It's Two Days in Galut

After missing my original Thanksgiving dinner because it was moved to Friday night, Shabbat dinner Friday night at my hosts’ home was, that’s right, Thanksgiving dinner. Clearly, the date of Thanksgiving took too long to get to Israel from the Promised Land of America, so Thanksgiving was celebrated by the traditionalists in Israel on Friday. Or something. Also, Kiss of the Dragon is a terrible movie.

Veneration City

This morning I went to a bat mitzvah by the southern end of the Western Wall. What is today known as the Western Wall is an exposed part of the Temple Mount’s retaining wall built by Herod and used as a place of prayer by Jews who wish to pray as close as possible to the site of the Holy of Holies. While compelling, the place does lack a certain decorum, and the large crowds and separate prayer areas for men and women make it difficult to have family events there. Over the last few decades since the Old City came under Israeli control in 1967, archaeologists have excavated much of the area around the south-western corner of the Temple Mount, exposing the street from the Second Temple period, along with shops, ritual baths, and other structures that had been covered by thirty feet of earth for centuries. This area is now frequently used for small events because of its proximity to the site of the Temple, as well as its relative tranquility. We were the first of at least three private services there that day. This bat mitzvah was celebrated in a more egalitarian style with the bat mitzvah girl leading part of the service and reading from the Torah, which would be impossible at the Western Wall. And praying alongside the mounds of debris, the stones piled where they were toppled by the Romans when they destroyed the Temple two thousand years ago, was a much more powerful reminder of the losses and triumphs of the Jewish people than the Western Wall plaza could convey.

The southern end of the Western Wall and the Jerusalem Archaeological Park. At the top left is what remains of Robinson’s Arch, once an entrance to the upper level of the Temple Mount and the largest arch in the Roman Empire in its day. In the foreground are the stones that once made up the top of the wall before the Temple’s destruction. They rest on the original pavement, part of which is visible above the rocks. Beyond that are three enclosures which were shops, including one of a money changer, where travelers would come to buy sacrifices to bring to the Temple, ritual baths, and other buildings of the era. In the distance is the southern wall of the Old City.

En route to meet a friend for lunch, I went to the Abbey of the Dormition, a beautiful church on the site of the Virgin Mary’s Assumption to heaven (some Christian tradition tells that she did not die but fell asleep and was received by Christ in heaven, hence Dormition). I marveled at the striking Byzantine mosaics and stonework, and only found out later that the reason it’s in such good condition is that it’s only 100 years old, built on the site of an older Byzantine church.

The crypt of the church with a wood and ivory statue marking the spot where Mary fell asleep and passed to eternity.

From there I walked to a building containing three religions’ holy sites. The ground floor features a small synagogue at the site of what some hold is the tomb of Kind David. The entry was packed with people singing and dancing, the songs and drums echoing into the courtyard. The Upper Room on the second floor is venerated as the Cenacle, the site of Jesus’ Last Supper. Arabic writing and a mihrab date to when Muslims took over the building in the sixteenth century and made it a mosque, holy to Muslims who also revere the man they know as Nabi Da'ud. The solemnity of the Upper Room contrasted starkly with the exuberance downstairs. From the roof I had a great view of the church and the surrounding area. Then to koobeh lunch with a friend in the shuk and back to Baka for Shabbat.

The cramped room with the covered entry to the supposed tomb of Kind David, which the Bible says isn't here.

Thankful

I love Thanksgiving. I’m proud of my American heritage, and I’ll take any excuse to eat and party. I wasn’t going to let being in a foreign country stop me from celebrating. After my and a friend’s respective dinners were moved to Friday, we decided to go to a pot-luck dinner at the Merkaz Hamagshimim, a kind of cultural center for Americans in Israel. She got into a bit of a predicament with an Arab cab driver who was saying inappropriate things to her and then followed her to the dinner, but putting that behind us, we showed up to the packed dinner an hour and a half late. Sitting on the stage with the picked-over scraps of turkey we could salvage, we talked about family and friends and misadventures and the things we were thankful for. I’m thankful for my friends and family and the time I spend with them. I’m thankful I’m in a position where I could quit my job and take some time off without worry. I’m thankful for the opportunity to see new things and go to new places. I’m thankful for my safety and that of the people I care about in a volatile world.

Fun with Memes

The babies are smiling! And if you thought they were cute before, now they are just adorable. I’ll be amazed if I get any work done from now on.

The West Bank in Pictures

This morning I took a local bus to the Be’er Sheva bus depot, then the bus up through the West Bank back to Alon Shvut. I learned that the reason the buses that go through the Territories are so much cheaper than the buses that go around (14 shekel versus 29 shekel) is that they are half-price to encourage Israelis to take them. After the Intifada, a large portion of Israelis are still too scared to go through the West Bank. The windows on the bullet-proof bus were the best I had yet. Here are photos of my journey.

The Be’er Sheva bus station, full of soldiers on their way somewhere, and other assorted commotion.

People here pack a lot of heat. I'm still not completely used to seeing it.

Most of the West Bank looks like this. Scrub, scattered fields, sheep.

The entry gate at Otniel with the Otniel Yeshiva on the hilltop.

People getting on at the Otniel stop. The greenery and Western architecture set it apart from the Arab towns.

An aerial view of the Otniel area, courtesy of Google. Notice the American suburb-style layout of Otniel on the right, with small rows of white trailers directly north and downhill of the yeshiva. The town is only accessable from a single road with a security gate. The cluster of white buildings on the northern arc of that road is an army base. On the left is an Arab town, built along the road and without the same kind of meticulous organization.

View of what I think is greater Hebron from inside the gate of Haggai.

My final destination: barricade with soldier, and guy not waiting behind it.

Storytime

In Israel, everyone has a story. Ask someone anywhere else where they are from and what they are doing there and you could get an interesting personal history, or you could get something as simple as “I’m from Boston.” But here, those questions aren’t just ice-breakers; they are a window into each person’s life. For each person who came to Israel, their reasons and their stories give an insight into their personalities and dreams that would not ordinarily come so soon after introductions. And for each person who was born here, that question immediately unloads an oral tradition full of drama and hope.

For dinner we went to one of the deans of the med program at Ben Gurion who had come to Be’er Sheva 37 years ago to start the program. At the time, Be’er Sheva was a small desert town with a small new university and a lot of ancient history. He started the minyan at the absorption center when they moved there, which on Friday night had old Jews from Morocco, Uruguay, and Yemen, and teenagers fresh from Ethiopia. He watched Be’er Sheva and its university grow into a bustling metropolis and a thriving educational center, watched as new neighborhoods sprung up from the empty fields, watched as a new generation of Israelis made the city their own. We went to friends for lunch, each of them too with a tale of searching and finding something here, or of exploring the world, or grandparents’ escape from Europe. Whether seventh generation Jerusalemite or here for two weeks, each person adds to the greater story of Israel.

As a new city, and one in the desert, it was comforting to be in Be’er Sheva, with its cars and broad boulevards and desert air. It reminded me of Anaheim or Sherman Oaks in a way. It was nice to be back in civilization, and Be’er Sheva being a more secular city, I found the cars driving on Shabbat—noticeably absent in Alon Shvut or anywhere else I’ve spent Shabbat so far—oddly normal. Somehow Shabbat seems more different from the rest of the week when I’m the one walking than when everyone else is too.

Two street signs on opposite crosswalks. Clearly they still have a ways to go.

Every Day I Have the Blues

At 11:30 last night, my friend in Be’er Sheva emailed me, asking if I wanted to come down for Shabbat. My cousin’s wife looked on Eged’s nearly useless website and saw that there was a bus leaving Jerusalem at 9:30 this morning. I packed my things, got up early, and made it to the bus station at 9:45 with time to spare before the bus was set to arrive. I waited. Two cars came by and rolled down their windows to ask if I was going to Kiryat Arba. This is not unusual for Israel, as it is common to tremp when one needs to get somewhere; tremp, from the German tramp, i.e. to be taken for a ride. But Be’er Sheva is a ways past Kiryat Arba, so I declined the rides and waited, not knowing that there were buses from Kiryat Arba to Be’er Sheva because the website doesn’t list connections or have a map of the system.

Not my stop, but a good example of why I hate the bus system. Can you tell what bus stops here?

I rested on the edge of the barricade as the soldiers paced behind me. A checkpoint near here was declared “an obstacle to peace,” and yet when it was dismantled peace did not come and people were killed. A few years ago, some kids were run down here while waiting for a ride. A pile of stones marks the spot, and a concrete barrier and armed soldiers protect the bus stop, though everyone waited for their rides 15 feet or so down from the protection of waist-high cement. An army lookout sits on the mound on the other side of the highway and the soldiers remain. People and buses came and went, but not my bus. By 10:20 I was getting anxious. I called the house and apparently the website now said the bus was not running today. Instead, I crossed the street to catch a bus to Jerusalem to get a bus from there to Be’er Sheva.

Soldiers guarding the bus stop, which is behind me, protected by a barricade. A monument on the left, and people waiting on the right not by the bus stop for a bus or a tremp, whichever comes first.

The bus, with the clearest windows of any bus I’d been on so far in the Territories, and with a clear view of the ultimate Barrier on the hillside, took us to the train station on the outskirts of Jerusalem where we switched to a non-bullet-proof local bus, and went from there to the central bus station, passing walls of Tzipi Livni billboards and one for a noodle house on the way, up in advance of the forthcoming national elections. I grabbed some Chinese food from a stand in the food court, where the girl told me I was wasting money getting the small instead of the large box because the large was only 5 shekel more, despite me not being that hungry. Also randomly in the bus stop was my brother and a bunch of kids from his yeshiva on their way down to Hebron for Shabbat, this week being the week Jews read of Abraham’s purchase of the Cave of the Patriarchs, in which he would bury his wife Sarah. I do intend to go down there, but I’d prefer to go at a time that is not a romanticized mob scene.

In the central bus station in Jerusalem. Notice the man praying in the candy store by the liquor.

On the bus south to Be’er Sheva, this time on the “right” side of the Green Line, the name rang true. Fields of green dotted with sparkling white homes on rolling hilltops under open skies. Highway overpasses and train tracks and power lines and crop dusters—it was hard not forgetting I was in Israel and not central California or the Midwest. Green became tan as the desert took over, clouds drifting gently along. Count Basie played and sang me the whole way down, trumpets clamoring and piano keys tinkling along roads of majesty.

Heading east.

The Negev.

Life of a Modern Bum

I had an emergency conference call about the forthcoming issue of PresenTense. In long-forgotten times of twenty years ago, an international phone call was something special. “Excuse me, but I have a long distance call,” was a valid exit from any situation. My cousins have an internet phone line with a local Los Angeles number. We talk, make plans, and only have to worry about not catching the other one at breakfast. Micah says his office has conference calls with various people in Israel, all routed via the internet and American phone numbers back to home offices in Israeli suburbs. Global telecommunications hurts my head.

Without a segue, I haven’t showered since Tuesday. Most homes here have a dood shemesh, or solar-powered water heater. The morons who built this house put the dood on the side of the roof that doesn’t get sun until about 11:00am. By nightfall, unless you supply an external power source, there is no more hot water. This leaves a roughly five hour window in which to shower, and one that falls squarely on my peak work hours. I blame Herzl for my BO.

Of Friends and Fueds

My cousin’s wife had a driving lesson today and I got a ride with her into Jerusalem. Annoyingly, there is no concept of a learner’s permit here, so there is no way to practice driving in advance of the driver’s test outside of lessons. We drove around, practiced parking, and the instructor, who spent a bunch of time on the phone, told me that I needed to speak only Hebrew in Israel. While waiting for a college friend to get out of class, I sketched in my sketchbook for the first time in years. It took me a while to get into it, slowly remembering the process of drawing. We had lunch at “Kuppah Gh’oh” and then walked around the scenic HUC campus where all HUC rabbinical students from the various campuses in the US spend their first year. She told me about the wall built with narrow windows to minimize exposure to then-neighboring Jordanian shooters. Now squarely in Israel, the campus was an oasis of calm in the bustling city.

View of the Old City walls and the Tower of David from HUC.

I walked around a bit after she left for class, finding myself on front of what will be the Waldorf=Astoria Palace. The designers of the building appreciated the old façade so much they gutted the building and are constructing the new one inside it. Across the street I sat down in the park to check my map and call friends. Among the trash, graffiti, and the odd man peeing, I saw what looked like old grave stones with Arabic writing, now cracked and broken. This was a Muslim cemetery, long since deconsecrated, and under auspices of the Muslim Waqf who clearly didn’t take such great care of it. It is this same cemetery that is now the center of controversy because of plans by the Simon Wiesenthal center to build part of a new Museum of Tolerance here. Without taking sides, I’d hazard that they might take better care of it.

Construction on the new hotel, built in the shell of a hotel built by the Ottomans—on cemetery grounds.

The Mamilla cemetary as it is now. The trash, graffiti, and neglect are just outside the frame.

I walked down to Emek Refaim to meet friend #2 who I just discovered lived there. He had also given up a job in a thriving economy to come here and now is gainfully unemployed. Passing time until meeting friend #3 for dinner, I stopped by the PresenTense office, where I overheard someone lament that they’d prefer to eat free-range eggs, but most free-range eggs come from the Territories, and it was a tough call for him because he didn’t support that either. Upon relating this to Micah, he pointed out the irony that the farmers in the Territories were more humanitarian. At dinner at New Deli we caught each other up on what our high school classmates were up to. Friend #4 had passed on free jazz to go to bed, bringing my friend-filled day to an early close. I hoofed it over to the bus stop, and despite getting temporarily lost on account of Israeli fear of street signs, made it safely home.

The Moses Montefiore Windmill, built in 1857 to grind flour in the first Jewish neighborhood outside the Old City.

A modern masterpiece. How tastes have changed.

Ani Ohev Vafel Kreesp

Best. Cereal. Ever. Also note the milk in a bag.

While nigh impossible to find in most local supermarkets in Los Angeles, on a lark we happened upon a stash of crunchy maple perfection in a grocery store here. I am in 8-year-old with type II diabetes heaven. This is the breakfast cereal of the sweet-toothed gods. I almost forget that I inadvertently paid 28 shekel a box for it. It’s so worth it, though.

Brown Thumbs

Mostly over being sick, Micah and I spent a chunk of the afternoon on the garden. First we drove out to a trash heap on the edge of town and picked up some surfacing stones to use as stepping stones and a drum from the inside of a dryer to put our compost pile in. Compost needs heat to breakdown, much of which is created by the decomposing plant matter, but we wanted to speed up the process and move the pile to a spot that got more sun. I scooped up the top layer of grass clippings and yard trimmings and raked leaves from our compost heap to put in the drum. I had looked at the pile and seen some plant matter and figured that it just hadn’t decomposed much. But two layers down and I was smiling for the rest of the day. The core of the pile was a rich, dark brown, earthy smelling, and coolest of all, warm to the touch. Our compost was working! Waste was successfully on its way to being useful fertilizer. Nature is so awesome. And now our compost will hopefully be even better. I even joined an online gardening forum to get compost and gardening/lawn maintenance advice. This will be the best yard ever. Hooray for us!

Acceptable Bigotry

Being sick on “vacation” sucks. I didn’t take a sick day in the last year and a half at work, and now that I’m jobless I waste my time on the couch watching movies with tissues stuck in my nose.

In other news, Nir Barkat, secular Israeli and former hi-tech businessman, won the election for mayor of Jerusalem yesterday, beating out the haredi Meir Porush and other smaller candidates. The election results, with an almost Western 40-something% voter turnout, were decried by many as showing a deliberate prejudice against the ultra-Orthodox haredi communities. Which is essentially true. A sizable portion of the country sees the haredi community as little more than a drain on national resources. They don’t have jobs and rely on welfare to provide for their large families, don’t practice any form of family planning, don’t serve in the army, and don’t contribute much to Israeli society as a whole. In an already cash-strapped country and in such turbulent times, the Israeli public, including the more left Orthodox, has made clear that they want someone who won’t continue the system of government handouts to those they see as leeches. Porush made an interesting move in depicting himself on his campaign posters as a cartoon character, likely in the hope that this would make him less scary to the rest of the electorate, though it clearly didn’t work well enough. The rift between the haredim and everyone else is so severe that even the Orthodox think that a secular candidate better shares their values. Barkat did come out against the almost-nascent Jerusalem light rail system, but hey, at least he’s not haredi.

It's in the Bible!

We wanted to make fish for dinner and went to the butcher to get some. He recommended we get amnoon, St. Peter’s being the only English name for the fish he knew. We cooked it and it was good, but we still had no idea what it was. A quick search online later and we discovered that it was tilapia, so called St. Peter’s fish because of a story in the New Testament of Peter catching a fish in the Galilee with a shekel in its mouth (shekel being the name of both the currency used today in modern Israel and the currency in ancient Israel from which it took its name). At some point one kind of tilapia found in the Galilee became associated with the story, and the name stuck. I was just at the Galilee. I walked the paths of history. It seems almost unavoidable here.

Norther Exposure

I was sick for a few days this week and it took me a while to post this. Photos will be forthcoming.

On Friday the cousins and I drove up to the Golan for the weekend. A couple errands in Jerusalem and a pizza later, we were on our way. First we drove west, into the West Bank, and watched the markers noting we were at 0m, 150m, 300m below sea level in the Dead Sea basin. The barren rocky bluffs of the Judean Desert rose up on all sides, flecked with manicured Jewish towns and haphazard Bedouin encampments. We saw Jericho in the distance, road-side lawn ornament sales, and palm tree-filled desert oases. Before hitting the Jordan we turned north. Every so often we passed rows of green houses and date palm groves, small villages, some Jewish, some Arab, a rusted hull of a tank, left to the sun forty plus years ago, and the odd camel dawdling by the highway.

The farther north we traveled, the more lush the landscape became. From bleak white rocks to scrubland, to grasses grazing the most pitiful cows I’ve ever seen. The neat green rows under the tan, brush-covered mountains and the Arabs riding in the back of a flatbed reminded me of California. Some ways up, the highway runs just off the Jordan River, really just a trickle, and by extension the border with Jordan the country. Over fences and access roads were Jordanian towns and fields, just out of reach. A sign on the side of the highway had posted times for Shabbat services. We stopped at Mehola where one of my cousins-in-law is doing her national service, a community of both new suburban homes and older, smaller, weathered ones. Changing standards, I guess.

Crossing back into Israel proper, we continued north, across the Jordan (on such a small bridge, I didn’t even notice), and along the banks of the Galilee. We stopped to touch the water, and as we walked to the receding water’s edge, I couldn’t help but envision Jesus walking here along the seashell-covered sand. On the other side of the road were banana trees enveloped in netting, and above them the mountains from which Syrian tanks descended on Israel in 1967. Up the winding road into the mountains, and we arrived at Nov, a mostly agricultural moshav where friends of my cousins’ live.

We had Shabbat dinner with some of them in their gorgeous new house. I was trying to imagine what he must do to be able to afford to build a house like this, and then he dropped the bombshell: the plot cost 100,000 shekel. The existing homes like the one we were staying in cost 120,000 shekel. That’s about $35,000. I couldn’t believe that we were in a place where I could just about afford to buy a house on my savings and credit alone, no mortgages needed. The caveat being that in order to prevent people from just buying cheap vacation homes here, one would need to live there for a year before being able to buy a home. While many of these homes stood empty for a decade or more, being built to house some of the influx of Russian immigrants in the ’80s, this was now a very popular place to live and there was a wait list to get in. Our dinner host’s parents moved there and all their children stuck around to raise their own families there.

On Saturday afternoon, we took a walking tour of the town. We saw the rows of flowers and myrtles grown for sale domestically and for export to Europe and big pens of cows raised for the dairy, which gave the whole area its inescapable smell. The residents swear they’re used to it, but I don’t think I could ever. The plains stretched into the distance, tractors and big skies, in a panorama that could easily be mistaken for America’s breadbasket states. This is the agricultural heartland of Israel. It was really awesome to see people so attached to the land, so invested in working the land and tilling the soil. I’m a romantic at heart, and I find it affirming to interact with people so in touch with their environment.

After a very pleasant afternoon and evening, we drove back to Alon Shvut, stopping at the kosher McDonalds in Beit She’an. Micah and I just had to stop there, the American in us finding the concept unendingly funny, and I ate my “double royale” and “chips” with a smirk. And then the long drive home. The weekend was great, and Nov is a lovely place where I could own my own home, but with one catch. On our way out we stopped to say goodbye to our friends. They were on their way out to spend the night elsewhere, anywhere, because “you get trapped sometimes and don’t leave for months, and you need to get out.” Maybe I will just buy a vacation home.

Growing Pains

I can’t take credit for this photo. It’s Micah’s.

I’ve been gone for all of five days, and I got back and the boys are noticeably bigger. Five days may not seem long, but it’s roughly one eight of their lives so far. I wish I could fast forward them to see them smile and walk and talk and play. Temporal restrictions be damned.

Yes We Did

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

I had gone back to Alon Shvut instead of staying in an urban center like Emek Refaim, so I was unexcitingly following the election on my own. By 2:30 am here, it was only 7:30 pm EST, and the only states to have been called so far were not surprising. I decided not to stay up to see the results and just find out in the morning. I woke up at 6 and snuck a peek. It was awesome.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other.

Obama had already won the votes he needed, and even Montana was leaning toward Obama with some of the votes counted. I went back to sleep and woke up around 10 and spent the next few hours reading the results, analysis, and watching speeches. Obama’s speech was exactly as I expected: big, eloquent, inspiring. In contrast, I found McCain’s to be somewhat small, lacking the kind of universal vision and personal connection that lost him the election.

And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns bright, the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

This day was not without setbacks. Three states including California voted to ban gay marriage (and it also sucks to be an unwanted fetus about now, natch). And from under the election coverage, the Palestinians were there to remind us that they are still here. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But I have hope that it will be better than today.

America, we have come so far, we have seen so much, but there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves, if our children should live to see the next century, if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made? This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time.

Good morning, America.

Energia Ha-Atikah

After two days in Emek, I finally left the PT office. Micah picked me up on the way to a film shoot, and then we went to the Old City where he had meetings. Without anything specific to do, I got myself intentionally lost and spent the better part of the late afternoon and early evening wandering. I heard visitors speak German, British, Russian, various east Asian languages I couldn’t pinpoint. I walked above and below on the multi-level pathways, houses stacked on offices stacked on yeshivot, passing the same features over and over and trying to remember how I got there. A Greek Orthodox priest in full regalia, carrying a Greek flag, danced to an Israeli clarinetist in the square. Slender women in well-tailored clothes and hijabs hurried by. An overweight Hasid mumbled to himself and walked in circles. At a great observation point overlooking the Kotel plaza, a couple asked me to take a photo of them in front of the Dome of the Rock. The muezzin called out the adhan from the minarets on the Temple Mount, alerting the faithful it was time for prayer. The booming song echoed through the city. I explained to two young boys with blond payot and huge multi-color kipot that this is how the Muslims know it is time to daven, and one promptly excitedly explained it to his mother. A young Arab explained to his white boyfriend the nature of the conflict. The stones changed color as afternoon faded to twilight faded to dusk. I found myself following a Russian tour group through the Arab quarter to another entrance to the plaza. The soldier at the security check got mad at me for taking his photo. I walked toward the wall, all around me tourists taking photos, soldiers in formation, a man sitting on the ground, reading aloud softly from a handwritten sheet of notebook paper. I joined a minyan led by man with a stutter, in front of one with Tourrette’s. Along the wall, soldiers in uniform prayed next to men in black hats and coats and tourists in the white paper kipot those without a head-covering are requested to wear. I made my way back to the square where I was to meet Micah. Little girls played jump rope and argued in Hebrew about whose fault it was. I overheard a guy in a large white kippah on a skateboard tell a girl that Obama is up by 11 points in the polls. I found internet and saw that CNN.com had both candidates at 0%, this being about 8am PST. A girl walked over and asked to see poll results. She saw the senate count—more Democrats than Republicans in seats not up for grabs—and said, “There’s still hope,” I think implying she doesn’t have the same leanings I do. American yeshiva students passed by talking loudly. The Old City lives. I set my laptop to hibernate and go back to Alon Shvut after a long weekend.

Palestine is for lovers.

If you lived here you'd be home now.

Surely the man on the left is talking to God.

Hit'hadshut

Emek fest was awesome. Bands and music and food and arts and people and noise and energy. Emek Refaim, the street and its eponymous neighborhood, is full of hip restaurants, bookstores, coffee shops, and young people, and is a neighborhood that I could conceivably see myself in. I met up with one friend, found more (from high school, college, and two weeks ago), and made new ones.

Best thing about Israel: drinking in public!

The Effects of Busing

I think I like Tel Aviv. I had dinner last night at one of the few kosher restaurants in Tel Aviv—Tel Aviv being where the Jews live who want to get away from the Jews. It was a much more familiar experience: people walking around, waterfront views, stores and cars and lights. And the sherut drivers (a sherut is like a shared-ride taxi that essentially follows the bus routes but is faster) were surprisingly nice. One even drove me to the next sherut even though he was off duty because he saw me at the stop. At dinner with an old friend, and now mostly over my stomach-thing, we talked about Israeli culture and bad design.

Getting back to Jerusalem at 2 am posed a slight problem of where I would sleep. PresenTense, the magazine cum institute cum amorphous non-profit, for whom I’ve done some design work and am now assistant art director, has a new office in Emek Refaim in the southern part of Jerusalem, conveniently down the street from my friend. The high-concept office was intended to be a meeting place for young, active Jews, providing a workspace outside of coffee shops for writers, artists, entrepreneurs, etc., in addition to housing the global network’s physical presence. They also have a couple beds for PT staff who find themselves in the area and needing a place to sleep, and soon will have more to allow them to be a sort of hostel for wandering Jews. This being Sunday, people show up to work at 7:30 or 8:00 in the AM because this country hates weekends. I may go back to Alon Shvut today or stick around for the street festival tonight. Updates on that later. Now to work.

Hillel Goes to Yeshiva

The weekend wasn’t too bad. Aside from enduring stomach pains from my bullet-proof windowless-box trip to Be’er Sheva, it was fine. Friday night there was the periodic “ask the rabbis” event, and I was impressed by the truly profound, questioning nature of most of the questions. You’d think that kids who grew up in the Jewish day school system and opted to spend a year or two learning in Israel would have unwavering faith, and yet these kids were asking questions like what is the purpose of learning Torah when we could be helping people, how can God have commanded Jews to kill, and others that showed that these kids were actively struggling with various elements of traditional Judaism. I still don’t think it would have been a good fit for me, but it clearly shows that yeshiva is also for thinking, introspective people still searching for a workable worldview.

Also, at some point between me taking photos in the square around 2pm and leaving for Shabbat services around 4pm, my fleece sweatshirt disappeared. My guess is it’s in my brother’s place, but we didn’t find it, and a search of the square yielded three other sweatshirts/shirts, two pairs of shoes, and a baby stroller, leading me to think that had I left it there it would still be there, among the litter and filth covering most of the area. Six years, two continents and countless adventures were possible because of that fleece. RIP Black EMS Sweatshirt. Now off to Tel Aviv for dinner and the Israel Railways website is down. Figures.