Tales from the wandering Jewess

There and back again, the tale of a wandering Jewess

2011-05-16T18:20:00.002+03:00

I currently find myself in somewhat familiar territory--sitting and waiting for my flight in Suvarhnabhumi airport in Bangkok, Thailand. This is the fifth time I am doing this in the past three and a half months and my tenth overall time in this airport. I think I know it better than ewr now. Only this time feels very different, and perhaps the most foreign of m experiences in southeast Asia, which is a very high standard. And no, it is not just because this time I am waiting in the royal silk lounge whereas in the past I have been scrounging for bench while being sat on by oblivious Chinese people who seem to either not notice or not care that I am already in a seat ( it's not bein judgemental, just honest. Ask Lucy.). In about about an hour I will be boarding a plane that will take me west to Frankfurt, Germany and then further west on to new York, completing my around the world experience that started flying west out of NY to china. There are many things that have happened since my last post, and I do not have the energy in this moment to draft them together. I am in a different sort of mindset than I have often been when leaving a place I had come to consider a sort of home. It's true that many aspects of Bangkok, thailand, and Asia as a whole remained to this last moment utterly incomprehensible to me, unclear, bizarre and irrational. But my time here, so completely removed from most everything that could be considered familiar to me for 90% of the time enabled the time and the place to really in many ways take a different sort of hold over me and my mindset, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Who can say if ive been changed for the bett, but, I have been changed for good.

things i have learned, the 4:30pm addition

2011-04-14T12:29:00.002+03:00

1. dragon fruit is yummy, kinda like a kiwi but way more fun.
2. auntie anne's pretzels are addictive. must...have...another...
3. when lots of things are coming up and lots of things need to be done first, time moves fast. and its hardest to get out of bed early.
4. little bananas in a bunch kinda look like an animal..in a cute way.
5. telephones ring whenever you leave them too far away to answer in time.

three days to Cambodia

2011-04-14T12:09:00.001+03:00

The weekend following the earthquake, the time had come again for me to sojourn from Bangkok and Thailand. This trip would go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. When I went to Saigon, Vietnam, I chose the location largely on a whim, inspired mainly by the cheap ticket price and convenient flight times. The trip to Phnom Penh, however, had been decided on several months ago, since it would have a higher purpose than merely to go see the place.
Jewish Help Hands, an organization run by Rabbi Joel Soffin (my rabbi growing up, he was even my legal guardian for a week on a trip to Ukraine in 2000), has become involved with a village near to Phnom Penh, helping to support a large group of orphans, the local school, and the development of a clinic with an especially inspiring man, Arun Sothea. The next trip of JHH to the site is not scheduled until next fall, but Soffin thought it likely he would go out to see the status of things between his last trip and the next. At lunch last January, however, I told him about my plans of being in Thailand, and the simple solution of sending me as a shalicha for him was devised.
For the first time in Bangkok, I took public transportation to the airport—I had managed my luggage on the motorbike taxi, so I figured the metro trains would be doable. Pretty reliable, happy to report.
Got to the airport and made my way through customs etc, easily enough, making a friend at the security checkpoint, when he forgot his wallet and belt at the scanner.
Eating a ‘pizza company’ personal pan pizza in the time before the flight, I soon found myself on the Airasia plane. With a team of ‘rugby players’. By ‘rugby players,’ I mean 35-50 year old anglo expats, mainly british it seemed, who play in a rugby league in southeast asia. And by play in a rugby league, I mean play a bit of the sport, and take weekends away to get drunk. And where their uniforms, so you always can tell that the idiots travel in packs . lol
I arrived to the city around 5pm, disembarked, paid for my visa, collected my luggage and went out to find my transportation waiting for me. It was the first time at an airport I’d had a driver waiting with a sign with my name—granted, he was from the hotel, but still. A little swanky.

All two of us (the driver and me) loaded into the van for the 10 kilometer drive to the hotel from the airport. After clearing the streets for emergency vehicles and maneuvering through traffic jams that make Bangkok roads look calm and organized, two hours later we arrived to the Goldiana. 5 kilometers an hour. I can definitely walk faster than that. But I wouldn’t have known where I was going. So after all that, on arrival to the hotel, I checked in, had a quick dinner with green fanta in the hotel restaurant (actually very good!) and went to bed. There was cable, so I watched some strange but amusing French musical movie.
DAY 2

I had very nice plans to wake up early and start exploring Phnom Penh from just after sunrise, just like Fodor’s suggests. It was a very nice plan, but sleeping in, it turned out, was a nicer one. Despite a 4am phone call from my mother, I managed to wake up around 8 enough to go downstairs and have breakfast and take my malarone. Then I went back upstairs to lie down again until around 11. Encino Man was on, and I have a thing for Brendan Fraser.
I left the hotel and hopped onto one of the waiting motorbikes. He asked me what places I was interested in seeing; for the day, my plan was the Tuol Sleng Prison Museum, a former school turned into a torture center and prison by the Pol Pot clique, followed by a trip to the Killing Fields, a final destination for many who passed through Tuol Sleng. My moto-taxi driver and I agreed on a fare to hire him for the better part of the day for both these outings.
Tragic Pasts
Arriving at Tuol Sleng, the museum had every feeling and inclination of the total loss of humanity and dignity required for such a place to come into existence. Similar to Dachau, the organization and systematic approach to the whole thing is at the same time incredible and sickening. The museum allows visitors today to see the places that all levels of individuals were brought to, read their stories, and see into the lives and current criminal trials of the individuals who enabled this regime to operate. The irony of the way that the use of a school can be perverted—that classrooms that had been established in a set way to enable cooperative learning, private instruction, etc. are inclined to support isolation, confusion, and depravity.
The 15 kilometer drive out of the city on the back of the moto to the Killing Fields was a mixed experience (and not entirely comfortable, as I think the bike seat and I are the same age). Driving the same route to a vastly different purpose than those whose memory I was exploring, I arrived to the field with the slight apprehension you feel whenever visiting a cemetery, that mixed emotion of selflessness and arrogance. The field itself was relatively raw. The shallow mass graves were no more than 4 feet at the deepest, 7 at the widest, and frequently next to each other, like giant footprints. Occasionally on the ground were scraps of clothing—I overheard a guide tell some other tourists that the scraps were there since the field had been ‘in use’, although with the natural weather patterns of the area, I don’t know if I believe that pieces of cotton cloth would have survived 30+years. In the center of the property was a spire and shrine, containing bones that had been uncovered from the mass graves. Throughout the area, chickens and roosters and chicks poked around. Even in the wake o f tragedy, life goes on?
It was getting a bit later in the day by this point, especially since everything in Phnom Penh seems to close at 5. As I was leaving the grounds, my cell phone rang—work. Even on a day off, in Cambodia—what powers of technology.
Upon leaving the Field, I found my moto-driver, and we embarked to return to the city. This time, because of the relative slow speed we were driving at, I was brave enough to be taking pictures from the back of the bike, up to the point where he suggested I put away the camera, as we were entering in to a more trafficky area, and people are known to steal bags and things from especially tourists on motorbikes. Instead of going back to the hotel, I asked him to bring me to the National Museum.
No Need to Visit Temples
For the most part, in Cambodia many of the older temples, ruins, etc. are not something you need to visit, as all the Buddhas, etc have been removed to the National Museum. The Museum itself is set up lie a beautiful pagoda with a courtyard complete with lotus ponds and koi fish. At the first room to the museum was a lovely installation about traditional Cambodian dance, and after that it largely all gave way to buddhas. It didn’t take long to full explore the exhibition, since really many Buddhas are not so different from each other. The entire area, however was lovely. By around 4:30, having finished seeing the pieces, I bought a water and sat in the courtyard.
Making a friend
This is when I met Wen. She was sitting at the same corner of the patio as me, drinking a coke. Or maybe a pepsi. Anyway. We started to chat. She was born in China, from Florida/New York. Having quit her job last year, she decided to backpack southeast asia for a while before going back to the real world. She was on month 7, of a probable 11.
The museum closed at 5, and she and I decided it would be fun to take a sunset boat ride on the Mekong. We finally found a boat that would not be a private boat (two relative strangers, better to find more strangers), boat some beer (her) and coke (me) (the soda), and boarded with the 4 others who would be joining the trip. Not quite sure how six people at $6 a head can make it profitable to operate such a large boat, but all the same, it was a nice ride, and the opposite banks of the river could not be more different from each other. On one side, a relative metropolis with tall buildings and construction, full of lights as the sun sets. On the other, clusters of huts and long fishing boats tide to posts in the grass.
The boat dock was near to the night market, which Wen and I perused—cute, but nothing to Bangok’s markets. Maybe100 vendors were here.
As it was nearly 9:30 by now, we thought we might get some dinner, and so we wandered over to the nearby, waterfront FCC (foreign correspondents club.) Its not really functioning as one anymore, but it was very neat all the same. And really good food and cocktails. And lots of lizards crawling all over the place. After dinner by the water, and then lounging in overstuffed leather chairs chatting for a while, we decided to call it a night around 11, since the next day I was getting picked up by Arun at 7am. We walked to Independence monument, agreed to meet the next night to see a traditional dance show that was in my guide book, and went to our respective ‘homes’.

Arun, and the village.
Arun, an orphan of the Khmer Rouge with incredible personal drive and strength, and another volunteer picked me up the next morning shortly after 7am. Early. The village would be about an hour and a half’s drive, on the other side of the river (requiring a ferry ride). To see how rapidly the landscapes changed around me, from city to developing to truly east asian rural, with dirt roads, footpaths, rice fields, you name it. Arun showed me how far inland the river would rise during the wet season, almost unbelievable. Things are on stilts for a reason. We arrived first to the clinic. A very modest sized 1 story building, the waiting room in front is a grass hut on stilts with a few IV poles set up. The property, which was donated by the neighboring monastery, is full of mango trees. The clinic itself is half a maternity center, as an average of 30 babies are born there each month. Due many factors, the water is unfiltered and delivered to the clinic by pump from a water tank, and there is only enough power generated through solar panels to have lights for deliveries at night; however, patients who are treated at the clinic are treated free of charge.
After the clinic, we went to the school, a five minute further drive up the road. Since it was a Saturday and the start of the Lunar New Year 3 week vacation, the school was not too busy, but we were able to look in on the Saturday extra computer class that was in progress. Moving on from the school, we went further into the village, stopping at the construction site of Arun’s future learning and community center for his orphan group, and then on to the temporary center, a house he is renting where the large group of children can come and meet, talk, play, etc. Part of my job during the visit on behalf of JHH was to take many pictures, which I did at the school and the clinic. But in this instance, surrounded by at least 25-30 children from 3 to 18 years of age, my shutter only moved a few times. It felt less appropriate—in this instance, the supposed subjects of my pictures were not something I could describe, explain or relate to in any realm. These kids who are supported by Arun so their foster families will allow them to go to school instead of work, who have lost more and done with less than I could ever know how to, looked at me and spoke with me, shifting between smiles and shy faces. And in response, what could anything I have to give them be worth?

Back
We arrived back to my hotel in the midafternoon. After thanking Arun for his time and effort, I decided to go upstairs, both for a short nap and time to reflect.
After I got up, having gained some idea of the geography of the city, I decided to visit a particular Wat that is home to Phnom Penh’s only working elephant, Sambo, and stopped at an unexpected silk shop on the way there. Dress to come.
By the time I made it all the way to the Wat, there was just enough time to give Sambo some bananas and take some pictures before the compound closed for the day. The rest of the evening consisted in meeting Wen, NOT finding the dance show, giving up and getting food and drinks at a little café by the water I’d found. $2 cocktails, and some of the best mozzarella sticks I’d had in a while. It was nice to have some company for a while, too.

Day 3
Uncertain of how the traffic would be getting back to the airport after the 2 hours it took coming from, the next morning I slept in, packed up, ate breakfast, checked out, and went to the airport. Once there, however, I could not check in until 1.5 hours before my flight, so I hung out in dairy queen for a while and read pride and prejudice on my ipad. No, the story never gets old. Finally checked in, paid my exit fee (more than the entrance visa!!) and went inside the airport. There was a spa and everything up there—you would think airport s would want you inside sooner, you’d be much more likely to buy crap at duty free, etc.
Oh, and the ‘rugby team’ were on my return flight, too.

the earth moved

2011-03-26T05:17:00.002+02:00

Thursday night, lying in bed, i felt myself start to rock, as if i were on a ship, and not in an apartment building eleven stories above bangkok. Of course my first thoughts were of myself-- i had been feeling sick lately, was something wrong enough to make me so dizzy and off center?
Two hours later, reading the news, I saw the truth-- 6.8 earthquake in myanmar, spreading all the way to bangkok.
A couple weeks previously, a titan-like tsunami swept villages and their inhabitants into the seas along the coast of Japan,while nuclear reactors seep their contents into the air, all caused by an earthquake that had moved the foundations a few days earlier.

An apathetic, uncaring, unknowing force in the earths physical realm made a move, perhaps relatively small considering the size and age of the physical planet,and yet...the lives of so many have been forever changed, entire worlds destroyed, irreparable, unknowable, forgotten? if something passes away without record, without those who would remember and tell of it, did it really ever happen to begin with? and in that case, were these worlds destroyed, if no one knew that they had been?
did the earth just move, or did it become something else, something it had not been before, something to which the world before is irrelevant and alien?

364 days ago, the world moved, changed. A man took a life in violence, and the earth shifted. and now we have lived in world that doesn't know the woman it last for 364 days, and it wonders if she even existed-- was she more than her loss, did she exist in a different form once? did the world shift for everyone, or just those of us who felt it? if someone didn't feel it, did it happen? did it even matter that it happened?
will the fact that the earth has shaken and changed really be understood by someone who doesnt feel it, didnt know what it was before or realize there is an after?

"the misery of other people is only an abstraction, " Ray insisted, "something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence."
"and mistreat each other, won't they?"
Ray nodded. "Horrendously."

one night in saigon, 40 years of questions.

2011-03-06T17:16:00.001+02:00

Have you ever seen the movie “The Reader?” Probably, since it won so many awards and in general was a great movie, most people have, and more recently than me, who only saw it for the first time a month ago. In it, Hannah Schmidt is put on trial 20 some-odd years after the end of the Second World War for her part in the Holocaust, serving as a guard at a camp. From what I gathered, she was never armed and had no authority, was more administrative than anything else, though this is not really the point, the point is that she knew and to some extent enabled the atrocities that happened happen. And she stood trial for it, and went to prison for a very long time, as many others have. Michael Gruber, a Croatian boarn-Austrian living as a retired mechanic in Rockland, New York, was deported to Austria in 2002 at the age of 86 to stand trial for his service as an armed SS-guard at Sachsenhausen. Even though (nearly) none of these people committed illegal acts by the standards of the times in which they were acting, the world saw fit to hold them accountable, and to continue to ensure the responsible nations hold these individuals accountable indefinitely, as well as remembering their own national responsibility in the situation. There is not currently a child in Germany who goes through the German school system without studying WW2 and the Holocaust in particular. And I would say rightly so, as would people, especially Jews.

What is the relevance of this? It’s coming.

I just got back from one night in Saigon. The particulars of the city and the trip will have their place and time, but this is not it.
In the city, I paid a visit to the War Remnants Museum, which when it opened in 1975 was called "The House for Displaying War Crimes of American Imperialism and the Puppet Government [of South Vietnam]." Later it was renamed the Museum of American War Crimes, then as the War Crimes Museum, being renamed what it currently is in 1993 after relations between the US and Vietnam were attempted by Bill Clinton. The reality is, before this I did not know very much about the Vietnam war beyond what we saw in Forrest Gump, and in many aspects I still don’t. That is a part of the problem. The museum was of course heavily biased, ignoring all aspects of atrocities on the part of the Viet Cong, ignoring what was occurring that invited Western involvement to begin with. But that is not the point either. What matters here is what happened on the ground, part of individual incidents that repeated themselves. And were ignored. And were let go.
Former Senator Bob Kerry, as a leader of a unit of Navy Seal, lead an attack on a peasant village called Thanh Phong. Reports vary as to numbers, but it seems that in 1 night, 21 people were killed, 13 of them being women and especially children. In the War Remnants Museum, there is the cylinder of a well in which three children—siblings—were hiding. All three were dragged out, where 2 were stabbed to death, the third, disemboweled. It may not have the numbers of Babi Yar, but it has the brutality. In countless incidents villagers without discretion for children, pregnant women, etc. were lined up and shot, a scenario out of Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s willing executioners.” Only these weren’t Jews, they were Vietnamese peasants, and these weren’t Nazis, they were Americans.
I have never been in war. I have never been in battle. I am not trying to diminish the level of respect that should be paid to American veterans, of all wars; I also am not some bleeding heart liberal—while I am liberal, I believe in punishments fitting crimes and am not wholly against the use of extreme measures when it is truly necessary (this last part, however, is where I and many others who support various ‘torture’ methods differ). However, no matter how honorable and brave the members of the American military are at some instances should not absolve them from their ‘errors in judgment,” nor should the fact that the other side had begun using such violence first.
The indiscriminate use of chemical materials whose effects were not known is still having massive impact today. Babies are being born—or stillborn—with horrifying ailments and deformities. Why have we turned our backs to this?
I am disgusted that individuals who partook and lead such events have not been asked to answer for their actions just as we, as Americans and as Jews and as the entire world have forced Germany and all Germans to do. I am terrified that I did not know these things already. If we do not learn from the mistakes of our own actions, what will stop them from repeating, what prevents us from allowing those we send out to fight for us in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, from losing their morality, too? What makes us different from Goebbels, Mengele, Eichmann?
We continue to condemn the world for their actions and their histories, Rwanda, all of Europe, South Africa. When will America look in the mirror and take responsibility to our own history and mistakes?

catching up

2011-03-06T17:05:00.002+02:00

Been a while since the last post. I'll try to stop making a habit of it.

Last weekend was Avishai and Stop's wedding; unfortunately I was unable to attend the ceremony, so I cannot tell you what a Thai wedding is like. I can tell you what an Israeli/Thai party is like though-- lets just say that glasses were broken, and not just when stepped on by the groom.
The ASB Brass were here for the past week, and it was a good experience for me. I was included in almost all of the happenings, which (as corny and adolescent as it may sound), really made me feel included and valued; its hard to explain, in many ways the company is a big mispacha, and this week, I was invited to sit at the grown-ups table.

Otherwise the week went by fairly standard, with the benefit of being able to learn more about the history and future of the company, and to get to know my bosses better.

Saturday morning I left for a weekend in Saigon, Vietnam--30 days already. As a physical city, I liked Saigon better than Bangkok-- it was more accessible, I could cross the street with only a mild sense of imminent danger, I had sidewalks to walk along, parks to pass through. The people and culture, however, did not suit me. Perhaps it is just those who are in tourist industries, perhaps its a result of communism (mannerisms in former USSR countries are offputting to me, as well). In any event, the people I interacted with were very aggressive and pushy--my cyclo (rickshaw/bike) driver literally blocked my way from exiting the bench while convincing me to take a longer drive. In the market, if you walked away from something or a stall, the sales person would literally grab your hand, arm, whatever, and hold on, requiring some force, or force of bargaining, before you could get away.

Otherwise, I spent my time relaxing in my hotel room tub on a rainy night, eating pho (before a bug appeared on my chopstick), drinking jackfruit shakes, and visiting museums, namely the Ho Chi Minh City Museum, and the War Remnants Museum. The latter deserves its own discussion, coming up next.

things i have learned, the 7am addition

2011-02-22T02:26:00.002+02:00

1. starbucks does not have the venti size in bangkok
2. pouring grape juice over your cereal actually isn't too bad
3. being able to be out and about walking, etc. for more than five hours makes you a badass
4. thai people are very good at sharing
5. drinking 3 litres of water a day is hard.

long weekend fun

2011-02-20T17:53:00.002+02:00

Friday, our long weekend, had been quite the relaxing day: in the morning I did laundry and cleaned my apartment, and in the afternoon I went to lunch with Santiago to a very unexpected but great new organic restaurant, Sustaina (I think). As it turns out, most areas along Sukhumvit Road (where I live) are more expensive areas (this I knew already); Soi 39 (where I live) is particularly Japanese area, and therefore has many Japanese shops, residents, and restaurants, such as Sustaina. Although we entered into a little organic food shop, when you emerge upstairs into the restaurant area you find yourself in a light, airy space with comfortable wicker furniture, elegant table settings and attractive walls. Additionally, the toast set, when ordered with the pumpkin soup, is a wonderful 4 course meal for a maybe less than quarter of what it would be in New York. Adding to the comfort of the meal, since Santiago and I lingered for sometime chatting (partly of what our respective trainers would say about the piece of cheesecake we split), our waitress brought us some complementary sweet tea. The rest of the day was spent wandering through the local shopping mall (a different sort of animal from what we have in the States) before heading to a nicer local grocery store and wine shop (Sutter's White Zinfandel was more than $20 a bottle!)

During the rest of the evening, I sat by the pool for a bit and then did a light workout after lighting Shabbat candles and eating a nicer, Shabbat dinner. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to break into a round of "wherever you go, there's always someone Jewish, you're never alone, 'cause Gd made you a Jew." After one line, though, I managed to stop myself.

Saturday progressed similarly to Friday. I went out to the pool, swam a bit, read some, and napped. There is something especially satisfying about sleeping outside, the fresh air, the occasional breeze; maybe its the naturalness of it, maybe its the warmth of the sun instead of a fabricated blanket,I'm not entirely sure, but perhaps one of my favorite things to do is nap outdoors. Saturday evening found me back at California Wow!, my local gym. Just after I got home, I got a call from Kun Giant, my trainer, calling to check up on me, seeing that I am working out properly. Exactly what I need to stay motivated-- someone to answer to, who will judge me, that I won't resent for judging me (unlike family members or friends.

Today, Sunday, had much more substance to it. I met up with Kun Beam (a coworker) and her younger brother around noon, and they had a full day planned for me to start getting me to see Bangkok. Our first stop was the Rattanakosin Exhibition Hall, a new museum about the history of Bangkok/Siam. Although the majority of the tour was sans English, due to the museums extremely media based exhibition and interactive aspects, I was able to get a lot out of it and appreciate its detail. From the 4th floor coffee shop, we had a near-panoramic view of the city, overlooking the Temple of the Sleeping Buddha next-store. Which was our next stop. After lunch, that is; as we were near Beam's old high school, we went to a favorite noodle shop of hers where I got my first authentic pad seeyoo. Tasted like what I get in New York. Which is delicious. Before finishing lunch, I was introduced to toast, a yummy Thai dessert with a sweet bread dressed in custard.

The temple grounds were massive, each building and element within the compound constructed with the utmost care and detail. The Sleeping Buddha himself was nearly unbelievable; we all know going into it that the statue is incredibly long, but actually seeing it is beyond what can be expected. On a side note, anywhere in a Buddhist country, if a doorway has a raised entry, do not step on it. It is the residence of a diety. step over it.

After this temple, the three of us boarded a boat for a short ride across the river to a second temple compound. This temple had been built by King Rama 2, and was the royal family temple at the time. Also incredible to see, the details,the workmanship, at every corner. A perfectionist's dream, really.

Following this temple, we journeyed on to a market where inevitably Beam and I ended up shopping. Her brother soon deserted us.

The day ended with a boat ride along the canal to the BTS station (after all, Bangkok is the Venice of Asia)where we headed towards home.

Throughout the entire day, I was repeatedly overwhelmed by the attention and generosity of my friend and one-day guide. She planned the day ahead of time, taking into account what she thought would be most interesting for me, what was near each other, what were the sort of things it would be better for me to have a local around for. Both she and her brother put me first, and I began to see that despite the surface appearance of the city, inaccessible and forbearing, the spirit of welcome in the people can more than compensate.

Magha Puja

2011-02-18T05:56:00.003+02:00

Today is the Buddhist holiday of Magha Puja, celebrated by Buddhists in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. The origins of the holiday are as follows: 9 months after the Buddha achieved enlightenment,on a night of a full moon (which in itself was a special thing being in a lunar calendar) on a seemingly random night, 1,250 followers all came to the Buddha at once, unplanned. All 1,250 of them were Arhanta (spiritual followers who achieve a high level of enlightenment) who had been ordained by the Buddha personally, and then at this meeting, the Buddha gave them the principles Buddhism, called "The ovadhapatimokha": - To cease from all evil,- To do what is good,- To cleanse one's mind.

in observation of this day, observant Buddhists will go to temples to pray and venerate the Buddha (Puja means venerate).IN addition, they will do extra good deeds, and be mindful of the precepts of the Buddha*.

for most of us here in Bangkok, it means a three day weekend. The idea of the holiday sounds lovely, and the timing of it is perfect, making up for my missing presidents' day in new york.
So, my plans for today include: cleaning my apartment, doing laundry, having lunch with a friend, laying by the pool and going to the gym. Tomorrow, the continuation of tourism in Bangkok commences.

*all information regarding Magha Puja was obtained through wikipedia.

week one in bangkok

2011-02-15T17:41:00.002+02:00

Sawadee Ka!

I have now been here a bit longer than a week, I had meant to post Sunday night after exactly 1 week, but what can you do.

The flights here were not so bad...things could be worse than flying in business with a seat that reclines to 180 degrees. it is still 22 hours of travel, but things could have been worse. (On that note, it could have gotten worse--flying through Shanghai, I had to go through customs and get my passport stamped just for transferring. Not so bad in theory, except I had only 3 boxes left for stamps, planning to get new pages on arrival to bangkok. If i had been 1 box shorter, I'd have had a massive issue.)

Once I arrived to Bangkok, I collected my luggage, arranged a car, and, thanks to Noam's map, found myself at DS Tower 2 shortly before 11. After introductions, a bit of chit chat and some business with keys and cell phones, I retired to my new home, room 93/129, where I did some minor unpacking and went to bed for the night.

Merely 6 hours later I was meeting Noam in the lobby-- for my first day, he kindly agreed to let me go into work with him. This needs some explanation. The mode of transportation in Bangkok can not be your feet. For us, the daily commute in involves a motorbike to the BTS station, and then the BTS airtrain (and the reverse coming home). So, this my first morning, found me as the third passenger on Noam's bike, along with his 7 year old daughter we were dropping off at school.

Of course, everyone, the forong and the locals, have been very nice and as helpful as i need. the biggest thing is still just getting used to the ways that i can--and cannot-- get around the city. Since my fourth day, however, I am able to get my own motorbike taxi to and from, and I haven't missed a BTS stop yet. Oh, and not to worry--Last friday was my appointment at the embassy, at which I successfully obtained a set of additional pages, worth a total of 88 new stamps.

Monday through friday I saw nothing but my desk and my bed really; between the hours, the unexpectedly early sunset, and the jetlag (I was waking up at 3 am for a while), what else could I do? But in this time, I got to meet many people and slowly begin to gain my bearing, just in time for Saturday, when Kun O kindly offered to go to chatuchal market in bangkok with me (the largest outdoor market in asia). It was amazing on so many levels-- obviously the shopping was great and fruitful (two hats, a couple of bags, 1 actually needed, and some souveniry things for me and others), we had some good food, and I was actually on my feet walking around outdoors for 7 hours!! Even I was a bit tired afterwards, though, and came home to relax for an hour or so by the roof-deck pool. tough life for a saturday with 90 degree weather in february. sorry, new york.
When Sunday suddenly came already, the end to my first week, i looked around and still saw-- my giant suitcase, with clothing spilling out of it. I, who can not resist unpacking for an overnight, had been living in a suitcase for a week. that ended quickly. In addition, I finally managed to find the local (and shockingly walkable!) grocery store. A successful end to a needed weekend.

Monday was Valentines' Day, which is definitely done here--roses and hearts abounded-- including for me! I came home to find a delivery from my own Valentine, all the way from New York-- roses, chocolates and a teddy bear. What more could a girl ask for :)

Which brings us more or less up to date. Today, I finally had the lenses of my glasses replaced (they had been so scratched up, it was like a permanent cloud!) and this evening I even joined a gym, going to bang into shape while in bangkok!...okay, that was bad. Oh, well.

To really seal the deal of my extended, not-so Eat, Pray, Love-like stay here, this evening I hung my mezzuzah on the door. I bet I'm easy to find now.

Here we go again

2011-02-05T16:16:00.002+02:00

It seems that not too long ago I was doing this, too. Right now I'm sitting in th lounge, waiting for 10:20 when I can go and board my flight, shearing for Bangkok via shanghai. For some reason my laptop is not connecting to the network, so I am blogging via my iPad, not as awkward to type on as I would have thought it would be.
On the list of things to do while I am gone, I hope to get to Cambodia, back to china, and to learn Thai, amongst a few other plans that will hopefully pan out well.

time to set up my extended absence greeting, see you all again in the far east,

2010-12-11T04:00:00.001+02:00

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

justice doesn't cut it.

2010-08-23T05:12:00.002+03:00

Last Thursday, Joe Tedesco was indicted for first degree murder, unlawful concealed possession of a weapon (or something like that), and unlawful use of a weapon.

People say that time heals wounds. Time does not heal wounds. Time allows us to become accustomed to our wounds, to learn to use them and to learn to live our every day lives with them,and to not let them control us. The way someone who looses a limb learns to manage without it. But just like a wound or a bruise, we have only learned to be careful for it. Exposed, newly agitated, it still hurts as much as ever.

four months later, part 2

2010-08-23T05:07:00.002+03:00

this is going to be nutshell style. I decided to stay in new york, thinking staying could have as much adventure as going. I have since accepted a full time position with the animation company I am working for (and I will begin full time september 1st. As part of this, sometime this fall I will be going for a period of time to our Bangkok office. So I guess I will be going away after all.

four months later...

2010-08-23T03:22:00.002+03:00

it has been a very long time since i posted.

less than a week after Alyssa's murder, in the middle of Pesach, I moved back into Manhattan. Through craigslist I had found a reasonable, comfortable, furnished month-to-month arrangement. This was perfect, since, still nannying, i had neither stable income, or a real idea of how long I would be in New York for. I had applications out to two programs abroad, an academic fellowship studying European Jewry in Stockholm, and a working fellowship with the JDC to somewhere in Europe, likely either Berlin or Serbia.
In the meantime, in New York, I was living between worlds. Coming from fresh crisis, I was now living with people who didn't know me, and didn't know about this; how could I explain? How could I have made it sensible, how would it have been fair to inflict strangers with this tragedy because I had to deal with it? At times, in my apartment, walking down the street, I would look around and just want to scream at the top of my lungs, "My friend has been murdered, how could this have happened!?!" the first weekend after I had moved into my apartment, I was out with friends; it had been too much, and i broke down.

I started finding ways to stay busy. I walked a lot, both to save money on the subway since income was unpredictable, to use time I had, and to exercise off the fat that had stayed with me from Israel. On average, I was walking 5-6 miles a day. I was aesthetically attacking my apartment, reorganizing all public spaces, cleaning with a vengeance, and finally, painting. This started with the window in the door of the bathroom, never a good idea. I put a Marc Chagall image on the inside, Frida Kahlo on the outside. Then I stenciled a tiled-look to the ceiling. Then a dandelion mural on one kitchen wall. Pineapples along the other kitchen wall. The apartment reminds me of Berlin.

And the job hunt. When I wasn't painting or babysitting, I was writing cover letter after cover letter, going through revisions of resumes, trying desperately to find, well, anything really.

Generally speaking, being back in the city was good for me. I began to regain control of my life, myself. There were days that I even felt like myself again, or what I thought that meant, at least. Things were here to distract me, seeing friends regularly, frequenting old locations and new ones. The volcano in Iceland occasioned enough to be talked about, and T, who had been in the city on a lecture tour, was around for a while. Got to see the Daily Show (thanks again), and I convinced him of the magnificence of Artichoke Pizza (he had been skeptical).
Beginning of May, I accepted a part time morning job at an animation company, going in from 7am-10am and, essentially, copy editing the animation. Shortly after, I was offered and accepted a part-time position at a locally conservative synagogue working with their teen-group, and teaching their once weekly gan-class in the fall. As a summer event, I went with the group to Six-Flags--the bus company had made a mistake, and we went in a luxury tour-like bus. Sweet.
Soon, I began to help out at a friend's art company (elementem.com). We revamped the website, and developed a marketing plan. At the beginning of June, I began management of a project at The National Urban Technology Center, a non-profit working for academic, life and professional skill development through the use of technology in urban communities. I suddenly found myself with 4/5 (part-time)jobs, plus occasional babysitting. At best I was working nearly 12 hours a day, and sometimes up to 18. things were becoming more comfortable.

At this point, I heard back from the programs in Stockholm and mainland Europe. I had been invited to both; from Stockholm, especially, this was a huge honor, since they only sometimes accept even 1 American. However, at the time my life was just gaining some stability. I was reeling still from the successive deaths of 5 people I had known (including Alyssa, and another of our high school classmates, who succumbed to cancer after many years), and bracing myself for two more still expected (one has since occurred). As much as the idea of going to Stockholm or back to Berlin appealed to me, enticed me, I couldn't bring myself to leave at this point. In addition to not trusting how I would do for a year in a foreign place without a support group, I was afraid of leaving again, and coming back a year older to the same instability I'd found after Israel. And so, I decided to turn down Stockholm and Berlin. Perhaps the greater adventure would be in staying, afterall.

morning mourning

2010-03-29T15:38:00.002+03:00

I woke up this morning and for a moment, I thought everything that had happened in the last 24 hours had been a dream. Then I saw the garbage can full of tissues and the photo album on the desk.
Hopatcong, where I grew up, is not the sharpest tool in the shed of hometowns. The people aren't always the brightest, most ambitious. But it had a bit of small town charm to it, a nice lake, and a slight removal from other issues.
My friends and I had all been poised to get somewhere better.

Saturday night, amidst making plans for the week and taking care of her dog, my very good friend Alyssa Ruggieri was murdered in her home, shot to death.

It feels important that people realize that she was murdered. This wasn't some beautifully tragic illness. She didn't do drugs. It wasn't a care accident. It wasn't an accident at all. Another human being looked at her, saw her beautiful face, smile, heart, and pulled the trigger.
It reminds me of one of the ends of a Harry Potter book--after Cedric Diggory is killed by Voldemort, and Dumbledore ignores the advice of the ministry and tells the school the truth about his death. DUmbledore says that to not tell the truth would be an insult to his memory, implying that his death was any kind of accident, or due to his own mistakes.
I feel the same way now. Vague comments about my friend having died, people would likely assume car accident. Which could have been faulted to another driver, herself, the weather, the road, anything. Because accidents happen. This does not happen. This should not have happened.
I have known many people who have died, I have been to many funerals, too many this year already even. But each of those people, sad as it was, had lived lives-most had children, grandchildren, had had the chance to get married, have a career.
Alyssa was 22 years old. And she was so great, even in this economy and just out of college, she had a job.
I am not interested in talking about Guiseppe Tedesco, her murderer. He is more than a criminal, he is a villain. But this is a time I am glad I believe in God--justice on this side cannot compensate. The other side will have to.

What is most important for the world to know is how remarkable a person this woman was. We had become close friends since the 8th grade. A life time of being friends with Alyssa would not have been enough, and 9 years certainly wasn't. Alyssa was one of the bravest people I have ever known in the most dangerous of environments--High school. She would never just follow along, would always say exactly what was on her mind. She had a confidence that could never have been measured. Her devotion to her friends and family were unparalleled. Even as we grew up, grew apart, it never felt that way. Whenever together, it was like things had never changed.
But now they are changed forever.
I cannot give justice to my friend's greatness in words. Trying would be like trying to catch the moon in a butterfly net.

The entire world should feel the gaping hole now left by her having been stolen from us. The fact that there are people who don't know about it, don't feel it, is incomprehensible to me.

I will miss you every day for the rest of my life, Alyssa. Rest in Peace.
9.4.1987/3.27.2010

more than shoes.

2010-02-27T06:28:00.003+02:00

after having lunch with a friend of mine today, I wandered into the shoe store on the corner to peruse their current 'exciting sale.' Not surprising, I found something that I liked--a pair of ankle boots, dark brown leather with straps wrapped around. Not something that would have traditionally been my style, but something about them called to me, and not just the for sale tag. I found out that the pair on display was the last in the store, and a half a size smaller than I usually take. But I decided to try them on anyway, and they were nearly perfect. So close to fitting. Especially being leather,I tried to convince myself they would stretch and be perfect. But every lap around the store, I could feel that they were just slightly too short, and would eventually hurt. So I put them down, determined to go to the same shoe store two blocks away and see if they had what I was looking for (since of course this location couldn't call over for me). Unfortunately, they also were completely out of stock. Not ready to give up just yet, I decided to check the Strawberry on another corner of this same street...sometimes they surprise you. And I was! There, on the wall with the shoes, was one pair of the boots I was looking for, in my exact size. Even more than that, they were a better sale, and $50 less than the first pair I had initially seen. But the color was different--a different shade of brown, like a camel, generally a color I really prefer. And yet, when I looked at them, all I could see was what they weren't. Even though in the context of themselves, I would have loved those camel boots and bought them in an instant, all I saw in them was what they were not--the dark brown. Since New York is abounding in shoe stores, I decided not to settle and to keep looking, trekking through the mush and slush and snow toward Soho, toward what my mind told me I wanted, through more than half a dozen additional shops. No luck.

Ok, I realize that this may seem entirely shallow a story to share--boohoo, the girl couldn't find her shoes, not that she needs any more anyway. But really, this is more than another example of American consumerism and greed...this is the problem that so many of us have in our lives. I was so convinced of what I wanted, that dark brown boot. And yet when I first found it, it didn't fit, but rather than be dismayed or reevaluate what I was looking for, I convinced myself that with so many places to look, what I had ideally in mind must be out there somewhere. And so I passed on the pair a bit too small, and I let go the pair exactly my size (and more my budget) determined that this now holy grail of shoe must exist somewhere. Everywhere I went, where I would see other possibilities, I did not see them for what they were, but only for what they weren't. I had prematurely locked myself into this corner of an idea of what I was looking for, that even when I found what was actually perfect in so many ways, all I could see were flaws.

I finally realized this, and what this meaningless search I had send myself on really meant about my problems in general, and decided to go back to Strawberry, get the boots in the other color (which were even preferred by some of the friends I had sent pictures of them to!) Of course, as is only appropriate in such a story with the moral given, by the time I got back there, the perfect boots were gone.

(in a nutshell for those who wanted to skip the intro about my incessant shoe shopping: too often, we get these ideas of what we want and convince ourselves that even though it really wasn't right when we were first exposed to it, it is right in the end, and nothing else will do; then, when we see other things that could be right, or that are even more right than the first, the memory of the first taints us so that we cannot see things for what they actually are when we find them.)

i don't know if i've been changed for the better...

2010-02-19T08:06:00.003+02:00

...but I have been changed for good.

It seems like a long time has passed since I last wrote, a long time since I sat in the lounge in Tel Aviv. I guess it is because it has been a long time.
I had expected a slightly rocky and slow transition back in to my old life, my old places. I expected time to deliberate. Who could have predicted that, due to two deaths in my immediate community circle in the firs few days I was back, I would see nearly every single family friend at least twice, and be asked what I am doing now with my life more times than I would ever wish to count. Unpacking and adjusting to the cold weather don't seem to be acceptable answers.

The return was in many ways surreal; in one conversation with my mother, she asked me if I really felt like I was coming home, she asked me even, where I considered my home to be. This might seem like it ought to be an obvious question, but how could it be? Was home Roseland, where my parents live, my dog lives, my room is and all my things are? No, how could it be a place filled with but separated from my life, a place I hardly knew and knew no one in. Hopatcong, where I had grown up, spent 19 years? I had never truly felt home there, and less so with most friends moved away, and my childhood house covered in Christmas decorations. Berlin? Jerusalem? True, these places were beloved, invaluable, but foreign. I realized where I considered home to be--a place where I had actually lived, grown in, and the first place where I chose to be. New York.

As my time back, wherever I was, some things had improved. I had started making a proper Shabbat dinner every Friday night at my home. I was seeing old friends, reconnecting with people I hadn't seen in a while. Eventually, after the constant Shivas ended I went to spend a week in the city, seeing my friends, walking my old routes, returning to some old and loved places, routines. Things that always seemed immortal. And yet somehow, in a certain way, it had become foreign. Not just the snow, which was a shock to my middle eastern comfortable system, but something intangible..
even though you return to the old places, people, it seems that from some things, you really just can't go home again.

but that doesnt mean you stop trying to.

Chassidim never say goodbye

2010-01-30T18:33:00.001+02:00

It certainly seems like the time has come for me to go, everything seemed to know it: Shabbat afternoon, while I was reading in my room, my empty mug, sitting on my shelf, suddenly cracked. Monday morning, while cutting a carrot, my knife broke in half. And so here we are, Tuesday morning, 9:50 am. My flight leaves Israel in one hour, 25 minutes. I am sitting currently in the Dan lounge, drinking a cappuccino and a diet coke. Very Israeli of me. How did I get here?

Sunday evening, in honor of the Frediker Rebbe’s yahrzeit (I won’t even get into the creation of still more holidays by Chabad…not the issue of the entry), we had a nice sueda (meal) and presentations about Judaism around the world. Then I participated on a panel about how I find Gd in my everyday life. After, there was a fabrengen at Rivka Marga’s, which I intended to go to before it began to downpour, hail and all. I guess I would stay in and pack instead. As I had returned from Ramallah too late to ask Chaim to get my suitcases for me, I was unable to do more than organize, and during this time, Jen and Sara joined me, with some chocolate liqueur.

Yesterday, Monday, mainly went by in a blur. I actually got up early, went to Chassidus, figuring I might as well go out in style. The classes were interesting, Monday being one of my favorite days, with Rabbi Levinger first, and Pearl Bloch third. The whole day seemed almost like a performance, knowing how the classes would go, how they would end, from the beginning. The hugs, the goodbyes, good lucks, all things in health and happiness. Dina Hendel asked who would be there to challenge her now I was leaving, Pearl Bloch reminded me how she would miss my reading, my curiosity, and we agreed to stay in touch, that she would send me the week’s lesson. By the end of Nechama’s class, when I was asked to direct the lesson, and then to say a few words, I thought that if I spoke anymore that morning, some of the other students would leap across the table and kill me. During lunch, I called to make my Nesher reservation, and as Chaim had finally arrived for the day—the one day in Mayanot history that he needed to come in late—retrieved my suitcases from the attic storage.
After class and lunch, the rain subsided enough that Hayley and I went on a trip to the shuk by way of Rivka Marga’s—she wasn’t there, but Rayzel and her friend were a fun little diversion, trying to keep us from leaving. I walked through Mahane Yehuda, wanting to study every inch of it, taking in the sites and the smells, the sounds of the merchants advertising their goods, especially in preparation for Tu B’Shvat. After buying some candy, dried ginger, halva, and a fresh piece of laffa bread, while simply perusing the area Hayley and I saw a new addition to the shuk—an olive oil shop, looking like a William and Sonoma display, and therefore very out of place.
On the way home from the shuk, last purchases in hand, we stopped again by RM, and this time she was home. After a short visit, a L’chaim on sweet wine, and a non-goodbye hug, Hayley and I set back out into the rain to go home for dinner, and so I could finish my packing, now that I finally had my suitcases.
At 9:30, after a nearly tearful goodbye with Chaya Levinger, Naomi, Jen, Erica, Elysia, Sara, Hayley, Laneia, Zack, Nechemia and I set off for Café Café for a final drink before I would leave the next morning, complete with a photo session.
This morning I woke up at 5:20, since my Nesher was due between 6:45 and 7, and I had to pack the last minute things and say goodbye to people, some who had gotten up to see me off, and others who asked me to wake them before I left. Laneia joined me at 6, and Hayley at 6:30, which was very good, since the nesher, which is usually late, arrived 10 minutes early. The down side to this was that then we needed to rush to bring my bags outside and get them all into the car, but what is probably good is that then there was no time for any sort of teary goodbyes, which I felt might have been coming on, at least from me. BTW, big thanks to Laneia, Hayley and Naomi for helping me to carry out my million pounds of luggage.
So now I sit here in the lounge, waiting to board my plane to take me back to New Jersey. But it reminds me of what I said to Dani and Hillary at their goodbye fabrengen, when we all talked of what it means to be going back, and they were concerned about their ability to be who they now were when they went back…the reality is, in our lives we almost never go ‘back’ per se—even if we are returning to a different place, a place we came from, we are still going there with the new parts of ourselves, with the current versions of who we are, so even going back is really just a different direction of going forward. No matter where we go, we take everything we have experienced with us, and changes, for better or worse, stay with us, so there really is no going back.
Looking out the window right now, I am thinking back on all I have done and seen, and all the people I have come to know these past five months, I am thinking about all I am going to in the US, and all I am leaving behind me here in Israel. But if there is one thing I have learned during these five months studying at Mayanot, it is that, although I am leaving Israel, and many people and places that I love here, I am not truly leaving them forever, rather just until next time. After all, Chassidim never say “goodbye”.

A few things about the politics, and some facts

2010-01-25T11:02:00.002+02:00

One of the hardest thing about being in Ramallah was the discussions about the presence of the IDF, and Israel in general, in the “West Bank” and in any of the land, the ‘occupation’ of Palestine as a whole. I am not nearly right wing enough to suggest that Israel has done nothing wrong, and that the entire situation is entirely right and ethical, but the reality is that, as Mayor Bloomberg said, when your cities and citizens are under attack, “there is NO overreaction to terrorism.” When you are already acting outside of ethical means, ethical standards can hardly be practically or successfully applied.

Anyway, some facts.
The names of places such as Nablus, Galilee, even Palestine, came from the Romans as they conquered the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea, approximately 2000 years ago, and this is historical fact. “Palestine” was derived from “Phillistine,” the legendary mortal enemy of the defeated kingdoms, and so this name was used by the Romans to further destroy their conquest, not just physically but in name and in spirit.

Regarding the “West Bank”. What does this name actually refer to? The west bank of the Jordan river. In this light, it is easy to believe the truth—That Jordan, during the 1960s when they were in control of the region, rechristened the area as the “West Bank,” to further validate their attempt to annex the region. Before this time period, every map—those of the UN, etc—had this regions labeled as Judea and Samaria. Why did the entire world acquiesce to the idea of the name change? In the time period in happened, Israel was for the first time no longer always the small, weak David versus the Goliath; name such as Judea for a region is hard to ignore in connection to the Jewish people. The West Bank, however, seems much more neutral, and yet much less likely to be an authentic name in a land where Hebrew and Arabic are the native tongues. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but that doesn’t really suggest that the name is culturally unimportant or irrelevant.

Sunday in Ramallah

2010-01-25T11:02:00.001+02:00

Back when Chelsea, Caroline and I had gone to Cairo, we met students from Europe and the US who were studying at Birzeit University near Ramallah. I have kept some contact with particularly one of the girls we had met since November, and finally, I decided I would take her up on her offer, and come and visit. Since Jess had taken me along to Bet Lechem, I invited her to join me in this excursion, and so at 10 am, we met at the Damascus Gate of the Old City, in East Jerusalem, and boarded the number 18 bus for Ramallah.
Marica, Salsa and their friend Banan met Jess and I at the bus depot, to which we arrived at with no issues at all, as the bus wasn’t even stopped by a checkpoint. Together, the five of us walked a bit around the center of the city and made our way over to a service, like a sherut, to travel outside the city to Birzeit. There, in addition to the memorials for Arafat and Hussein, the girls brought us to their university to show us the campus and to see the viewpoints, from which we could see the beautiful mountainsides in the region. Getting hungry, we jumped into a cab and traveled back to Ramallah to get lunch, a delicious traditional restaurant where we had soup, sameesh, hummus, baba ganoj, garlic salad, labaneh, and rock-baked bread. Finishing up, we continued to walk around the city for a while, ending our day at Stars and Bucks Café, where, unfortunately, they did not have standard mugs that Jess and I could buy (although they gave us Stars and Bucks stickers.) Coming onto 4pm and not wanting to be going through a checkpoint after sunset (especially since, even though Jess and I both have Israeli student visas, we had not idea of what a checkpoint from the capital city of the Palestinian Authority would actually mean) we said our goodbyes to our hosts and went back to the bus depot. In the end, the checkpoint was hardly anything, only taking as long as it did (about 10 minutes) because the guard in charge of checking passports was training another about what to look for, rather anticlimactic.

Saturday--Just a typical night

2010-01-25T11:01:00.003+02:00

Instead of any sort of goodbye party, I wanted a simple, normal evening with the usual suspects, and so, a facebook event came into being: Just a Typical Night. Along with Hayley, Laneia, Zack, Nechemia, Elysia and Jen, we began Saturday night at the Soup Place (tomato and cream, plus lots of pesto) and then made our way over to Blue Hole, where we were joined by Beeno, Shu Shu and Dudu, as well as Sara and of course Edwin, who informed me of my great potential as a possible Olah Hadasha, and the great opportunity to be part of a young country. He predicts I will be back here soon, maybe within a few months even. We’ll see. Typically, I left off my Blue Hole time with a hot apply cider with rum.

Shabbat

2010-01-25T11:01:00.001+02:00

One last Shabbat in Jerusalem. Although I got home only at 5, I woke up at 10 to start my day, taking a nap again after lighting candles at 4:23. Nearly 15 of us were going over to Loren’s for dinner that night, and so a little after 6 we made our way over. The
whole evening was beautiful, and Loren had done an amazing job of putting such an event together, but unfortunately, I began to feel sick (bad headache) and had to take
myself home early, going straight to bed and sleeping for nearly 12 hours for the first time in a long time.
The next morning, as we all lazily got ourselves ready in the morning, Malkah, an army veteran, gave us a short self defense lesson while we discussed her upcoming marriage, after which Hayley and I took ourselves over to the Barkai’s for our Shabbat lunch, French-Israeli style. From the beginning aperitif through the rhubarb tart, both company and fare left nothing to be desired.

Thursday

2010-01-25T11:00:00.000+02:00

Originally, as this is my last Thursday in Israel, we had talked about having some sort of party, barbecue, something, but then drama mixed with bad weather changed that. So, since a friend of Hayley’s was having a birthday party in Tel Aviv, we decided to go there. Although we had planned to leave early in the afternoon, unexpected things pushed us back, so that we actually left around 8pm, arriving around 9. Not even a little bit into our night, Hayley and I were immediately walking down the street singing. Definitely a good sign for the night to come.
Since we were passing it anyway, we decided to stop by and say hello to Anna and Omer—Hayley the creep covered the eyehole as we knocked on the door, and Anna literally shrieked and she saw us walking in the door. After a short visit and a bittersweet goodbye, Hayely and I continued on our way to 70 elephants, stopping for some L’chaim along the way.
The place was a wine bar, mainly located in the basement level. We entered into a lively scene, embraced into the heart of the party by a mix of Israelis, Olim Hadashim, and Americans, and started off with a tequila shot. I’ve got a feeling, that tonight’s gonna be a good night.
As it happens, TW was also staying in Tel Aviv, so it would only make sense that we would meet here—he’d said he might be going to a concert, and would likely meet us at 70 elephants, probably between 10 and 11. Showed up at 12:30, true to form. Otherwise, the meeting was very nice, potentially helpful. And then the most unexpected thing occurred—just after T left, I sat down to call Hayley, organize ourselves since it was 2am, and our bus at 3, and then I turn next to me and see my cousin, Nadav. Now of course this isn’t necessarily the craziest thing per se, he does live in Tel Aviv, etc, however, as a major city, there are plenty of bars, and even within this bar there is plenty of space, so it seems clearly HP that we should meet there. I hadn’t been sure it was him at first, my contacts were dry, it was dark, but after looking for a few minutes I said to him, “Nadav?” and he turned around, “Elizabeth?!” We chatted for a bit, and then it was pumpkin time, so Hayley and I said our goodnights and left. Our bus arrived back to Jerusalem around 4am, and for some reason decided to drop us off by Mamilla Mall instead of at the Central Station, significantly more convenient for us. We got ourselves some hot dogs, and walked home, getting to bed at 5.

Are biometrics making us more or less secure?

2010-01-21T11:57:00.002+02:00

Biometric issues are not something that I am especially familiar with. I know that the current American passports have chips in them, and I know that I am glad I still have an old one—a little less big brother, but other than that, its largely enigmatic. And so, I had Shai enlighten me.
In Israel, especially the government issued ID cards, which people get at age 16 and are meant to always carry (although don’t always in practice) are extremely forgeable. A bit worse than the old New Jersey driver’s license, the ID is pretty much a piece of paper with a photo, laminated. Makes sense that Israel would want to reform this; even NJ switched to IDs with holograms.
And so Israel decided to create a great data base with everyone’s information, and have it connected to ID cards and passports. The level of the technology that this data base would be set in would allow [somehow] for a camera to scan a crowd, be run through the system, and, through photographing individual’s faces, compile a total list of everyone in that crowd. More than just those in crowds, those who demonstrate and protest. Shai’s point against this, especially, was that then the political and police machine would be able to build profiles of average, law abiding people, the sort that usually only exist for those who have been through the justice system, would be able to profile people for their religious views, sexual orientation, political involvements, everything. Theoretically, if it remained secure, there isn’t anything necessarily inherently dangerous in this; the problem is, the individuals who would have access to this information would at their essence be human, and capable of human prejudices, human grievances, and flaws. And therefore, of abusing access to such information. Additionally, in the initial plan, the company who would be overseeing the database implied that they would have no issues with selling select information, plus the reality that databases can be compromised by skilled hackers. Just a few years ago, a great database was made of all dog owners in Israel, meant to keep track of vaccinations, etc. Eventually, it was hacked into, and now any random person can download the entire database. With the new biometric system, the stalking abilities would make facebook and twitter seem like jokes, very private.

Additionally, a complete implementation of biometrics into the IDs would compromise the security of Israelis abroad, and especially of future Mossad (Israeli FBI/CIA) agents. If the database were compromised, then Israelis traveling abroad would be sitting ducks to those who would wish to kidnap or target Israelis (and less face it, unfortunately that is a real possibility). As for the Mossad agents, even if their files were deleted after they became agents, Israelis get IDs at 16, and many get passports earlier; even if at age 25, 30 or whatever their file was erased, their preexisting information would still be available, and endanger their secrecy, and security.

It makes sense that the easy argument for the other side is that, anyone who is law abiding should have nothing to fear, as long as they are not doing things they would wish to hide; additionally, this system would make the justice system in certain ways more able and capable of solving crimes. However, even more than people, computer systems are fallible, no matter how strongly we rely on them.

Wednesday

2010-01-21T11:57:00.001+02:00

Class as usual. I had intended to get up early to go to Chasidus. That didn’t happen. Classes. Rabbi Hendel, Rabbi Schapira, Sara Zadok, Dina Hendel. These were my last classes with Rabbi Schapira and Sara. I’ll especially miss his class, he generally represents things very well, and can actually hear another perspective, even if it isn’t something he agrees with. A rare and invaluable quality in a teacher, to a certain degree especially on a Wednesday at Mayanot. After class, I went to meet Shai for a final time on this trip, since he was in Jerusalem to speak against the new biometric passport and identification system being implemented in Israel. We spent a couple of hours at Tmol Shilshom, slightly altering my plans for going there in the evening with Laneia.
Later in the evening, along with Sara, Jen, Hayley, and Zack, Laneia and I went down for a drink at Tal Bagels. The girls keep saying it is important to spend time together since I am leaving, but I have been insisting on typicalness still. No tears from anyone before Monday at the earliest, myself included.

It's the final countdown: Tuesday

2010-01-21T11:56:00.001+02:00

Nadav dropped me off back by the Dizengoff Center where I met up with Anna and Jen, who were shopping. The rain that had been predicted was finally beginning to come, especially in Jerusalem, as Hayley reported. Instead of waiting for a bus, Jen and I sprang for a cab to get back to Mayanot. Taxi from the Tachana to Mayanot: 34 shek. Not needing to stand in the rain: priceless.

Tuesday morning. Officially one more week until I leave to go home to the States. I woke up to a surprise, an email from TW, letting me know he was in Israel, asking if I was still around; always a surprise on Facebook. In the evening I met Yiftach, with whom I had studied in Berlin. I felt bad that he lives less than 20 minutes walking from where I have lived the past five months and this is the first time that we are seeing each other. Five months may seem like a long time, may seem like enough time to see everyone, to know everyone you are supposed to know and meet, but it goes by surprisingly fast. He is such a surprising combination of ideas; as radically left wing as he is seen as being in many ways, such as his tshirt with a Palestinian flag, which reads (in Arabic) ‘free Palestine,’ and on the other hand, he works at Yad Vashem, does work internationally in Holocaust awareness and education, and asked me whether I had met a nice Israeli while here, particularly commenting that if I had called him when I was first here, he has parties sometimes, and he knows many nice guys. Politics regardless, everyone is a Jewish mother.

hanging out in the city

2010-01-20T11:40:00.000+02:00

For a change, when coming into Tel Aviv Hayley and I missed the stop we had intended to get off at, and so had to get off at Hahagana, the Central Station, which is in actuality anything but central, but rather very large. It was a nice enough day, so we decided to walk to meet up with Jen, which allowed us to walk along Shenkin Street and admire all the shop windows. Along the way, coincidentally, we also ran into Tanya on Allenby.
We finally met up with Jen around 4, dropping off our things at the apartment where she was staying and hanging around to watch Super Sweet 16 on MTV for a little while before heading out again.
Eventually we went to my favorite eatery to get dinner—the sandwich shop. Amir, our sandwich guy, was just leaving as we got there, but we were able to hello before he went home and went off to miluim (reserve service) the next day, and Hayley and I were able to get our delicious deli delights. After we were satisfied, we went to meet Anna and Omer to catch up. Hayley then went to a concert with a friend of hers, while Jen and I stayed at Omer’s place for the night, catching up with Anna and each other. Since the dangerously torrential rain predicted for the next day seemed not to be coming, after sleeping in, again, Jen, Anna and I went for a small breakfast at a local café and to do a bit of shopping. I got a Golda Meir tshirt. Happily, since I was staying in Tel Aviv again, in the afternoon I met Nadav (my cousin) for lunch. While we were inside the restaurant, there was a short downpour. Nadav explained that he loved the rain, but conceded that his having a car made him less inconvenienced by the rain. Also in the restaurant with us was a cat, probably owned by someone who at least worked there, who flirted around amongst the different patrons, settling in Nadav’s lap for a while; although he protested, I got a picture of this.

taking the train to tel aviv

2010-01-20T11:13:00.001+02:00

Although I was still a little bit tired, I decided to stay awake the entire train ride, looking out the window at the landscape that passed before me. I watched the Mediterranean crashing to my left, the mountains waxing and waning to my right as we passed out of Haifa. The city turned into countryside, exhibiting horses and goats grazing in fields. While Hayley dozed across from me, I watched Israel traveling past me while listening to my Ipod, watching places I had come from being left behind me. It truly began to hit me that I would be leaving Israel in about a week, and these places that were passing by me as I sat on this train, places I had spent some time in, may never be seen by me again. Although I was going to Tel Aviv, a very exciting thing, going to see friends, family, places I have come to love, I had to leave Motzkin and Haifa, a place I had become so comfortable with. And really, that is the problem with going someplace. No matter where you are going to, in order to get there you need to leave someplace else behind.

No party like a Shabbat dance party

2010-01-20T11:07:00.002+02:00

Shabbat again, this week an out, so Hayley and I went north to spend the weekend in Motzkin (a suburb of Haifa) with a friend of mine. In the end, my friend would not actually be at the apartment for Shabbes, but at his parents’, where his new niece would also be for Shabbat. Understandable. Making ourselves at home, after eating our Shabbat dinner, Hayley and I indulged in some spirits (in the form of Greygoose) which led to our having a loud, energetic song and dance party in the living for an hour or so. What began with a reenactment of a scene from The Proposal (to the window, to the wall) led to an all out party, complete with Spice Girl’s songs, Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilara, Aretha Franklin, Shania Twain, Rent, Wicked, Fiddler on the Roof, the Black Eyed Peas, Ace of Base and a medley of other 90’s pop artists, with a cameo appearance by the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

After exhausting ourselves, and our BAC, we concluded the night playing Connect 4 and Phase 10. Although we had planned to go to Schul the next morning, and after that to go visit the zoo my friend had shown us the day before, by the time we finally woke up at 11:30 the next morning, we were too late for schul and then utterly unmotivated to get dressed and go out. It was clear that the zoo was not going to happen. After lunch, we got back into bed, played a game of Phase 10, and read/slept for the rest of Shabbat. I managed to read an entire book again (Running with Scissors). I think reading on Shabbat will become a tradition of mine…if I finish a book every Shabbat, it would be a good thing. When T came home Saturday night, the three of us decided to go to the mall to get something to eat, and to see the mall, of course, and then watching half of V for Vendetta before going to bed. Although T had to leave before 6 am the next day to go to university, Hayley and I slept in again, getting up finally around 11 and heading out of the apartment for the train station, heading down to Tel Aviv to meet up with Jen and Anna.

Banquet

2010-01-20T11:07:00.001+02:00

On Thursday, the 14th of January, we would be having our second annual Mayanot Banquet, honoring the girls, the teachers, the alum, and above all, the donors. We expected around 120 guests, and we (the girls at large) were in charge of making the whole thing work. I somehow was a cochair of the food committee. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were spent baking in three different locations (at Mayanot, at Chaya’s and at Rivka Marga’s, where I was, making five recipes of cookies.) Through late nights for many people, especially Laneia, who was in charge of the art display, eventually Thursday came. The final five hours before the event were frantic, with salad being washed dried and cut up, fruit salad being put together, dessert platters built, etc. But eventually everything came together, the night went off well, with Naomi’s MCing and Hayley’s Dvar Torah being well received. It was nice to see many of the people in a more social setting.

After the banquet Hayley and I rushed home to change to go to Jess’s Pink Party birthday bash, where we were joined by Nechemia, Beeno, Zack and Laneia. Jess eventually found pink boas, so what more could be asked for?

Sneaky

2010-01-20T11:06:00.000+02:00

Hayley brought back something from the US extra special—Inglourious Basterds on dvd. Sunday after classes, we took the dvd and went over to Zack’s to have a movie party. After the movie was over, I told her I had to head downtown to meet a friend of a friend that I had been postponing meeting, someone I didn’t really want to see. Zack explained that he also was meeting a friend in town, so, naturally, we walked together. What Hayley didn’t know was that this was actually our sneaky plan, heading downtown together to help Zack buy a present for her for their 2-month anniversary. When she found everything out a couple days later when Zack gave her the earrings, she was stunned. Aren’t we sneaky.

In/Out Shabbat with Laneia

2010-01-20T11:05:00.000+02:00

Friday night, Laneia, Miri and I were placed for dinner in the Old City by the Schlosses’. I had heard that Rabbi Schloss was into mysticism, etc, and that he ‘read’ people.
After going to the wall to daven, the three of us went to our host home for the night, where a table was set for maybe 30 people or so, and a table complete with jalapeno pepper vodka (which I had). Halfway through the meal, Rabbi Schloss, who had been leading the discussion almost as a shiur the entire evening, suddenly quieted everyone and announced that Miri, as a relation of the Rebbe, would speak, and everyone should listen (this is not something she planned). After a moment of hesitation, she looked around, then looked back to the rabbi and said that she would pass her stage to her left, to me. Thanks, Miri. Nope, I had nothing prepared. I tried to tie in to what the rabbi had been saying, to which I had only been half listening, and in the end did pull off a decently well thought out short dvar, or at least, Miri and Laneia insisted it was, as well as a few of the yeshivish guys who were sitting across from us. I guess it wasn’t so bad.
When we had entered the house and seen that there were a number of yeshiva guys there, especially some from the men’s Mayanot program, I had jokingly told Miri that she would maybe find her shidduch. That’s why we were all surprised when I ended up spending the whole night talking to someone: ivy league, lawyer, upper west side, taller than me, seemed perfect—he even walked us/me all the way back to Mayanot at the end of the night. During the walk, however, he got right to business, discussing issues he had faced in relationships, marriage hopes, etc, and it soon became clear that he wanted much more of a traditional/subservient sort of wife than I could ever be. Oh, well…generally those who seem to be extremely eligible and perfect have problems, anyway. I guess no shidduch for Liz afterall. Saturday was another lazy day, with Laneia and I having a sleepover party and staying in bed nearly all day. Plus side, I finished the book I was reading, The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm. Not necessarily something I would recommend, though.

Birthday

2010-01-20T11:04:00.000+02:00

While at Ein Gedi, I received a few phone calls from America, my brother and my mother calling to wish me a happy birthday (thanks!) That night, after getting back from Ein Gedi, I went to Timol Shilshom (my favorite coffee shop in Jerusalem) with Laneia, Zack, Nechemia, Jess and Tanya. The next day, in honor of my birthday, along with a few other girls I went to donate blood (very good thing to do, everyone who can should donate!) Hayley, who only just got back from Texas early Wednesday morning, was still sleeping all day, so she insisted that we should all go out again on Thursday night for my birthday (thanks, Hayles!). Dressed in my new birthday dress that Hayley had given me, we went to pregame by the boys’ and then set off for town to go dancing, where Laneia joined us. The boys, sweetly protective as they can be when we go out, were a bit too overprotective…maybe that’s why I get along with Nechemia so well, he reminds me of Josh… after not getting into a couple…altercations, we decided around 1:30 it would be best to leave.

Tuesday is for Tiyul: the trip to Ein Gedi

2010-01-20T11:03:00.000+02:00

On January 5th, my 23rd birthday, and a Tuesday, Mayanot took a trip for the footsteps of Jerusalem program, although this trip extending a bit past the city itself. The plan for the day, which was only announced a couple of days before, was to head southeast to Ein Gedi, visiting the Kibbutz and botanical garden, the nature reserve, and the ruins there.
We left Jerusalem before 9, very early, and so I slept nearly the whole trip down.
Along with our guide, Eve, we started off at the Kibbutz, the only one in Israel with a botanical garden on site, to see a handful of their more than 1000 species of plants, including a great many species of cacti, Sodom apple trees and even a couple of great banyan trees. After we had concluded this tour, we boarded back on the bus and went over to the reserve, where the first agenda item was lunch, for which we were joined by a large group of Ibex (small, goat like animals that live in the mountains). Even though I was sorely tempted to give one my carrot, I listened to the sign which forbade feeding the animals, expressing this through a picture of an ibex being fed a carrot, with an “X” through it. Definitely explicit enough.
After eating, it was time to hike…maybe not the best order of things after all. Hmm. We did the standard short Ein Gedi hike (not everyone was dressed for real hiking…I was…I felt a bit silly.) On the way back, we passed by the main pool in which people often go swimming. Not surprisingly, being January 5th and all, no one was swimming at the moment. That wasn’t to last long though.

Eve asked if anyone was actually going to go in, or should we just head back. No one moved. It was time to take initiative. Although I hadn’t brought a bathing suit, I had worn many layers of shirts, and two pairs of leggings. Good to go.
After getting down to my base layers and stripping off my socks and sneakers, I waded in. Cold. But soon enough, I was used to it, and after a quick head dunk, it was actually quite comfortable. My example was soon followed 
Before long, Ruthie, then Candice, then Malkah, Naomi, Deborah, Elana, Elysia had submerged, and then, to top it all, Rivka Marga, with her sheitl (wig) and all, joined us under the falls. Apparently, there are fresh water crabs in Ein Gedi. There was one by the fall. Not kosher.
After we left the reserve, many of us got ice cream, and then we went over to the archeological site, where the remains of a more than 2000 year old synagogue lay across from the Dead Sea, complete with a still recognizable bimah, aron hakodesh (Ark), mikveh, and a beautiful mosaic floor. The group who came to the site as we were leaving, maybe 10 yeshiva-bucher types with a teacher, behaved very badly, climbing over the ropes and walking on the ancient mosaic, etc, and so when no one else (ie, Eve, our guide) said something to them, I took it into my own hands, scolding the boys and their teacher for disrespecting not only an archeologically important site, but also a schul, still holy no matter how old.

its finally happened!

2010-01-04T17:08:00.003+02:00

I am caught up! took long enough, and not a moment too soon.

Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday. I'm at the end of my early twenties.

we (Mayanot as a whole) are going on a tiyul to ein gedi and the dead sea, coincidentally. Should be nice.

Shabbat comes again

2010-01-04T17:07:00.000+02:00

For services for Kabbalat Shabbat, I went with Jen to Yikar, a local synagogue with the rep of being organized by the Rabbi as an intentional meet market—I was curious to see how much of a parade the whole thing really was, and had heard a great deal about it. It wasn’t as bad as I had expected, and the davaning, as the shul is carlebach, was actually very nice.

The first Shabbat of the new year was an in Shabbat, and an especially interesting one, as it is the first since we have had a 50% increase in girls, so our meals would have more than 50 people at each. Expecting 50 people to know what their jobs are for the meal, and to do them without needing to be chased, is expecting too much.
The meal itself went so late, and the room was so crowded, that instead of staying for the official fabrengen, Naomi, Sara, Nechama and I snagged some goodies and fabrang on our own in our room until I fell asleep.

Saturday I stayed in bed until after 1pm, went to the meal, and then went nearly back to bed. Rest is good.

2010

2010-01-04T13:29:00.001+02:00

The last week of December, the last week of the decade, passed relatively unremarkably, full of lots of naps, occasionally going out (especially as Daria was still here) and watching Disney movies streamed from youtube. Thursday night, New Years’ Eve, came before I knew it, and we decided to spend it in the usual company, starting at our usual place in a usual manner. We gave the night a slightly earlier start, assuming most places would get crowded earlier. It was our normal group, plus some additions from amongst the new girls at Mayanot, another reason to start early.

Along the way to meet Nechemia and Zack, we picked up a curious stranger, who became less and less attractive as his story was displayed, from dropping out of high school to a decade of drug dealing before moving to Israel, hoping to get onto the Derech and “find himself”. It seems that so many who move to become religious do so after falling farther than expected possible.

In general, the New Years was like most: I had built it up as having a great potential to be a great night, and found that everyone who should and should not have been was out in the streets, everywhere that was anywhere, even silly places, suddenly aspired themselves to have lines, charge covers, and people generally mobbed about like apes.

We ended up going to Blaze, hearing a decent blues band, and watching mid-life crisisers dance like they thought they were teens. Things were entertaining, things were trying, people were not always what we hope them to be.
Happy 2010, even if New Years eve is not like what we see in movies.

and it was good

2010-01-04T13:21:00.001+02:00

The Shabbes following Christmas was an in/out, and I was anxious for some rest after the preceding week. Laneia and I had decided to go to dinner by one of our teachers Friday night, and were due to be there at 7pm. Although the address could not have seemed simpler, in reality there were two buildings of the address, one very obvious and wrong, and the other less obvious and correct. We circled the block for nearly an hour, close to giving up and going home, before we found the right place just after 8pm. The downside of being Shomer Shabbes, you cannot call when you are lost.
Saturday, Shabbes day, Laneia and I had decided to stay home and not take a meal anywhere, instead spending the day with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and eating in bed, staying in pajamas all day. This was a good day of rest.

to that little town of bet lechem

2010-01-04T13:14:00.000+02:00

Hayley was to head home early Christmas morning, spending a week and a half in Texas for her mother’s wedding, so I spent the previous night at the Mayanot apartment, intending to help her pack but actually just sleeping through it all and waking up to a note from her shortly after she had left.
For the morning of Christmas day, I had arranged to go with Jess and some of her Pardes friends to Bet Lechem, since I could hardly pass up the chance to visit such a place on such a date. I met Jess by her apartment at 8:40, and we were to meet with the rest on derech Hevron at 9 to catch the bus. One of the guys, who seemed to be the coordinator of the expedition, told us of a free bus going to and from Bet Lechem from a nearby monastery and so we passed up the Palestinian mini-bus and set off for the church.
And we walked. And walked. After approximately 40 minutes (from Jerusalem to Bet Lechem is only about 9 kilometers to begin with) along which we could see the transition out of Jerusalem, we walked passed the eruv that surrounded the city, and even saw a shepherd herding his flock across the street, we found the right church, and after inquiring within, were informed that there was no free bus. But by this point, we were only about another 15 minutes from the checkpoint, so we continued on foot.
We got through with relative ease, just needing to show our passports, and then entered, for the first time, into Palestinian Authority controlled West Bank territory.
From the other side of the wall, it was another half an hour walk to Manger square, the first bit actually along the wall.

It was interesting, coming for the first time really into contact with the security wall. I am not even interested in hearing it compared with apartheid, or hearing it called a racist segregation—such comparisons are degrading to the histories and victims of actual apartheid. The reality is that the wall and the checkpoints, unfortunate as they are and as tragic as the effects have been to everyone, especially the Palestinian-Arabs, were built as a response to the multiple successful suicide attacks that took place nearly every week during the second intifada, and were not built to hurt people, but to protect people.

It is just further proof that the sins of a few will curse the many, the innocent who have done nothing wrong.
And this needed security, while succeeding in preventing further attacks, further angers and hurts the newer generations, making people become more radical and more upset, thus creating a cyclical curse of uncongeniality and hatred on both sides. What can be done. Perhaps more to come on this later, after I am all caught up to the date…

Back to the wall itself. In many ways, it physically reminded me of the Berliner Mauer, especially in graffiti to be found on it. In general, throughout the city and along the wall, the graffiti art was impressive, and inspiring.

Along the walk to Manger Square, we were constantly wished Merry Christmas, and invited into local shops and restaurants to see the ‘local offerings.’
True, there was a very great Palestinian military presence all around, but even still I felt perfectly at ease. Or at least, as at ease as possible when I don’t understand the language around me, which is more than I can say for my companions who were constantly concerned of any sort of separation between the four of us, even just a bit of distance if two lagged behind the others.

We first went directly to the Church of the Nativity. Within the site, there were two churches, an orthodox church, and a catholic, in which mass was in progress (the Orthodox church celebrates on January 6th). It was incredibly packed, and very international; in general, I was sad to see that there was an incredible lack of formality amongst the worshippers. It may seem shallow, but I have always thought that places of holiness deserved greater measure and effort than jeans and t-shirts. I also think it is weird when Jews not only know all the latin hymns and such, but think it appropriate to sing along with them, when I imagine they are talking about the holiness of Jesus and Mary and the church, etc….I have no problem being in a Church, but I wouldn’t recite prayers, or think it necessarily appropriate for a non-Jew to recite the Shema or something when sitting in Shul. Anyway.
After mass, we went into the Orthodox side, which was much darker and older looking, and had parts of which that looked like parts of a barn. Apparently you could see the actual manger in which Jesus was born, but the line for this was very long, and Shabbat was to come in eventually.
After we left the church, we stood in Manger Square for a bit, watching pilgrims sing and dance (and seeing the sale of things such as tourists would buy, including helium balloons, including army tank shaped helium balloons…) and then made our way to the Milk Grotto, where it is said that a drop of Mary’s breast milk hit the ground and turned everything white. It was also very crowded, not necessarily a place for someone who is claustrophobic.
It was getting later, and people were hungry, so we went to find some falafel before leaving. I was not too hungry, so Jess and I decided to forgo the 5 shek falafel sandwich, and order simply some pita and hummus. It was the worst hummus I had every eaten, even the pita was pathetic. And then we paid 30 shek for it. Lame.

The one negative thing that I have to comment on about the people in the city, which is also something that I saw in Hebron, was the very frequent use of toy guns by small children; and I do not mean neon colored nerf-type guns, but very realistic, noise making handgun and rifle and machine gun type toys. At one point I even watched a three year old standing on a wall behind his father/uncle whomever, who was leaning against a car. The child had a very large toy gun, which he had pointed into the back of the adult man.

Eventually we found our way to the stop where the minibus would leave and go back into Jerusalem along Derech Hebron toward Damascus Gate, boarded the bus, and went back across, stopping at the border to disembark from the bus, show our passports to the Israeli border police, and then reboard the bus. The man who looked at my passport thought my having a residency visa from Germany was exciting.

BBQ

2010-01-03T14:31:00.001+02:00

Christmas eve night, my tradition is always Chinese food, often a movie. Originally, this had been the plan between myself, Hayley and Laneia, but then it was decided that Nechemia would be having a barbecue this night in the park since Daria, his girlfriend, was visiting from Boston. It may not be Chinese food, but its good for me 
Around 9 we set out, including Jess, for the park. One of the beautiful things about Israel is that you can have an outdoor barbecue at night in the end of December.
The barbecue had all the usual suspects present, including a guest appearance by Nechemia’s parents, who were very nice, as well as a few neighborhood dogs. We ate, we drank, we schmoozed, the boys rough housed near to fire, nothing unexpected, and around 1 am or so, we packed up and all went our separate ways.

l'hitraot, irina....

2010-01-03T14:30:00.000+02:00

The problem with studying in a place where there is not a set schedule and people can come and leave as they may is that people do just that, and leave before you would like to see them go. On December 23rd (this week in December, if not already evident, was a very full week, and every day demands its own post), Irina was to spend her final day with us, her nesher coming at 4 am between the 23rd and 24th. We all tried to spend every moment possible getting good quality bonding time, packing together and everything, and at 9:45 pm a lot of us all went down to café rimon to eat and schmooze with girl time, and had planned to after meet up with the guys for a drink before sending Irina off. Time seemed to speed up, and before we knew it, it was nearing midnight, her nesher was to come at 3:45, and she hadn’t finished packing, so we had to finish up at rimon and simply spend the walk back home with the boys. Around 1:30, we set ourselves back to packing (mainly I packed Irina, and Laneia, Tanya, Hayley and Sara helped clean up her room, while Irina started saying her goodbyes.) We were done by 2:30 am, and didn’t need to leave Mayanot to head over to the Levingers’ with her things until just after 3 (Irina had had some confusion with the nesher people, and they got pissed, refused to send her a car, so we had to fake a new person at a different address) so all of us collapsed in the lounge and took a short nap. Then Irina said more goodbyes, and Laneia, Irina and I started off with her luggage. Just after we got to the right address, Irina decided she needed the bathroom, and it was 3:30 am, so the only option was to go back to Mayanot—just after she left, however, the nesher called and said they would arrive in five minutes, and so I had to call her to come back (poor dear, she got lost coming back!! From two blocks away…) and before I knew it, she was packed away into the car and gone…and then there were three.

meeting with destiny

2010-01-03T14:29:00.000+02:00

The next day, the 22nd of December and the 5th of Tevet, is also a special day in the Chassidic calendar; for some reason, I was never quite sure why, it is a special day of books, and people are supposed to buy books, and give each other books.
(side note: very sweetly, Mayanot got a book for each of the girls here, Feminine Spirituality, a translation and discussion of a discourse by one of the Chabad Rebbes. Although the book itself seems interesting and the ideas perhaps even inspiring, it is painfully obvious that the editors did not even use spellcheck—the first sentence in the preface describes the books as a great addition to the “Chassidic Jewish Herirage series,” and that is only the beginning…sigh.)

I had the chance to meet up with a friend of mine from when I had studied in Berlin with the Leo Baeck institute; although Omri is an Israeli, he and his wife have been living for some time in Stockholm, so it was an occasion to see him in the Eretz. The meeting was proof that although I have been living here for nearly four months already, I still don’t necessarily know all there is to know of the area, and he showed me a coffee shop, and then a tasty café that I hadn’t seen before.
Although he personally is Israeli secular, I was telling him about what I am doing here, and the studies I am doing at such a frum institution, and about how the previous day had been my Hebrew birthday, and we had a fabrengen. Suddenly inspired to know what his Hebrew birthday is, he took out his Israeli ID to check (interestingly, government issued IDs still have Hebrew birthdays as well as secular dates listed on them). Since his English birthday was coming up, he thought maybe his Hebrew one was, too. And what do you think?—his Hebrew birthday is the 5th of Tevet, that very day. Coincidentally, we had stopped at a second-hand book store already and bought some books, honoring both his birthday and book day…we agreed that it was appropriate that his birthday should be book day, and he an academic.

my fabrengen dvar torah

2009-12-28T15:55:00.000+02:00

Additionally, during the fabrengen, the host is expected to speak. So, I prepared a Dvar Torah for the week.

The Torah portion the week of my birthday was Vayigash. In this portion, the saga of Joseph and his brothers was continued. We picked up with Judah and his brothers trying to secure the release of their youngest brother, Benjamin, after Joseph planted his goblet in Benjamin’s bag to frame him.
The portion explains to us that the brothers see all their misfortunes as part of the unending punishment for what they had done to their brother Joseph, their father’s favorite, whom they had 22 years previously thrown into a pit and then sold into slavery. It is explained that all of them these 22 years have been able to think of hardly anything else, continually haunted by Joseph’s memory and concern over what has happened to him, and how they might rediscover him. And yet.
The brothers had now spent countless hours in direct company of Joseph, now second in command only to Pharaoh in Egypt. True, he is in a very different circumstance then they had last seen him, and true, he is speaking now in a different language, but Joseph is still in fact himself. He was 17 years old, very nearly a man, when he last saw his brothers, and so in all likelihood his appearance is not so wholly alien to what his brothers last knew him to be. It seems a bit odd that his brothers, who constantly think on him, would still fail to know him, even after he exclaimed who he is to them, after having spent so much time in his company.
And so this brings me to wonder, why we so easily can find ourselves obsessed with something, thinking of and hoping for just one thing for years and years, and yet when it is right in front of us, even after it has identified itself to us, we fail to see it for what it is.

Too often, we worry so much about finding the forest, we don’t realize we are in the midst of the trees. We are so hardpressed to what we think we are seeking, we don’t even realize when we have found it.

Being Jewish means having two birthdays

2009-12-28T15:42:00.001+02:00

One of the things I have learned during my time here is that being Jewish means you have two birthdays. My Hebrew/Jewish birthday is the 4th Tevet, the same as my good friend here, Irina. On a Jewish birthday, we are meant to give extra tzedakah, eat a new seasonal fruit we haven’t eaten yet, give friends brachas, increase Torah study, and host a Fabrengen. Irina and I decided to take on the challenge.
This year, 4 Tevet was on December 21st.
Rivka Marga offered us her home for our fabrengen, which we excitedly accepted. For our fabrengen, Irina and I set off for the shuk early in the morning to buy the necessary things to have brownies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate covered strawberries (my new fruit) and bananas, veggies and humus, and pomellos. We then came back to Mayanot for the afternoon class, and then straight back to Rivka Marga’s to get to cooking and preparing. With some local help, we set up quite an elegant little table with the fruit and baked goodies and even a few candles. Everyone had written cards to us throughout the day, and during the evening, as typical during a fabrengen, the girls took turns saying warm fuzzies about Irina and myself, making a very comfortable and sweet evening, where we didn’t leave Rivka Marga’s until after 1am.

Back to Hebron, December 18/19

2009-12-28T15:22:00.000+02:00

I had arranged to go with Miri to Hebron for Shabbat, staying by the Cohens, who run the Chabad house there (what a sentence I never thought I would say!)
Every Friday night, Bat Sheva hosts a Shabbat dinner for about 40 of the soldiers stationed in Hebron, and so when girls go to stay by her they need to get there early, and are expected to help and work.
I don’t know if I will ever understand how this woman really keeps her sanity. In addition to having this massive dinner every week, for which she makes all the food fresh, she also has six children from the ages of 12 years to 4 months, the first five boys (and you can imagine how crazy five boys are to have), and she is a perfectionist down to the manner in which the napkins for the table are folded.
Miri and I arrived by 9:30, and we were right away chopping, folding, cooking and slicing (with the occasional eating breaks…Bat Sheva is a Jewish mother, after all) until nearly 3 when we went upstairs for a short rest and to shower and dress for Shabbes, and then go to Machpelah, the cave where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah are buried to pray, and then came home for dinner, during which we were very helpful. In truth, the amount of work that we were doing during the meal was not entirely necessary all the time as there were five girls there doing this and just one entry to and from the kitchen, but there would have hardly been any reason to stay seated. The seating had been arranged so that I was sitting only with the other girls who were there, and the parents of one of the girls who were visiting Israel. Although I desperately wanted to speak with the soldiers, talking with them about their experiences and lives living and working in Hebron, in such an environment, I could tell that it would not be the most appropriate thing for me, as a woman, to do. The limitations to entering certain worlds…

After dinner and cleaning up, I was sufficiently ready to go to bed. Miri and I were staying in the Chabad guest house on the roof, literally 15 or so feet from a guard post where a soldier keeps watch 24 hours a day, and as it was such a chilly, windy night, before turning in I made the soldier a cup of tea and wished him good shabbes. Then Miri and I retired, having a long conversation about my actual feelings towards the apparent theology of the Chabad movement. She took it pretty well. Saturday morning I slept very late, still getting over my cold and tired from the day before. The benefit of being shomer shabbes is there are no alarm clocks, so no one can be angry at oversleepers . After reading a bit from The Five Books of Miriam on my own, I went downstairs to help put lunch together, a much easier task as there would only be 15 of us (crazy to think, ONLY). After lunch, which was just as perfect as dinner, Miri and I went on a tour of Hebron, given by a local who had lived in Hebron for 33 years. He took us on a tour of the Old (not ancient) city, and we were accompanied by about 20 armed soldiers, and a few lovable stray dogs. The level of needed separation was odd to see, and the level of guards seemed extreme, but another girl told us that on a previous tour, local Arabs had thrown rocks and even a knife at them…hard to reconcile the situation….
We returned home for a snack and Havdallah, and then directed ourselves for the bus stop to return to peaceful Jerusalem.

Chanukah in a flash

2009-12-27T19:09:00.001+02:00

It was a bit of a readjustment being back to classes full time after so much time away, but it was almost easier, as I slept much more than I had been doing, and before I knew it, the whole week was up, it was Shabbat again, and the start of Chanukah. This next in/out Shabbat, for dinner Friday night, I went to the family of John Medved, an American venture capitalist that I had met when here on my birthright trip with AIPAC when he had spoken to our group, and I had in fact been the one to introduce him. Dinner was delicious, company entertaining, everything wonderful. Adding to all this, my friend living nearby was away for the week, and so I was watching her cat/having use of her apartment for a bit of respite when needed, so after the meal I went back to her apartment for the night where I could sleep star-fish style and play with the cat, who is the greatest cat/dog like animal I know in Israel. The on Saturday, and I joined up with Hayley and one of my roommates to go to lunch by a family up the road, giving Chanukah a very delicious and fun beginning. During the week, different girls signed up to take different days, organizing Chanukah events for everyone. Musha, Hayley and I signed up for the fourth night, having a ‘mystery maccabbee’ as well as a sufganiyot decorating party, in addition to the nightly communal candle lighting and the frequent parties hosted by different women in the community for us. And again, before I knew what had hit me, it was Shabbat again, out once again, and the last night of Chanukah.

December already?

2009-12-27T18:54:00.001+02:00

Somehow, just after Chelsea left, it was December, and already on Tuesday we were having to say goodbye to Hillary, and then to Dani on Wednesday. Monday night, therefore, we all went out AGAIN, this time to Herzl where we had the place to ourselves. We laughed, joked, passed around the frog-hat, all and all, a good time. Hillary accidentally spilled a decent amount of red wine on my white skirt, which proved the true value of tide-to-go, when it got all of the stain out. Red wine, out of white cotton. Amazing. I’d be a spokeswoman for the product any day.
Just after saying goodbye to a friend a day for three days, it was another Thursday night before an out-Shabbat, so the usual suspects were again to be found at Herzl, spending the night dancing away from our senses.

Eager for some reprieve, I went to Tel Aviv to stay at Anna’s for the weekend, spending the time with a bit of solitude after weeks of constant (but very welcome and enjoyable!!) company, hanging out with Anna Friday night, spending Saturday day on the beach with my favorite sandwich and a book, and then seeing Shai for a coffee Saturday night before heading back to Jerusalem.
Shortly into the week, I had a very nice distraction—Joel Soffin, my rabbi growing up, was in town and had his last evening in Jerusalem put aside to meet with Jess, Matt and I, his little protégés living in Haeretz. Although the meeting was cut shorter than hoped since he had a last minute TV interview to give before heading to the airport, it was great to see him.

L'Hitraot, Chelsea!

2009-12-27T18:35:00.001+02:00

Next on the tour was to stop by Kever David (David’s Tomb). While this is portrayed just like all the other kevers, with a proper tomb-like shrine and beit kenesset full of praying Jews, from what I understand no one actually thinks that this is the location in which King David is buried. ANYWAY.
So we went to the kever and explored around there, and additionally, the guide book claimed the room of the last supper to be in the building of this same plot, somewhere hidden around and above. So we decided to play crusaders, in the most Monty Python way possible. Eventually we found what may have been the room, and took some funny pictures that may or may not have bordered on respectable (her idea, we sat in the middle of the room and pretended to eat imaginary food).

Next on the agenda was a break at a coffee shop downtown to revive on lattes. Although it was a Sunday, we all rallied for another night out with Nechemia, Irina, Laneia, Hayley, myself, and of course Chelsea, and spent in the most ironic way, at the cheesiest tourist bar in town, where we all continued to fail to be able to blow smoke rings (though not for lack of trying)
Monday morning, before her sherut was to come, Chelsea and I set off early for the shuk so she could buy some things to take home, such as halva and dates, and to get a final falafel sandwich, getting us back to Mayanot just in time to say goodbye.

the grave of Oskar Schindler

2009-12-27T18:27:00.002+02:00

Sunday, Chelsea’s last full day in Israel, was going to be spent visiting different tourist attractions. After I had attended my morning classes, the two of us set out for the Old City so I could drop by Jeff Seidel’s office to hand in my paperwork, and then we set off for the grave of Oskar Schindler, stopping off at the Old City Holocasut memorial museum along the way.

Following the guide books directions, we managed to find the cemetery easily enough. The path led out of the old city, east from where I live; the roads were a little less clean, a little less smooth. Eventually we found the Christian cemetery we were in search of. It was very nondescript but for the small, cheap looking sign telling people “Oskar Schindler’s grave.”
Oskar Schindler, although originally motivated by economic opportunity during the reign of the Third Reich, began to care for his Jewish workers above his own fate and fortune. Saving more than 1200 individuals—unskilled workers, women, children, handicapped individuals—bribing the SS and Gestapo, and even once going so far as securing the return of individuals sent to Auschwitz. Although at the height of his career he was among the economic elite, his unyielding efforts ate away at his fortune, leaving him impoverished after the war, needing to largely rely on social welfare, even for his final hospital bills.
Oskar Schindler was honored as a righteous gentile, a Righteous Among the Nations, in 1963 by Yad Vashem, and he died 11 years later, interred—according to his wishes—in a Franciscan cemetery on Mt Zion, making him the only member of the Nazi party to be buried in Israel.

There was one other man in the cemetery when Chelsea and I were there, presumably looking for the same thing we were.
According to the book’s information, the grave itself was fairly poorly marked, in the lowest section of the cemetery four rows from the left, or something to that affect.
After looking around for a bit, Chelsea and I were not exactly sure how we would find what we were searching for, without literally going through every grave.
Then in the distance I saw a simple grave that differed significantly from its neighbors: it was covered in rocks.

(this is a Jewish custom, to leave rocks on the headstone)

I knew I had found my man.
It seemed simultaneously appropriate and odd that Schindler, who had at great personal risk saved the lives of so many, should in his final state be so plain. There was no special marker from Yad Vashem. There was nothing from the State of Israel, or from the Federal Republic of Germany honoring him. He lays alone, having divorced from his wife in the 1950’s, and is surrounded largely by unknowns, as well as a decent amount of garbage from years of neglect to the cemetery at large. Why is it seemingly acceptable that such a man should be in his end so treated?
And on the other hand, while his actions were indeed great, they are what in theory ought to have been by so many more; his behavior in an ideal world would have been the norm, going to great lengths to insist on an acceptable level of humanity, not the exception. He has been granted all of his final wishes, being buried in Jerusalem, and so perhaps the relative simplicity of his actual legacy—greatly supplemented by his virtual legacy built by Steven Spielberg—is appropriate for a man who acted as we would hope should be ordinary in times that were far beneath him.
In either case, I had done what I considered a responsibility for myself, not only as an Ashkenazi Jew, but as an ordinary human being: going to pay my respects to one of the few men who managed to maintain their expected decency and normality in a time of unexplainable inhumanity.

thanksgiving in Haifa

2009-12-27T18:27:00.001+02:00

After eventually returning back to Caitlin's and still in a bit of a foul temper (taking much after my father ;) ) Chelsea and I decided it best to go back to sleep. Later that day, we all went with Caitlin to explore her favorite vintage shop and get a hot drink in the hipster area of Haifa, Rehov Masada, all the way at the bottom of the Carmel, until it was time for the three of us to head to our Thanksgiving dinner.
Looking at the map, we could see that from where we were to where we were heading would only be about 800 meters, an easy walk, so we decided that we would save the taxifare and trek. What we forgot to account for was that these 800 meters were straight up the Carmel. I guess we thought we were mountain climbers.
At every point along the way, when we would check directions with someone, everyone tried to convince us that it was not a walking distance that we were going. Even Reber laughed when we told him we were walking. Oh well.

It took us nearly and hour and a half, but eventually we arrived. We were having thanksgiving dinner with Reber, who went to Temple Shalom with me, and friends of his in Haifa from when he used to live there. It was mainly Americans who had made Aliyah, with a few Israeli spouses. Especially luckily, the hosts of the dinner were in culinary school 
Although it was a long way from Plymouth Rock, it was a very traditional Thanksgiving, complete with corn muffins, potatoes, yams, a beautiful turkey, pumpkin and pecan pie, and of course, the football game.

After dinner, we decided to head back to Motzkin instead of staying in Haifa for the night, since most of our things were there. Even though it was just a 30 minute train ride there, due to a series of unfortunate events, ranging from a slow taxi driver, to oversleeping girls, it took us about 2 hours to finally get home. Thankfully, keys were left for me.

Although T was away for the weekend due to the happy arrival of his new niece, we were allowed to stay by the apartment for Shabbat, and so we ventured out into town to equip ourselves with food for the next couple of days before heading back to Jerusalem Saturday night, to spend Motzei Shabbes out with the usual suspects.

a bit of rage comes out...

2009-12-20T13:39:00.003+02:00

Chelsea and I woke early the next day, intent on returning the car immediately, and proud to be just within the mileage allowance (200 kilometers) for a one day rental. It needed to be returned by 10, so we left before 8 am, with 177 km on the dashboard, confident of ourselves and armed with our Avis map, showing a center located directly in the heart of the old city of Haifa.
Two hours, 50 kilometers, several stops asking for directions, and a decent amount of swearing and shouting from me, coupled with unanswered phone calls at the center, and I decided to head toward the center just on the edge of Haifa, which, while less convenient and off of the map of Haifa that Avis equipped us with, proved much easier to find. However, by this time, we were 33 kilometers over the limit allowed, which would cost us an additional 60 shekels in fees. Also, when we arrived, we were informed that the center we had been circling the old city for an hour trying to find has been closed for a year, even though it is still on their map. And now they want me to pay an overage fee. Unacceptable.
After a bit of a heated discussion with the agent at the Avis center, and the involvement of the manager, I succeeded in convincing my way out of the extra fee. That's right, Avis, don't mess with me.

goodbye, golan, hello haifa

2009-12-20T13:37:00.000+02:00

After the winery, and a decent respite so that driving would not be an issue, the three of us loaded back into the car to head to Haifa—that’s right, I would need to drive in an actual city.
Following the directions of the map were easy enough, and once into the city, we were able to follow signs to the University of Haifa most of the way, asking for directions from neighboring drivers as we got closer: “yashar yashar yashar, v’smola” until after a few times needing to turn and correct ourselves, we managed to find Caitlin and park by the dorms. The four of us then went inside to settle—Hayley still barefoot—after which we returned to the car, all shoed, to head into town for a bite and a bit of catching up with Caitlin. After playing with the life-size spider man statue in burger ranch and taking a nice walk around the area, we set our way back to the campus to set to bed before needing to get up first thing in the morning to return the car by 10 am, and not need to pay for a second day.

No shoes? no problem! anachnu rotzot lishtot ktzat yayin bGolan

2009-12-10T11:31:00.002+02:00

After the sun had set, we decided to complete our Golan experience by visiting a winery. Based on some recommendations and the tour books we were armed with, we selected the Golan Winery, not too far from the reserve. After getting a bit mixed up with directions (as long as we didn’t end up in Lebanon, I think it was a success) we found the winery. Just one more obstacle to overcome. It was already late, so we weren’t sure if tours were still being given, or even if the place was still open. Hayley was napping in the backseat, so Chelsea and I went in to investigate.
“Hi,” said the hostess. “Can I help you?”
“We have two questions,” I asked, while Chelsea waited a bit anxiously, knowing what was coming. “One, are you still giving tours?”
“We aren’t,” she replied, “But we are still offering tastings”.
“Great. Second question: So we are traveling around in Israel and today was our only day in the Golan, and so this morning we went hiking at the reserve. As you know, it rained all day yesterday, and so the reserve was incredibly muddy. Our other friend, who is still in the car, doesn’t have a second pair of shoes with her, and her sneakers are really disgusting. Would it be okay for her to come in just in clean socks?”
Chelsea and I were barely keeping a straight face by this point.
“Sure, no problem.” Not even a snicker, no appearance of surprise. Israelis are pretty chill.
We went out to rouse Hayley and inform her of the good news, and the three of us, in various states of muddiness, went in to speak with the sommelier in order to select the three wines we would each taste, as well as to look around the show room explaining the processes in a winery. Coincidentally, Hayley and I selected the exact same set—a sparkling Yarden white wine, a light red Golan, and a dessert white from a newly started company. Chelsea also had two whites and red, but very different from ours. It was dusk, we were sitting in the Golan, sipping our three glasses of wine each, and enjoying the evening. All for 10 shek a piece. What else is needed in life? The dessert wine Hayley and I had was very very nice. I bought a bottle to save for my birthday.

a hiking trip

2009-12-10T11:15:00.001+02:00

Although I was very nervous getting behind the wheel—I had never driven a rental car, never driven outside of the US, didn’t know where I was going, and hadn’t driven at all in a few months—but I maneuvered out of the parking lot sans accident, so so far, so good. Chelsea sat in the front as navigator, which made her motion sickness better, but she doesn’t read any Hebrew, so this would be funny. Actually, she did a great job—and Israel is pretty good about making all signs trilingual (Hebrew, Arabic and English). That, and it a pretty easy route we were taking, just driving north to the Kinerret, and then following around the lake from one high way to another and then straight on to Katzrin and the Yehudiya reserve. Having the car was a very nice luxury, allowing us to just throw all of our things into the trunk and backseat, and not need to carry, or hold or worry about what is where.
Since daylight is a scarce thing, we thought it would be best to head to the reserve first to get some hiking done. We found the place well, packed up the back pack with our lunch food, and head out with our map. It may not have been raining anymore, but the evidence of the rain the previous day was certainly there. The woman at the desk had told us, had even warned us, but we were sure that mud wouldn’t stop us. Well, I guess technically it didn’t, but it did slow us down a bit. It was a very special kind of clay-like mud infused with cow excrement that would build up upon itself on our shoes, resulting in three inch platforms that needed to be regularly kicked off. It felt like walking on moon shoes.
Looking at our trail map, we had decided to head to the spring pools—even though it was very cold and rather muddy, we decided we would take a swim. It would likely be a very short swim, but since there would be no one else around, we would be able to lay in the sun and dry up afterwards while we ate our lunches. Except we never managed to find the pools. We were where they ought to have been, but all we saw was a small stream. And a crab (did you know there were freshwater crabs that hang out outside of the water? Did you know there were crabs in Israel? Not kosher…) So instead of the pools, we just hung by the stream, Hayley drank some brine, and we all enjoyed the weather and the beautiful scenery of the Golan. Since the reserve would be closing at 4 (the sun sets then) after lunch we turned back, traipsing back through the mud and swampyness (on the way in, I had fallen in a bit of swamp. Wet.). When we finally arrived back at the car, the level of mud and much on our shoes was beyond what we had expected possible. Chelsea and I luckily had another pair of shoes in the car. Hayley was not so fortunate. Needless to say, none of the muddy sneakers were worn into Siva—they were all quickly abandoned into bags (and at the time, I thought maybe forever; although I have since managed to clean them of almost entirely and have been wearing them again).

go north, go sea, go lan!

2009-12-07T17:55:00.001+02:00

Although we were sad to see Caroline go, there was no downtime. Monday evening, Chelsea and I, now accompanied by Hayley, packed our bags and boarded a bus heading north, starting our upward expedition, basing ourselves out of Motzkin (a suburb of Haifa). We awoke early the next morning (okay, 7:30…it was a vacation!) and headed off around 8:30 to make our way to Tsfat, one of Israel’s most mystical city. We spent the afternoon exploring the winding streets, endless art galleries, and beautiful synagogues, seeing the filming of one of Ben Snouf’s music videos and stopping for a Yemenite lunch along the way. As the sun began to set, the three of us set course to Tiberias, on the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee). The plan was that from here, we would see the Kinneret and go up into the Golan heights. The snag in the plan was that it had been intermittently raining throughout the day, and was pouring the entire bus ride from Tsfat to Tiberias. A rainy Kinneret might be a full one, but it is not a good climate for hiking. I assured the girls that God would see to this: it would rain the entire bus ride, cease for the two hours after we had arrived to Tiberias so we could find a hostel, get some food, etc, and then rain all night again so that the morning would be clear.
Believe it or not, even though the weather reports had predicted a week of rain, I was 100% correct. Spooky.
In Tiberias, for dinner we found a great little shwarma stand (only 15 shek!), and some interesting people to talk to before heading in for the night.
The next morning, we packed our things, prepared ourselves for our day of hiking, checked out (storing our bags) and went off to the bus station to go to Katzrin in the Golan. We found out the that the next bus wouldn’t leave for Katzrin for a couple of hours, and the last one coming back would be at 2 pm. This wasn’t going to work well at all. After talking with some taxi drivers, we ruled out taking a cab, too (they wanted nearly 400 shek!) Being the adventurous girls we are, I remembered seeing an Avis center in town. Bingo!

We moseyed on over to inquire about acquiring a vehicle, and after jumping through some hoops because none of us were 23 (meaning we had to pay the young driver fee, and were not eligible to buy the extra insurance) and none of us had our passports (so we also had to pay the tax that tourists are exempt from) we hopped into our little silver car and hit the road. Or more precisely, while the girls went to get our things from the hostel, I asked the Avis guy every possible question about Israeli driving laws possible, from right on red to legal BAC limits, merging, speed limits, gas regulations, you name it. That’s right: I was the driver.

Farewell, Caroline

2009-12-07T17:40:00.000+02:00

Sunday night, in honor of Caroline, the three of us went to Waffle Bar, where we indulged in waffles with toppings and the largest salad ever created, and then joined with a few others for a final goodbye evening. The next morning, after coming to Rivka Marga’s class again, Chelsea, Caroline and I went to take a tour of the aqueduct tunnel, graciously arranged for us by Nechemia and Zack. This tour is extremely interesting, and not for the claustrophobic. Or people whose hips are too wide…even skinny Nechemia needed to turn sideways occasionally.
By the time we returned to Mayanot, we just had time to eat some lunch, take one last walk over to Aldo Max Brenner’s for Caroline to get some ice cream, and then to wait for her Sherut to arrive to take her to the airport.

Remembering

2009-12-07T17:39:00.000+02:00

Sunday was Caroline’s last full day in Jerusalem. In the morning, she and Chelsea joined me for one of Rivka Marga’s class, and then the three of us grabbed lunch for the road and set off to visit Yad VShem, the Holocaust museum in Israel. It was a bumpy ride just getting there, which didn’t sit too well with motion-sickness prone Chelsea.

I hadn’t been to the museum since my Birthright trip in 2006, before the renovations had been completed. Going through it, especially with my academic background, felt extra meaningful in this context; I was walking through the Israeli Holocaust museum with two individuals on their first trip to Israel. Ever since I had begun my studies in German and Holocaust history, visiting such museums has taken on a new meaning for me. So many of the places displayed and discussed in the exhibition were places I knew and had been to: Babi Yar, Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Weimar. Many of the background locations to the marches, speeches, and actions by the Nazis were places that I have grown to love: Unter den Linden, Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag building, even random streets whose names meant something to me just throughout Berlin. Being able to read the signs and understand the speeches of the Nazis, and feeling connected to the Hebrew captions, individuals giving their testimony in the loschen kodesh, gave the three+ hours spent traversing the winding space a deeper sense of inner comfliction. Reading through the stories of the resistance fighters, I began to wonder if I would have the strength, physical and spiritual, to do what they had done if God-forbid the need should ever rearise.

I tried to help guide my friends a little through the exhibit, being supportive, informative, and not overbearing. The one thing I really wanted them to take away, however, was best explained by the way the exhibit ended: the exit from the museum leads onto a promenade overlooking Jerusalem and Israel as a whole. This, I told them, was the whole point, and what was too often misunderstood: The history of the modern state of Israel did not begin with the Holocaust as so many would claim. Rather, the history and the tragedy of the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe—whose aim was complete genocide many peoples, particularly the Jews—ended with the rebirth of the state of Israel.

Chelsea and Caroline do Shabbat

2009-12-07T17:38:00.000+02:00

Friday morning, we got started (relatively) straight away. Chelsea wanted to get some pictures at the Kotel, so we went there first to get them done before Shabbat, and then trekked on to the shuk in order to buy some food for our shabbos day picnic the next day. Because Shabbat comes in ridiculously early in the winter, after this was done it was time to go home and get ready. Along with most of the girls from Mayanot, we then climbed the snake path again to go back to the Kotel to daven before the meal. When we got back we were all sufficiently hungry for dinner, and got straight to our jobs to put the in-Shabbat meal on the table. After we had all had our fill, true to form Rabbi Levinger went around the table having everyone speak, including Caroline and Chelsea. Although it was their first fabrengen, they got right into it and Caroline was even moved to tears while she spoke, which made a big impression on the Mayanot crew as a whole.
Saturday morning, I picked the girls up at Jess’s, and the three of us went to picnic in the park near the windmill, one of my favorite overall locations in Jerusalem. From the shuk we had gotten a delicious challah, tomatoes, the unripest avocados ever, and some amazing cheeses from what may be the greatest cheese/wine shop in the world (we had a pesto cheese and something else I don’t remember…it was a little pricey, but with all the samples that were thrust at us while waiting our turns in the store, it was worth it). In addition to our picnic, we played cards, and did the ultimate shabbos day requirement: took a nap. That night after Havdalah, we of course went out, as it would be Caroline’s last weekend night in Israel before she left on Monday.

coming back to Israel

2009-12-07T17:20:00.000+02:00

Our bus arrived back to Taba around 4 am. As we were crossing through the Egyptian side, Caroline decided she needed to go to the bathroom. Knowing that the Egyptian side does not believe in the practice of toilet paper, I decided to wait the next 200 meters and pee in Israel. After paying the 2 pound exit fee, we approached the Israeli side and were shocked: it was 4 am, and apparently everyone in Russia had chosen this hour to enter into Israel. Seriously, this was the time to go in and conquer, because no one was left watching the motherland, even Putin might have been there and in the throngs no one would ever have known. And because when entering Israel, the border guards question everyone, particularly non-Jews, and because seemingly none of these Russians spoke any English, let alone Hebrew, it would be more than four hours before we got through the last 200 meters of the border. So close, yet so far. And no bathrooms. Ouch.
When we finally got through, Caroline and Chelsea had no problems. I, on the other hand, had entered, left, and re-entered Israel once already since I had been here, and was still waiting for my official visa, which I need to be here longer than three months. Although we had chatted in a friendly manner, the immigration official meant to stamp my passport called the higher-ups, and informed me that while yes, I would get my 3 month tourist stamp now, if I have not received my actual visa before I leave, the next time I come back again they will only give me a one month stamp.

On the way back to Jerusalem, the girls and I decided to stop for the afternoon at Yam haMelech—the Dead Sea. It may have been late November, but that didn’t stop us from donning our swim suits and playing in the lowest place on earth. I think the girls were glad I had convinced them not to shave for the entire week previous.

We then came back to Jerusalem, settled back a bit into Mayanot, and then went to meet Jess, who had kindly agreed to host Caroline and Chelsea. Not wanting to stop, after a short respite from the previous few days, along with Jess, we all went downtown for a night out. New York never sleeps, and neither do New Yorkers.

The last day in Cairo

2009-12-06T11:37:00.002+02:00

The next morning we all slept in, going for breakfast at 9 am. After breakfast, we gathered our things and checked out, leaving our bags at the hostel for the day while we did more touring. The first stop was to be the Egyptian Museum. Once again, student IDs were handy. After a few hours of hieroglyphs and mummies, we left to go to Khan el Khalil market to get some lunch and do some souvenir shopping. I hadn’t finished my meal, so I packaged it up in my purse and brought it from the restaurant. The stray pooch who I gave it to really appreciated it. The market place was huge, with a local side selling fabrics and clothes and wares, and a tourist side, with 7 or 8 varieties of shop selling belly dancer clothes, hookahs, pyramids and the like. While perusing the wares, we ran into our friends from the border, the students from the university in Ramallah, so we all stopped to have tea. This evening was then a huge soccer match between Egypt and Algeria ( I think), so everyone was going crazy for it the entire day, carrying flags, wearing painted faces, banging drums etc. This craziness inspired Chelsea, Caroline and I to want to get to the bus station early to avoid any problems with traffic, etc. So even though our bus didn’t leave Cairo until nearly 10, we were at the station by 8. After buying our bus tickets and getting our change literally all in change (we each had handfuls of single pound coins—felt like pirates), we made camp upstairs in the station by a burger café, were a dozen or so men were gathered to watch the game. We ordered some dinner and played cards while the hooligans went through ups and downs with their team, and the poor performance led to a couple of big fights breaking out in the mall. In Egypt, they don’t drink alcohol: just goes to show you that men can be stupid and belligerent while completely sober, too. On the plus side, the custom of service in Egypt is so high that even the burger and fries I ordered were served to me on a silver tray, with my tea in a real tea cup. We finally boarded the bus, braced ourselves for the long, uncomfortable, and freezing night ride ahead of us, and tried to go to sleep.

In de Nile

2009-12-06T11:37:00.001+02:00

Through Amman, the American guy we had traveled to Cairo with, we had agreed with our cabby to get to our hostel for 14 Egyptian pounds. When we arrived, he tried to tell me 40. I said no, explained the crucial difference between 14 and 40 (although the 14 had been agreed upon in Arabic between the driver and our friend), told him I would not give him more than the 15 I was intending to give him, and he eventually said okay and we got out of the car. Interesting start. We found our place, Lialy Hostel, fairly quickly, but were uncertain of it by the somewhat shady state of the entrance. We walked up the three flights of stairs to the entrance, and upon seeing the charming lobby, we were completely reassured.
After a warm greeting from the receptionist, Shady (Sha-D), we checked into our room. Technically they were out of triple rooms, so he offered us a double and a single, but we decided that we would fit the three of us into a double room (and agreed to pay the triple rate: three showers, three breakfasts, etc.) and although we imagined two of us doubling up in bed, Shady brought in an extra mattress for us. The bathrooms were clean, the room was charming, and breakfast was included. All of this for the equivalent of $6 each per night. After having some dinner and doing some planning, the three of us decided to turn in early, still tired from our odyssey to Cairo, and intending to leave by 6:40 am to make our way to Giza, and the pyramids.
Following the tips of Lonely Planet, as we began our trek we sought out a meter taxi, knowing it would give us the best deal to Giza. Before we had even completed getting to the pyramid plaza the onslaught began: “You want camels? Come to my stables, good prices, good deals.”
We wanted to wait by the window to make sure we could buy our tickets to the plaza right away, since they only sell a limited number per day. Having our student IDs was definitely a good idea—Cairo is big on student prices. After successfully acquiring the tickets, it was time for camels. We were aware that the ministry of tourism had set the official price at 35 egyptian pounds an hour (less than $7) and we were also told to haggle. We eventually agreed with a man for 30 pounds and hour, and taking a two hour trek, so 60 egyptian pounds each. My camel was named Michael Jackson. It was a thriller.
Our guides were two: a mid 30’s seeming man, and a young teenage boy. The boy did most of the work, leading on foot, while the man rode a horse.
The pyramids were everything they are expected to be, and more and real and surreal. We took tons of touristy pictures, as well as walking around on the base of the pyramid and around the Sphinx.
Because we had arrived so early, we were finished touring and playing in the pyramids before 11. Caroline and I had thought it would be funny to eat lunch at the Pizza Hut across the street. We got there and it was still closed. That is what happens when you start the day at 6 am.
We stop for some Fanta, relax and bit, and then make our way back to Cairo, where we went straight to our hostel and our 30 minute nap turned into nearly 5 hours. Oops. So we got up, got some dinner, and then went for a tea and nargillah, and then going for a stroll along the Nile, having a lazy Arabian night.

Oh, PS, crossing the road in Cairo is a permanent game of frogger. My hand was hit by a bus. Aval kol beseder.

CAIRO OR BUST

2009-12-06T11:36:00.000+02:00

Since we first talked about Chelsea and then Caroline coming to visit me in Israel, we also talked about taking a trip to Cairo and seeing the pyramids. Although Chelsea and Caroline had managed to get visas in New York (Americans need visas to Egypt when traveling over land) I had as of yet not acquired one, after a disastrously failing attempt to do so a few weeks previously at the embassy in Tel Aviv (the post is only open from 9am-11, Sunday through Thursday, and it takes 24-48 hours to process, meaning I need to surrender my passport to them). I had read that it could be gotten at the consulate in Eilat easily, but was still concerned that I wouldn’t be able to, and then no one would be able to go (I had tried to convince them that, should I not be able to get the visa, they ought to go without me).
We caught the last bus from TA to Eilat, which left at midnight and would arrive very early the next morning. Egged buses are not necessarily comfortable places to sleep. They also aren’t exactly warm places.
We arrived to Eilat around 4:45 am, and schlepped into the bus station, where we haphazardly went back to sleep until around 7:30, at which time we would head out to the consulate. When we eventually get there—a there that is not the same there that is listed in the maps in tourist books—I handed in my form, my photos, and my 65 shekels and less than an hour later, poof, a visa. The Tel Aviv Embassy is so much less helpful. While waiting, the three of us started to chat with the four others—two girls and two guys—who were also waiting on their visas. We found out that these four, who studied together at a university in Ramallah in the West Bank, were also going to Cairo. Because they were studying at a West Bank university, they were unable to acquire student visas from Israel and therefore needed to leave the country every few months, and then hope to be able to get back in.
Because we were all going to the same place, and these four all spoke some level of Arabic, we decided to stick with them and travel to Taba (the border point) together. After getting through, the now seven of us hired a minibus to take us to Cairo—it cost an extra $4 a person than the standard bus would have, but made the trip 2 hours shorter, and infinitely more comfortable. It was also convenient, because even though the Egyptians would mainly only be speaking in Arabic, two of our new friends—a Moroccan-French girl and a guy from Germany—spoke German, and so I was able to covertly find out what was going on in Arabic from them by speaking in German. Multilingualism is helpful.
Seven hours later, we arrived to Cairo, hailed a taxi to take us to our hostel with the help of one of our new Arabic-speaking friends, and parted ways with the other four (after exchanging contact information).

Trying to catch up. Please have patience with me.

2009-12-06T11:33:00.000+02:00

So. Caroline and Chelsea arrived in the evening on Thursday, November 12. They took the sherut from Ben Gurion to Mayanot, where we reunited, washed up, and made a plan. Wanting to kick things off the right way, we decided to go out that night. They were graciously allowed to stay by Rivka Marga’s that night, so we went there to drop off their things and then went to meet the girls and boys downtown. We girls were deciding where to go, so we chose this bar up the street. Just as we are about to order, one of the boys lets us know we can’t go there: N and Z are banned from there because of a fight a few years back. Right.
So Laeneia, Hayley, Hillary, Irina, Chelsea, Caroline and I (we are like the Pink Ladies) leave the place where we were sitting and go meet the T Birds outside the Square and decide what to do next. We end up at Herzl, a bar on the main bar street, but up a level so it escapes the stigmas associated with the main strip (a place for 18 and 19 year old yeshiva kids trying to flirt with one another and smoke cigarettes). As a group of 14, we pretty much took over the place. It started off a quieter night, the boys were out to cheer up Z who had just ended a relationship, we girls were out to welcome the tired Caroline and Chelsea, so in theory it was going to be a quieter, chill night having a few drinks and relaxing. I stepped out onto the balcony for a little while to get some air and talking to A, and suddenly we come back in and the entire room is a dance party. Rumor has it that Chelsea and Caroline started. So much for jetlag. And so much for a quiet night ;)

Friday after a trip to the shuk, where Chelsea and Caroline discovered the joys of dried fruit, halva, and schwarma/falafel stands, we left for a weekend in Tel Aviv, where we would room by our old couch surfing friends again for the night. After coffee and cake, Caroline and Nevo had a recording session, performing ‘Let it Be’. With the ridiculous amount of equipment they had, Dor managed to make a high quality, synced video of the performance (which can be found on Facebook). The next day, the girls and I had brunch with Nevo, Hayley, and Anna and Omer. After we dropped off our things at Omer’s, the New York girls headed south toward Yaffo, stopping at a particular ice cream shop in Neve Tzedek on the way. Walking through Tel Aviv and Yaffo along the beach, watching the sun set over the Mediterranean, is like nothing else.
Along the way, we found a playground unlike any we had seen before. This naturally required a short pause to play.
Saturday evening, we were going to stay by Nevo again, except that late that afternoon, his grandmother passed away. Of course we felt very sad for him and his family. We also realized our predicament. Having nearly decided that we would sleep on the beach for the night, Anna and Omer came to the rescue, arranging for us to stay at the former apartment of Omer’s new roommate. Israelis are pretty cool.
That night we went out with Etan, who lived in the apartment we were staying at, to Apartment, a decent club in TA. The next morning, although he had to leave early for work (also a pilot in the IDF) he left us his keys and allowed us to use the apartment for the rest of the day. Again, Israelis are pretty cool.
After a lazy morning, Chelsea, Caroline, Hayley and I headed off to eat at our favorite sandwich place in Tel Aviv—the best sandwiches ever perhaps, with a full condiment/salady bar, tons of sandwich options, and friendly sandwich makers. Satisfied from our lunch, we mosied across the street to the greatest juice bar, where we each got a fresh squeezed something (I had pomegranate and green apple). We then went back to the apartment, where caroline decided to take a nap, and Chelsea and I walked Hayley to the bus station, where we would meet up with Laeneia, and go to get my passport photos taken for my Egyptian Visa that would hopefully be procured in Eilat the next day.
The rest of this day comprised of a trip to Kikar Rabin to see his memorial, poking in vintage shops, and going back to wake Caroline to go to a final picnic on the beach. Around 10 pm, the four of us gather up, picked up all our things, and left for the Central Bus Station, from where Laeneia would return to Jerusalem, and the adventures would just begin for Chelsea, Caroline, and myself.

what is to come...

2009-11-23T11:31:00.001+02:00

It has been nearly two weeks since I have made a single post. There is a LOT of catching up to do.
Here is a sneak peak of what to be looking forward to:
*Chelsea and Caroline arrive in Israel
*first night out with the girls in Jerusalem
*weekend in Tel Aviv
*going to Cairo
*Pyramids, market places, tea shops, and the museum
*coming back from Cairo
*Dead Sea
*Shabbat in Jerusalem
*farewell, Caroline

week in review

2009-11-11T11:01:00.000+02:00

Sunday, after class, Laeneia and I decided to go to the Shuk. On the way there, while walking along Rehov Tel Hai I suddenly heard from behind me, ‘Elizabeth?’

Turning around, I see Jess, a woman who had gone to my synagogue, whom I have known since I was maybe 10 years old, and hadn’t seen in about five or so years. She had just moved to Jerusalem, is studying at an institute very close to mine. Only in Jerusalem.

Monday a few of us went to the shuk again. It was time to buy supplies for the weekly guac night. After, we watched ‘Big Fat Greek Wedding.’

Tuesday night was guac night. Making guac by hand with bad supplies takes a few hours. But when you can buy 4 pounds of avocadoes for less than three dollars, it is worth it.

Today is Wednesday. When I came into the classroom this morning, Tanya informed my there was a cat sitting on one of the chairs. Rivka Marga wasn’t thrilled. I managed to bribe it out—very sweet animal. Too bad the yeshivah won’t adopt it. Tonight, with Hayley, Laeneia, and possibly some others, I am going to see Balkan Beat Box at the Black Party, a municipally sponsored party to raise awareness against drunk driving.
Tomorrow, Chelsea and Caroline arrive and the odyssey begins.

don't stay...go Kfar! :my weekend in Anetevka

2009-11-11T10:37:00.000+02:00

Last weekend, Mayanot went on a mini Shabbaton weekend to Kfar Chabad, a moshav (village) about 5 miles southeast of Tel Aviv. Although it is geographically extremely close to the most progressive, modern city in Israel, culturally, Kfar Chabad is worlds away from Tel Aviv, and far closer to Anetevka, Russia.
We left Jerusalem before 10 am, packed in our bags and toting along bagged lunches (I had made a schnitzel pita sandwich from the previous night’s dinner, knowing the lunch of the day would be tuna). Arriving at Kfar Chabad before 11, after dropping off our things at 770* we were escorted over to the Roeber factory, where the family-owners of the company leather-bind books. Although most of the books they work with are religious siddurim, tehillim, etc, they do custom work and will bind anything. During the factory tour, our host (one of the sons of the family) showed us some of the more intricate and artistic works that his father has done, combining different pieces of colored leather, designs with individually, handstamped designs, etc. It was truly inspiring to see that this sort of artisan work is still done and appreciated anywhere; I am considering getting a book bound, something really special. The biggest holdup is deciding which book to bind (the book 2001 Things to Do Before You Die lists getting your favorite book bound in leather as one of the things to do…maybe Anthem, or something from Jane Austen?)

After leaving the leather factory, we returned to 770 and had a tour of the building, as well as a video presentation on the life of the Rebbe (Moses Mendel Schneerson, deceased 1994). We saw clips from different meaningful figures, such as Yitzchak Rabin, Ariel Sharon, and Bibi Netanyahu speaking about their encounters with Schneerson, as well as confessionals from average people about the way he touched and altered their lives in a single sentence. We were then shown the building as if it was the actual 770—“this room was where the Rebbe slept, this was his little schul, this was where he received visitors,” etc (except that the Rebbe never actually came to Israel, let alone to 770 in Kfar Chabad). People still come to this place in order to daven and to feel connected to the Rebbe, and even to write letters to him.

Right. Idolatry.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck...
That is all I have to say about that.

After the tour, we ate our lunches on the lawn in the front of the building, and then went to go and walk through one of the largest etrog orchards in Israel ( I got to take a fallen etrog…smells wonderful). By this time, it was nearly 3, and since Shabbat was in 4:30 it was time to head to our host families. I was to stay with three other girls at the M- family, the home we were all going to Fabreng in that evening. Since we would need to bring all the fabrengen food with us, we were given a ride.
The family lived in a beautiful home. Both the mother and father had grown up in Kfar Chabad, and now lived there with their 9 children, ranging in age from 16 years old to the youngest, Mussia, just 1 year. I had expected to get right to work helping to get ready when we arrived, but our host mother, Chana, insisted she didn’t need help, and we should go upstairs to rest and get ready.
One of the girls wanted to daven at schul, but we discovered when we got there that the women’s section wasn’t open on Friday evenings, so we went home, and had a delicious Shabbos dinner.

After dinner had finished, the rest of the girls began to arrive for the fabrengen, led by one of the local rabbis. A fabrengen, in theory, is supposed to be an organized, social, casual but intellectual discussion. Instead, it became a lecture. Our guest Rabbi, when answering a question about why the fabrengen wasn’t so cooperative, made a joke. He said, “I was told not to tell girls jokes on Shabbos, because you aren’t allowed to prepare things for after Shabbos during Shabbat, and if you tell a girl a joke on Friday night, she won’t get it until Sunday.”
Then he had the nerve to ask if we got the joke. I don’t think I even need to say anything more here.
I slept until nearly noon the next day—the benefit of being Shomer Shabbos, is no one expects you to use an alarm clock. After dressing, I went down to help Chana get ready for lunch, but as she was nearly done, I mainly played with Mussia.

After lunch, Chana encouraged us to go upstairs to nap before needing to go to another home for Havdalah- Shabbat leaves as early as it comes in. It wasn’t hard to convince us of the nap.
Havdalah was relatively uneventful, and afterwards we went back to our host-homes, gathered our things, and headed back to 770. There, we played an ice breaker game, ate (really good) pizza (since it had been a whole hour since the last meal we had all eaten together), and then got back on the bus to head home shortly after 9 pm. On the way out of the building heading toward the bus, my heel caught on a stair and I fell…the theology of the building may not have killed me, but it had a bit of a go at it.

Leaving Anetevka, I was able to appreciate especially where, as Ashkenazi Jews, we have come from and where we are going to. Despite the constant bickering of two of the girls I was staying with, and the constant gaze of the Rebbe from pictures, portraits, and videos the whole weekend was lovely and relaxing, although it was nice to get back to the ‘modern world’ of Jerusalem.

* 770, the name for 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, is the headquarters of the Chabad movement, having been purchased by the Friedliche Rebber (Schneerson’s father-in-law) when he arrived from Europe to New York. The 770 referred to in this story is an exact replica of this center that is located in Kfar Chabad, Israel. There are seven 770s in the world, from the original in Brooklyn to one in Kfar Chabad, and at Rutgers in New Jersey, one in California, one in Australia, Italy, Brazil, and Argentia. Because in the Lubavitch community, anything connected to the Rebbe is nearly deified considered holy, replicas of the building are seen as especially holy and spiritual places—and at least the one in Kfar Chabad was built under the direct instruction from Schneerson, and instructed to be an exact replica, down the fixtures on the doors and the stained-glass windows. Even a handmade table that the Rebbe davened at was replicated.

a lesson in acceptance

2009-11-08T01:19:00.001+02:00

After this last post, confessing my short comings, I feel the need to share this story (which I learned long before coming here)

There were once two angels—a head angel and his apprentice—walking through a town. As the night began to fall, the two, disguised as traveling men, knocked at the door of a very great and rich house. The owner of the house came to the door, and the angels asked the man for food and shelter for the night. After trying to turn them away, the persistent angels were granted entry, allowed to sleep in the damp basement for the night, and given bread and water after being roused early to start again on their way.
While they were in the basement, the head angel saw a crack in the wall of the house, and to the apprentice’s surprised, fixed the crack.

Continuing to walk, as night began to fall the next day, they angels came to a small, poor farmhouse. They approached the door, which opened before they even knocked. The owners, an elderly couple, saw the angels as weary travelers and welcomed them into their home. Although they were extremely poor—they had only one cow!—, the couple shared the best of what they had with their guests, and that night, they insisted the angels sleep on the one bed in the house, while they themselves slept on the floor. The next morning, after having slept in and been given a meager but generous breakfast, the angels set to leave. The apprentice looked out the window, and saw the couple in their field, crying because during the night their one cow had died.

Later that day, the two angels were walking again. The apprentice turned to his master and, exasperated, demanded that what had happened be explained.
“In the home of the rich, selfish man, you fixed—actually fixed!!—his wall!” the apprentice accused, “and yet this couple who have nothing and yet offered us everything, you sat by as their one cow died?!”

Unsurprised, the head angel calmly looked at his pupil. “In the rich man’s home, he kept his gold in an unknown hole in the wall. The crack I sealed was the way in which it was accessed. As for the cow—last night, I was awake when the angel of death came to the farm. But you don’t realize, the angel came for the famer’s wife! I convinced him to be appeased with the cow in her stead.”

We may all sometimes loose our cows, but what we don’t see is what was saved in its place.

my confession

2009-11-08T01:05:00.000+02:00

This is my confession.

In many ways, in many concerns, I am an extremely arrogant person. From an optimistic, positive perspective, this can be interpreted as confidence, but in reality, it is a very fine line between arrogance and confidence, and that line is often defined by how much the one making the judgment likes the individual in question. So I will adjust: depending on whether or not you like me, I am generally a confident person, or an arrogant one.
In many situations, this often extreme level of self-assuredness can be beneficial, if not truthful; it helps a person to overlook what might be meant to offend, to condescend to others instead of to doubt one’s self, etc. On the other hand, this self assuredness can be very dangerous, in the time when something that the person could not control and could not predict comes to fruition, and it crushes.

I. was. not. accepted. to. the. internship. at. the. bundestag. in. berlin.

I found out last Tuesday. Two letters arrived, one from the consulate in California, the other from Berlin, to inform me of this. I guess they thought one letter alone would not convince me, but that to make the job clean, they needed to reject me twice. And return my application, in order to completely terminate my applicancy. As the letters were delivered to my home in New Jersey, I found out through an email from my father, in which he endearingly typed up the German rejections. Although he could not read, he knew what was being said—I wonder if it is harder to receive bad news about yourself, or to have to literally type the bad news, which you know will be painfully received, to someone you love? Abgeordnete Frau Dagmar Freitag thanked me for my interest, ensured me of the overwhelming number of qualified applicants, and wished me only the best of luck in my future endeavors.
I read the email in the morning, sitting at the table waiting for class to start. I silently shut my computer, left the room, and went upstairs to my room. I had felt so good about my chances, so good about the prospect, so confident in the position being a part of the greater plan of my life. Even though it was just before 10am in Jerusalem, making it just before 4am in New Jersey, I called my father, and began to cry as he answered the phone, knowing already why I was calling.
I think that the whole thing may have been nearly as hard for him as for me, especially since he could not be here to help me through it, and I can’t say enough how meaningful his support has been through this.
As I sat on my bed, the arrogance poured out of me in disbelieving sobs, slowly shifting to shocked gasps, and trickling away in hurt, betrayed tears that leaked from me steadily for the next hour, and resurfaced for the next day and a half whenever anyone asked me if I was okay, and still manage to spill over whenever I need to think or speak about it directly.
If I had not been so confident in my chances, the rejection would not have hurt so much. But how could I have gone as far as I had without that confidence? How could I have asked for the recommendation letters, write the application, tell people what I was doing, FLY TO BERLIN FOR THE INTERVIEW.
Mayanot (my yeshivah) was also in shock. The girls who had davened for me at the time of my interview felt sorrow, disbelief. Rabbi Levinger was surprised, had no words. Chaya asked me if I was embarrassed to tell people.
I sat upstairs for two hours. I decided to come back to class; sitting alone and missing what I was here for would not change the reality. It was a lie to tell people I was fine. It was impossible to have to tell people the truth.
When Hayley saw me and asked me if something was wrong, I couldn’t even stay in the room. In the bathroom, I confessed to her. I spent the next two hours in class distracting myself with the internet. During lunch and the following afternoon, she sat with me in my room, playing phase ten. She is hooked on the game, even though I won.

I am still in mourning. I think that even the initial mourning process will fairly take at least a week. I have realized that what I am grieving after more than anything is not the job, but the life that I had been reestablishing for myself in Berlin. The relationships I had assumed would have more time, the friendships that would become a more regular part of my days, the dynamics that would have had the time to be developed, this was all the life there that I had already begun to live, to plan there and now will not have. I am mourning for my stillborn life in Berlin, dead before living.

What have I learned from this all? Everyone here tells me that Hashem has a plan. What about my fucking plan?
I don’t really mean that. I do believe that things happen the way they are supposed to, that we may not understand what happens but that we should trust that what happens truly is for the best. But at the moment, I don’t want to hear that.
In truth, has this made me any more humble? Do I feel that I wasn’t qualified enough? No, not really. And maybe that is better, that I don’t think that the rejection means I am lacking…maybe that is one of the benefits of being arrogant.

sigh...it is a constant struggle.

2009-11-05T10:35:00.000+02:00

And still again:

Today in class we are talking about Lech L’cha. She recognizes and praises Abram’s ‘obvious natural attraction’ to the land of Israel, since without knowing where he was going, he went to the land of Israel; she admits that no one has it written this way, but that it is simply obvious that the land itself pulled Abram to it.
However, I countered, verse 1 in the chapter contradicts this assertion that it was Abram’s magnetic pull that brought him to Canaan- “Now the LORD said unto Abram: 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee.” Unto the land that I will show thee. So, Abram was not brought to Canaan by his inner compass that unconsciously knew that the land of Israel was the land to which he was meant to go, but rather he used GPS directions—God Personally Spoke the directions to him. Continue 500 meters, than make a right at the mountain after the flock of goats out to pasture.
Teacher listens to this opinion. ‘Yofeh!’ she confesses. ‘this even strengthens the conviction that Abram was drawn to the land by his neschama!’
I don’t know why I bother.

A little while later…

In the parsha it talks about the ‘souls that Abram and Sarai made’ in Haran—the converts to Abram’s new ways that were following them on their journey. Rashi further elaborates that Sarai taught the women, and Abram the men—and Teacher asks us why this is so critical and important to acknowledge within the oral law. She says that even here, Abram and Sarai knew that the ‘essence of men and women were different, necessitating the separation for the women to learn from Sarai, the men from Abram,’ proving that even before the Torah, Abram and Sarai knew the importance of the separation of the men from the women, already knew the idea of tzniut (modesty, unquestionable disparateness.)

Slightly cynically, I would argue that this comment by Rashi, erudite as he was, came roughly 2500 years (according to the Jewish calendar) after Abraham’s lifetime (who was born 1948 according to the Jewish calendar, while Rashi lived around 4600, and now is 5770), when these ideas of Tzniut were already ardently adhered to; of course it would make sense to analyze the past in a way that would concur with the present in order to assuage those who would question the validity of the current standards.

One more interesting tidbit:

Men, women, and children are meant to enjoy Chagim, and Halakha has a different standard for each; children, through sweet things to eat. Women, are supposed to be bought something new (clothes and jewelry) for the Chagim by her husband. And men, they are to enjoy the Chagim through meat and wine. (and probably scratching themselves while burping.)

This discussion began by asking if we are actually meant to be vegetarians, since in the time of Eden we were, and in the time of the Moshiach we will be.

what happens in some classes...part 2

2009-11-05T01:25:00.001+02:00

Monday morning. Another class with my (sarcasm coming) favorite teacher, the same spoken of before.
I spoke with the Rabbi last week, expressing my concerns of this teacher, as well as her adherence to the topic of her class. He assures me he will address the problem.
The first half of the class goes by fairly innocuously. Alas, this, too, will pass.

We are discussing why it is important for Jews to stick together, literally, secluding ourselves from the rest of the world (the topic of the class is the book of Genesis). Teacher explains that ‘our’ [Israel’s] commitment to the ‘annihilation of terrorism’ is what gives the US the courage to stand up to Bin Laden. Annihilation. There is a good plan for a peaceful ending. And a good word for a native English speaking teacher to use to her students, some of whom are particularly impressionable. Strike one.
Then the topic turns to the Jew’s innate attraction to the land of Israel, evidenced by even those like ‘Herzl, who turned [his] back on the Torah, on Hashem!’ who were drawn to the Land.
Just because people are Haskalah does not make them heathens. Who are you to place such judgement? Living in a glass house…

what I miss from home...

2009-11-05T01:19:00.002+02:00

Israel doesn't really do Halloween. I miss candy corn. And anything with pumpkins.

Murphy ('s Law) defines the weekend

2009-11-05T01:16:00.001+02:00

Right. So this past weekend was an in/out Shabbat, meaning we could either stay at Mayanot, or leave. Bit of a reminder, I am living and studying with about 30 women between the ages of 19 and 29. 24 hours a day. Women are weird. I decided I needed to get away. My very gracious friend T, hearing how stressful the situation in the seminary was sometimes getting, offered to let me come to his apartment in the suburb for the weekend, while he would be spending Shabbat at his parents’ home in the city. It would be nearly a 3 hour train trip from Jerusalem to T’s, but I couldn’t pass up the offer. If for no other reason, his guest room has a queen size bed, and I sleep on a bed that is 2.5’ by 6’. I decided to take the train, a little bit more comfortable than the bus. Leaving from Jerusalem Malkah at 11:34 am Friday morning, I would then arrive to Tel Aviv at 1:03 pm, getting onto the next train at 1:19, and arriving at my final destination at 2:48, where T would pick me up from the train before heading to his parents’ home in time for Shabbat, which began at 4:25 pm.
Around noon, the rain began. At 12:30, about 15 minutes after passing by a bunch of camels, the train stopped. Due to the rain. 15 more minutes later, the announcer informed us that due to some technical issues, we would be stuck another few minutes. Around 1 pm, still at least 20 minutes from Tel Aviv, we still weren’t going anywhere. I had missed the 1:19 train for sure. There would only be one more train according to my train schedule before Shabbos came in. The woman sitting in my compartment, coincidentally, was heading to the same connection as me, only intending to go four stops farther than I was. She managed to tell me what was going on, because all the announcements were in very fast Hebrew.
I called T to tell him what was going on. We decided I would keep him posted. I apologized via SMS, to which he responded “it’s not your fault.” Which of course means he is annoyed and cannot say so.
I finally arrive to Tel Aviv at 2 pm, an hour late. It should be another 75 minutes to my destination (once I am on a train). Okay, still doable. Except- the next train is going to be 15 minutes late. And then 40 minutes late. Now it is 3pm. I call T, not sure what to do. Should I still even bother coming? How will I get there? He needs to leave for his parents’ if he will make it in time…
He calls me right back; he is at the grocery store, buying food for me. I am worried about making things all hectic for him, causing issues with Shabbos; he is concerned he won’t buy the right food for me, that I won’t have enough to eat, and tells me he is getting me meatballs with peas, spiced potatoes, and a challah. Am I sure that will be enough? I am trying to convince him he doesn’t need to go out of his way to take care for me, I can manage, I had packed a couple of avocados and a pomegranate…he keeps asking if I want anything else, and I start to laugh. At the whole situation. He asks why I am laughing; how do I explain how funny it is that here I am, seemingly the most high maintenance friend ever, screwing up Shabbat because of the trains being all balagon, and he is only concerned with whether I will be hungry.

(side story: also on the platform, standing not too far away, is one of the most obviously German men I have ever seen before; later on, I hear him speaking to someone. He says he is Canadian. His English and Hebrew have the strongest accent I have ever heard. Weird people.)

Finally a train arrives, at 3:15 pm. Not sure if it will go all the way to where I need to go. No one seems to know. I ask a train attendant, asking him if I need to be worried that the train will suddenly stop, say “Shabbat Shalom” and leave me stranded in a place that is not my final destination. He assures me I won’t be abandoned. I believe him.

I call Hayley again, for about the eighth time in this whole debacle. I tell her my latest update, and about how sweet T is being, and how I laughed at him. She sees the humor in the situation.

The train is the only train for more than the last hour, in place of where four trains should have been, and is the last train before Shabbat. I have no choice but to stand for the next hour plus. I call T, tell him I am on the train. We are both pretty sure it won’t be going as far as I need to. I will have to take a taxi from the last stop that the train makes. Shit. Maybe it will go quickly, make it the distance.
Or maybe not. We get to the last stop on the train. Everyone gets off. There is no one left working at the station for me to ask for help. I call a friend of mine from the States who is also living in Israel, since he has a lot of friends where I am suddenly standing, dumbfounded. He happens to be there, too, so while he doesn’t know how to help me get to T’s, if I decide to stay where I am, I can just join him and his friends. Except a big bed and good food are waiting for me.
I share a cab with a Swedish guy going even farther than I am. The price of my journey just doubled from 50 to 100 shek.

Thankfully, I get to the apartment, find the keys left for me in the fuse box, and let myself in. I left Mayanot at 10:30 am, Jerusalem at 11:34 am, and have finally arrived, 90ish miles away, at 5:30 pm. Yeah.
Good sides, T got me the greatest challah I have ever had, and the food was delish. I watched Pride and Prejudice (streamlined), took a shower, ate my pomegranate, and went to bed, like a starfish (meaning all stretched out).
Overnight, there was a huge thunderstorm. Luckily, I had had the foresight to unplug the computers in case the power went out. I am psychic. It did. The next morning, I didn’t shower. Didn’t use the computer. Didn’t open the fridge. However, avocado and challah is very tasty.
After Shabbos, T calls to see how things are going. I tell him about the power, and he tells me how to fix it, which I manage to do, and eventually can then shower. It is good.

The next morning, Sunday, I head to Tel Aviv again, meeting up with Hayley and Laneia in order to go to the Egyptian embassy to get our visas for Cairo. We get there at 10:30. By the time we get to the window, we are informed that we need to fill out the forms, get photos taken, and photocopy our passports. And that the desk will be closing for the day in 2 minutes. WTF.
We resign ourselves to needing to handle Egypt another time, and meet up with the dearly departed (from Mayanot to Tel Aviv) Anna for lunch, and then head to her apartment for coffee, cake, and air conditioning before heading back to Jerusalem.

In a nutshell, Israrail has not heard the last from me.

karmic kleaner

2009-11-05T00:43:00.001+02:00

So for most of last week, I suffered from sick symptoms…what this means is that I felt absolutely cartwheels in the grass fine, except for…well. Yeah.
I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I hadn’t changed my eating habits. I have always had a very strong stomach. WTF.
After several days needing to alter my days, I decided to go see Chaya, my local rebbitzin, known for her methods of holistic and spiritual energy healing.

I went over to her house on Thursday afternoon, and she set right to work. Without even touching me, she used her reference manual and went into a sort of trance state, fluttering her eyes and popping her hands, feeling my physical energy. She discovered that the sick energy had already traveled from my skin to my organs, showing it was on its way out.
After this, she read my emotional energy, looking for the reasons that my body had reacted sickly to begin with.
She told me to be taking the words that she was giving me as I thought to interpret them—they weren’t necessarily an absolute truth or anything, but simply the feelings and energies being drawn from me. At first, I saw what she said as completely kool-aid; she told me that one of my big issues was my relationship with Gd. Other feelings that came out were issues of blame, finality, and boorishness.
After a nap though, I remembered I was supposed to think about these feelings and what they would mean to me, not necessarily what they might mean in the context of someone else. And I realized that maybe I was having these issues—issues of having changed the way that I am religious, not out of feeling or devotion, but perfunctory respect for my surroundings, which although in theory more religious, actually enervated my personal spiritual level.
Since realizing this, I have decided to reevaluate what I am doing here, and why, going back to certain standards that had made me feel connected in the past. Oh, and the sick symptoms are gone. Thanks, Chaya.

sorry

2009-11-05T00:30:00.000+02:00

It’s been a while since I made a post. This is going to be a time to play catchup.

I gave a dvar torah

2009-10-28T15:51:00.001+02:00

This past Shabbat, I had been asked to deliver a Dvar Torah. Risking my modesty, I would go so far as to say it was perhaps some of my better work as far as Dvarim go, and I have given a fair few in my days. So, here, I am going to attempt to recreate it here.

The Torah portion this week was parshat Noach, the story of Noah. The biggest and most discussed part of this parsha is of course the whole deal with the flood-ark thing. Noah built it, gathered the animals, loaded the family, and waited out the raining and the draining. This story we know, we know what different metaphors and life lessons we get from this, the whole thing has been talked about a lot, in general and also during this Shabbat in specific. So I am not going to talk about Noah, or the ark, or the flood.

In the parsha, lots of things happen after Noah and his family and all of the animals came off of the ark. Noah gets drunk, his sons do and don’t show respect for him, things go a bit off, Cham proves a jerk, etc.
Later on, the descendents go down into the valley and decide to build a city. They decide to build a tower in the center of this city (the tower of Babel) that will reach all the way up into the heavens, solidifying the unity of the people and ensuring their future harmony. However, Gd sees this tower and says, “ Look at what this people are already doing?! This cannot be allowed!” and Gd destroyed the tower, and babbled the language of man, creating the different tongues of the world, and preventing easy communication and cooperation.
Well this seems a bit off. Why would Gd want to divide people, to prohibit cooperation and easy cohabitation? It seems that it would be a more peaceful, harmonious place where people aren’t preemptively misunderstanding each other due to language issues. So what happened?

It has been pretty much accepted (by me, at least) that details that are included in the Torah, especially details that seem unnecessary and unimportant are in fact just the opposite. When it talks about the construction of the tower, the Torah tells us that in the valley there were no stones, and so the leaders instructed the people to make bricks with which to build a tower that would reach the heavens. We are not told any dimensions of the tower, we are not told anything about what the tower will look like, we are not told about what the purposes and functions of the tower will be; this is a great contrast to what happened when the instructions for the building of Noah’s Ark, or the Tabernacle, which were described to the minutest detail. In this case rather, we are told solely that at the location where the tower was to be built, there was no stone, and they would instead make and use bricks.
So, what does this mean? Was it the advancement in human technological advancements that offended Gd so? And if so, then from a Jewish perspective are all of our technological advancements today, from laptops to medical advancements to ipods, equally heretical?
No. Let’s look again at what is said about the tower; we are not told exactly what the purpose of the tower is, but again, that it was made of manmade bricks in absence of natural, organic stone, in the absence of what was there without them—in the absence of Gd. It wasn’t the act that proved so offensive, but rather the godlessness of the foundation and inspiration of it.
In this way, if we, as individuals, choose to include Gd in the actions of our everyday lives, to realize that what we do which may seem so far separate from Gd, really is just as connected as water, trees, and air.

As a conclusion to my Dvar, in tradition with the environment, I gave all the girls a Bracha to be ‘fruitful and multiply.’*

From the previous week’s Parsha, Beresheit, we are commanded to be fruitful and multiply. The problem with this is that, especially as women, there is a very limited amount of time in which this mitzvah is even possible.
In the beginning of Noach, we are told that the toldot-offspring- of Noach are firstly that he was a righteous person and secondly the names of his children. Rashi explains that this is because the most important offspring of a righteous person are not necessarily their children (which are of course important) but their good deeds; based on this, we can all be fruitful and multiply in our deeds for our entire lives, filling the world with our most meaningful offspring, our mitzvoth.

what happens in some classes...

2009-10-26T12:59:00.000+02:00

Today in class, our teacher questioned us:

If we [Jews] all have a neschama, and the Torah is in fact our true nature, than how is it possible that some people [Jews] do not live according to their true nature?

She asked us each to take a few moments to write our own thoughts to this question, and asked us to share what we thought. A good lesson: don’t ask questions of people you are not prepared to hear answers from.

My answer:

If we truly accept axiomatically that Jews are inherently and naturally constructed internally according to ideas of Torah and the Jewish neschama, and accepting the assumption that the vast majority of the people [Jews] who do not live strictly according to the Torah are in fact of sound mind and body (which is fair, as 1. we have not all been institutionalized, and 2. Gd has not found it necessary to smite us all, as the Torah tells us happened to the irrevocably perverse generation needed to be wiped out by the great flood), than the only logical solution that can be drawn from these statements is that what is today interpreted as the way in which one needs to live in order to be living according to the Torah has been perverted from what it in actuality means. Do not mistake this for my opining that those who do live a more traditionally lifestyle are wrong, but rather that the spectrum of lifestyle choices that are in fact acceptable according to what the Torah tells us is greater than is today recognized.

Again, if it is an accepted axiom that we, as Jews, are inherently drawn to living according to the Torah, to living in harmony with our Neschama, than it would be physically and psychologically unhealthy to live in a way that contrasts with the Torah. The reality of people being able to live fulfilling, healthy lives in a way that perhaps is not exactly in line with what the orthodox community sees as the canonical was of the Jewish life is proof that this script is not mandated and necessary for each individual Jew to live to his or her full potential.

I have just relayed this opinion to the teacher. She seemed thrilled, and then reiterated to the class what I had said; she said that the issue is that we cannot know our natures, and we misunderstand what the Torah is accepted as saying, because we don’t know what we are. She says how the rabbinical interpretations of the Torah are what understand what our true nature is, and that for the individual it is a constant battle to bring themselves to the understanding that will allow them to live in harmony with what the Halacha tells us is our nature. This is what the teacher understood me to be saying.

Sometimes I wonder why people ever even bother trying to say.

(side story:

This same teacher has multiple times used different examples of how people, starting from infancy, learn to meet the world; she explains that a child who crawls along the floor, sees something, picks up the brown unknown substance, and puts it into his mouth and discovers it is sweet, enjoyable, and his mother than encourages the child, explaining the substance as chocolate, offering the child more. The teacher explains that this is the important way in which people physically discover the world; however, this sort of behavior, encouraged and accepted, actually just encourages taking things from the ground and imbibing them, unsure of what the circumstances may be. Teacher, perhaps you encourage your children to eat strange things from the ground, but I would not do.)

Side story 2: According to the bias of Rivka Marga, when people cut out large parts of their selves, of their lives, in order to fit into what they think is the accepted mold to which they think they are expected to fit, it is not good. Rather, each individual needs to be able to create a tailor made relationship between themselves and Gd.

and I had an epiphany

2009-10-20T22:48:00.002+02:00

I have realized a great thing, maybe for the first time since I have arrived here.

Sunday night, I walked into one of the girls rooms where a few girls were talking, two of whom are very good friends of mine. One of the girls got very uncomfortable, and told me that she didn't want to ask me to leave, and didn't want to talk about what she was talking about in front of me. I knew what she was talking about (a boy, which is awkward, because she is technically shomer negiyah, but had been hugging him and such at a bar). I also knew it wasn't a personal thing, but simply that I had not been there on the night this all happened, as the other girls in the room had. The other girls told me to stay, but I didn't mind her asking me to leave, so I did.

Later, she gave me a big hug and said she felt bad, and asked me if I was mad at her. I told her, truthfully, that no, I was not mad, but rather sad for her.

I realized that the worst thing that I could ever be, is someone who is so uncomfortable with myself, that I cannot face what I am doing in my life in front of my peers. If I am so ashamed of what I am doing that I cannot own up to it, than clearly either my standards or my actions need to be adjusted. However, I can honestly say that there is nothing in my life that I would not be able to admit to in almost any setting. And while I can feel that way, I know I am okay.

My father's cousin's daughter's husband's sister's family...

2009-10-20T22:35:00.002+02:00

is technically family (in-law). Last weekend, since it was an out-Shabbat at Mayanot, I decided to contact Yamit and take her and her family up on their offer for me to come visit while I am in Israel.
Thursday afternoon, I traveled with Anna to Tel Aviv, helping her move all of her things there, and intending to meet Arlene, my first-grade teacher, who had arrived to Tel Aviv that morning. We got there easily enough, and indulged in the grocery store, buying hot dogs, french fries, and sweet wine to dine on that evening. Before dinner, while Anna took a nap, I walked to Arlene's hotel, where I had a glass of wine with her and her husband at the hotel lobby. Who would of thought that I would one day find myself having a glass of wine in Tel Aviv with my first-grade teacher.
Hot dogs are yummy, Anna has discovered the wonder of carembas, and I finally saw the movie 'Seven Pounds." Very beautiful, very sad. All very fitting for my goodbye slumber party with Anna.
The next morning, I checked out the antique market at Kikar Dizengoff, met with Musha and Anna briefly, and then went off to the bus station to head to Kfar Varburg, where I would spend Shabbat with Yamit, Assaf, Shahr (2.5yrs) and Ela (5 months). Bus drivers can be frustrating.
This was my first real time in a Moshav, and it is incredibly endearing. For Shabbaton, we went to Assaf's parents, where I met his sister, and where Yamit's brother, whom I had met at Emily and Boaz's wedding in June, also joined us. Dinner was delicious, and kugel with eggplant is a great idea.
The next morning, we joined six other families for an all day Jeep Tiyul. Starting at 9:30 am, the seven jeeps went off roading, stopping for a morning coffee break, an afternoon barbecue at the JNF Bulgarian Park with tons of delicious kebabs, burgers, and of course, hummus, as well as tons of good company.
The day continued with several more hours of off roading, exploring caves, seeing views and then a pancake break at sundown.

I had to head back to Jerusalem this evening to be ready for class the next morning. Serendipity let me meet up with some of the girls at arriving back, and we had a brief night out before heading home to bed.

Thanks for an amazing weekend, Yamit and Assaf!

lamah at ohevet tel aviv?

2009-10-13T11:23:00.002+02:00

I made the decision to move to Jerusalem to do something different than the big, cosmopolitan city for a while. I am glad for this decision, but I still have been going to and from Tel Aviv a bit often. From both sides of things, this is often questioned...the religious in Jerusalem do not necessarily see the appeal of Tel Aviv, seeing as too big, too secular, too removed from the neshama. Those I know in Tel Aviv don't necessarily understand why, if I like Tel Aviv so much, I still choose to stay in Jerusalem. But really, these things aren't about choices, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, religous or secular. That is the whole point of this--there isn't just the black and the white, I am here to further develop my gray zone. But no matter how much I am determined to stay in Jerusalem, to experience every aspect of what it means to live in this torn and tethered city, Tel Aviv keeps drawing me back. The city itself is like the sand on its beaches; beautiful, a bit dirtier than maybe preferred, but incredibly soft and fine, to the point that once you step foot onto the sand, it is unlikely to ever be able to wash it off of you completely.

Tel Aviv, yet again

2009-10-12T00:32:00.002+02:00

Minus the Simchat Torah disaster, the time in Tel Aviv was lovely. Friday afternoon was spent doing a bit of shopping, Friday night by far the highlight.

After eating some dinner on the beach, I remained there, just thinking and relaxing and watching the ocean and the stars, when suddenly a man rode by on a horse. I immediately called Hayley, who reacted with surprise. She and I discussed ways we could convince the man to give me his horse, wondering if I would need to trade myself for it, in old Middle Eastern fashion. When he rode by again, I asked him where the horse came from. This man spoke no English, so I had to manage with my very minimal Hebrew. As it turns out, the horse was his own. After a bit more conversation, shockingly enough, he asked me if I wanted to ride! um...YES.

He dismounted, assisted me in mounting the steed, Anta, (a bit harder because of the soft sand and the hornless english saddle) and hung out by the gazebo as I rode up and down the beach for about 10 minutes.
Called Hayley back immediately after saying good night to the man--she was impressed.

Saturday was to be a total beach day, possibly one of the last good ones of the season. I arrived at 11 am, and left at 6pm, having spent the majority of the day with a few other American girls who had been sitting near me, all in various stages of Aliyah.

In the evening, I met up with an old NFTY-GER friend whom I hadn't seen in 7 years. Josh, less infrequently, I think :).

Sunday was to be a reunion day-- long lost Anna was back in Tel Aviv with her new friend, and after not seeing one of my partners in crime for nearly two and a half weeks, I went to the apartment she was staying at at 11 in the morning for a session of catch up, followed by lunch at the wonderful sandwich kiosk and an unplanned shopping spree, where we badly influenced one another. Then our trio was completed by the arrival of Hayley from Haifa! The three of us returned once more to the beach for the afternoon, before Hayley and I bid once more farewell to our musketeer and trekked back to the bus station to return to Yerushalayim.

Simchat Torah

2009-10-12T00:11:00.002+02:00

Simchat Torah is a holiday that rejoices in the Torah, commemorating the end and beginning of the reading of the Five Books. In the States, I love this holiday, singing and dancing at Temple Shalom, watching as the cantor de jeur attempts to run the entire length on one breath. However, realizing how much a spectator I would need to be as a woman in Jerusalem, I decided to spend the holiday weekend in Tel Aviv.
Saturday night, after the Chag was over (by Israeli custom), a group of Beslov Chasids came to the boardwalk by the beach where I happened to be sitting, enjoying the water, and were dancing and celebrating with the Torah, encouraging passersby (males) to join in; in theory, I thought this was all nice and well enough. As I watched this happen, however, a sadness enveloped me. I remembered how it was to actually hold the Torah, and be able to dance with it, a privelage--a right--that had been struggled for by Jews in so many lands, and by women over so many centuries, that I in a way yearned for it. It was an absence that I imagine is felt in so many different sorts of relationships--the yearning of an absent lover, a parent kept from their child, and a child kept from their parent. The Torah, which simultaneously is what has maintained me and is reliant on me to be maintained, had often felt merely as an extension of me, and here I was, forcibly kept from it by a non-obligation turned prohibition, and my heart broke.

And then I got angrier than I have maybe been in a very long time. Sitting merely 30 feet away, I watched as one of the Breslovers jumped down to the beach, urinated on the beach (surrounded by a big city with endless bathrooms), and then returned to his fellows, holding the Torah to dance.
1. This man was not a child, nor an animal, nor stranded in the middle of the woods. In what world is it acceptable--reasonably--for an individual to simply pee, on a beach, where less than ten hours later people would be?
2. In what way is it at all appropriate for a man to go from holding his penis while he urinates to holding the Torah, and yet my holding the Torah would not be appropriate?

I stood for about twenty minutes, developing a bit of a speech (in Hebrew) to scold this man; in the end, I was not brave enough to deliver. It took a phone call to Musha and to Hayley, venting and elaborating on the ways in which this was unacceptable, before I was able to relax enough to fall asleep.

the little bird, to caitlin, with love

2009-10-11T23:57:00.003+02:00

my lovely roommate caitlin leaves tomorrow, returning to haifa for a semester of academic study. She has a favorite Nigun (a chasidic song), called The Little Bird.

The little bird is calling
it wishes to return.
The little bird is wounded,
It cannot fly but yearn.

It's captured by the vultures,
Crying bitterly,
Oh, to see my nest again,
Oh, to be redeemed.

The little bird of silver,
So delicate and rare,
Still chirps amongst the vultures,
Outshining all that's there.

How long, how long it suffers,
How long will it be,
When will come the eagle,
And set the little bird free?

The little bird is Yisroel,
The vultures are our foes,
The painful wound is Golus,
Which we all feel and know.

The nest is Yerushalayim,
Where we yearn to be once more,
The eagle is Moshiach,
Whom we are waiting for.

When I was in Haifa on Thursday, after riding the cable car, I saw on the sidewalk a beautiful bird, it's wings splayed out to it's sides, very much alive, but clearly injured. I looked around for the first person I saw, and asked the man if he knew if there was someone we could call to help the poor creature. He said he didn't know, but while his wife, modestly dressed with a Hijab, and children waited, this man and I discussed what could be done for the bird. In the end, together we agreed that the best thing to do would be to move the bird to a less exposed place, and try to place some sustenance within reach. This episode made me think especially of my roommate and this Nigun she loves so much, and something seemed to poetic and beautiful about the fact that here was this actual injured bird, and the most that could be done for it was a collaboration between this man and me, him an Arab, a Muslim, me an American Jew.

still a week of vacation

2009-10-11T23:40:00.004+02:00

Last Sunday I arrived safely back from Berlin, Monday I went to Hevron, and Tuesday I had planned to head down to Tel Aviv, except rain was predicted, which never came. Oh, well. Instead I went to the Arab shuk in the Old City with a few of the girls, and then spent the evening down town with Hayley, Irena, and a certain yeshivabucher we know and love. This evening was in place of joining a lot of the Yeshiva girls to go down to Geula and Mea Shearim to watch (passively) the Haredim (Men only, of course) dance. I am not exactly the spectator-Jew sort.
Especially post-Hevron, I decided that it was time again to get away from Jerusalem, and so decided to go and visit my friend and his family's sukkah in Haifa. Haifa is pretty far from Jerusalem. And it is pretty pretty.

I arrived in Haifa and my friend picked me up at the bus station. For Sukkot, there was some sort of street fair going on, which we briefly purused before getting some burger ranch (kosher) and going back to eat it in the Sukkah.
Thursday morning, while my friend was in a meeting, I walked through the Bahai Garden in Akko, and only Gan Eden could possibly be more beautiful. Thursday afternoon, Hayley and her father were arriving into Haifa, so after spending a couple of hours on the beach, I met them and rode the cable car up the Carmel with them, before scurrying off to the train station to go to Tel Aviv, meeting Roi and Asaf to go hang out with Nadav at his work and eat some dinner (all cousins). Roi and I enjoyed watching some of the pretty men play soccor, occasionally with input from Asaf. Thursday night I stayed in Petach Tikvah at Roi's, meeting Mike (his adorably cuddly dog) and discovering just how amazingly talented an artist Roi really is. Before heading back into Tel Aviv the next morning, Roi and I enjoyed breakfast at Cafe Hillel.
Back in TA, I met Shai for a quick coffee before doing a bit of shopping and checking into the sky hostel for the weekend.

Hevron, where craziness comes out a few days of the year

2009-10-07T00:38:00.002+02:00

So yesterday I went to Hevron. It is one of the holy cities for Judaism, maybe the holiest after Jerusalem, because it is the site of Machpelach, where Abraham bought land and built a kever in which to bury Sara, and in which consequently Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Rebeccah, and Leah were all buried. The city of Hevron, however, while being official a Jewish settlement, is a very controversial place, and is located in the West Bank (sorry, Mom), thus making it an extremely controversial place. The cave at Machpelach has been divided, with a Jewish section and a Muslim section, and the two groups are not allowed to visit the other's side. However, because the tombs of Isaac and Rebeccah, as well as the fountain of Gan Eden (said to be the entrance to heaven) are on the Muslim side, on ten specific days of the year, coinciding with different holidays, the Muslim side of the Israeli controlled holy site is closed to Arabs and open to Jews (and Christians, agnostics, etc). So, deciding this was likely a once in a life time experience, I decided to go with two of the girls to Hevron.
The insanity begins.

I had some tasky things I really needed to get done in the morning, and combined with my only waking at around 12, I was not ready to leave with the other girls, so I decided to meet them there. Since the city is located a bit deep in the West Bank, getting there is a bit complex: first there is the local bus to the central station, then bus 160, which takes us halfway to Hevron before we switch to a bulletproof bus to go the rest of the way, and then we are dropped off in Kiryat Arbah, a neighboring city, about 15 minutes walk from Hevron. Believe it or not, getting off of the first bus and onto the bulletproof, bullet dented bus was the calmest part of the entire event.

I have been in some scary situations. I was on the tube when the second london bombing happened in 2005. I was in a car accident in which the car did a 180 degree spin through three lanes of traffic into the woods. However, getting on the bus at the central station in Jerusalem was by far the scariest thing I have ever done.
Because of how special the day was at Hevron, EVERYONE IN ISRAEL TRIED TO GET THERE. Black hatters can be quite scary. People were all pushing and cramming and jamming, trying to get onto the bus, I was sure people would be knocked over and trampled. There was screaming and fighting, one man even knocked the glasses off another, and he retaliated by throwing the man's black hat away. Had I been shorter, I may have suffocated. Police were called to control the intense mob scene, and all in all, it took about two hours to get onto a bus and pull out of the central station to even begin to head toward Hevron. During this ordeal, I made friends with an Ethiopean girl who had made aliyah with her family in 1991-- very interesting, and she helped me with my Hebrew!

Once I arrived, it took quite a bit of effort to find my friends, but eventually we were together and online--meaning in the throng like crowd- to enter into the Kever. here, again, I saw how scary women--especially religious women--are, as everyone pushed and shoved, nearly knocking over the barricades to try to get into the site first.

While the whole experience was very exciting and ought to have been very spiritual and very special, the crowds, and especially the percieved anger emanating from the crowds made it a bit
difficult to appreciate how amazing it was to be at the grave of Avraham Avinu and Sara Emeinu.

the worst of the entire thing: so in this cave there is the well of Gan Eden-- this site, covered by a silver cap, at which a stream of air continually rises and you are supposed to be able to talk directly to heaven, and therefore directly to God. Again, however, this spot is only accessible to Jews about 10 days out of the year, and the women trying to get at the site were very eager to see it, to pray at the site, which can only really be accessed by one person at a time. Try to get one angry Jewish woman to do this at a time and see how successful it goes. So many women were shouting and pushing, yelling in a way that I couldnt understand what was being said but could definitely tell the anger in it all--one woman in particular seemed absolutely livid at everything, she was yelling at everyone and hitting people, me in particular, trying to get to the front of the line. Definitely a change from the line loving individuals in Berlin.
Because I am so much taller than most of the women, they all saw me waiting for a long time, and all assumed that I had already done the well and was standing in the way, taking up space, which of course I couldnt explain was not the case. In the end with all the pushing and yelling, after I finally did manage to get to the well, when i stood back up i smacked the back of my head near my neck very hard on a metal bar, so that i couldnt even speak for a few minutes to tell my friend that I was alright. Very sweetly, the entire night she was checking on me, making sure I was waking up and coherent.

im told that in normal circumstances, visiting Hevron is a very spiritual experience, but on this day, while I am glad I was able to get there at a time when I could access the entire site, the trip was completely mundane.

I say that, on the frightening level, it will probably be hard to top the experience of getting on the bus. And don't worry, Mom, I don't have a concussion, today my head only hurts at the spot where I hit it.

Zurich is NOT the city that never sleeps.

2009-10-06T01:47:00.002+02:00

Of course I was at the airport much earlier than I needed to be, although I only got there 2 hours before my flight. Arrived on time to Zurich, unfortunately, as I knew I would have twelve hours ahead of me there. By 10:30, most of the shops and restaurants were closed. By 11 pm, lights were off, and even the arrival and departure boards had blanked. Until 4 am, I maybe saw 4 people.
I lasted the night, aided by a small bottle of baileys, a bag of gummy bears, and some Turkish bread, rations from Berlin. The flight from Zurich was fine, I slept a lot of it, and chatted with my swiss seatmate (I was able to understand her Swiss German--quite a feat!) It was a strange feeling to know I was coming home, but the home I was coming to was Jerusalem, not something I had ever anticipated necessarily. The girls I came home to were all great to come home to, and of course my fellow heathenishy ones. In 72 hours, I managed to travel through three countries, switzerland appropriately being the neutral, limbo-like place of the journey, and arrived right back into the swing of things with Sukkot.

the rest of the week in Berlin

2009-10-06T01:18:00.002+02:00

Wednesday I was lazy. Everything caught up to me a bit, and I slept until nearly 12. By the time I got out of the apartment, it was around 2. I walked around a lot, popping into a few boutiques in prenzlauerberg, and especially near my old haunts, stopping by Sophienstrasse, Rosenstrasse, Hackescher Markt, passing by the Neue Synagoge. At this point, I noticed that I the NS was the same Israeli guard that had been at Pestolozzi Str, with whom I had chatted a bit on Monday, and he also recognized me. We chatted a bit again about how he is just synagogue hopping in Berlin, and I had the great idea that I would love to interview him, as an anthropological interest, about his life and interactions in Berlin and with the Juedische Gemeinde, so I proposed the idea, and gave him my contact info.
I had plans with Kat that she would come over and I would make us dinner, so I met her soon at the market, and she and I bought the supplies for the dinner I had in mind: stuffed eggplant (vegetarian dairy dish).
I was able to have a healthy, hot meal waiting for Claudia when she came home from another long day at the library as well, and Florian also joined us after his class. The eggplant could have been a bit more baked, but all in all, was a good meal.

Thursday I met Rob and Stefan in Kreuzberg for lunch at a small italian cafe, and had my first pumpkin dish of the season (PUMPKINS!!). It was also the first real conversating I had done in German, not counting my interview, in quite some time, which was refreshing and successful enough. In honor of free museum evening-Thursdays, after some tea at his place, Rob, Rafi and I went over to the Hamburger Bahnhof art museum.
The most exciting exhibit for me was a short film being shown, Spielzeugland (Toyland). It takes place in the Third Reich, and shows the relationship between two families with small sons (who are friends), one Jewish, one not, when the German mother tells her son that the other family, who must go away, are going to Spielzeugland. I highly recommend seeing the short.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1280548/

After the museum, I brought the boys to my neck of the woods, to the Kohlenquelle in Pberg for a coffee before I had to head southwest for my interview with the import. Very interesting, notes to be analyzed, recording to be typed, possible report to follow.

Friday was Claudia's exam, and I so a big day for her. I met again with Martin in the afternoon for coffee, then went to find a relieved and newly coiffed Claudia to go to dinner with. The problem with small restaurants like falafel places that dont have you pay upfront is that the possibility to walk away and forget to pay exists. almost happened. embarassing. whoops.

That night, looking to unwind but not go crazy, my newly free friend and I shared a bottle of wine before heading back to the kohlenquelle with kat and florian to enjoy a few drinks and a juke box. The next morning, the four of us travelled back there for their breakfast, three euros for endless cheeses and salads, breads and sandwiches.

After packing my things up, while claudia ran some errands, I met Kat and Florian for some Tag der deutschen Einheits festivities at the Brandenburger Tor. craziness. not that I am one to generalize, but when germans don't have a line to que on, some just don't know what to do with themselves.

It took ages to finally get back to Claudia's, and I ended up leaving a bit later than intended, and then coincidentally ran into a friend again on the way to the Sbahn. but then, is anything really a coincidence?

the main event

2009-10-06T00:47:00.003+02:00

Everything for the interview needed to be perfect, at least, everything within my control. The whole thing came about so suddenly and I wanted to be as in charge of the situation as possible, so Monday night after I came home from breaking my fast, Claudia and I did a dry run of my outfit, down the earrings, and then discussed potential questions, etiquette, and words that I may not know in German that I maybe would need to know.
I spent the evening reading up on some issues, brushing up on some phrases, and looking over the basic background of the Abgeordnete (like congresswoman) with whom I would be interviewing.

The next morning, I was so ready and intent to be early. Of course, with the Sbahn construction work being done, I was nearly 5 minutes late getting to the building. Fortunately for me, the abgeordnete was running 10 minutes late with the interview before me. During this time, I got to chat a bit with the two recent uni grads working in the office, and one turned out to be the former roommate of someone with whom I had studied in New York/Berlin--die welt ist doch klein!

overall, I would say the interview went well. There didn't seem to be too serious of language issues, and I had the correct answers to many of the history/protocal based questions pitched to me. The one question that at the time maybe I didn't handle best was one of my motives: on my application, I had stated my career goals as they had been at the time (and still largely are), most likely to be a professor. I was asked, if I want to be a professor, why would I want to work at the Bundestag? I gave a long answer about the beauty and necessity of interdisciplinary work and understanding, how no field can work in a bubble, how, as an anthropologist, I would be able to work in a political world in a more humanistic way. All good. Better would have been to include that the abgeordnete herself started her career as a teacher. (I decided to include this in the thank you note that I sent--I know this isnt a German tradition, but I was always taught that after an interview a thank you note ought to be sent, and it can't hurt anything...)

So the interview ended, it felt faster than it was (which I take as a good sign) and I will know in a month or so. Afterward, I made after-eight chip cookies with Kat at Shuff's apartment, and then met W at a local cafe, where we played with local pooches who were joining their owners for a beer. Oh, and I learned the magic of lighters.

let the waiting patiently begin.

so much to catch up on...first, Berlin and Yom Kippur

2009-10-06T00:29:00.002+02:00

So I arrived to Berlin safe and sound Sunday mid morning--it felt in many ways like simply stepping back into my old life, getting back onto the bus that I know well, taking the ring to Schoenhauser Allee, where I would be staying with Claudia, which I have done before. After standard greetings and settling in, I washed up (in my hair I was still wearing the beach from Tel Aviv--my hostel had had bad water pressure), changed, and headed west to spend Erev Yom Kippur with a friend and his mother. I was very pleasantly surprised by his cooking skills, and the evening gave me a chance to get caught up with the election issues and ideas (as well as the see the results) as well as to get back into speaking German. Dinner was delightful, and the elections, especially for my SPD supporting hosts, were dissappointing. My overall judgement on them: Germans don't seem to vote very strategically. Granted, in this case strategy may not have resulted in victory, but the coalition and parliamentary system enables a more idealistic voter, not a practical one, and so the result in many ways reminded me of the 2000 presidential election, between Bush, Gore, and Nader.
Kol Nidre this evening was at a very small synagogue not far from where they lived, but it was a beautiful service, and felt very familiar to me.
Choosing to sleep in the next morning as there would be no first coffee of the day, I met Martin at 10:45 to head to the synagogue at Pestalozzi Strasse. A very old synagogue, rebuilt and consecrated about eight years after Kristallnacht, although they used a conservative Machzor, and the service was complemented with an organ (not really my taste, I prefer a simple piano), the women were seated on a level above the men, and keeping with the tradition of the synagogue, individuals and families 'owned' specific seats. They take this very seriously, as at about 12:30 pm, in the middle of the Shma (a very holy prayer), an older woman sternly taps me on the shoulder to inform me that I am sitting in her platz. Whoops.

I left the synagogue before the start of Yizkor (which individuals who have not lost their parents are not meant to attend) and decided to go home and take a nap before neila. Naps when fasting are good things. The whole fast wasn't so bad, and at neila I met another American girl recently moved to Berlin so that was nice, but the last ten minutes or so of the service were near torture. The sun was long set, and I had a special pop-rock chocolate bar I had brought with me from israel in my purse to break fast with, and the version of Avinu Malkeinu being done with the organ took ages.
Eventually, though, I found myself on the bahn back to Claudia's, enjoying my chocolate bar and beginning to mentally prepare for the morning: the big interview.

Tel Aviv, part 2, and family reunion

2009-09-30T13:03:00.003+02:00

Friday afternoon, Sky Hostel, Ben Yehuda 34. 5 minutes from the waterfront. Very much a hostel.

The day was still beautiful and warm, and since the next time I would find myself in Tel Aviv it would probably not be so hospitable, I decided it seemed only fair to go back to the beach, which was likely to be fairly empty and entirely beautiful. My friend I joined me, who came fully prepared for a proper evening on the beach, bringing along some party leftovers (a bottle of wine, chocolate rice krispy treats), and the most necessary, a beach blanket--the beaches in tel aviv have especially soft, and persistantly sticky, sand. I, on the other hand, brought only a towel. Okay, so my intentions are often nice, but sometimes the production leaves something to be desired. After slightly mocking how touristy the whole thing was (going swimming at night), the two of us did so, and then I conceeded that, touristy or not, swimming at night is a great idea. Tel Aviv has something over new york: beach, and stars.

Saturday was an especially exciting day: meeting the long lost and through facebook recovered family!
My cousin picked me up in Tel Aviv, and we drove to Kfar Saba, where we had lunch with the rest of the family at their restaurant. Beautiful atmosphere, largely designed by Roi (oldest of the brothers). Right away it felt like family. Plus, they are tall. Yep, definitely related.
I'll hopefully be seeing them all soon again, as I have been invited to visit their Sukkah. That evening, Roi came back into Tel Aviv, and he and I hung out (also on the beach), and walked through the Marina, before he very sweetly drove me to the airport (thanks, Roi!)

due to the changing of the clocks for daylight savings time, my 1 am flight was technically a 2 am flight and I had an extra hour (but better than it being the other way around, i suppose), and at around 10 am the next morning, I arrived at Claudia's.

Nex to come: Yom Kippur in Berlin

additional story: Kappirot

2009-09-26T09:11:00.002+03:00

So as many know, the time around and between Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur is generally seen as a time to fix grievances, right wrongs, reevaluate yourself, etc. There is an old minchag (custom) called Kappirot, in which a persons since are absolved in a manner of speaking, through an act of repentence and charity. In specific, the person waves a chicken over their head three times, and then the chicken is sent to the butcher to be delivered to a needy family. Some say you can also do this with a fish. At Mayanot, we had the opportunity to do this if we wanted to (obviously I turned it down. I told them they could give me a nice frozen chicken, and I would throw that around and then give it to a soup kitchen).
Relevence of this story: So while Hayley and I were getting out sandwiches and discussing how we are the worst yeshivah girls ever (whenever we meet new people, and they inevitably ask us what we are doing here, and we tell them we are studying at a Chabad Yeshiva, they give us a once over and often do not believe us) noticed that a man wearing a chicken suit had appearred. Although my original thoughts were that this was some sort of gimmick, up went the Moshiach sign, and I knew it was Chabad outreach, bless them in there arrogantly and unJewish prostyletizing ways. Anyway, they set up this stand, with some stuffed animal chickens and start talking about Kappirot. people get interested, as always--it is hard to ignore a rollerblading chicken-suited Chasid. A few girls start doing the chicken dance, walking up to the chicken, and suddenly another of the preachers thrusts a box into the girls' faces. Inside the box? two actual, rather young looking chickens. The girls screamed, yelled at the Chabadniks, and walked away.
Moral: Chickens have feelings, too. Kappirot can be done with money instead. Free the chickens.

"we are the worst Yeshiva Girls ever."- hd

2009-09-26T08:45:00.002+03:00

Current location: bottom bunk of a girls dorm-style room, Sky Hostel, 34 Ben Yehuda, Tel Aviv. Approximately five minutes walk from the sea. Pretty exciting that I picked up wi-fi.
How did I get here? that is the story...

Since I am flying to Berlin this evening, which is Motzei Shabbos, I would have needed to get a cab just as shabbos was ending in Jerusalem in order to make my flight. Probably would take a bit of time, or be very costly, neither of which appealled to me, what with how calmly I handle getting to an airport on time and all. So I figured the logical thing would be to spend the weekend in Tel Aviv, and my two partners in crime, Hayley and Anna, decided to take a mini holiday from the yeshiva and join me thursday and friday (but of course, making it back to Jerusalem for Shabbos.)
We arrived to the central bus station around 7, but couldn't yet go to where we were couchsurfing for the night, and as I had arranged to see a good friend, that was what we did first. He picked us up at the trainstation, we all had a lovely dinner, my friend broke up with a guy for Hayley (because the guy didn't speak English, and often used his elderly uncle as a translator), and then my friend drove us to our abode for the night.

Our hosts were very nice, three pilots in the airforce. We got the chance to talk to them about the actions that they do, the methods they are taught; one spoke of how meticulous they are truly trained to be in avoiding any civilian fatalities when on a mission, but this is a conversation for another post.
The six of us all went out, bar hopping a bit. At one place, I felt a bit of homesickness for the first time--at the bar there were big tvs with artsy images and such showing, and one piece on the loop was a video taken from a car, driving through new york. at one point it drove up 4th avenue, past the Kmart on Astor place, and nearly right past the Palladium.

Lessons from this night: Bar tenders in Tel Aviv make very strong drinks. Israeli men enjoy pretending to do american accents, especially when a bit drunk, and are often not very good at them. Oh, and Tel Aviv is awesome.

Bright and early the next morning (11:20--still AM!) the three yeshiva girls donned our bikinis and trekked to the beach. A while later, Hayley and I- who hadn't yet eaten- decided to go into town and grab some brunch. As we were walking away from the beach, still just carrying our shirts, Hayley realized that 'we are the worst yeshivah girls ever'.
Reasons why:
1) slept at the apartment of guys
2)wearing bikinis on a mixed beach
3)being at a very openly gay beach
4)going to bars
5)walking around in bathing suits
6)getting lunch- one of us had turkey and gouda, the other roast beef and cheese!

The sandwiches were from this little kiosk-thing on Ben Gurion--we had been told they were the best, now I believe it.
Shortly thereafter, Anna and Hayley left to go back to Jerusalem for Shabbos with the Gestetners (which I do regret missing), and as our hosts were all leaving for the remainder of the weekend, I was hostel bound, bringing me to where I am now.
Last night, after checking in and settling in, I decided I wanted to go back to beach and swim in the sea at night. A friend joined me, and came prepared, bringing leftover chocolate rice krispies and wine from a recent party. Swimming and sitting on the beach is fun, especially at night. A big difference between New York and Tel Aviv: TA has stars at night. Lots of them.
Today, I am going to be picked up by my cousin (whom I have never met) and go to a family lunch in kfar saba (to meet the rest of my newly known family).
see you in berlin!

things I did not pack...

2009-09-24T01:23:00.002+03:00

Unfortunately, I always manage to forget to pack something. Luckily, unlike the time when I went to DC for a long weekend and managed to forget to bring ANY shirts, this time it wasn't such an important thing, but seeing as I am going to be spending this coming weekend in Tel Aviv, my absent bathing suit was a bit of a dilemma...after a bit of fruitless searching so late in the after season, I passed by a fabric store, and, returning to my old ways, solved the problem that way. In the end, making my swimsuit instead of buying one resulted in a much better fit, and a much lower price.
Another thing that I did not bring with me? A regular suit. Of course, when packing I saw no likelihood of needing one, but since I am interview in Berlin next Tuesday, I do. Unfortunate new piece of knowledge: imported stores in Israel are very overpriced. Sorry Israelis. I have managed to borrow a black pencil skirt from a friend, and think I have scrounged together an acceptable outfit from the closet I did bring with me. Since my interview is the day after Yom Kippur, and has been moved from 2:30 pm to 10 am, and since the only HM that once was open on sudays in Berlin no longer is, my plans to buy something quick and easy have fallen through.
On that note, I will be spending Yom Kippur in Berlin. Yes, Mom, I found someone to go to services and breakfast with. And to add to the fun, like I said before, leading up to my week long stint in my favorite european locale, I am spending the weekend in Tel Aviv, going to the beach Friday with a couple of friends, and finally meeting my new found extended family at some point. I'll probably look for something to make my interview outfit abit more conservative, too.

In other exciting news, Chelsea and Caroline have booked their tickets and are coming to Israel!!

Need to finish packing now, and Chasidus class is in six hours...

l'hitraot

Rosh HaShannah reflected

2009-09-22T22:59:00.002+03:00

As of last Friday evening, it is officially 5770. Apparently this means that we are in the 1,770 year of the time of Moshiach, and that the Moshiach has to come sometime in the next 230 years. That it is, presuming we accept that the entire earth is only 5770 years old. (by the way, did you see that they discovered modern human footprints in tanzania, preserved in volcanic ash, dated to 120,000 years ago? currently the oldest human footprints known.)

Anyway, overview of the weekend...I spent the first night the guest of the Levingers, the Rabbi and his wife, Chaya, as well as their five adorable children, Yehuda, Yossi, Tzipi, Chani, and Mendel. It was the first chasidic chag of my life, and I still can't understand how Chaya manages to manage five children and make such a multi course meal. Miracle of the evening: I deseeded a pomegranate in a nice dress, and managed to not get a single stain!

Instead of going to some shul the next day, I decided to spend my first Rosh HaShannah in Jerusalem (and realistically, likely my last) at the Kotel. I was a bit nervous at first, convinced that with the double whammy of Rosh HaShannah and Shabbat, the wall would be a mosh pit, completely packed without a stone left to stand on.
Instead, it was quite the opposite. There were so few people, I was able to take a chair of the stack (which was still stacked!) and bring it right up to the wall, sitting just a foot or two from the stones, and sit for a couple of hours, reading, resting, thinking. I have managed to come so far, to where so many generations only dreamed to speak of, and my only regret is that I know I will never be able to where my Tallis at the wall.

Walking through the old city, seeing the ruins, the new "old" walls blending nearly seamlessly with the actual old walls, on a day that was meant to be spent in this city, was a slightly surreal experience, which was increased by the hordes of Russian tourists thoughtlessly snapping photos and speaking on their cell phones in the plaza of the Western wall, and all over the old city (note to potential tourists: on Shabbat and holidays, not the most considerate thing to do.)
This night, I went with four other girls back to the Lymans' for dinner, where I was confronted with the biggest symbolic fish head ever. It was from a salmon. And had teeth.

On the second day, since we had yet to hear the sounding of the Shofar, I went to the Great Synagogue, where the service was austere and the famous choir neogospel. Beautiful, yes, but disconnected.

The evening's Tashlich brought us to the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, where the hungry fish and turtles eagerly gobbled up the challah-fied sins. Later that night (much later), on a whim, Hayley and I went to Tel Aviv, where we met up with a couple of her friends for a negilah night on the beach of the mediterranean sea before coming home at dawn to start the Fast of Gedaliah, really an easy fast as far as fasts go.

In other news, I am going to be going to Berlin on Sunday morning in order to have a job interview, which was supposed to be at 2:30 on Tuesday (the day after Yom Kippur and another fast), and will now be at 10 am. Yup.

so, ich muss jetzt nur Deutsch sprechen, ob ich fuer mein Interview bereit sein will...
Tschuss!

virtuality

2009-09-22T02:12:00.002+03:00

last sunday, an Israeli soldier in the air force, during a training session, fell from the sky and lost his life. this soldier happened to be not just any soldier, one of the countless members of the IDF, but the son of the first Israeli astronaut to go into space, who also tragically died when the NASA shuttle failed to safely reenter the earth's atmosphere.
this soldier also happened to be the friend of a good friend of mine. he was 20 years old, had a mother, three younger siblings, and a country, all of whom loved him.
apparently when the plane crash was cleared, they were not able to recover his body, and so buried an empty casket next to his father's grave, where his mother, in his eulogy, said ought to have been the place reserved for her, not used for him.
what are the marks of our lives? when there isn't even a body left from us, when the concept of a soul is so abstract and unrecognizable, especially in such a tragedy, how do we see the proof of existence, the proof that a life actually happened, and was not just a dream?

his facebook page is still up. His handsome face still smiles out of his profile, and his friends still make posts on his wall, but what does this mean? is a profile still a profile when it is just a shadow, an imprint? and now, who are the posts meant for? him, his family, his friends, or the one who makes the post?
when our virtual selves are still accessible, are we truly lost?

rivka marga, the mayanot magnet

2009-09-16T21:00:00.002+03:00

In every setting you find yourself in, generally there is one special person that just draws you in like a magnet.
At the Mayanot Women's Yeshiva in Jerusalem, for me that person is called Rivka Marga.

I first met RM on my very first day in Jerusalem-- After class, three of us went to her house to make challah for Shabbat. Right away, I knew I was in the presence of something special. Even though this meeting also was the site of one of my expected, unreasonable falls.

During this afternoon, like a good Jewish mother, the first thing she did with all these new, strange girls in her house was feed us. In addition to four of her eight children. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, she explained various spiritual aspects of baking challah, as well as indulging us with experimental braiding methods, etc.

Beyond this, RM teaches at the moment three or four classes of mine, two that are actually her, and two that she is covering for women on maternity leave. No matter how tired I am, her presence wakes me up, makes me feel so much more comfortable, and even through her sneehus (sp?) clothes and constant sheitl, I feel that I could ask her about anything. She is the perfect balance of spirituality and groundedness, with a great sense of efficiency. If I ever entered the Chabad/Frum world, I would want to emulate RM.

getting up to speed

2009-09-16T20:21:00.002+03:00

so. I said I would get a lot worse with the frequency of my posts, and I was right. Lets catch things up then.

In the past couple of weeks, I have had had classes at 7:45-8:30, then again from 9:30 to 4 pm. definitely a bit more intense then expected by the general public. The classes cover a very wide range of topics from chasidus, parsha, and talmud, to love dating and marriage, and 'my jewish family'. Apparently, the dating to marriage courtship process ought to be no more than three months.

The teachers are all interesting, and range from former stoner hippies, to FFB women, to varying levels of chabad rabbi, who sometimes speak with various levels of condecension. Some of the teachers aren't my style, but a couple are especially amazing.

I spent my first shabbos at the Kotel, with the first shabbos meals had with the yeshiva and the girls here. The second shabbat was at a carlebach schul nearby, with dinner at a local couples' home.

pieces of excitement: the area is very nice and a bit chic, apparently. I live just off of a main road in Moshav Germania, so there are a lot of cafes and restaurants nearby.
I have been walking a lot recently, to and from downtown Jerusalem nearly everyday. While I thought about doing a lot of walking and packed comfy shoes, I did not think about the fact that the stones and sidewalks here are very slippery. Not surprisingly, most of my shoes don't have the best traction. I fell once. Yesterday I bought a new pair of Naots, so hopefully that problem will be solved.
I am beginning to know my way around, largely through going out walking by myself, getting myself lost, and then figuring out how to be unlost. It may seem like the hard way, but it works. Also, I have found a favorite spot, not too far away, in a nice little nook near the menachim begin heritage center, and the montifiore windmill. Its the type of thing that wouldn't necessarily be noticed if you didn't know it was there.

The head rabbi of the program is very nice. He and his wife have currently five kids, and their first language is Yiddish, which is fun for me, since I can generally communicate with them in my German.

Okay, I think I am going to end this post, and post a couple others, so things can be a bit more topic specific.

day 1.Riding buses.

2009-09-04T06:44:00.003+03:00

So, leading off from my last post to you all from the lovely Ben Gurion International Airport, I managed to find the nesher cab, and started on my way to Jerusalem. The cab driver was actually very nice, if not a bit unprofessional (he stopped on the way to get himself a soda). When we finally reached my address after dropping nearly everyone else off, he helped me with my luggage, and used his phone to call the contact person, since I have yet to get my new sim card for Israel.

I was let in by a very tired but very nice girl, who is also in the program, and we managed to find which room I was in, and wake my roommate up. sorry, caitlin.

I didn't sleep persay, but i did lay down for a few hours, and in the morning quickly unpacked my suitcases and settled in, ready to join the rest of the girls for breakfast at 9, and then head down to class at 9:30. Classes were okay, on first impression, some of the teachers seem to appeal to me more than others.

during break, which starts at 1:30 0n thursdays, along with two other girls I went to the house of one of the rabbi's to bake challah with the rebbitsen (rabbi's wife). I learned how to do a six braid, and succeeded in a very well down 5 braid. summary: baking challah is fun, and little children are cute. Exciting parts of this tale: I fell down for no reason (and it had been more than I year since my last tumble!) and, I rode a public bus, six or so full stops, for a full ten minutes. and lived to tell the tale.

the sun has just risen, and this evening begins my first shabbat of this experience.

appropriately, when in the cab here from the airport, I heard on the radio a pop version of Boi Kallah.

Shabbat Shalom!

business first, then Shalom, Tel Aviv!

2009-09-03T01:38:00.002+03:00

Okay, so let start out by promising that within a week, the frequency of these posts will almost certainly decrease. That settled...

The flight. due to a series of lucky circumstances, I flew first class, or business first as continental calls it.
good things about first class: three bags checked allowed, even though I only brought two. bags can be 70 lbs. i could nearly fully extend MY legs while seated. the seat moves into a lying down position. my tray table was given a linen table cloth. no one sat next to me on this flight. i had a dinner menu. and ordered steak. with a glass of red wine. then a cheese plate. then ice cream and baileys. borded the plane first.

bad things about first class: it is not like in the wedding singer. there is no red carpet, and passengers cannot actually serenade the plane. shucks.

currently, i am sitting outside a coffee bar in tel aviv (still in Ben Gurion airport). collecting my luggage, going through customs, all relatively painless. probably because its nearly 2 am. I am soon going to leave the airport and attempt to get into my apartment in Jerusalem. we'll see how that goes.

on a slightly more thoughtful note, as the plane started to get lower, preparing to land, i looked out the window as we flew over the mediterranean sea. I instinctively said a whispered schehechiyanu (a blessing for a new thing, a first time, or a first time of the year) as I saw the sea meet a sea of lights, the twinkling, hundred year old Tel Aviv. In the middle of my prayer, a moment of 'WTF' swept my mind, and for a second, I had no idea what I was doing, why I was here, what had possessed me to want to take this trip. That thought hasnt really vanished...perhaps been calmed, but it is still there. Here's to seeing what comes!

Shalom!

13 minutes, 12 seconds on the computer, not on an airplane

2009-09-02T06:33:00.003+03:00

13:12. That is all the time I have, before the computert automatically signs me out again. I am in the 'business center' of the crowne plaza hotel in Newark, which, naturally, implies that I am not in fact on an airplane winging toward Tel Aviv. While standing in line to check in, an announcement came on over the loud speaker. "Continental flight 90 has been delayed to 6:30 am". (reminder: the flight was supposed to be at 10:50 pm).

So, the options were to stay at the airport all night, go home for around 4 hours, making my parents get up early again to drive back to the airport, or go to the comped hotel room.

It hasn't been too bad so far, to be honest. The airline also gave me food vouchers, so when I got here, another woman from my flight asked me if I would like to join her for dinner in the restaurant. The food was tasty, and her company interesting (she works for the consulate in New York), and now I will have a friend for the daytime flight that I will likely not sleep through in the morning.

Another funny aspect of this, now instead of arriving to Jerusalem around 6pm to go into the building I will be staying in, I may not get there until around 3 am...doubt someone will be there to let me in at 3 am. Looks like I may get very familiar with Ben Gurion airport. at least it has been recently redone.\

benefits of being at the hotel: really big bed. and a decent bath tub. to myself. (the five months ahead of me are shadowed by the communal bathroom awaiting me).

downsides: time of the flight, and needing to head back to the airport at 4:30 am.

So, I have 6:11 on the clock before I get signed off the computer again, and a wake up call in 4 hours, 20 minutes. I am going to leave this here for now, and may I say that I have so far handled this upset with (relatively) remarkable calmness. Chelsea, I hope you are proud.

hopefully, the next post will come from Jerusalem

Shalom!