ago. weird!

yeah, they had all the structural stuff right: they pronounced the words with rigorous accuracy, and there was challah from the nearby SuperKosher (apparently the largest kosher food store outside of Israel) and even that viscous Manischewitz vino tinto. they also talked at length about the Torah portion of that week, deuteronomy 44 - the scholarship got into that nitpicky realm of "moses's motivations" and "why did he do this and not that? climb this hill and not that? why didn't he wait to say X to the wandering jews? is that what god really intended?" - which made me bored and antsy. plus, there was all this weird stuff about jesus sprinkled in there - apparently, the major features of the jews for jesus bible/torah combo (like surf n turf) are a superficial aesthetic overhaul - even the introductory notes to david stern's authorized translation call the change "cosmetic" - and an extensive reordering of the texts (allegedly - i saw some cutting and pasting, but not too much), which really screws up that whole foreshadowing/triangulation thing that st. augustine liked so much. mary was miryam, etc. all the greek words were changed to hebrew, which seemed really problematic - this dismissal of the greek-language bible as a tool of the conquerers/oppressors of the jews and not a possible language of jews themselves.

still, this was not the scary cult that i had been warned about in hebrew school ("they look like jews, they sing like jews...but they're not jews!!!!" very bodysnatchers-esque stuff that was). it seems like 5 minutes of informed debate might go a long way toward clearing up some of this illogical mamada and making everyone feel less on edge about their places in things. but beyond a couple points, i did not care to get into it with these people. i was in their house, after all, and that woman kept staring me with an intent to kill through hypnosis or something. appropriately, she wore a military-style jacket riddled with faux bullet-holes - some of that guerrilla survival-fashion that might have reached its heyday in the nineties.

and anyhow, the whole thing seemed less threatening than silly - for one thing, a lot of the stylistics of the singing and dancing and praying were overtly taken from Fiddler on the Roof (i'm not kidding. this is what our prayer books said to do! sing like the actors in Fiddler!). also, it was noteworthy that these people believed so fervently in something so obviously fabricated, seams and all. it sort of typified all religious practice. they weren't exactly challenging me to defend 'my' version of judaism, but if they had, i would have sort of giggled and admitted that mine smacked of bullshit, indoctrination, and fanaticism as well. we were even on that count. also, they were incredibly serious about mining their cockamamie bible, held together with chicken-wire, and their empathy for how the jews had suffered under constantine was admirable. the woman said that every time she read the part where moses died before reaching the Promised Land, she cried. it reminded me of people and their sentimental romance-novels. i wanted to say, "hello! this is moses we're talking about, not some hunky lead!" but instead i just pushed forward the box of candy that i had brought like some kind of sacrificial plea for appeasement.

so the whole thing left me feeling both slimy and lighthearted. also, the smell of the couple's apartment was something that i haven't smelled since my four-year stint tutoring the blind taiwanese graduate student andy huang. i recall first walking into his tiny room, stuffed with refuse and apothecary implements, and almost falling over from the stench. it was this combination of decay, unwashed-ness, and something even more pungent that i can in no way name: the kind of scent that an exotic pet might produce. anyhow, so this place smelled like that. in fact, upon entering i immediately scouted around for said exotic pet. but the couple appeared to live alone in a new house filled with replicas of glass, painting, and china. the whole thing was eerie and depressing, suffused with rosemary's baby lighting. i actually experienced a wave of fear during the ceremony as i wondered if the wine were poisoned. just in case, i didn't drink it. weird.

i should also mention that the talk turned to tisha b'av - the ninth of av, which was this past saturday. apparently, this day is the worst-ever day for jews: lots of bombings, genocidal acts, and that sort of thing. the jews for jesus decided to try to chronicle all the bad things that had ever happened on this day, which freaked me out a bit. on the way out, i met them in the elevator and hoped that their saturday would not transpire as so many tisha b'avs did - with a horrendous calamity. they didn't really get the joke.

after this, i joined up with some friends, including (unexpectedly) my roommates, at the club that everyone goes to in this town. i must admit that it's an excellent scene, with the aforementioned queers/hippies/hipsters/radicals/punks/rastas/rastas/more rastas (this is a reggae-heavy area, as per my previous posts). so we were there, and among us was the cousin of a friend, who's a chilean artist person here. (i should mention that right parallel to the jews for jesus, i've been sucked into this chilean circle with strange affinities and cultural chauvinisms. another sort of ethnography, this). the cousin was hilarious - this faux-blonde supermodel from argentina who moved and behaved like a life-sized doll, sort of unable to control her limbs or lips. she had this unbelievably endearing, ready grin, a bright-eyed "ready for adventure" look about her that was infused with incredible innocence. her earrings bobbed and she smiled unknowingly. she was super-argentinian in that she did that "shsshshshsaaa" thing with every "ya," and her nickname was apparently something like "cheessi." i have no idea what her actual name was. but she was quite a sight to behold, lolling about in short shorts, with tons of men slowly circling her like flies do shit. this is not to say that she was shit - in fact, we all rather liked her. she was a lot of fun.

so cheessi had been in town doing a photo shoot, and she wanted us all to go to this bar that she'd visited on some previous occasion. we piled into a tiny taxi, six of us, with the driver hemming about how he'd be stopped by the police and everyone jibing him (this was sort of an awkward moment, the class-stratified interactions here in latinamer, but i just silently went with it). one of the people with us was the son of a prominent black alderman who presided over the casco viejo, and the son himself was a tax collector of sorts. interesting stuff, racial/socioeconomic politics here. he had an obama sheen to him. anyhow, so cheessi directs the taxi to this gas station, and we pull up and there's a bar attached to it. a bar attached to a gas station, indeed. the toilets are outdoor pits in the ground, and the spare semi-outdoor drinking space (beer garden?) is bedecked with diablo rojo-style murals and lovingly scripted tattoo-looking spreads that say things in cursive like "Y Que?" so we're there to drink 50-cent beer - the swill of the land, balboa/atlas brand - and cheessi then remembers that she only has an 100-dollar bill. she tries to break it at the bar, and the people look at her like she's insane. then she wants us all to play dominoes. within one minute of this, she no longer wants us to play, because she's spotted the pool table. this lady was nuts! at this point it was roughly 4 am, and i was wilting in a major way, so i went home soon after, while my roommate stayed behind to guard this strange figure and "protect her from men." apparently this directive to "protect X from men" is a compliment aquí, meaning that the goods are valuable and prized enough. yikes!

Okay, tomorrow commences the "conozca su canal" week, and as a result i must sleep, rise early for a methodist commemorative mass, and forge on with my documentation of the activities. adieu, fair blog.