I was sorting through my computer files, deleting duplicates, trying to
up its organization just a wee bit, when I chanced upon a eulogy that I
delivered at the funeral/memorial for Herman “Hy” Resnick. Hy was a
professor colleague of my father’s at the University of Washington School of
Social Work. He later became a true friend of mine, including even in his older
years, a ping pong buddy.

Below is that eulogy:

“Political Science is not a science!”  Thus spoke Herman (Hy) Resnick three weeks ago at our Post-Thanksgiving gathering along the Washington Coast at the Tokeland Hotel.   We were clustered around the hearth fire, in couches and chairs. Jennifer was wrapped under Hy’s arm.  Mary, Elizabeth and Phil were right there too, as were my sister’s family and my son. The fire felt warm and inviting.  We were talking and talking some more into the night.  And Hy, playing the role of intellectual provocateur, a role that was not foreign to him, was in his element.

I first met Hy and his family as a pre-teen.  He joined the small faculty at the UW School of Social where my dad, Arthur Farber, had been teaching for less than 5 years.  The faculty in those days seemed like an intimate club.  The families would visit each other’s homes.  The kids would connect with other kids, but even more, the professors would interact with us kids in respectful and fun ways.  And the names of faculty colleagues – Rino Patty; Moya Duplica; Cal Takagi; Hy Resnick – would playfully dance in my head even as the dinnertime conversations turned to the serious issues facing the school and the world.

What I grew to learn, was a keen sense that there was a hierarchy of professional and personal connections in that club.  And that hierarchy including Henry Maier, Ben Jaffe, Hy Resnick and Arthur Farber.  In personal connections, Hy and Mary and the kids spent time in our home and we in theirs.  Hy and I and Dad shared the joy and thrill of table tennis.  In professional connections, Dad and Hy became co-principal investigators in the Wallingford Wellness Project.  An intergenerational community health model that Dad had explored in his sabbatical year.  But frankly, Dad wasn’t the best at research, writing or organizational development – he needed Hy for all that.  And Hy was generous in his support to get the project off the ground.

There was something else that Henry, Hy and Dad had in common – they loved teaching. They cared about the teaching art and put effort and skill behind its practice.  Several friends of mine had Hy as a professor.  The picture you get from listening to a number of his former students is of a professor who was emotionally engaging… even demanding.  Many students came to simply adore Hy. Others he pissed off greatly.  Yet, he had a large cadre of devotees.  One friend of mine, upon hearing of Hy’s passing said “thirty years later and I still quote him more than anyone else I’ve met.”

So what made Hy so gifted as a teacher?  And so memorable as a mentor and friend?

Let’s start with his own words. Listen to the titles of some of his articles:

Managing change: An administrator’s View

Strategies of Change from the Top

Leaving Paper Trails and Other Survival Tactics

Manager As Change Agent

Influencing Upward

What Organizational Development Can Do For Social Work

Leadership and Change in Child Welfare Organizations

This guy wanted to change the world!  And his specialty was in change within organizations – organizations where people spend the majority of their waking hours.  That’s important stuff.  And what made Hy particularly important and effective, is that he approached the organizational work with strong insights… no, strong gut knowledge about the psychology of people. Hy grounded his deep caring for people and the capacity to see positive change, in his own modest beginnings as a butcher’s son, the youngest of five children, growing up in a household where, as Mary has written, “As long as there was a home in which to live, food on the table and clothes on their body, kids were seen as cared for. Hy was left alone to find his own way.“

He was fortunate to live within the city of New York, with its dedication to providing all a free college education. At Brooklyn College he found terrific educators who helped inspire him to achieve a Bachelor’s in psychology.  He started out immediately thereafter with an interest in psychopathology and play therapy. (Ah… THAT’s why Hy and Henry hit it off so well!).  This merged with a growing interest in the new social work field of “group work” where he pursued first a masters and later a PhD in the field of organizational theory and development.

Back to teaching.  All the theory in the world does not a great teacher make.  Hy had such a profound effect on so many students because they knew he really cared for them and would go the extra mile.  His 2- and 3-day retreats at the Bear Creek workshop center he and Mary created out of their home became for decades a great opportunity for learning and growth.

So yes, Hy was an intellectual provocateur.  (How many political scientists would agree with his assessment of their profession?)  But he was also an extraordinarily good listener, a wise and witty sage and a dear and dedicated friend.

Last week I received, upon Hy’s request, the 2015 UW School of Social Work Annual report called “Igniting Social Change.”  We had been talking at Thanksgiving about how to deal with the problem of a leadership that was more interested in self-protection and aggrandizement than in the mission of the organizations they purported to lead.  I wanted strongly to talk with Hy and get his insight on this question.  We had a good conversation about it and he suggested I read the brochure.

My conclusion: If there really is a heaven where leadership is getting too big for its britches and needs to be knocked down a peg or two, now that Hy Resnick is around, they would be advised to watch their step.

Bluntly put, I haven’t kept up with the blog since the last half of the Moroccan/Spanish trip. Bummed out by the war between Israel and Hamas (with occasional fortes between Israel and Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis as well as West Bank settler violence), it seemed small and not quite the point to finish off stories of our trip. Yet, there are some pretty cool pictures, pretty cool stories, a few oddities and… what the heck, let’s share a bit of fun.

Cousin Shirley insisted that we visit the “Blue City” of Chefchaouen, Morocco. Call it half way between Fes and Tangiers – a small town tucked into the Rif Mountains, at an elevation of about 2000 ft – Shirley raved about all the homes painted blue. To learn a bit about the town, here’s the Wikipedia entry ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chefchaouen). 

The reality for Jean and I, as we entered the tail end of our Moroccan visit, was that the place came across as a false – but pretty – tourist trap. The blue wash of the buildings apparently started around 1970 when one guy painted his steps and building blue, tourists started snapping pictures, and city officials thought they found an angle to bring in the masses.

Chefchaouen’s original painted house and front steps.

The result of all that painting is a distinctive community theme. It IS pretty. But it is not rooted in any particular religious or deeply historic Moroccan cultural tradition. Call it ship shape schlock.

A broad view

Kitties climbing.

For our trip, Chefchaouen provided an important transition. It was the first Moroccan town were Spanish, not French, was the secondary language. While we listened to music at a restaurant in the central square, our menus came to us in Moroccan Arabic and Spanish. We ordered our food in Spanish.

The stop was a short one in the Blue City. We were off to Tanger ( also spelled Tangier or Tangiers) on our last night in Morocco. Here are some street scenes near our hotel, followed by the marine port terminal where we took off to Spain.

The marine port in Tangiers.

Leaving Africa… far in the background.

The boat took us to Tarifa, Spain. From there, a bus (no additional charge) took us to the city of Algeciras where we caught another bus to Seville. It was there that we stayed a night in a hotel connected with the Yom Kippur services that I attended; previously mentioned in an earlier blog entry.

Highlights of our Road Scholar Spanish tour will be in a forthcoming blog entry.

Exactly five years ago, November 15, 2018, I sent a “goodbye and thanks” email to my colleagues at Washington State Parks on the eve of my retirement. All employees were allowed this singular indulgence and I had been keeping all such emails in a special folder I labeled “So Long” for years. I relished the opportunity to thank folks and deliver a personal message.

This Daniel’s Derekh blog was intended as a means of documenting my post-career explorations and was started immediately after leaving Parks and shuffling off to Israel for three months. A couple of days ago someone asked me about my previous work career and it triggered memories of that “So Long” email. So… why not document that part of my derekh (my path) here too? Below you can read it (with only tiny edits).

Dear State Parks colleagues,

Twenty-five and a half years ago I walked into Larry Fairleigh’s office as a dead-broke, 30-something, single dad without a job.  Larry decided to hire me as a Temp Planner 2 and told me that the first thing I had to do was set up a public meeting for a master plan of Rasar State Park.  “Great, I’ll get right on it,” I said, even though I had no idea what went into a state park.  I was pretty sure a campground, but I had to ask.

The rest, as they say, is history.

For about a dozen years, I’ve placed other employees’ retirement goodbye emails in a folder called “So Long.”  This folder now has over 100 entries.  Many are simple and matter of fact – just a couple of sentences of thanks and best wishes.  Others take the opportunity to make one last statement of State Parks philosophy, or to impress upon us an important insight or set of values. Some expand upon their reasons for gratitude.  And a few express a sickening loss – in particular during those horrible times when deep budget cuts removed so many of us from either our jobs, our hometowns, or both.

As I am about to leave State Parks, I reflect on how this institution has provided me an adulthood filled with meaning and purpose.  What we do and how we do it touches the lives of millions of people and safeguards an extraordinarily varied and vital set of natural and cultural treasures.  What a pleasure it has been to work with you to plan for the future of our parks!  What a privilege to advocate for Parks as we have fought for our share of the pie in the Legislature!  What an honor to meet with our many stakeholders and inform them of Parks’ needs.  And what satisfaction there has been in working with staff from virtually every portion of our agency, learning about our internal organizational needs, learning about each of our parks’ needs, and finding ways to improve our parks system and the wonderful recreation programs we manage.

I recently visited our smallest State Park – Ranald MacDonald’s Grave Heritage Site.  A simple, beautifully written monument stone supplemented with a couple of multi-colored interpretive signs – one in English and one in Japanese.  On the grave itself people have left small rocks, a Cherry Coke can with a rock on top of it, bits of jewelry.  The site took on greater meaning when I started reading MacDonald’s book. He told the story of his daring solo adventure in 1848 to Japan, where, as prisoner, he became the first native English-speaker to teach the language in isolationist Japan.  His story took on even more intimate meaning for me when I found out he was the bi-racial grandson of King Comcomly, the Chief of the Chinook tribe at the mouth of the Columbia, who met with Lewis and Clark. I spent over half a decade in Chinook territory, representing State Parks in the master planning of Cape Disappointment, designing Station Camp with the NPS and the Historic Society, creating the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, and figuring out how best to represent the public interest while dealing with Maya Lin and the Confluence project.  Whatever would young Ranald have done?

And it suddenly struck me.  THAT is what state parks are for!  They are trigger-places for connecting with our region’s natural and cultural history.  They are jumping off places to provoke a desire to learn more about the marvelous, beautiful place we call Washington.  And to understand the interconnectedness over time and place of us all. So, I urge you, get out to our parks! And then dive deeper to understand your connection with them all.

Working for State Parks has kind of been a “Forrest Gump-like” experience for me.  I’ve visited all of our 125 named state parks and all 16 Heritage sites – and gotten paid to do it. How amazing is that!  I’ve been along for the ride – often more an interested observer than a central driver – to some of the most controversial or far-reaching stuff we’ve done these past 25 years: St. Edward Seminary preservation; Mt. Spokane ski area expansion; new parks at Rasar and Hope Island; the creation and implementation of the CAMP Program; and the Partnership Bill and other agency request legislation.  It has all been a completely lucky break.

Weirdly, looking back, I’m almost prouder of the noble failures – e.g., Seaview piano key preservation or the never named “Pluvius State Park Trail” – than the wins.  Ok … I’m also pretty proud of the 2012 State of State Parks Report to the Legislature.  If you want to understand what precipice we were balanced at then, and the fight we made to pull ourselves off that cliff, you can read it here.  It’s a powerful statement of defiance. Punched together by the Commission and Executive Leadership Team, we fought back against a mandate for zero tax support and won.  But enough indulgence.  The key thing is that for 25 years, work has constantly seemed consequential, and therefore rewarding. 

We’re in a better place as an agency than we were a few years ago. That is because the public loves their state parks system, we’ve had wise leadership, and so many of you have given pieces of your heart as well as your thoughtful minds, to all the tasks necessary to keep our system running. Thank you for being such wonderful colleagues and teachers. I will miss working with you daily to advance the public interest and our wonderful state parks system.   

At 4 p.m. on November 29 in the Moran Room, we’ll get together so I can have the opportunity to thank you personally. We’ve invited some former colleagues to come by, so I hope you’ll have a chance to say hello again to old friends.  I’ll be taking annual leave until the middle of January but may come in briefly from time to time until then to consult.  If you have any questions, feel free to reach me on my personal cell phone at 360-402-9983 or at my work email, Daniel.Farber@parks.wa.gov, which will be active until then. 

So Long, 

Daniel

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” 

― Baba Dioum

I am writing this entry on November 13, 2023.  Occasional readers of this blog may have been confused by the last few entries, referencing events of our Moroccan trip that took place nearly two months ago.

“Are you back in Olympia?” one friend recently asked. 

I explained a couple of blog entries ago that I have been struggling to both write new entries and more generally come to a psychologically healthy place given the horrors of October 7 in Israel and Gaza and all the subsequent compounding of horrors.

Prior to October 7, I had planned to do a presentation at our synagogue’s monthly Senior Schmooze session that I would call “Traveling Jewishly.”  I would talk about the Jewish history of Morocco and Spain, discuss Jean’s and my experiences and explorations of the Jewish sites and people we encountered, and show pictures along the way.  But someone asked me a few days ago whether I would have gone to the Jewish places I went to and been as upfront about my own Jewishness with the guides we followed if we were to do the trip now. I instantly felt the hinge of the October 7 event.  No, I don’t think I would do the same tour.  No, my own sense of safety as a Jew in Morocco and even in Spain would be different now.

Nevertheless, our experiences – especially my personal experiences and emotions – in traveling Jewishly on the recently completed trip feel important to document. So… here are a few incidences and perhaps insights that highlight the Jewish angle of the trip.

In Meknes

I informed our guide, Essam, that I was Jewish, and he brought us to a jewelry shop in the souk that he said was owned by a Jewish merchant.  The shop did indeed have a bit of Judaica mixed in with many non-Jewish pieces.

When Essam greeted the shop proprietor, he introduced me as Jewish.  The man suddenly began to tear up, opened his arms, and hugged me.  He explained that he was in the process of closing the shop in the next few weeks because he was moving to Israel to be with his extended family.  Then he switched gears to see what Jean wanted to buy.  He assured me that he would make an especially good deal for us.

Jean looked at some bracelets that she liked, but I informed the shop owner that we really weren’t in the market.  Soon, he separated me from Jean and we began a bargaining session – one that I honestly had no interest in being part of.  He poured me a cup of sweet tea.  We talked about Israel. And my protestations of disinterest in purchasing anything notwithstanding, I ended up indeed buying Jean a bracelet.

The thing is, of course, that that shop looked in no way like it was about to close.  The proprietor was extremely intent on bargaining.  And my best guess is that he was in no way Israel bound.  I doubt he was even Jewish.  To which I say, “THAT’S an authentic souk experience!”

In Fes

The city of Fes is one of the world’s most important historic urban centers. As various sultanates and empires conquered then lost the area now known as Morocco, Fes was at times the political, intellectual, or religious capital, and/or center for trade and commerce.  It still has what is claimed to be the oldest continuously operated university in the world and is now Morocco’s second largest city (nearly 1million inhabitants).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fez,_Morocco

Like much of the rest of Morocco, there is an extraordinarily important Jewish heritage but few Jews remaining.  There were far more Jewish bodies in the cemetery we visited than living Jews in town. Wikipedia pegs the number now to be about 150.  Our guide in Fes, Khlefa, said that there are about 40 families living in the Ville Nouveau portion of the city.

But around the year 1150, and for ten years thereafter, the Jewish physician and scholar, Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) lived in Fes.  He was said to have written his most profoundly influential work, the “Mishna Torah”, while in the city.  More on Maimonides later in this blog, as he was born in Cordoba, Spain, but chased out when Jews were forced to convert to Islam, be executed, or go to exile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides

The Jewish cemetery in Fes was larger and more orderly than the one in Meknes.  The lack of names on most of the tombs was said to reflect the abrupt and massive death of the population that occurred due to a pandemic.

There was also substantial monumentation to the significant Jewish personages in Fes. Note the three languages, French, English and Hebrew.

Khlefa did bring us to a couple of synagogues, which functioned now as historic sites more than actual sites of worship.  To me, their residual beauty spoke in wistful harmonies.

Inside Synagogue Al Fassiyine in Fes.

An historic synagogue restored.

Entering a restored – but empty – synagogue in Fes.

In Seville

I knew we would be in Marrakech during Rosh Hashanah. I also knew we would be in Seville during Yom Kippur. Fortunately, I found a progressive Jewish congregation in town that was open to Jewish travelers attending services. So, we booked the hotel where the Yom Kippur services would occur, registered and paid for the privilege of joining the congregation, and I was able to spend the day with fellow Jews fasting and praying on the holiest day of the Hebrew calendar. Jean got laundry done and was able to relax a bit and order restaurant meals in her mostly fluent Spanish.

The congregation in Seville was tiny.  For the High Holy Days, it brought in a rabbi from Barcelona to lead services. Attendance drew from a small set of American Jewish ex-pats living in southern Spain, as well as the few Spanish Jews living year-round in the area. 

Yom Kippur services were mostly in Hebrew and Spanish, but there were also English language siddurs available and some English translations throughout the day.  With the combination of my broken Spanish and minimal Hebrew skills, I surprisingly got by.  Also surprising for me was that many of the tunes – like I experienced in Marrakech – were Ashkenazi, not Sephardic.  In the land of Sepharad, there were almost no native Sephardic Jews!

Of course, we all know why the Jewish community is so tiny in Spain. As was described to us by a Road Scholar tour guide, in 1492, the King and Queen of Spain struck a deal with the Catholic pope.  The church would help fund Christopher Columbus’s expedition and others like it, but only if the Spanish royals would help cleanse their country of heathens. Thus was born the Spanish Inquisition, which, to my surprise included not only conversion, murder or expulsion of the Moors (Muslims) and Jews, but also the Christian protestants.

Throughout the rest of our visit to Spain, the results of the various successful efforts to rid the country of its religiously tolerant past was a constant theme.

In Cordoba

As the Jewish Quarter in Morocco is commonly called the Mellah, so is the name in Spain called the Juderia. And the reality is basically the same, but with more direct and effective tragic consequences.  The Spanish Jewish Quarters have no Jews because they were “inquisition-ed” out of them!

Cordoba is, however, a very significant part of the world Jewish story, as the birthplace of the aforementioned Maimonides.  Our Road Scholar tour guide took us briefly to the Juderia to see a statue of Maimonides and visit a tiny synagogue site.  Jean and I split from the group for a half hour around lunch time to return to the Juderia and run through a local Jewish museum.

Statute of Maimonides in Cordoba’s Jewish Quarter.

A tradition is to touch the foot of Maimonides and then press your lips to your hand. 

Inside Cordoba’s synagogue.

Cordoba’s Jewish Museum

Inside Cordoba’s Jewish museum.  “Casa Sefarad:  A unique view In the heart of the Jewish Quarter.”

It would be the last “Jewish thing” we would do on this trip. 

I will leave it for another blog entry to explore non-Jewish aspects of the last portion of our trip to Morocco and Spain.  But the retrospective context of Jewish loss in Sepharad and the current crisis in Israel and its effects on the entire world – not just the Jewish world – has left me profoundly troubled.

There were no knock-off ornaments or false Romanesque carvings to buy in Volubilis. (I’m thinking back to some of that kind of thing at Mexico’s Teotihuacan – from Pyramid of the Sun and Moon fame.) Probably because it was in an isolated hillside national park, no one was hocking their wares.  Our drive away to a Meknes medina souk changed all that.  In souks, hocking is the main point. And the imperial city of Meknes, former capital of Morocco, is famed as an urban trade center for a productive and varied agricultural hinterland, wood carvings, woolen carpets and metallic trinkets.

Meknes is also known as the “minaret city” and a center for religious devotion. It’s Ville Nouveau – built during the colonial period – is known as “Petit Paris.” It is a lovely city. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meknes)

The abundance of a Meknes souk.

Jean grabbing a spicy picture.

The souk was not for vegetarians or the faint of heart.

Throughout our trip to Morocco, Walid would drive us to a new city or site, part with us for a while as a knowledgeable local guide would lead us through the local highlights, then pick us up again for the next drive.  For several – but not all – of the guided tours, we would be led to a particular shop, where the guide would have an ongoing relationship with the store owner and provide us an opportunity to purchase the store’s goods.  I’m not saying that there was a definite financial arrangement between each guide and the particular store owner.  I’m just saying that the chance of such an arrangement was likely greater than 98%.

In Meknes our guide’s name was Essam. Like all guides on our trip, I mentioned to him that I was interested in seeing what if anything remains of a Jewish presence in town.  The old Jewish quarters, known as Mellahs, are present in most cities of any size, and Meknes was no exception. (BTW…. Mellah is Arabic for “salt” which was the old means of financial exchange. The Hebrew word is Melech. The English word “salary” is derived from that function of salt.)  But while there are geographic centers of old Jewish life, there are few if any living Jews.

In the 17^th century, a plague hit Meknes. There was a need for quick burials of both Jews and Muslims.  Essam took us to the Jewish cemetery.  We saw lots of evidence of dead Jews on this trip.

Meknes Jewish cemetery.  For most of these unfortunate victims of plague, no names were provided on the gravestones.

After the plague, the cemetery continued to be used, including substantial monumentation for luminaries of the Jewish community.

Essam took us to a musical museum which included instrumentation of Jewish heritage.

A beautiful shofar (ram’s horn) and shawl.

Essam also brought us to both a carpet store and a jewelry store.  In the latter, Jean and I bought a bracelet and in the former a carpet.  The carpet now graces our living room. The bracelet on occasion graces her wrist.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPoIueFSiDTQKT6_BReBZR0cVoIKlww9aXETCjf

The back end of our Moroccan adventure started as soon as we departed Rabat.  We had experienced both the highlight and the core purpose of our trip – to return Jean to her Peace Corps roots.  And now we were classic Mediterranean region tourists hitting the highlight reel. Roman ruins?  Check.  Ancient churches and mosques?  Check. Jewish cemeteries?  Mournful, yes, but… check. Souk shopping and gourmet meals in carpet-lined ornateness?  Double check.

What remained distinctive, always remains distinctive, are the people. You just need to ask a bit then dive in and follow where the lead leads. 

Off from Rabat

Walid picked us up first thing in the morning and we quickly exited Rabat’s broad, tree-lined landscaped boulevards and made our way east into farm and grazing lands. Our first stop was the Roman ruin village of Volubilis. Adjacent to the ruins was a tiny hillside town, looking very much like a support center for tourists and surrounding olive groves.

Walid brought us to the ruins parking lot where we met Abdul Kareem who would be our tour guide. He was a local village resident and had been functioning as a guide for 33 years.  His father worked with French archaeologists at the site.

 Jean with Abdul Kareem, our guide to the story of Volubilis

Abdul Kareem was a Berber. Spoke six languages. French was his most fluent European tongue. And as we talked, it became clear that Volubilis was more than his job. It was his very personal heritage and pride.

A city’s expansiveness.  Volubilis at its prime, must have been extraordinarily wealthy and imposing.

Some of the ceramics restored.  The baskets of gold and silver… no where now to be found.

With even a modicum of interpretation it was easy to imagine the grandeur that was this place at its height.  Ornate ceramics, towering arches. Volubilis was ransacked by the Vandals in the fourth century and mostly destroyed by an earthquake and subsequent looting around 1750.  Like all of our interpreted guided experiences on this trip, much more can be known about the history and significance of Volubilis by checking out Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volubilis) as a starter and moving on to whatever level of research one desires.  Yet there is clear value in the analog feel of simply soaking in the actual place.  And delight in the personal, as Abdul Kareem demonstrated how Roman baths operated by climbing in a remnant of one, lying down and lounging as the locals must have done. Peel me a grape.

Abdul Kareem demonstrating the good life.

The road from central Marrakech to Rabat starts as a major urban arterial, walled by mid-rise apartments, offices and street-level retail. Walid works his way around construction projects and errant pedestrians as we quickly merge into an exurbia of scattered homes, light industry and farmlets.  As we head north, even these urban fragments yield to jagged, barren, low-lying terrain, dominated by browned out summer grain remnants, an occasional sad herd of sheep or goats, and ever more sparsely distributed tiny rural settlements.  Most settlement shacks by the side of the road looked deserted, or at least like they should be deserted.

It is now a four-lane highway, speeding southeast of Casablanca past the town of Settat.  The further north we go, the greener the landscapes and more dense and large the villages and towns. As is our habit, I sit upfront with Walid, asking him an occasional question, but mostly find myself staring in weary awe at the strange landscapes we pass.  Jean is in the back, minding her own business, but infrequently raising a question or making an observation.

We are on our way to Rabat, capital of Morocco since 1956, home of King Mohammed VI and his palace and his courtiers and the national administrative state. Our guidebook says that if Casablanca is analogous to the New York of Morocco, Rabat is its District of Columbia. 

The broad boulevards of a capital city, flags-a-flying.

Rabat will also prove to be the highlight of our three plus weeks in Morocco and Spain.  For this is where Jean lived and worked as a United States Peace Corps volunteer for two years, from 1981 to 1983. This is where Jean was placed in her second year in an adult leadership position; provided a car and tasked with driving around the country, meeting with Corps volunteers, evaluating their performance and assisting them with their questions and concerns. This is where she spent her third year, developing written program materials for the Moroccan Peace Corps program. And now, we were eager to see about what, if anything, remained of the places and people she knew way back when.

We arrived mid-afternoon in the city and Walid drove us to the hotel where we would spend three nights, the Rabat Marriott. The hotel was adjacent to, and appeared to be built in conjunction with, a major shopping mall called the Arribat Center. It was also a half block away was one of the city’s modern light rail system stops. Collectively, we had been dropped into a 21st century generic urban middle- to upper-middle class corporate fantasy land. 

While Jean took a brief rest, I scouted out the Arribat Center. Walking the mall corridors, past the same corporate names you would see in Europe or America, the shoppers appeared indistinguishable from their western contemporaries. The majority of the teenage girls and middle-aged women were not wearing hijabs (Dorothy, we are not in Marrakech anymore!). Ethnic attendance too appeared global: melanin levels of all sorts and multiple languages overheard.

Strolling Rabat’s Arribat Center Shopping Mall.

Returning to the hotel, Jean and I decided to take a walk for an early dinner.  We were rewarded with a delicious Moroccan meal where we were the only patrons (it was too late for lunch, not early enough for dinner, but they served us anyway).

A tired but hungry Jean works her way through a delicious early dinner in Rabat. The tagine is mine!

After dinner, we returned for an early restful evening at the hotel.

The next morning, Walid picked us up, along with a Rabat tour guide, Mustafa, and we were off to the King’s palace. Jean had never been there as a Corps volunteer, and the reason why relates partially to her priorities at the time, but also to current priorities of the nation. Those priorities? Tourism! We were told that foreign visitors represent the second highest economic sector in the country. Thus, a major financial incentive for political and cultural stability.

Mustafa, Jean and Walid inside the grounds of Mohammed VI Palace.

Tour guides, such as Mustafa, are licensed by the government.  They are given training, of course, but I also think they are provided with certain boundaries about what they can and can not say.  To get into the King’s palace, there is, of course, security. And having an official tourist guide is a measure of that security.  I imagine that Walid, Jean and I could not have gotten in without Mustafa – or at least it would have been more difficult.

Mustafa’s official tourist guide identity card.

The grounds and the buildings were, of course, monumental.  There were also grand open spaces around the palace itself. While apparently King Mohammed VI is rarely present at his Rabat palace (frequently in Europe is what I heard), the net visual effect of the palace grounds is one of awe and power.

The Palace of Mohammed VI, King of Morocco.

Behind the walls lie the nation’s administrative ministries, adjacent to the palace and its grounds.

From the current royal palace, Walid drove Mustafa and us to the mausoleum of King Mohammed V, Hassan II and Hassan II’s brother – the current king’s grandfather, father and uncle. Across from the mausoleum was the ancient Hassan tower, started a thousand years ago, but never finished.  Much was damaged after a recent earthquake.

Rabat’s answer to Sydney’s Opera House.  Modern architecture which screams “look at me!”

More “look at me” ultra-modern architecture.  Apparently, this structure and the surrounding massive development scheme – including the Sydney-like entertainment center – got derailed by the Covid pandemic. Never completed.

The mausoleum of the immediate past two Moroccan kings.

Hassan Tower remnants. About a thousand years old.

Across the street from the Hassan Tower site was the South African embassy. I asked the young lady who is reading her cell phone in the picture, whether she knew where to get some Black Cat peanut butter in this town.  She replied, “Oh… I miss it so much!”

From the tower and mausoleum site, we drove to Rabat’s oceanfront Kasbah. Beautiful. White washed buildings. Spectacular views of the Atlantic.

The Rabat Kasbah is a bit of an art colony.  Here there was a fund raiser for earthquake victims in the High Atlas Mountains.

Oceanfront view from the Kasbah.

After our visit to the Kasbah, we parted ways with our guide, Mustafa.  Walid, Jean and I then went for some fried seafood on the ocean front.  I had been thinking about this opportunity for days.  As it turned out, the quality was only so so.

A bit of work to pry off the bones, and less meat than it looks, nonetheless, it was indeed local fish from a local sea.

After our seafood lunch, we asked Walid to take us to where the Peace Corps headquarters used to be.  Jean had lived in a flat not far from the old HQ.  But as we arrived at the address, the old Peace Corps center had been rebuilt and repurposed and her neighborhood razed and rebuilt. 

We returned to the hotel for the rest of the first full day in Rabat.  The next day would be our “free” day. No Walid.  No tour guide.  Just us fending for ourselves, but with one overriding goal in mind: get to the new Peace Corps headquarters and see if we can get to talk with someone to give Jean’s 40-year-old pictures for their records. 

The sign identified both where we had been and a bit of where we were about to go.  Now, we didn’t pick up shabbat bread at “Challah.”  That’s the palace, I think.  And you can also see on the sign references to the mausoleum, Hassan Tower, and administrative quarters. Coming up later would be our train ride to Sale, Rabat’s neighboring city.

The search for Jean’s old neighborhood in Rabat yielded only newer apartment buildings.

Breakfasts at these fancy hotels are a real showcase.  So, our “free day” got off to a gourmand’s delight. But this would be a day of much walking, so we felt justified in getting our fill.

Walking the streets of Rabat was easy.  Many broad boulevards. Excellent pedestrian facilities.  And Google Maps worked like a dream.  Punch in the address and audio directions in English provided the confidence to stroll.

After an hour or so of walking around we approached the Peace Corps gated entrance. Jean spoke to the guard, describing her background and interest in meeting a staff person.  The guard got on his cell phone and soon, out came a slim-built older gentleman named Aziz.  Turned out that he was a Moroccan national and Corps’ General Services Manager and had worked there for 38 years. 

Aziz was so very welcoming. He offered to not only give us a tour of the grounds but introduce us to Peace Corps staff that were present and available.  It felt like Jean in particular became almost instantly an honored guest.

Inside the grounds of Peace Corps HQ, Rabat.

Soon, Tim Ambrose, the Director of Management and Operations was introduced and started guiding us through our questions and the grounds. Tim had worked with the U.S. Army in the civic affairs office of Special Operations. He started doing community development work with the army, then retired.  He had earlier made contact with the Peace Corps and found that he wanted to continue his international service. So, he joined the Corps.

Tim told us that the Morocco site was undergoing a change in leadership at the moment.  The existing country director (yikes… I didn’t write down her name) was in the process of departing and the new director, Lena, had just arrived.  He asked whether we’d like to meet them and of course we said we’d be honored. Lena had a Jordanian background and was last serving as country director in Indonesia. Tim brought us over to Lena who was talking with Rashid, the Youth Development program manager.

Jean and I with Peace Corps big brass in Rabat HQ.

We had the good fortune to speak with this Peace Corps crew for about 5 – 10 minutes, asking them questions about the program (it’s climbing back from a full stop during Covid), and them asking Jean questions about her experiences way back when.  We spent additional time just with Tim.

Jean handed Tim the photos which he said could be incorporated into a 60^th anniversary event they were planning. Tim said he’s put Jean on a list to get updates on Moroccan Peace Corps happenings. Overall, it was just a lovely, satisfying opportunity for Jean to reconnect with a key part of her life story.

We bid adieu and hopped a (shared) cab ride half-way to our hotel.  We stopped for a magnificent lunch at a Syrian restaurant.  Then walked over to the nearest light rail station.  We hopped (lots of hopping!) aboard the train going out to Sale, the neighboring city to Rabat. 

Delicious meal at Syrian restaurant.

On Rabat’s light rail.

Jean described Sale as the place where the lesser paid bureaucrats could afford housing.  Mostly though, we just wanted to get on a train and feel what it was like, and then immediately take the first train back to the station adjacent to our hotel. Which is what we did.

Hanging back in our room for awhile and then going out for a small bite to eat at the Arribat Center, would finish off our free day.  And finish off our visit to Rabat.  From there, the next day, we would be on the downward end to our Moroccan adventure.  Roman ruins, medinas and souks, weird and beautiful blue-washed buildings, and a ferry ride across the Mediterranean would all await. Oh yeah, and another gourmand breakfast paradise the next day to get the ball rolling.  

Regular readers of this blog may be wondering why it has yet to chronicle our trip to Morocco and Spain after our visit to Marrakech. That last entry described events which occurred more than a month ago.

This delay has been due, in part, to the intensity of the touring experience, in part to my contracting a cold which took a bit out of me for several days, and in part due to my normal procrastination tendencies.

We arrived back in the US on October 4 and then on the 5^th we were on the road to fly out to Missouri to attend our nephew’s wedding.  And then, immediately upon our return to Olympia, war broke out in Israel and Gaza.

Several friends and family have been both inquiring about my emotional state as well as what I know about our Israeli friends and relatives.   The reality of both is a confusing mix of fear, anger, determination, and deep deep sorrow.

No one knows how this war with Hamas will evolve. There are no good choices. Only, if we are lucky and wise, less worse ones.

It was just last March when my cousin Hemy was taking me to the tiny town of Ghajar, Israel, which lies adjacent to the Lebanese border.  We ate a pita falafel, walked in the “Peace Garden”, and I took pictures of the border wall which separates the two nations.

The Lebanese-Israeli Border: Note the border fence separating two very different realities.

At that time in the spring of 2023 and onwards into this summer and fall, Israelis were convulsed with demonstrations against “judicial reforms” proposed by its right-wing government.

Hemy and Anat, in their beautiful Beit Hilel home, watching massive street demonstrations, protesting Israeli government moves to restrict judicial oversight.

Hemy grew up in Kfar Giladi, a kibbutz about 5 miles to the southwest of Ghajar, lying less than a mile from the Lebanese border.  It was famous as a smuggling route for Jews to get into Palestine prior to Israeli statehood.  My family were significant pioneers and leaders of that settlement, and I had enjoyed a beautiful Passover seder celebration there in a previous time I was in Israel. 

Israel’s fertile Hula Valley, lying between the Golan Heights and Lebanon. Cousin’s Hemy and Anat’s home lies just to the north (left) of this picture.

As of a couple of days ago, Kfar Giladi and 27 other Israeli towns and settlements adjacent to the Lebanese border have been evacuated. Skirmishes with Hezbollah have been occurring with increasing frequency and full-scale war may break out at any moment.  Hemy reported to me that authorities recommended that he and his wife Anat leave their home in Beit Hilel, which is located due east of Qiryat Shemona.  They have done so, staying with their daughter’s family further south, away from the border. Ever the workaholic, Hemy tells me that they are in “a village in the Misgav area near Carmiel. Safe place and close to my work at Rosh Pina.”  Hemy previously told me that his son was likely to be called up into the reserves at any moment.

Another cousin, Yoav, an Israeli now living in Walnut Creek, California, grew up in a kibbutz bordering Gaza. He reports that “Our home in Kibbutz Kissufim has been destroyed with many people murdered, kidnapped and terrorized.  My dad passed away back in 2015 and my mom is living on a kibbutz up north. We’re devastated, sad, angry and anxious.”

My cousins living in the center of the country, some near Tel Aviv, and some west of Jerusalem, appear to be physically safe at the moment.  But all are emotionally traumatized and know folks who have died, been injured, or are actively in the military.

Everyone I know in our country is inundated by the news. I find myself mesmerized. Paralyzed really. And of course, frightened and sad. I think a part of it is the feeling of helplessness in the face of extreme danger. And I also feel incredible compassion for both the Israelis and the two million Gazans who are truly in a hellish existence.

A few days ago the Olympia police reached out to me to see what our temple might need.  I felt a certain thankful calmness around the ability to just act in some fashion. They contacted me because I both chair the Olympia Downtown Alliance’s committee that deals with safety and serve on the executive committee of our synagogue. Bottom line, we at the temple are taking some precautions and keeping our communication lines open with the police.

There were important life experiences that Jean and I had during the remainder of our recent trip, and I intend to share those with blog readers.  But I just couldn’t do that until weighing in on what is foremost on my mind and the minds of all caring people. Let us all pray for peace.