Interviews >> Carmit Levité                                                                         

Carmit Levité

(USA via Israel)

Pg.: 1,2,3,4,5,6

Carmit is Jewish. She is the only person I know who eats Kosher. At parties she screens the foods and picks and chooses the ones that adhere to her faith. “Do you really believe in that stuff?” I asked her once. She answered “Not for biblical reasons, I do it mostly because it reminds me of home.” Sometimes people unknowingly cook with ingredients that are “forbidden” to her. She eats the food. “Friendship”, she says, “is more important than some rules about food.”

These are some of the things that go into the recipe of “home”: habits, ways of eating, beliefs about the world. You could be physically anywhere, but if you ingest or think “home”, you’re closer to it – or you ARE it. Take Carmit, for instance: first South Africa where she lived for the first eight years of her life. Then the entire family moved to Israel. She moved to the United States in her early twenties. So where exactly IS “home”?

We met in a café in Los Angeles, not far away from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. At the time I didn’t really know much about her. We’d met through friends and never actually talked much at parties. I knew that she was an actress, that she kept kosher, and that she laughed a lot. But that was all.

And speaking of laughter… a few minutes after we met, preparing for the interview, I lamented the fact that people get intimidated by recording devices. I do that sometimes to warn my interviewees that the tape recorder is nothing to fuss about, that it’s simply a tool to help me with accuracy. Carmit laughed and took a dramatic pose – and a British accent: “Don’t worry, da’ling, I’m classically trained, I can handle it”.

That put me at ease right away, I laughed, and off we were… to India! At twenty-one Carmit took a backpack and a few books on a trip to the Far East. Surprises… surprises…

1. The smells of the Far East…

Carmit: I smelled it the moment I landed there and I got out of the train. You don’t feel on Earth anymore. And right away people tried to take my money. A man I knew who met me at the station took me through all that. He “cut down the shrubbery for me to get to the castle” (note: yes, we do speak in metaphors…). I got on a bus that took me to the Salvation Army and I just sat there and looked at poverty and wealth, and poverty, and wealth… looking through the bus window was like watching a crazy movie.

The people that I met were the most incredible people I met in my life. The friendships that I made there were the strongest I ever had. Maybe it’s because you go through these things and you go to a frontier, to a place “where no one has gone before” you are going through these scary things. You can get malaria, you can be a victim of kidney theft, you can get kidnapped…

Cristina: Kidney theft??

Carmit: Yes, people put something in your coffee, they offer it to you, you pass out, they open you up, take out a kidney, and you wake up and know nothing about it. You have no idea what happened to you. Some say it's fiction, some swear by it. I didn't take my chances either way. My parents were so against me going to the Far East. Actually I had many “almost death” experiences. I was lucky to go through everything. I can’t explain how lucky I was. I did not die, I got plenty sick but never to my demise, not one penny was stolen from me (other than being ripped of, but I knew it was happening and sort of went along with it). I was either very clever or very lucky. Or a combination of both because I actually did not take chances.

I remember when I got to India I met these friends who got together with fourteen other Israelis. We started traveling south together. I was having fun but I felt there was something wrong. We went to this Goa,  where there are a lot of acid parties and full moon parties. I remember going by myself on the beach – and there were cows on the beach; it’s India, they couldn’t touch them – and I realized suddenly that what was wrong was that I was traveling with Israelis. It was like I never left Israel. Everything was closed around me. I think it’s the mentalities and the language that locks people out. Whether you are Israeli traveling with Israelis or you are French traveling with other French people, or German traveling with Germans and so on and so forth. So I took my bags, they walked me to the bus, and I went north. By myself. I’ll never forget it.

I was going to a place called Puna which is right where the Osho ashram is. I wasn’t going to stay there but pass through on the way to Jaislamer which is like a desert / lake palace. I had my backpack on my lap and clutched it. Everyone put their luggage underneath the bus, but I said to myself “First night in terra incognita, I'll keep my bag with me”. This is my life, nobody touches it. There was a woman sitting in front of me. Nobody was sitting next to her, even though the bus was packed. Comes night-time, she starts pushing her chair back towards me. She had an extra chair next to her. There was a guy sitting next to me and he was very nice, asked me where I’m from. But he didn’t do anything when that woman started pushing her chair back because she wanted to lounge. I had my backpack in between though. She suddenly turned around and started to scream “It’s my seat, I paid for two seats so I could put this down”. She was constantly pushing it back but I didn’t let her. What could I do? I had my bag! At one point she started scratching my face and attacking me. This woman, out of all people! An Indian girl. Nobody did a thing. Finally she gave up. Later I found out that there was a Canadian guy on the bus who also did nothing. She was literally attacking me with her nails, she was scraping my face. I took a picture. I have these bloody little nicks on my face.

Cristina: And nobody said anything?

Carmit: No. But that’s India. It’s hard enough to have their own life. You deal with yourself. That was the first night. But I’m so glad I did that, that I left the Israeli group. I started meeting people.

Cristina: That was very adventurous. Twenty-one years old and you take off like that.

Carmit: When I left for the Far East my father went out of his way to find articles about how dangerous it is. His favorite story was about a woman who came back with some sort of wart on her neck and it grew and grew and grew. One day it popped open and tiny little spiders came out of it.

Cristina: That sounds like one of those stories from the rags about Hillary Clinton being cheated on by Bill with aliens.

Carmit: Yes… my father pushed those stories on me. (laughter)

Read more: page 2

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