Passover and Pasta

On Sunday I ventured to Palermo for the YOK Passover festival. I had literally no idea what to expect and had only a vague idea of where I was going, but I figured it would be interesting no matter what it was.  I walked down to 9 de Julio to cross it and get the 39 on Salta (I swear, each street here is like a new world) and saw the beginning of the manifestación for the anniversary of the dictatorship. The streets were clogged with buses that had come in from outside the city and more of them kept arriving literally by the minute. Huge crowds of people in various sets of matching t shirts poured out of them - young, old, babies, everyone. It was cool to see the groups setting up, hoisting up the huge signs and putting their drums on. I met a backpacker from Brazil who was really confused but in the right place at the right time! I never made it to Plaza de Mayo as I intended to see the actual culmination of this, but a friend from the res hall did and said it was incredible. Thousands of people, thousands of signs, everyone yelling "nunca mas" and tons and tons of photos of the desaparecidos. Check out these  links for more very basic introductory information of the significance of this day in Argentine history.

In Palermo, I walked down Armenia until I got to Costa Rica and saw the festival. It took up around 2.5 blocks. It's kind of hard to explain what was going on but it took me a while to comprehend what I was seeing, mainly because I can't really imagine seeing anything like this back at home IN THE STREET and not in a community center or school. In addition to having a DJ playing spanish and israeli music, there were vendors selling pesach foods, israeli food, jewish products (like sedar plates and kedem grape juice and pillows that said "laila tov"). The main part of the festival was that the entire thing was structured like a sedar. It was based off the idea of "puertas abiertas" - open doors. On Passover, you are supposed to celebrate your freedom by opening your doors and having discussions because you can and are obligated to by your freedom. So this festival (and the organization) is dedicated to creating a "modern judaism" by way of open doors - open conversation. So, there were stations for each part of the sedar ceremonies and little activities for each one. They ranged from silly (at the matzah station you could draw on matzah for some reason) to reflective (at the "plagas" station, there was a globe set up and styrofoam spheres on sticks. you were supposed to think of a modern day plague, write it on the stick and stick it on the globe) to really cool - at the final station when the main conversation and door opening is supposed to take place, there was a series of speakers. I sat in on Rabbi Guido Cohen (what a clash of Argentine immigrants, eh? Italian and Jewish) and Anthropologist Alejandro Grimson.  Cohen spoke a lot on Argentine Jewish identity and how the Jewish historical experience informs how the community can relate to and empathize with the Argentine historical trauma. He also spoke on how significant it was that the celebration fell on the same day as the Día de la Memoría and how it was a time for reflection, etc, etc. Grimson spoke less about jewish identity and more on Argentine identity in particular, a subject he recently published a book on. He spoke pretty bluntly about the lack of Indigenous and Black people in Argentina ("porque todo fue mataron") but how people are quick to blame social ills on those populations. It is important to note that of course there are indigenous populations in Argentina, but they are much less visible in Buenos Aires than in most other Latin American capitols. As for the Afro-Latin population here, it is quite small and, to my knowledge, mainly comprised of afro-uruguyuans. He also spoke about Argentina's latina identity with a Euro population and how people want to be European because it is idealized. It was pretty fascinating and the audiences reaction (laughing in recognition) was also pretty interesting.
The best part of this festival was how many people were there. TONS! It was crazy! I tried to talk to one of the young girls working for the organization about what other work the organization does but she didn't understand me...It seems to do some cool work for Channukah and Rosh Hashanah though. There were families, tourists, young kids, a group of teenagers playing guitar to raise money for their trip to Israel, etc.
After that, I walked around Palermo for a bit and took photos. The neighborhood is beautiful with tons of the world's cutest restaurants, many with totally open fronts, terraces and roofs. Of course I got lost on my way home to San Telmo butttt let's not talk about that.

Continuing my trend of finding myself in strange and awesome situations:
Last night on my way home from school I got a text from Gonzalo saying "estoy en un reunion, salgo y nos vemos!" so I met him at his friends restaurant a few blocks from the dorms. Unfortunately it was the end of the day and I was exhuasted with a ton of all spanish reading (a novel and articles on contemporary art theory...) ahead of me so I felt kind of brain dead and could barely speak or understand spanish but everyone was nice to me. His friend gave us coffee, wine and homemade alfajores and then invited me to dinner with them! I was saying how I had to go home cause I have a meal plan and homework and they were like well, we're closing the restaurant and having dinner just us, so stay anyway. I mean, when in Rome, right? So they closed the restaurant and turned up the music and his friend started cooking and a few more people came and we had dinner! His friend Nick (is that a nickname or a real name, who knows) cooked us pasta - with cheese sauce and basil for me the vegetarian and chicken and broccoli for everyone else. I wish I could have held up a conversation better but I did teach them the word for "eggplant" which was funny because it's such an ugly word. I mean, yeah I ate pasta on the first night of Passover, but I also went to a freaking jew festival so I think I can get off the hook.