Oren Raab
Met 2023-09-14 09:00 at Numa Hotel, She’erit Israel 1 Tel-Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel.He arrived wearing a t-shirt showing Schroeder (from Peanuts) as Freddie Mercury, at the piano. He’s reading David Bowie’s 100 favorite books. He’s an ex-musician.
His family has been living in Israel since before it was called Israel. He has two kids, age 10 & 13.
Kibbutz is an Israeli interpretation of something that happened in the communist Russia. Raised their own foods, they raised their own like animals, cattle, and they self-managed their own existence. Everybody shared everything. Some came from Russia to what’s now Israel, and they wanted to replicate the same thing here, but just having like the good parameters from that rather than the bad parameters. There are only a few left like this with the original intention.
Jerusalem has so much meaning to those who have been saying “next year, Jerusalem” their whole life. Lots of old cities have history, but this place was the begining of many foundational things for civilization. Religions formed here, and religions are very important to many people.
When I mentioned I'm going to Palestine, he noticed his first impulse was to say “be careful”, but then questioned that indoctrination. We talked about the Black Mirror episode where soldiers are brainwashed to think the enemy are sub-human beasts. I read two books before coming here, one about history of Israel, one about history of Palestine, and both trying to de-legitimize the other.
Read “The Invention of the Jewish People” book by Schlomo Sand.
Religion was invented to get people to stay in one place, stay and cultivate food, create order and control there. Stay here because God says stay here.
The guys wearing the fur hats in the middle of hot Israel summer.
Watch the movie “Mute” by Duncan Jones, David Bowie’s kid.
He’s the first person to say his favorite chapter of my “How to Live” book was the one about living randomly, because he already does that in many aspects of life.