MYANMAR

A picture like this one above, literally called out to me from the pages of a National Geographic magazine. I saw it and I was mesmerized. I knew I needed to go there. When I saw the picture, I didn’t even know where this place was, but I knew, deep, deep inside of me, that I needed to go there. This was not a case of desire, or want, or even great interest. This was a primal urge. A compulsion. This was not a matter of choice. I had to go there.

As destiny would have it, or as the Ribbono Shel Olam would have it, I was invited to join a kosher tour to Myanmar as a Mashgiach, something I have done on numerous occasions. Mainly due to my familiarity with Eastern eating customs and practices. As a matter of fact, I have dedicated a chapter to my work as a Mashgiach later on in the book. So, blessing the Lord and my good fortune, I flew off to Yangon (formerly Rangoon) via an overnight stop in Bangkok to stock up with kosher frozen chickens from Chabad of Bangkok. I had sent my order ahead to Rabbi Yossi Goldberg at Chabad Bangkok and a short while after I arrived at my hotel in the city center there was a knock at my door and the kosher frozen chicken delivery man was there with my order.

The following morning I headed back to the airport with my frozen fowls in a padded cooler bag and my small roll-on (I almost never travel with more than 14kg of personal luggage, so a roll-on usually works best for me) and made my way to Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport. It’s interesting that both Thailand and Myanmar, at some stage in their histories and local languages, called themselves Suvarnabhumi, which means Land of Gold in both languages. The gold referred to is not the precious metal – more of that later – but the color of ripened rice, the staple of the diet in both countries (and many others here in the East).

Arrival at Yangon International Airport was swift and efficient and in no time I had received my visa, picked up my bags, cleared customs and was outside the building. There I was met by one of the passengers and by our guide, dressed in traditional Burmese clothes – a crisply ironed amazingly clean, pristine white shirt, a sarong and flip flops. Mr. Soe Yee was a university lecturer who also worked as a tour guide and was an amazing source of information throughout our tour. He also constantly wore traditional clothes. This was the case with almost everyone in Myanmar, something that I found quite charming and admirable. To my mind, this shows respect for tradition, which I consider a valuable characteristic of any culture. I liked seeing it in Alaska, in Peru, in Vietnam and Cambodia, and I very much liked seeing it here. I bought myself a sarong as well and learned to wear it, but I could never quite get comfortable with the fact that the top is just sort of tucked in and could open at any inopportune moment. I frequently noticed Burmese men flapping their sarongs open as they retied them around their waists. Their undershorts (no, they don’t go commando) were as white as their shirts. How do they get it so very white?

My first view of Yangon reminded me very much of parts of New Delhi. Tree lined wide boulevards, traffic on the left side of the street, signs in Sanskrit and English. It was neat, clean, organized. And then I saw it. The Massive golden Shwedagon Pagoda which dominates the city or so many ways. Myanmar is 90% or more Buddhist, and their Pagodas are spectacular! Amazing and dazzling in their golden color. And, unlike so many other golden pagodas one finds throughout the East, here the gold is, in fact, GOLD. This is a feature of Myanmar that really amazed me. The vast majority of this country’s population is poor. Many of them extremely poor. And yet, even the most poverty-stricken Burmese will spend a significant chunk of his or her meagre earnings to purchase a little bit of gold leaf to come to the pagoda and stick it on the Buddha or Pagoda. So, the Shwedagon mega-Pagoda is not painted gold. It’s gilded! Gold-Plated, so to speak. Incredible!

The group was staying at the wonderful Shangri-La hotel in downtown Yangon, and as soon as I arrived and checked in I went to meet the F&B manager and the executive chef. One thing I have learned in my work as a Mashgiach: the higher the level of the hotel, the more eager they are to work with kosher travelers. This was not my first experience with Shangri-La hotels, and as I mentioned to the staff with whom I met, I have always had a “yes” reply to my question “can you do this for me?” First came the positive answer, and then they set about working out how they would do it. As a rule, I like to have my own kitchen and dining room. They better the hotel, the more they try to say “yes” first and then work out the details. It’s something I genuinely appreciate when I work as a Mashgiach.

Yangon was once home to a very large and vibrant Jewish community, had at least one Jewish mayor, and its synagogue, Musmeah Yeshua, had a collection of 126 Sifrei Torah. The original wooden shul was built way back in 1854, while the current building dates back to 1896. It is simply beautiful. Its design is very similar to those of synagogues throughout the east, wherever Baghdadi Jews settled. Was that the design they were used to in Baghdad? My guess is yes, it must have been. Because I have seen that type of design in Mumbai, Singapore, and Hong Kong in shuls established by Baghdadi Jews. Then again, maybe it isn’t limited to Baghdadi synagogues because the synagogues in Cochin and other places in Kerala are pretty similar too. Anyway, I’m not sure, but I think I’m correct.

The Holy Ark in the Musmeah Yeshua is more a room than an ark – after all it did need to house 126 Sifrei Torah. Today, however, there are only two remaining. The others were distributed to synagogues in Israel and elsewhere as the community diminished. Today, I don’t think there is a minyan of Jews who were born and bred Yangonians. The synagogue is maintained today by Sammy Samuels, who took over the task from his late father. Sammy and his wife recently gave birth to their first son, and thus another generation of Jews is born in Yangon. When I visited Yangon there was no Chabad there – something that has been corrected since. However, Chabad does not pray at the Musmeah Yeshua as they are located in a different part of the city. A great pity in my opinion, but there you have it. I am grateful that Chabad is there, make no mistake about it. I love all those wonderful Chabad Shluchim and their amazing wives who dedicate their lives to being there for Jews coming by in so many faraway locations. True Zadikim, in my opinion.

The other Jewish site I visited in Yangon was the old Jewish cemetery. To me, cemeteries are large repositories of history. Fortunately, I don’t know everyone buried there, but I do like to walk by and read names and dates. I don’t really know why I like this, but I do. Often, when I have visited my parents’ graves in Netanya cemetery, I take a walk around to see the graves of my aunts and uncles there, and read tombstones of all sorts of people who I don’t know – and some whom I do. The old Jewish cemetery in Yangon is in a very run down part of the city. It isn’t well kept, somewhat overgrown, but nevertheless fascinating. The gravestones are tubular in shape – same as in Mumbai and Cochin – with the name and information about the deceased engraved upon one end. So, despite its poor condition, I really loved the visit there.

Pictures of Bagan like this one above, and the one at the beginning of the Myanmar chapter never cease to fill me with… I don’t know what. It’s hard to describe. I have mentioned in my previous book that Buddhist music touches a very deep place in me. There is something in Bhuddism that moves me. I haven’t studied much about Buddhism and I am very comfortable in my own traditions so I’m not searching for something else, however, there is some level of spirituality in Buddhism which seems to me to be more easily accessible than it is in Judaism. Not that Judaism is without its spirituality. Not by any means. However, in my humble opinion, in our pursuit of the minutiae of Halacha and our Talmudic approach to argument over even the simplest detail of any important issue leaves me with the feeling of bewilderment, that we are so busy looking at individual leaves on individual trees, that we have long since forgotten that there is a forest. OK, that was going off at a tangent now, wasn’t it? Bottom line, when I discovered that our next stop on the tour was Bagan, I was super excited.

Let me say something about some of the airports we flew through in Myanmar. I mean, these were runways with tiny buildings, luggage services that literally walked out to the plane, climbed into the baggage compartment, hauled out the luggage, put it onto a trolley and then walked the trolley to the building, where they put the luggage in a line for you to come and take. Quaint. 

The first thing I wanted to see – and did – was that view over the fields of Bagan with all the Buddhist temples. It was f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c! It was everything I wanted it to be. And that was at midday. I went back again for sunset and it was even more beautiful. Breathtaking! Fabulous! Wonderful! I don’t have enough words to describe my joy at having experienced this. 

                           The next thing I wanted to do was take a walk through those fields, and I did that too. I walked through fields with farmers ploughing – some with water buffalo, some with oxen. I walked into one field to ask the farmer what he was farming. Turns out, Bagan is famous for… Peanuts! Many of the fields in the area are peanut fields. This was sort of old news to me because in my early childhood we had peanut plants in our yard and I remember the distinct taste of fresh, unroasted, peanuts. The farmer invited to to plough with his ox for a while. I’m not good at ploughing. Tried, failed, move on. However, he invited me into his home which was about a fifteen minute walk away. There he introduced me to members of his family who were all sitting around this massive pile of peanut bush cuttings, plucking the shells off the plants, and then opening the shells to take out the peanuts. The piles of peanuts were also huge and were being left out in the sun to dry before being packaged and sent off to the factories for roasting. 

  The following morning, we bussed over to Nyaung-U, the town next to Bagan (which is where the airport is located) to visit the local market. I am well aware that Buddhist monks and nuns take vows of penury, and I have seen in other countries Buddhist monks either standing in a single place or walking about with their alms bowls. Near the market in Nyaung-U I saw for the first time Buddhist nuns doing their morning alms walkabout. They would go from store to store in total silence and storekeepers would provide them whatever they chose to provide. However, over and above their alms bowls, they also carried flat baskets on their heads where they placed some of the items they received.

  Something I noticed soon after we arrived in Myanmar was that many men have red teeth. I asked about this phenomenon and it turns out that this is caused by the betel leaves than Burmese men like to chew. When I was in the market I came across this delicacy (not for me, it wasn’t) available for sale. I asked the storekeeper how much it would cost to buy one leaf. He burst out laughing. Apparently this item sells in handfuls and more. However, he did give me a leaf to try. I did. Didn’t like it at all. And my teeth remained white. The white item I did want to buy, on the other hand, was some of the Chinese-collared pristine white cotton shirts that I saw the men wearing all over. I found some of those and bought two short sleeved and two long sleeved. As a rule, I don’t really like collars at all, but Chinese collars tend to be low and are mostly worn with the top button open. And the cotton is pure and super light. Real comfortable. 

One last thing to do in began was to climb to the top of one of the temples in the late afternoon and wait there for the sunset. I managed to get a horse and buggy taxi to take me through the fields to one of the temples and after reaching the top, I sat there and waited as this overwhelmingly beautiful panorama slowly changed colors and hues, from blazing sunshine to soft golden tones, pale pink to dark violet and into the night. One of my dreams had been fulfilled, and the picture that initially drew me to Myanmar in general and Bagan in particular was no longer just a picture. I had seen in with my own eyes. 

Blessed are You O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive, and vouchsafed us, and brought us to this time. Amen.

Information to come

My flight into the Inle Lake area landed at Heho in central Myanmar, a small landing strip about an hour’s bus ride from Nyaungshwe, a town close to the lake. That’s where we boarded long boats – 6 people per boat while our luggage was boarded onto its own boat – for the trip down the Nyaungshwe canal and into the enormous Inle Lake. The water borne trip took some 45 minutes and we zoomed at top speed through the spray and bumps on the lake to our shoreside hotel. What would you imagine you would not run into when out on a small boat in a massive lake? Traffic. I was dumbfounded by the number of long boats racing back and forth and across this way and that way. All zooming along at top speed, putting out huge plumes of sprayed water over one another, and puffing out diesel smoke, just to add to the definitely not joyous encounter. To say that it was an enjoyable ride might be stretching the truth a little, but it’s one of those things that when it’s done, you write it off to “experience” – and you’re glad you did it. But that was where the less than enjoyable [part of the visit to Inle Lake ended. The lake proved to be a most fascinating place. Here we discovered how people live all their lives on water. Their homes are built on high stilts, to ensure they remain safe even during monsoon when the water level of the lake rises a few meters. Children learn at a very early age how to maneuver their boat into and out of its docking station under their home. It appears that the multiple car garage that many homes have on land is repeated here on the water too. We saw many children heading off to school in the morning by boat with a few kids per boat and no adult accompanying them.