Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark was supposed to cause a political-psychological "Saadat-Effect".

In addition it was meant to serve four long term functions:
Healing Man
Healing Water&Environment
Solving Water Issues (digging, distributing, consuming fresh water, treating waste water)
Being a model for a DeadSea Hosting Business


This page is not "sculpted" as all other pages on "Healing-K.i.s.s.", even if the sculptures are torsos and incomplete.
Here I simply and accidentally copy part of the documents written, sometimes sent, in July and August 2003.

Two 1967 photos which always make me cry on behalf of both, the humiliated and the humiliators…

Even the Sea is not exterritorial. The border runs right from the River Jordan through the Sea

A rare map of the Jordan's estuary in the report of "Eco-Peace" about a conference concerning the "Dying Dead Sea" in Oct. 2002

One morning the world will wake up to an amazing sight:
A triangular pyramid (tetraeder) of steel pipes and glass floors,
mounted on a triangular raft,
will rise up three storeys, about 12 meters high into the sky,
anchored in the ground, but floating on the water,

The upper floors, equipped with sophisticated tents, will be open to the air.
Sunk into the bottom of the ark will be a pool of glass,
nourished by flowing, purified Jordan water and round,
thus uniting the "male" human-made tetraeder structure,
with the "female" nature-made water flow.

July 20, 2003- To Dr. Sari Nusseibeh salaam and shalom

This is amazing!
As activists for a Palestinian State already before the '67 war,
my husband and I visited your father Anwar Nusseibeh some months after the '73 war in your home.
And now I learn - from Nimr Ismair, my main Arab partner in "Partnership" (1974-1980) -
that you came out with your present initiative 4 days after I had launched my own new "project",
and one day after I had found an expert to help me realize the technical part of my project,
who said:
"I don't believe in your aim!
I belong to the right!
But I'll develop your idea together with you."

Since my project has to do with water, both salty and sweet,
it's also amazing, that Ami Ayalon is connected to water in past and present.
But it's you, with whom I need to check,
if our "projects" could compliment each other.

Please let me know,
if and how you want me to convey to you my purpose and process,
if by mail or face to face.
If by mail - discretion should be guaranteed.

I would like to be known to you with my middle name

"Maryam".

In the center a winding staircase of glass or an elevator will link the sea with the sky.

The equipment of the ark will be both:
reminiscent of the origin of Abraham's sons:
tents - to symbolize and practice hospitality in the desert,
pyramidal tents, the optimal result of 6 years R&D in the desert ,
see:
http://www.empower.co.il/healingkiss/appendices/DesertVision/RedSeaPartnerShip-stage2-TENT-structures.htm
and post-modern, i.e. truly environment-compatible installations,
concerning energy production and management,
and the newest technologies of communication.

The access from the sea will be by small boats from both shores.
For later I have better ideas.

In writing I'll not mention my fantasy about the one-time "performance",
the "breakthrough on the emotional level",
but I'll point out some of its long-term functions and wide-spread impacts.

This model was made for me by a glass company in Israel without any charge.
I photographed it on my veranda at Modi'in next to the "Love-Flag" of my grandson Arnon.
Since the tetrahedron is not exact, I also insert a photo of my own, more primitive, but exact model:

My own model of Noah's Ark, before it was converted into glass and steel by professionals

2003_07_25 To Shelley O...
Shelley!
At the Water-Night in Ohaloh I saw a woman who looked very much like you, also called Shelley.
Later we all delighted in her belly dance.

Thank you for telling Victor Barr about the Water-Night.
You both made it possible for me to take part.
Water is my World.


I'm scared to come forward with my quest,
since I had no chance to feel or know you.
Please take me with a sense of humour.

I've been in hiding for more than 3 years, from November 1, 1999, till July 4, 2003,
tending only my 3 children, 3 children-in-love and 9 grandchildren and my website
http://www.empower.co.il/healingkiss/ (please, scroll down to "A Time to Harvest"),
and now that I've started my new exodus to a new assignment in the exterior world,
I am like a turtle, which leaves its house: a drop of dew will hurt or scare it.
The turtle (not Maryam's Mind) interprets any non-response as:
"Let go! This isn't the right avenue either! Just an illusion."

I approach you because of your connection to Nusseibeh's wife.
Did I understand correctly,
that she - originally British - organizes (?) alternative education for Palestinians,
which should result also in an alternative approach to "resolving THE conflict"?
[Now, on December 7, 2011, I discovered a video with Lucy Nusseibeh's appearance in 2010, in TED-ideas worth spreading]
This is interesting in itself.
I'm originally German and I believe,
our kind has a role to play,
since we were not hurt neither as Jews nor as Palestinians.
But there is more to this "coincidence",

A week earlier I was given the ad of the "mifkad leumi" by Nimr Ismair, PH.D.
He was my main Arab partner in my "Partnership" Work in the Seventies.

I felt touched!
Not so much by the content of the "Agreement",
as by the coming forward of two individuals in full stature
Ami Ayalon [see an impressive article, which I found in Dec. 2011, yet no date is mentioned]
and Sari Nusseibeh     [in Dec. 2011 I discovered, that he has a website of his own]
(even physically on the ad in "ha-aretz")
and by their basic approach of
- replacing victimhood with self-determination
- and replacing fighting the governments with "helping" them.
I'm in contact with only a few people
and to those I forwarded the mifkad's website. http://www.mifkad.org.il

The Water-Night started with a panel of representatives of the 3 religions about water in the 3 holy books.
The panel was facilitated by Robin Twite, O.B.E.
Director of the IPCRI Environment Program in the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.
He works specifically on the water issue.

Robin said:
"It is by jointly working on the environment,
an enormous challenge,
which is not only national, but planetary,
that these two nations will achieve peace."

or in my own words:
"that these two nations
will convert a negative dependency into a positive dependency,
i.e. a partnership,
based on the three conditions:
common interest,
mutual trust
and
EQUALITY of SELF-RESPECT."

I wrote an e-mail to Nusseibeh on July 20 and got no answer.
As you can guess, my project has to do with water.
More details can be given once mutual trust will be created.

I wonder, if you feel "a calling" , Shelley,
to mediate or even to cooperate.
Maryam

To the Palestinian cutting edge
[edited graphically on December 7, 2011: It seems that never anyone has read what in my eyes is still a most exact and relevant appeal]

A Satellite photo which covers the 80 km strip of the River Jordan between the Lake of Tiberias and the Dead Sea Dear Lucy Nusseibeh, In the following letters I'll finally outline "the Plan". I differentiate between my vision of "Noah's Ark", a physical structure as the focus of both a sudden happening and a following multiple work process, and my vision of Palestine becoming the planet's first "National Learning Society". or PLO – Palestinian Learning Organization or PLLO – Palestinian Liberation Learning Organization, meaning, that the Palestinians will learn as a nation to liberate themselves. It is impossible to convey the two visions in a linear way. They must constantly complement each other and interact with each other, and the timing for the effective appearance of "Noah's Ark" depends on this .

Noah's Ark (in Arabic: fulk-Nukh): What I envision there, will be an emotional breakthrough concerning PSR and PSD (=Palestinian Self Respect and Palestinian Self Determination). caused by a theatrical "performance" by the Palestinian Leadership: I'll use "performance" as a code for my idea, so as not to give away, what needs to be top secret. But I'll describe the physical structure, the topographic location and the long-term functions of Noah's Ark. There is a unique spot on earth, nowhere else to be found: the spot where the flowing fresh water of the most famous river The only image of the River Jordan I found on the Internet in 2003   merges with the saltiest sea on the lowest level on earth. This spot, where the Jordan marries the Dead Sea, is also the border between Jordan and future Palestine. Isn't this spot destined for a quantum-leap in human evolution?     Since access is not allowed by the armies of Israel and Jordan, I tried to get an idea of the topography with the help of satellite photos, maps and my own photos from the closest accessible spot: the beach of Kalia.

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Science/Copernicus.htm In 1530, Copernicus completed and gave to the world his great work De Revolutionibus, which asserted that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly: a fantastic concept for the times. Copernicus was in no hurry to publish his theory, though parts of his work were circulated among a few of the astronomers that were giving the matter some thought; indeed, Copernicus' work might not have ever reached the printing press if it had not been for a young man who sought out the master in 1539. George Rheticus was a 25 year old German mathematics professor who was attracted to the 66 year old cleric, having read one of his papers. Intending to spend a few weeks with Copernicus, Rheticus ended up staying as a house guest for two years, so fascinated was he with Copernicus and his theories. Now, up to this time, Copernicus was reluctant to publish, -- not so much that he was concerned with what the church might say about his novel theory (De Revolutionibus was placed on the Index in 1616 and only removed in 1835), but rather because he was a perfectionist and he never thought, even after working on it for thirty years, that his complete work was ready, -- there were, as far as Copernicus was concerned, observations to.... Copernicus died in 1543 and was never to know what a stir his work had caused. …Two other Italian scientists of the time, Galileo and Bruno, embraced the Copernican theory unreservedly and as a result suffered much personal injury at the hands of the powerful church inquisitors. Giordano Bruno had the audacity to even go beyond Copernicus, and, dared to suggest, that space was boundless and that the sun was and its planets were but one of any number of similar systems: Why! -- there even might be other inhabited worlds with rational beings equal or possibly superior to ourselves. For such blasphemy, Bruno was tried before the Inquisition, condemned and burned at the stake in 1600. Galileo was brought forward in 1633, and, there, in front of his "betters," he was, under the threat of torture and death, forced to his knees to renounce all belief in Copernican theories, and was thereafter sentenced to imprisonment for the remainder of his days. The most important aspect of Copernicus' work is that it forever changed the place of man in the cosmos; no longer could man legitimately think his significance greater than his fellow creatures; with Copernicus' work, man could now take his place among that which exists all about him, and not of necessity take that premier position which had been assigned immodestly to him by the theologians. "Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus…." [Goethe.]

The circle around the Israeli army shack indicates the border at the estuary of the Jordan

Noah's Ark will serve 3 purposes:

1) The ark will be a situation for healing and learning

It will host 6 guests week after week:
war-and terror stricken people from all quarters.
[There will be access also to people in wheelchairs.]

In a one-week training each carefully composed group
will experience a glimpse of the possibility of healing,
and get tools for body, mind and soul to follow this glimpse.
This will be partly the effect of the Dead Sea
with its specific qualities in water, air, sun, earth,
partly the effect of living in the tent tetraeders
embedded in the overall ark tetraeder,
- the tetraeder is the most harmonious and balanced geometrical space,
since it's the same length from one edge to the other, without tension.
and partly the result of how I and my trainees shall work with the people.
[Hosting in the desert and healing myself and others
are the capacities which I myself want to put to use,
until I’ll have trained other potential hosts/healers.]

2) Noah's Ark will serve as an R&D model for a new kind of hosting business,
which will be both:
- compatible with the extremely vulnerable environment of this spot on earth (see later),

- responding to the market demand
of a discriminated 2-5% minority of potential tourists,
whose recreational needs include the following three elements:

* SPS (Space, Purity & Silence as opposed to Crowdedness, Pollution and Noise in the City)
which on this planet is still provided for instance by the Desert and the Desert Sea,
* different subjects and directions of healing or learning,
* personal hospitality in an individualized group.

Though the first "Noah's Ark" will be also a model in "post-modern economy",
in order to maintain itself financially (I won't explain this now)
other applications of such a tourist enterprise on the water or on the shore of Sea and River
can work partly according to present capitalist business principles.
"Partly" - because general principles for the area will have to be followed:

I'll just hint at an overall Desert-Economy concept,
which I've worked out in the past for both,
a Western (Israel) and a Third World (Sinai) socio-economic setting.
http://www.empower.co.il/healingkiss/appendices/appendices%20List&Links.htm#desert

http://www.empower.co.il/healingkiss/appendices/DesertVision/Sinai.htm

This concept combines the advantages of small scale and large scale economy:

When thinking of "Noah's Ark" on that particular spot,
where the Jordan merges with the Dead Sea,
I visualize the about 130 km long strip

along the western shore of the Sea ,
from the Israel-Palestine border north of Ein-Gedi Fieldschool up to the estuary of the Jordan,
and the same strip on the eastern, Jordanian shore,

then along the Jordan
(which in its first part will serve as
– national but green – border between Palestine and Jordan,
then as
- national but green border between Israel and Jordan),
up to the Lake of Tiberias and the
- national but green border between Israel and Syria.

I envision a partnership (!!!) of numerous independent 3hosts/12guests hosting enterprises,
each one unique in appearance and aimed at a specific tourist target group,
which would be situated for instance - in a certain distance - along two "pilgrim-pathes"
(another project - to be carried out by "peace-volunteers", one along each shore of the Jordan).

Noah's Ark will thus symbolize and indicate,
that tourism [which I see as one of the main branches of Palestinian Westbank Economy],
will utilize the "Comparative Advantage" of the Pal. segment of the Syrian-African rift,
which has qualities, both in its nature and in its "holiness", nowhere to be found on earth.

3) Noah's Ark will function as "Water Monitor".

Since the pool will be nourished by a simple garden hose from the Jordan,
the hosts, guests and carefully screened visitors (scientists, politicians etc),
will have a direct interest in "healing" the water of the holy river,
which is usually reduced to a quarter of its former flow, and badly polluted.

Noah's Ark will also be the natural meeting place of the Work-Force,
which will have to work out one of the core-issues of The Conflict:
the distribution and management of Fresh Water Resources.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My vision of Palestine becoming the planet's first "NSOL",
i.e. "National Society of Organizational Learning".

Following my analysis of lacking PSR as the reason for lacking PSD,
as the reason for the failure of all peace efforts so far,
and the main reason for the "terrorists" activity,
it is obvious,
that Israel's present demand of
"If you don't dismantle the militants' infrastructure, we will go on with ...."
signifies a level of non-understanding,
which cannot even be justified by Israel's emotional trauma of annihilation.
Of course, Mr. Bush and the rest of the terror panicked world
have not even made an attempt to analyze the motivation of the "terrorists",
leave alone suggested a solution.
(I'm aware, that I've allowed my rage to flood me for a moment.)

Lack of self-acceptance, lack of self-esteem, lack of self-determination
and lack of meaning in one's work in particular and in one's life in general,
are common to all human beings on this present earth.
Maybe in our region this universal predicament has hit Hell in a way,
that exactly here the quantum-leap is meant to "happen".
The quantum-leap towards human capacity
for self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-determination
in creating meaningful work and a meaningful life.

It's here were the concept of "life-long-learning",
of "organizational learning", or of "a Society of Learning"
has to be intentionally put to use.
I am amazed to see all the skills and models,
which have been developed for instance by "Tavistock" and "SOL",
in order to bring about such change,
and on what gigantic scales.

My scenario at 4 P.M. today, Tish'a be-Av ,
which commemorates 3 major destructions of the Jewish Nation
and - at the same time - reminds of the metaphor of "The Birth of the Messiah" -
looks like this:

After a concrete program with concrete first target-groups.
(government and its institutions, ALL the militant groups, prisoners in Israel's jails, etc.)
and all the logistics, timetable etc
will have been worked out (a process in which I want to take a very active role)
a prestigious group of prestigious professionals in OL (Organizational Learning)
will win over a group of international decision-makers (the Quartet, the Europeans, the UNO etc.).
The stated purpose:
"We, the Palestinians, will be the first nation to train ourselves in true and consistent self-determination,
thus inaugurating our soon-to-be-declared State of Palestine and guaranteeing its functioning."
The international decision-makers will recruit the financial means
and then apply a professional plan for winning over the Pal. decision-makers,
not by way of negotiations, but by way of getting them to experience one day of training,
either as individuals, or as small, parallel groups According to their positions
(see, what I said in "Cain and Abel" about my experience in a family in Tira
i.e. the danger of the interior Palestinian hack-order.
This has to be meticulously taken into Account).

The program itself needs to include the following elements (among many more obvious):

- Participating in a training course has to be presented as a matter of enormous prestige.

- Each course will center around a specific project to be implemented at the end of the course
(technology, economy, education,
and on the highest level, of course, self-determined solutions for the "core-issues")

- The militants, who are outside learning and labor settings anyway,
should be organized around the most prestigious project,
the tetraeder raft or Noah’s ark.
Many diverse low-tech and high-tech skills are needed
to put together such a simple and at the same time sophisticated structure
which must function on an almost unknown sea,
and which will become a model for a futuristic tourist economy.
The long term effect of the acquisition of such skills on the part of the militants is obvious,
and so is its impact on the socio-economic infrastructure of a State seeking independence.

- Each participant on the lower levels will get paid,
like a valuable employee gets paid by the employer in order to improve his/her skills.

- The coaches should create not only a learning experience,
but give specific tools, with which the trainees can work right away in their families .

(In 1978-9 the organization I had founded, "Partnership" ,
conducted 3 times a kind of a 3 day "mobile workshop",
moving with a mixed group of twenty from an Arab village to a Kibbutz to a Moshav.
I remember an especially moving sentence of a teacher in Jaljulya:
"Only now do I become aware, how much I am oppressing my wife.
I must apply, what I experienced, first of all in my relationship with her."
And another Arab, a young man:
"In our society a young boy is absolutely nothing,
he is not allowed to open his mouth in front of grownups,
in short, a boy is made to believe, that he is worth a shit.")

- The coaches will pay attention to potential trainers among their trainees,
and aim to coach those as sub-trainers from the start.

The trainers or coaches will be the most experienced in the world.
They'll change their timetables to be available for a national/international learning campaign.
They'll get paid as they deserve, and their travel expenses will be covered,
BUT they agree to live in the families of their trainees, however terrible the conditions will be,
and pay a reasonable sum for lodging and food from their salaries.

The campaign will be limited in time, but within the limit of, let's say, a year,
ever more organized groups can become Learning Organizations.
As to the highest level:
there the goal must be,
to lead as fast as possible and as secretly as possible,
towards “the performance”, focused on and around Noah’s Ark,
that will cause the breakthrough on the emotional level...

My scenario includes more incredible things:
the peace-process would be freezed,
"until we, the Palestinians, will be ready to take our destiny into our own hands.”
ONly the daily pressure of limited movement etc. and "the Wall" !!!
have to be taken off the Palestinians,
but not via their own demanding and negotiating,
which constantly reenacts humiliation,
but by the US etc.
This vacuum will take much wind out of the sails of Israel,
make them extremely suspicious, but their hands will be tied.
And softening can start...

This nationwide campaign has to happen as fast as, for example,
the decisions of the cabinet on the Day of Atonement 1973,
when Israel's government as well as its army were surprised by war...
Every single day, that passes without the Copernican revolution,
costs more lives, and, what is worse in MY eyes,
reenacts more of the patterns of victimhood, self-hatred, emptiness of meaning.
Just imagine a day of curfew in a house of two rooms with a family of ten:
what interactions would be going on in any society,
but particularly in a society, where oppression is acted out on labourers,
who then act it out on women and children.
With such imprints, reenacted daily, - how can PSR and PSD ever appear?
And if not, how will terror stop?
And if terror will not stop,
what will happen on the Israeli side, where people believe that they-they are the victims?

(Addition in my letter to Shelley Ostroff, one of the three "poles" of the human "pyramid",
which I envisioned as mediating the Noah's Ark project),
I feel ashamed to present something so incomplete.
But then shame is what signifies us humans
(Nietzsche: Man is the animal with the red cheeks.
Adam in Hebrew is the same root as "adom".
"Shame" is the first and only feeling, conceptualized in the Bible, right after Man/Woman were created...)
And what’s more important:
- because it’s so incomplete,
it calls for the completion by the triangle pyramid “on the ground”.

Maryam

An earlier letter, not sent, shows my efforts to communicate...
The Vision of the Ark

To both of you, Abu (Arafat) and Abu Mazen

Imagine the Northern End of the Dead Sea – the lowest spot on earth.
The water with 10 times as much salt as in the ocean seems to be dead,
and the "earth" which borders it,
is a dreary, ugly, dead wasteland:
the Sea recedes with frightening speed and leaves behind desolation,
sown with deadly mines and pierced with a chaos of barbed wire
by the armies of Israel and Jordan, nations officially at peace.
Nobody can approach or even photograph the spot,
where the famous river Jordan joins the famous Dead Sea.
Moreover, the once living holy waters
have turned into a stinking dribble.

It's at the bottom of hell,
where I suggest to dig up a well.

The mines and barbed wires have protected that spot on earth,
so no one could ruin it with another chain of overdeveloped hotels.

There will be tourism, yes, but in tune with the DeadSea .
It will thrive on the Dead Sea's comparative advantage,
an advantage not shared by any other place on earth .

There are 2-5% of potential tourists, who yearn for this,
for the uniqueness of this spot on Earth,
for the Space-Purity-Silence of the Desert and the Desert-Sea
for the healing qualities of this Sea's water, air, light and mud,
for a program of learning or healing,
and for personal hospitality.

The land around the Sea belongs to a few people.
The Water belongs to all.

Imagine, the world gets up one morning
and is confronted with an extraordinary phenomenon floating on that spot
where the running-down sweet water ("Jordan=going-down) meets the salty sea:

A triangular pyramid rises twelve meters high into the air ,
its 3 poles and bottom are of steel,
its 3 floors and the wall around the lowest are of glass,
and so is the round pool sunk into the bottom,
a pool with purified flowing Jordan water.

On the highest floor 3 pyramidal tents will host 6 guests,
war-victims from both sides, handicapped in body or soul.
The middle floor too contains 3 such tents, but has space for more housing structures,
for the two hosts, for the kitchen and for the computer equipped class"room".
In the middle of all 3 floors a winding stair will join them into one.
The two upper floors will be open to the air, with only a rail for security,
the bottom floor, which has the function to balance the ark on the water,
will be surrounded by glass, partly fixed, partly movable.

The shape of the anchored floating ark
will allow the heavy waves to soften before they hit the walls.
Both, structure and equipment will demonstrate the most modern technology
in green energy production and consumption
and in communication.
The housing will be reminiscent of our common tradition:
Abraham in the desert, receiving men and angels in a tent.

"It is by jointly working on the environment,
an enormous challenge,
which is not only national, but planetary,
that these two nations will achieve peace."

or in my own words:
"that these two nations
will convert a negative dependency into a positive dependency, i.e. a partnership,
based on the three conditions:
common interest,
mutual trust
and
EQUALITY of SELF-RESPECT."

There will be 4 long term functions or 4 levels of purpose to the ark,
and one one-time political effect, a "Karate-move".
The economic, scientific, psychological, political functions:
1) The ark is a situation for healing
the lowest:
the healing
of human pain and shame, fear and frustration, powerlessness and victimhood
and the healing of the Jordan water.
The middle floor which can receive 4 visitors, in addition to the 6 guests and 2 hosts,
or 10 visitors, if no guests should be there,
symbolizes the political work that has to be done
with concern to all I-P issues,
but mainly the management of water resources.
It could be the neutral meeting place of all negotiators.

The integration of our tent heritage with the most modern technology ,
to make living on water, moreover, on the DeadSea water possible.

A model for ecological tourism development,
the Sea with its blessings contained
in air, water, earth (mud) and fire (the sun less skin-burning),
the combination of sweet, flowing water with salty sea waves.

The big challenge which will dwarf the gap in self-esteem:
cooperation in meeting challenges which are those of humankind.

The Pal. Will be the cutting edge, the leaders,
you will act, not react, you'll show the way not only for two conflicting nations.
You'll take the role of monitoring the environment.

A boost for PSR: a Karate- move : to throw the adversary, both the interior and the exterior out of balance.

Process:
Utmost discretion, so that neither Israel,
nor the World nor even the Palestinian people themselves
will know anything , for the surprise to have its effect!

Just like the militants work as a team in total secrecy,
so all the research, planning, carrying out of the building of the ark
has to happen in secret team-work

I suggest, that it be the Palestinian technicians in the IPCRI

The money will come from Itamar or another private donor.

The economy on the ark will be new too:
the guests will take part in household chores,
hosting visitors and each other,
healing, supporting each other, teaching each other, operating the ark ,
they will participate in the expenses and return of loan, day by day.
This is part of their healing work and make the ark function
without the charge of money the use of which is unknown to the payer.

The healing "methods": Water, Sound, RC, Paula, Self-Determination theory

The "bomb":
only the army commanders on both sides have to be won over
to strike an act of "wall and tower" in one night,
it must be conducted like Sadat's attack on Israel in 1973:
not a single leakage to the Intelligence,
Then with sunrise You call from the Arc,
you invite the governments to an encounter,
which will include a healing swim.