Bite-Size Forkfuls of Brilliance

Too Many Shows

2010-05-25T12:00:00.003+03:00

I made a whole heap of cards this month, and even with a few shows getting pushed, I still wound up with six cards. Whew. I'm trying to mix it up between illustrated cards and photographic cards. Keeps things interesting. Though I did overuse Futura, now that I look back over the batch. I'm particularly fond of the VMW graphic, and not so much of the names that were added to the bottom at the very last minute.

Mustache March!

2010-04-25T00:00:00.001+03:00

My friend Avi's office has a Mustache March competition where the guys grow mustaches during March and then submit photos of their mustaches for official judging in random categories. He had the brilliant idea of dressing up as an old-timey villain and posing menacingly in photos with another friend of ours. He sent me the raw photos to dress them up and put together a single graphic for submission. It's hilarious. The judges thought so too, awarding Avi's mustache Most Daring. Hooray!

Theater May-hem

2010-04-18T15:00:00.002+03:00

Super corny, I know. I quite like the quiet simplicity of the Before Sex/After Sex card, and the photo effect on the Love, Lust card. The other one is kind of eh. This month is very red, apparently.

Only Two Shows

2010-03-21T22:00:00.002+02:00

Kinda skimpy this month. I realized I've subconsciously been making an effort to make each card different in style and color. I think it's partially a result of boredom with my "regular" style and trying to experiment and see what kinds of strange things I can imagine. Though looking at the cards as a whole, I think that my preferences for bold colors and singular images are still very apparent.

Spray Paint is Awesome!

2010-03-10T21:00:00.005+02:00

I've been itching to make art again for a while. In college I made a screenprint of a woman wearing an artichoke as a dress, and I'd always planned on continuing that series to include other vegetables but didn't get around to it until about a month ago. I designed two more prints and revised the artichoke one, sent them off to be laser-cut into stencils (cheating, I know), bought spray paint at 33third (huge selection of colors, cheap, local, and very helpful), and waited eagerly for my stencils to arrive. I painted my first batch February 19 and when I brought them down to Jewlicious to show off, people liked them so much they all sold! I even got tweeted! I made a second batch earlier this week, and I'm hoping to experiment with different materials in the near future. Let me know if you want to buy one or three!

Here's a single artichoke print, three colors on cardboard, the inside rectangle being 6" x 11":

And one with all three on one board, from left bok choi, broccoli, artichoke:

Happy Go Marni! Now Happier!

2010-03-09T23:00:00.000+02:00

I just redesigned the blog of a good friend and baker/blogger extraordinaire, Marni Landes, aka Happy Go Marni. We wanted something that reflected her perpetually sunny disposition and showcased her subject matter, but didn't overshadow the photos of the delicious pastries. I was very pleased with it, she loved it, and best of all, reading the comments, it seems everyone else did too! I will shamelessly quote here:

"it's awesome!!! great job! i love the mini-marni!"
"Lovely and bright! Very Happy Go Marni. :)"
"Super cute new design!"
"I love it!!!"
"Love the new look! Yellow makes me happy, and it's a unique blog color. Perfect."
"Congrats on the new look! It DOES seem more fitting. It looks more vibrant and bubbly -- just as you always are. ;)"
"Love the wonderful logo and sunny mood of your new design! Makes me happier, too, for "happy go marni"!"

Here's the new look on the blog:

And a close up of the logo:

Theater Theater

2010-02-26T17:00:00.001+02:00

New shows. I was feeling the stark single images this month.

Jewlicious 6.0!

2010-02-21T22:00:00.002+02:00

I was down in Long Beach today at Jewlicious, an incredible weekend of Jewish arts, culture, thought, and socializing in the 18-30 crowd. This is the third year I've sold my M.o.T.s Jewish t-shirts there and it may have been my most successful yet. I met some cool people, got tweeted, and got to stick around for an acoustic set by Matisyahu at the end of the day!

This lady wasn't there for Jewlicious but had come to bring her daughter to Hebrew school. She hung around for a while to chat and bought a shirt. Kinda random.

Purim Party

2010-02-02T18:00:00.000+02:00

I recently started doing some work for Temple Beth Hillel, a borderline-confusing exercise because of the name. Here is my first project for them, a 5" x 7" postcard for their 4th Annual Purim at the Pier event at the Santa Monica Pier. They wanted the card to be hip and evoke club party fliers, but it still had to be family-friendly to target families with kids. We were all very happy with the result.

New Year, New Shows

2010-01-15T12:00:00.004+02:00

Theater postcards for the new year. These were done on a super-quick turnaround, and while I'm happy with how they came out, I wish I had a bit more time to finesse them. Two of the cards this time around are photographic. While the Chicago card in particular looks very straight-forward, it took quite a bit of work to make a photo that had just the right quality to it: nothing too modern to keep it timeless, simultaneously sharp and nostalgic, recognizable and distinctive. I had to use all the tools in my photo-editing and color-correction toolbox to make something that looks like it didn't have any work done to it.

Annie's Got a Gun

2009-12-07T10:00:00.002+02:00

This past weekend was a production of Annie Get Your Gun by the Jewish Women's Repertory Company. I was originally brought in to design the poster for the show, and though they later decided to go in a different direction and use another designer, they paid me for my work and we parted on good terms, as it should be. I liked my poster and thought it would be a shame if no one else saw it. We went through multiple ideas and rounds of revisions on this one. Here's my favorite of the bunch.

Christmas in the Theater

2009-11-17T10:00:00.005+02:00

Here are some new theater cards I made. I like the house on the Timeless Christmas one.

How Much Can You Bench?

2009-11-08T21:00:00.008+02:00

It's a common tradition in some Jewish circles to give out a bencher, or Grace After Meals prayer book, as a souvenir at weddings and bar mitzvahs. My friend Rachel is getting married today and instead of going with one of the standard benchers out there, she asked me to designed a custom bencher for her wedding. Rachel loves to sing, and one of the things she wanted to include was a whole section of songs in the back. It was hard work typesetting the Hebrew and getting all the text in, but we made our deadline and it came out great. Check it out here. Click on the arrows on the right and left to flip the pages.

Children's Theater

2009-10-19T10:00:00.002+02:00

Two more cards for kids’ shows.

Urban Sweetness

2009-10-15T17:00:00.002+02:00

A friend of mine runs her own wedding cake and pastry company called Urban Sweets Bakery and wanted to spruce up the look of her blog, which you can find here. She had been using a standard blog template and wanted something more personal that reflected her brand and her tastes. Here's the result:

Seriously, how awesome are those cakes!

Cheesesteak Latkes

2009-10-13T22:00:00.004+02:00

My friend Ben is directing a show that our friend Matt wrote. It's hilarious, so check it out this weekend. Show info here. Guess who made the poster.

Lotsa Cards

2009-10-11T22:00:00.003+02:00

So many shows going on now. Here are some postcards.

I'm on Broadway!

2009-09-25T10:00:00.002+03:00

Well, not quite. Over the summer I designed the title and key art for a show in the New York Musical Theater Festival, which starts next week. It's a musical about vampires called The Cure. If you're in the area, why not check it out.

Happy New Year!

2009-09-18T10:00:00.008+03:00

Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. It is a time for reflection when we assess the previous year and make our aspirations for the coming one. Our family has a tradition that at the ritual-filled dinner the first night of Rosh Hashanah, we go around the table and say one nice thing that happened this year. My year has been an interesting one. What has meant the most to me are the new things I've seen, and that I've managed to be entirely self-supporting as a freelance designer. Hell, I'm impressed I pulled it off. Here's to bigger and better things.

This is the Rosh Hashanah card I sent out to friends and family. The yellow spells out "Shana Tova" or "Good Year" in Hebrew, the traditional greeting this time of year.

Cards Cards Cards

2009-08-24T10:00:00.001+03:00

For some upcoming shows. Pinocchio’s Playhouse is their children’s program, and I’m now doing cards for that as well.

In the Movies

2009-07-29T18:00:00.000+03:00

Micah made this short film a while back and wanted a poster to go with it. The design is a pretty typical "big head" poster, but the great thing about it is that the stars are little kids, turning the idiom on its head, if you will.

Comic-Con!

2009-07-27T10:00:00.002+03:00

This weekend was one of the events I look forward to all year — Comic-Con in San Diego. Anyone who knows me knows I love comic books. Comic-Con has changed a lot since I started coming a few years ago. Increasing popularity of blockbuster franchise properties has brought hordes of attendees who come more for Twilight/Lost/Whatever than for comics. It's cool that it exposes more people to comics, but it's really annoying that they clog up the convention center and sell out the show (150,000+ people over four days) months in advance. My favorite part of Comic-Con is meeting the writers and artists who created the books I love and having them sign my comics. This year was a real treat. Seen below is the legendary Gene Colan holding my newly signed copy of Iron Man #1! The man is 82 years old, and he's been drawing comics since the 1940s. He was actually really surprised I knew who he was! I also met a bunch of other awesome folks, got some sketches, and can't wait for next year. Maybe I'll even have some money by then.

Straggler Card

2009-07-07T09:00:00.002+03:00

The odd lone card. Thank the Lord for the Public Domain.

Cardy Cards

2009-06-13T22:00:00.004+03:00

I’m really happy with the Vagina Monologues card. I’m so clever sometimes. Friends was a bit tricky because it’s based on the show, but we legally can’t have representations of the characters. I thought this was close enough to make the connection clear without direct infringement.

My New Favorite Cards

2009-05-15T10:00:00.003+03:00

I’m so proud of myself for making these cards. Such talent! Special thanks to Guy Gascoigne-Piggford for allowing me to use his photo as reference for the ruff. Check out his amazing costume work here (select Costuming from the drop-down).

Update: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead was canceled. Another masterpiece for naught! Maybe I’ll find an opportunity to reuse that one eventually.

I'm in a Show!

2009-04-29T15:00:00.000+03:00

I had heard about a benefit show being put on by an organization called Stoked Mentoring, which according to their website "is a non profit action sports organization for at risk youth with the mission of developing Successful Teens with Opportunity, Knowledge, Experience, and Determination through the use of action sports, mentoring and coaching." Sounds pretty cool. So for the first time in a long time, I busted out the paints and got to it. The show is this weekend in Downtown. Stop by!

New Theater Gig

2009-04-21T09:00:00.004+03:00

A friend is an actor for a theater company in Hollywood and through him I got a small gig designing postcards for their shows. Here’s the first batch. These have a pretty quick turn-around and aren’t quite as refined as I would like. They put on a whole bunch of shows at a time, which means there’ll be lots of these. I like the title treatment for Bit of Broadway, which was a pain to put together, though the rest of the card never quite gelled for me. I also like my Machinal illustration. Too bad the show was canceled!

Misery Loves Company

2009-03-05T10:00:00.000+02:00

One of the projects I worked on with Micah while in Israel was this video for Aish. They wanted these very rudimentary animations in the background to go along with what the narrator was saying. I drew the frames by hand and Micah animated it all together.

Army of None

2009-02-23T08:00:00.002+02:00

In my quest to find a job and pad my wallet, I've been applying to listings on sites like Monster and CareerBuiler. I saw a posting on CareerBuilder for a design position with the US Army in the LA area, and hit apply. I figured it must be some kind of desk job managing marketing or designing ads or something. Some time goes by and I get a call from one Sgt. Guererro who wants to ask me some questions: how much do I weigh, have I been convicted of a felony, did I go to college. Yes, I did go to college, I responded. Where? University of Pennsylvania. Is that a two-year or four-year school? Four-year. Four-year? Yes. Where is that? In Philadelphia. I thought you said you were from LA? I am, I just went to school there. You went to Pennsylvania for school? Yes. It's really a four year school? Yes, I have a BA. You have a BA? Yes.

He was so incredulous that he was talking to someone who had actually graduated from a four year school, hadn't been convicted of a felony, and was in shape, and it became more and more apparent in his voice with each new question. It also became clear that there was no design job to be had; he was recruiting for the army. He enthusiastically told me to come by his recruitment center. I gave a vague noncommittal response. What does that say about the state of our armed forces when finding someone who has above-disdainful intelligence and hasn't gotten into trouble before and isn't morbidly obese is a real find? I worry for the country.

Update: CareerBuilder has been entirely useless since then. Because I applied for an army job, suddenly my best matches were jobs like "truck driver in Valencia." I opted out of all emails from them. And I got a few more calls from Sgt. Guerrero to find a time for me to stop by. After a number of apologies for being to busy to visit, I got a call from a higher up firmly asking if I ever planned to stop by or if I could stop wasting their time. I admitted fault, and appreciative of his directness, opted to never hear from them again. Sometime later, the Culver City office closed down, taking all my unrealized military potential with it.

Hebron, Merit of our Fathers

2008-12-22T22:00:00.003+02:00

The tour I booked to Hebron was set to leave at 9:15 from the Sheraton in central Jerusalem. I tremped into town, but unbeknownst to me, my ride would end far south of where I needed to end up. A local bus took me where I needed to go, but my plan of getting a free ride in backfired when I only saved one shekel by taking the local bus over the bus from Alon Shvut.

Anyhow, the tour bus took us first to Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem, except you wouldn’t know it to be there. Bethlehem is an Arab city and between violent attacks and peace accords, the place was set to be closed to Jews. But, as our clearly religious-right tour guide retold, enough Jews made a fuss and braved the dangerous territory to visit that the government preserved the site for future generations of Jews. This meant that the Wall would have to be designed in such a way as to allow access from Israeli controlled territory, so a narrow finger was built that extended to the site. We drove down this corridor, surrounded on both sides by tall gray concrete walls, until we reached the building. The tomb used to be a small building in the middle of a larger lot, but after Joseph’s tomb was desecrated by Palestinian rioters, this large structure was built around it to protect and preserve it.

From here the bus drove to Hebron, but the tour guide got off the bus halfway there and said we would be met in Hebron by another tour guide. We drove along through places unknown to us, one man commenting that only in Israel would we be on a tour without a guide. After meeting our new guide, a Jewish resident of Hebron, we stopped in various places where he told us of the history and importance of the community here. Walking through a small museum in the Beit Hadassah building, which featured a moving display on the 1929 massacre, he recounted tales of Jewish valor and heroism, and of the hardships suffered by the Jews who wanted to be so close to this holy place. Without diminishing the real efforts of Jews to maintain this part of their heritage, I can’t omit that the tour was heavy on inspiration and light on facts. I like tours where the guide tells a sweeping narrative of a place from ancient times to present day, but we only heard bits and pieces.

Hebron itself was a ghost town. Very few people—Jew or Arab—walked the streets. Here and there were a hasid or Arab kids on a donkey. The kosher restaurant, which wasn’t so good, blasted Chanukah music as a form of audio assault on the city, across from the only three Arab shops open. I looked around, watched one hand-mold dozens of small cups on his clay wheel, and chatted with another shopkeeper who thanked me for even stopping to talk. Walking into the Ma’arat Hamachpelah, or the Cave of the Patriarchs, the traditional burial place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah, and possibly others, I was caught off guard by Jews praying under Arabic script. This was converted to a mosque centuries ago, the Ibrahimi Mosque after their patriarch as well, and now arks with torah scrolls and Hebrew biblical passages sit in rooms covered in clashing religious décor. Cenotaphs honoring Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, and Leah are situated among small prayer rooms, while Isaac and Leah’s are in the Muslim side of the building, which Jews only have access to ten days out of the year. The whole complex used to be open to all, until American-Israeli Baruch Goldstein opened fire on worshiping Muslims in 1994, killing 29, and a gate now separates the Muslim side from the Jewish side, with neither allowed on the other’s turf.

By the end of the day I had visited the graves of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the holiest places in Judaism after the Temple Mount. I saw the yearning of Jews to be in this place, and heard of the courageous acts they performed to be here. But I also saw a nation divided, justified or not, and the home of our forefathers resigned to rot. We drove through the well-kept Kiryat Arba on the way out, contrasting sharply with the decrepitude of the Hebron streets. I pass no judgment, but I do hope to get an alternate story on a Palestinian tour later this week.

Touring in Stereo

2008-12-22T21:00:00.001+02:00

Tomorrow I go on what will be the first of two official tours of Bethlehem and Hebron. Visiting these places and seeing the historical sites and the current situation for myself was a priority of mine when I came here. This was complicated by the hullabaloo over Beit Shalom (a house in the Arab outskirts of Hebron that was bought by an American Jew for Israeli Jews to live in, and because no one takes the idea of residential heterogeneity particularly well here, the Arabs got upset back in late October, the government agreed and told the Jews to leave, the Jews rioted, hilarity ensued, or something to that extent). Now that my time here is running low, I finally made plans to do it. I wanted to find a non-political trip so I wouldn’t be bombarded with whatever propaganda. No such luck. There are no non-political trips. Each has is its own unassailable agenda. Then I had an idea: I will take two tours and get both an education in the history of the region and of the perspectives of the respective groups. Tomorrow I take the right-wing Jewish tour and Thursday is the Palestinian tour, with still-in-flux Christmas plans Wednesday in between.

On the Way Down South

2008-12-10T23:00:00.001+02:00

Tomorrow I have a tour booked of Petra. All tours to Petra leave from Eilat, so I took the 4.5 hour bus from Jerusalem to Eilat where I would spend the night. Alone, after various people bailed on me. After a close call (I left my passport in the bag I had left in Emek Refaim and made a few frantic phone calls to have someone take a cab to the bus station and bring it to me) I was on my way, east toward Jericho, south along the Dead Sea, past Ein Gedi and Masada, through desolate desert expanses, to Israel’s prized coastal resort. Which was pretty dinky and kind of a letdown. I checked into my hostel, thankfully the least sketchy looking of the bunch, and commenced my romantic day with myself. I explored the city with myself as my guide. Put my feet in the cool waters of the Red Sea and gazed at the boats bobbing on the cerulean waters and watched the sun set over the mountains of Jordan. I wandered by myself through the promenade, pointed out to myself the interesting people I saw. I marveled to myself at the Muslim girls riding the bungee swing in their hijabs on their Muslim holiday. I took myself out to a delicious steak dinner (across from a Muslim family eating opposite a portrait of the Lubavitcher Rebbe) and then out to a movie. Getting late, I walked myself back to the hostel and prepared for my big day in Petra.

Mount of Olives and Jesus' last days

2008-12-08T22:00:00.001+02:00

Going back in time to the day before Jesus’ last, I went to explore the Mount of Olives. Walking the same route as yesterday, I visited the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, named for Peter’s rejection of Jesus and his later repentance. The main sanctuary has lovely pastel mosaics in an art nouveau style. Caves on a lower level are believed to be a possible location of Christ’s prison, and an ancient stairway along the side of the church, possibly the path Jesus took down to Gethsemane on the other side of the Kidron Valley that night. Walking along the Eastern Wall, I could see the various churches on the Mount of Olives, to their right the historic Jewish cemetery, and beyond that the town of Silwan.

I descended into the valley and investigated the monumental tombs at the base of the mount. These tombs, traditionally identified as the tombs of Avshalom, Zechariah, and Jehoshaphat—and a fourth marked as the tombs of the sons of the priests—were carved out of the very rock of the mountain. I meandered through the thousands of Jewish graves, some new, some ancient, cracked, and worn to oblivion. The churches were closed for siesta, so I trekked up and up to the top of the mount by the Seven Arches Hotel with its spectacular views of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. I tried to follow a church spire but got disinterested and stopped partway at the Pater Noster church, close to where Jesus related the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples. The walls of the church, cloisters, and courtyard are covered with translations of the prayer in more languages than I knew were spoken by Christians, everything from Cornish to Tagalog to Hmong and beyond.

On the descent down the mount, a small residential complex also includes an underground complex of tombs, believed to be the burial place of Malachi. I ran into some Americans in the blackness and searched the tunnels with them. Farther down is the Dominus Flevit Church, where Jesus wept for the destruction of Jerusalem. A window at the front of the chapel looks across onto the Temple Mount. The grounds also include ossuaries of the type used at the time. Sadly, the Church of Mary Magdalene, with its gilded onion domes, is only open to visitors for two hours once a week.

At the foot of the mountain is the Church of All Nations, built on the site of two older churches, which sits next to the Garden of Gethsemane. “Gethsemane,” derived from the Aramaic for “olive press,” is where Jesus and his disciples gathered the night before his death. A small olive grove stands there today, and a very forward young Arab man with surprisingly good English offered to show me through, until I mentioned that I was not willing to pay him. The church façade’s stunning mosaic, the colossal marble columns in the interior, and the ornate architecture were the most awe-inspiring I’d seen the whole day. But for all their beauty, I was still surprised that all of these churches were less than two hundred years old. Their locations were historic, but the actual structures less so.

Just outside the garden is the tomb of the Virgin Mary, an Orthodox crypt cut out of the ground, and housing the sarcophagus in a small shrine. As an Orthodox site, the dimly lit space, heavy with smoky incense, profuse with lamps and mismatched art, stood in stark contrast to the elegant, carefully crafted Western spaces I had visited earlier. The father wished me well in very broken English, then I headed back to Emek Refaim, where, in one of the odder sights of the day, saw frummies on Segways. Miracles never cease.

In the footsteps of Jesus

2008-12-07T23:30:00.002+02:00

This post is really long and I have way too many photos to post. I'm considering adding them all to a photo site instead of bloating this entry even more. Suggestions are welcome.

I’ve had a fascination with Christian imagery for as long as I can remember. It’s an epic story of good and evil, told and retold in pictures by different people in different times, each giving their own vision to the greater fabric of legend. Years of art history and travels to museums and churches abroad fostered this love of Christian art and thinking, and I was thrilled with the opportunity to see the places recounted with my own eyes. The Via Dolorosa, the route that Jesus walked on his last day, is memorialized as a pilgrimage with 14 Stations of the Cross, tracing his journey through suffering to salvation.

I began walking along the southern wall of the Old City, at times along the ramparts built by Suleiman, and along the eastern wall of the Temple Mount. This side is not seen by most Jewish tourists, though the walk around the southern and eastern sides affords views of the Hulda Gates on the south, the original entrances to the Temple, and the Golden Gate, the gate through which, according to Jewish tradition, the Messiah will enter Jerusalem. Opposite the Temple Mount is the Kidron Valley, and beyond that the Mount of Olives, which also features prominently in the life of Jesus. The Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu being closed on Sundays, I walk along the Muslim cemetery that flanks the Eastern Wall and through the Lions’ Gate to the Muslim Quarter, past the ridiculous traffic caused by a truck trying to go in and a van trying to go out. The first thing I see is a small market in the plaza selling everything from nuts to knock-off Barbies and cologne. Farther down a wall has engravings illustrating the 14 Stations.

1. Jesus is condemned to death

The tour traditionally begins in the plaza of a girls’ school, but unless you take the tour along with the monks on Friday afternoons, this spot, where Pontius Pilate sentences Jesus, is closed to the public.

2. Jesus takes the cross

A complex built here includes the Chapel of Condemnation and the thorn-themed Chapel of the Flagellation. On the floor of the Chapel of Condemnation is some of the original Roman pavement with games carved into it. This is reputed to be the Lithostratos, where the Roman soldiers gambled for Jesus’ clothes. Father down the road is what’s visible of the Ecce Homo Arch where Pilate declared, “This is the man.” Under the church built on the site is a network of rooms and cisterns in use at the time of Jesus. Past the arch is a chapel marking one possible site of Jesus’ prison. Groups of Jews in black hats and coats mill about the shops, crowded among throngs of Arabs shopping in the market. I make a small detour out the Damascus gate for a look at East Jerusalem, where markers of Israeli nationalism and Arab culture butt against each other.

3. Jesus falls for the first time

A small chapel was built here by the Free Polish Army in the 1940s. Beautiful though modern chapels along this route and in Jerusalem in general seem to be common; this was unexpected, as I was hoping for something more ancient. A nearly toothless man named Walid decides that he will be my tour guide and brings me downstairs.

4. Jesus meets his mother

A mosaic on the floor shows footprints of where Mary may have stood. Walid then takes me through an unmarked door on the street to the Austrian Hostel, and to the views of the area from the roof. Realizing I may not finish before dark if I don’t hurry, I plead with Walid that I can do the rest on my own and thank him for his trouble. On the street is another marker of the meeting of Jesus and Mary, though I don’t know if it’s above the chapel below or a differing tradition. Traditions, I find, differ greatly on the locations specified in the 14 stations.

5. Simon takes the cross

Whatever is here to mark where Simon of Cerene took the cross from the ailing Jesus is closed. I keep walking.

6. Veronica wipes Jesus’ face

Story goes that St. Veronica wiped Jesus’ face with a handkerchief and the impression of Jesus’ face was imprinted on the cloth. Known as the Sudarium, it is in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Whatever is here to mark the spot and the home of Veronica is also closed.

7. Jesus falls a second time

This is in the middle of a packed marketplace set up in the narrow streets. Butchers, barbershops, restaurants, and shops selling shoes, antiquities, and pirated movies line the passage. Some guy is blocking the door to the chapel with his stand. No respect.

8. Jesus speaks to the women of Jerusalem

A marker on the wall points to the spot.

9. Jesus falls a third time

I wander through the Coptic monastery at the leisure of some old monk, before getting kicked out by a younger one. Down below a Coptic chapel is Helen’s cistern, allegedly found by St. Helen, mother of Constantine. The acoustics are incredible, and a woman sings a hymn as per the guidebook’s advice, the notes rising and echoing across time. A number of Ethiopian Coptic monks live in tiny shacks on the platform before the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre plaza. They’ve been here for a while, though changing allegiances and feuds between Israel, Egypt, and Ethiopia have kept more of their fellows away. Through an Ethiopian Coptic chapel is the plaza before the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Stations 10 to 14 are inside.

10. Jesus is stripped of his clothes

A small side chapel viewable through a window marks the event. Walking into the church and up the stairs to the station, the huge diversity of Christian traditions is very apparent. Ancient Byzantine architecture is flecked with Orthodox excessiveness, Catholic elegance, and chapels from diverse groups over the ages.

11. Jesus is nailed to the cross

An altar adorned with silver plates donated by the Medicis sits below a mosaic of the scene in this Catholic chapel. A woman reaches up to touch the wounds on the mosaic, as if the mosaic itself was a holy relic.

12. Jesus dies on the cross

Lanterns hang by the dozens over the Orthodox chapel. Figures of Jesus, bloody and in pain, doting Mary, and doting Mary, stand before an ornate silver wall of reliefs. It borders on gaudy, and exists in stark contrast to the more restrained chapel to its right. This is the climax of the pilgrimage. The emotion is palpable. Women dab at their tears. A line forms to touch the rock of Calvary through a disk under the altar. The mood is only broken by a noisy Israeli tour guide and his boisterous group. I tag along and follow them downstairs to the Chapel of Adam with the Rock of Golgotha, cracked by divine earthquake, Adam having many parallels to Jesus in Christian thought. After waiting for one of the various services to pass, I walk back upstairs.

13. Jesus is deposed from the cross

Nestled between stations 11 and 12 is a small shrine of the Stabat Mater, or Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows. Down below in the entry to the church is the Stone of the Anointing where Jesus’ body was prepared for burial. Pilgrims kneel to pray and bring their heads to rest on the red rock.

14. Jesus is laid in his tomb

In the center of the rotunda is the holy sepulcher itself, the Aedicule, the tomb of Christ. Held in place by steel girders since an earthquake decades ago, cracks and seams bulge with notes left by pilgrims, much like the Western Wall. I can’t bring myself to duck (translation: bow) and go inside the chapel, so I watch the service from outside. I explore the many chapels around the church and then find my way back through the Christian Quarter and back to the German Colony. My feet ache and my entire being is exhausted. Despite not having a personal religious connection to Jesus, I felt the sorrow and salvation. The journey has touched my spirit and I think I have gained a new understanding of the human condition. Congratulations on getting this far. Now we both sleep.

I Love Jesus

2008-12-07T23:00:00.001+02:00

I walked the Via Dolorosa, tracing the steps of Jesus on his last day through the Muslim and Christian quarters and passing the 14 stations of the cross. I took something like 400 photos. This post is on hold until I get that sorted.

Fleeting

2008-12-06T23:00:00.002+02:00

Over the last few days I sulked a bunch, did some work, tended the compost, played with babies, and the like. The poor blog feels very neglected. Sorry, blog. I also planned my forthcoming big travel week: Tel Aviv, Eilat, Petra, take 2. It’s starting to hit me that I only have less than a month left in Israel and that I haven’t done a lot of what I was hoping to accomplish. For Shabbat I’m staying with a friend I hadn’t seen in three years. It seems like everywhere I turn are people from past lives and lives unlived—this one I worked at retreat with, this one knows most of my high school class, this one went to college with my friends, and all the ones I’ve emailed for PresenTense for years but only met in person for the first time now. My brother plays for a flag football league made up of teams from the various American yeshivas. They play Saturday nights at Kraft Stadium, the first American football field in Israel, built in Sacher Park near the Knesset by Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots. I went to watch their game and stood among the 18 year old boys cheering for their friends and fawning over the 18 year old girls. Good for them that they can find the comforts of home in this foreign land. They seem so young. And only a handful of years until they find themselves in the midst of their own quarter-life existential crises.

American football in Kraft Stadium, with the Patriots logo in the middle of the field.

The shuk at Machane Yehuda at night—a rarely seen view of a place everyone goes. Kinda eerie.

Disaster

2008-12-02T15:00:00.001+02:00

I was supposed to go to Tel Aviv this morning to spend the day with a friend of my parents’ but as I was getting my stuff together, Micah informs me of this: there is a terror alert in Tel Aviv and the city is under lockdown, roadblocks have been set up, and traffic is backed up from Tel Aviv to Modi’in, halfway on the hour’s drive to Jerusalem. Everything’s been relatively quiet since I got here, aside from a minor riot in Ashdod after Yom Kippur and the ongoing drama in Hebron with a few Jews who are living in houses they technically own but probably shouldn’t be living in. Stupid friggin’ terrorists. This comes after my proposed trip to Eilat and Petra this week got postponed because my friend who I was planning on going with recently became an Israeli citizen and thus needs an Israeli passport to leave the country, which he doesn’t have yet. (And after the friend I was planning on going with originally tells me she won’t make it to Israel until right before I leave, and then not at all, for reasons that are annoying though not in her control.) I vow to spend the rest of the day sulking.

It's Two Days in Galut

2008-11-30T21:00:00.001+02:00

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

2008-11-28T16:00:00.002+02:00

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

2008-11-27T23:00:00.004+02:00

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

2008-11-25T19:00:00.000+02:00

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

2008-11-23T17:00:00.006+02:00

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

2008-11-22T22:00:00.002+02:00

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

2008-11-21T16:00:00.004+02:00

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

2008-11-20T22:00:00.002+02:00

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

2008-11-18T23:00:00.003+02:00

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

2008-11-16T12:00:00.001+02:00

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

2008-11-14T16:00:00.000+02:00

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

2008-11-12T21:00:00.001+02:00

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!

2008-11-11T22:00:00.002+02:00

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

2008-11-09T20:00:00.002+02:00

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

2008-11-06T12:00:00.000+02:00

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

2008-11-05T18:00:00.005+02:00

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

2008-11-04T19:00:00.002+02:00

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

2008-11-03T10:00:00.003+02:00

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

2008-11-02T10:00:00.006+02:00

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

2008-11-01T20:00:00.002+02:00

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.

Missed Connections

2008-10-31T16:00:00.003+02:00

The Negev desert north of Be'er Sheva

I was so excited to find out that only the buses in the Territories are bullet-proof, and that I would be on non-bullet-proof buses with clear windows to Beit Shemesh. Or more specifically, the adjoining Ramat Beit Shemesh where my brother is in yeshiva. I watched the rocky soil of the Negev give way to farms and fields and forest. Eged’s website is, as expected, unhelpful, and I was stuck at a bus stop at a highway junction with no idea what to do. Bus drivers on the two possible lines I could take each said to take the other line, and the third listed on the website was not listed at the stop. Luckily, an American-born Israeli soldier overheard my phone call for help and told me he was going to the same place I was and I showed me the way. An intercity bus to Beit Shemesh and a local bus full of rowdy elementary school kids to Ramat Beit Shemesh later—something I’d never have been able to figure out on my own—I was at my destination, and met up with my brother and got some pizza. Oddly, the square looks dirtier than the clean streets of the settlement towns. Everything is under construction and covered in trash. My brother’s dorm/apartment is pretty crowded and seems like it was constructed with efficiency and expediency in mind in this rapidly growing region, rather than comfort and quality. I was reluctant to spend my weekend in isolation with 18-year-olds. We’ll see how it goes.

Most of Ramat Beit Shemesh looks like this, but with more trash.

Territorial Ruminations

2008-10-30T23:00:00.004+02:00

Tonight/tomorrow is my Hebrew birthday, so the Be’er Sheva birthday dinner was on again. I prepared my stuff for a long weekend (Shabbat in Beit Shemesh, details to come), walked to the bus stop and got on the 3:00 bus to Be’er Sheva. Again, the bus’s cloudy bulletproof windows were nauseating, but I managed to sit by a relatively clear one. The bus shot nearly straight down through the West Bank, stopping at various yishuvim along the way. We stopped in Kiryat Arba by Hebron, a built-up, well-kept enclave in the middle of a barren, rocky desert, with trees, nice buildings, and lots of children. Army soldiers get on and off. The guy sitting next to me got off at Otniel. We stop at Haggai and Shim’a, turning off the highway, driving the winding roads up the mountains, entering through the electric gates by the security checkpoints. Inside are carefully paved streets, rows of houses, a cluster of trailers, and kids mulling about. Outside are crumbling cement walls littered with broken refuse. Those are Arab homes.

Who are these people who live such cloistered lives in towns enclosed by barb wire, surrounded by desert, among scattered Arab towns? Where do they work? Where do they buy their groceries? What spirit moves them to effect their destiny in the desert, create ex nihilo communities of civic-minded citizens, dedicated to the future of their children? It’s inspiring to see what can be achieved through sheer determination. It’s also striking how weirdly normal they all seem. I stop to wonder what will happen to these oases of civilization should a Palestinian state be founded here. A soldier playing loud Israeli pop in the row behind me interrupts my philosophizing.

I eventually made it to Ben Guiron Univeristy, no thanks to the bus driver who wouldn’t tell me which stop was mine, and we went out for an Indian birthday dinner. We walked through campus to the student center. It’s sleek and modern and collegiate. What a place that builds its dreams with stone and steel and constructs the future it sees for itself.

Yom Huledet M’azben

2008-10-28T11:00:00.002+02:00

Today is my birthday. This is the first time I’ve spent my birthday in a foreign country and I wanted to do something fun. A friend from college with whom I share a birthday just started at Ben Gurion University in Be’er Sheva and I was hoping to go down there to have a celebratory dinner. Israel had other plans. I looked on the Eged website (Eged is Israel’s national bus company) to find a bus. I entered “Alon Shvut” to “Be’er Sheva” in the search window, but the website said that “there is no direct route to your destination.” I tried “Efrat” and again no dice. See, the English site will only tell you if there is a bus from the point of origin to the destination, like Jerusalem to Be’er Sheva, but won’t register any cities the bus stops at on the way. It also doesn’t tell you if there is a way to take one bus and connect to another bus. And the website has no maps of bus routes to figure that out for myself.

My cousin’s wife helped me look up the bus information on the Hebrew page, which lists connections and times, but by the time we finally figured out that there is one bus that stops by here on the way to Be’er Sheva, leaving Jerusalem at 3pm, it was 3:10, and not quite enough time to get my stuff together and make the bus. I tried the website for the relatively new train system, but found the map to be almost unusable, aside from the train not going quite where I needed it to. I could have taken a bus to Jerusalem and then a bus from there to Be’er Sheva, but with the intermittent rain, I wasn’t about to spend the next three hours in frustrated transit.

Putting the failures of Israeli transit system behind me, I went out to dinner with the cousins at a restaurant nestled in the forest with views of the valley below. We ate overlooking the lightening storm brewing in the distance, warmed by a log in the fireplace. It wasn’t so bad after all. Happy birthday to me.

In the Big House

2008-10-27T20:00:00.002+02:00

The home of Noam Federman, an activist leader in the Hebron Jewish community was demolished over the weekend and some members of the family were put in jail for the night. One of my cousin’s sisters-in-law was in school with one of the daughters. “Yeah, she’s in jail all the time,” she says.

Fig Natanyahus

2008-10-26T21:00:00.002+02:00

I went on a hike today through the fields and hillsides that surround the town with my cousin’s father-in-law and some of his students at the yeshiva. We passed Roman milestones and an ancient mikva with express lanes that was used by Jews on their way to Jerusalem. But the most interesting thing we saw was Khalid.

As we walked on a path alongside vineyards and almond trees, we met a local Arab named Khalid who let us try the figs from his tree. He explained to us, in his heavily accented Hebrew, that he used to work at yeshivas in Jerusalem, but ever since the peace process started he has been unable to enter the city. He even has signed letters from the roshei yeshiva confirming his identity and commending his character that he keeps in his wallet and shows to anyone who cares to look, but to no avail. Since the start of the peace process in Oslo, the left has been pushing for more separation between Israel and the Territories as a move toward eventual separation of the two when the Palestinians achieve statehood. The Wall was a step in this regard. But the effect on Khalid and his family was devastating, costing him his job and hampering his ability to provide for his family.

Khalid hates Fatah, and has no kind words for Arafat or Abbas. He sees the rampant corruption in the Palestinian Authority and decries how the government officials take foreign money and drive around in Mercedes cars and tell him that they have no money while Khalid’s children go hungry. He was much better under Israeli rule and misses the days when he could work in Jerusalem and the Jews shopped in Arab towns.

Which is why Khalid supports Bibi Netanyahu for prime minister. Bibi is the leader of the conservative Likud party and was prime minister in the late ’90s. With a member of the right in control of Israel, Khalid hopes that the PA will not be given as much power and that Palestinian statehood will remain in the distant future. Khalid says to support the right and elect Bibi as the new prime minister of Israel. He would do it himself, except he can’t vote because he’s not an Israeli citizen.

The yeshiva students already had their share of politics that day. They left the yeshiva to see leftist activists standing by as Arabs in the neighboring grove picked olives. One of the activists had an accordion and was singing songs like “Heveinu Shalom Aleichem,” “bring peace upon us.” The irony being that “Heveinu Shalom Aleichem” was a song of the early Israeli pioneers who kicked the Arabs out to begin with. This was likely lost on the activists, who were also more interested in taking photos of the yeshiva students than helping with the harvest. In this area, the Arabs and the Jews live in segregated towns on hilltops opposite each other, and everyone minds their own business and generally gets along. One of the yeshiva students remarked that had the Arab olive pickers asked the yeshiva for help picking olives they would have gotten at least as many volunteers as there were protesters. And who plays the accordion anyway?

Alon Shvut on the hilltop on the left, the Arab villiage on the hilltop on the right.

Si Muove

2008-10-25T22:00:00.001+02:00

Today Jews read of the creation of the world in Genesis. While I generally avoid touching musar-y expositions and forced Torah-science rectifications (but see here for the best book I’ve read in that regard), here are a couple thoughts.

Copernicus argued that we are, in fact, not the center of the universe, a stance that landed Galileo under house arrest for advocating by order of the Catholic Church. We are, however, the center of the universe that we can see. Due to the speed of light, we see things not as they are, but as they were, accounting for the time it took the light to reach us. Thus, looking out into space is a look back in time. Look back far enough and all we see all around us—from inside our 14 billion light year bubble—is light. Specifically, the cosmic microwave background, essentially a wall of electromagnetic radiation created by the big bang. In theory, were we able to see past the light of creation, we’d be able to look all the way back to the dawn of time, and all we’d see, in any direction we looked, is a singularity.

Many consider the turning point in man’s growth as a species to be the act of using tools to make tools. Many hold man’s capability to speak as its most notable trait. Both show a capacity for abstract thought in the act of creation and mark the change from man-like ape to ape-like man. The Bible recounts that Man was created “in the image of God.” To this point, the defining characteristics of God are His role as Creator and as a being that speaks: And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. In an interesting confluence of anthropological and religious thought, Man is different from the animals because he has the unique ability for cognition. To take this one step further, Man does not merely have the ability to create and speak, but the predisposition, the propensity, even the desire to create, to make, to build, and to think, to learn, to know, to understand. I feel the urge in myself. I like to think it is the mark of the divine.

Aerated Topsoil and Infant Flatulence

2008-10-24T16:00:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I worked a bunch. Today we went to the nursery, bought our own spade, rake, shears, and some flowers, and spent some quality time marveling at our newly improved grass, planting the row of soon-to-be amazing flowers, and maintaining our compost pile. I even got a blister! And then the downpour began. Geshem appears to have worked. Living out here in the ’burbs is relaxing, but a little too uneventful. I feel removed from the rest of civilization. This could make a nice vacation home (though it would be nicer if it had restaurants) but I don’t think I’d want to live here.

On a different note, have you ever felt a fart from the outside? I was holding one of the boys with a supporting hand on his butt and experienced a unique tactile sensation of a rumbling, followed by a soft, staggered expulsion. I figured that I must have perceived a pooping first-hand, in-hand, but he didn’t smell dirty. After consultation, the verdict was that it was “only” a fart, but that doesn’t change the fact that I felt it. Also, have you ever held a baby with hiccups? Or one whose tummy growls? It’s so bizarre to experience bodily functions when they are happening to someone else.

And I heard a man was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in Gilo, a neighborhood in southern Jerusalem. If I seem casual about it, it’s because everyone here seems to be casual about it. This is such a (tragically) normal occurrence that I sense more relief from people than anything that only person died.

I Approve This Message

2008-10-22T11:00:00.003+02:00

Today I actually start work. I have a bunch of stuff to do for Micah, so it’s time to start procrastinating. News junky that I am, I’d been following the coverage of the election pretty closely since the start of the campaign season, and it frequently got me pretty worked up. Thus, I pledged a self-imposed media blackout upon my arrival to Israel. That lasted about a week. Today’s news: LA is on fire, and Collin Powell endorsed Barack Obama. I knew I liked him. I support Obama for many of the same reasons Powell does. He’s articulate, thoughtful, and intelligent. I also support the things he stands for, including environmentalism, human and civil rights, separation of church and state, responsibility, pragmatism, etc. I am also put-off with the way McCain has handled himself since 2004, and especially in this campaign. But it’s more than that.

People look at McCain and see a guy who has done good things. People see Obama and are inspired to be better people. There’s an aspirational quality to him and his message. Hope. Change. Yes We Can. These are not slogans but mantras. I don’t need a comfort blanket: I need a raison d'être. I want someone who represents the American spirit, someone who thinks deeply and can speak to me without condescension, someone who understands and embraces nuance and complexity, someone with a force of will and an outstretched hand, someone who truly believes in our potential. I am almost 24 years old and I can honestly say I’ve never been inspired by a politician before. I was born into a post-Watergate America. I was 4 for “Read my lips,” 13 when Lewinsky was news, 16 when W. Bush took office. I am the future of America and I am almost without faith in its promise. Then I heard Obama speak.

This election is as much about narrative as it is about issues. But that is not entirely a bad thing. What is it that moves us, compels us to strive? You’d be hard pressed to find such passion for McCain as we’ve seen for Obama. Something about his presence stokes our creativity, challenges our intellect, and restores confidence in government. He is not the messiah. He is not magic. And yes, he has his weaknesses. But he believes, and makes us believe, in ourselves.

S’chach

2008-10-20T14:00:00.002+02:00

Various disjointed tidbits of Sukkot that didn’t fit anywhere else: ¶ Micah and I built, nay, assembled our sukkah motzei Yom Kippur. This was anything but construction, but there was a cool feeling of “I made this” the whole week. Our sukkah is endearingly tacky. ¶ In America, people generally sell arba minim as a set, with the holder things on the lulav ready to go. Here, everything is sold separately, nothing has prices marked, and it’s very frustrating and overwhelming. ¶ On the way to the concert in Beit Shemesh, I saw a random sukkah-shack just sitting there on the side of the highway. ¶ Also on way, driving through the mountains and forests, with the city lights just out of view, I glimpsed ancient Israel in the night, as it may have looked ages ago. ¶ Sukkah parties are fun. People who play three instruments make me feel bad about myself. ¶ I walked across Jerusalem yesterday because I had two hours to kill. This may be blasphemy, but most of it’s not that scenic. But hopefully now I’ll have a better sense of geography and won’t get lost. ¶ My etrog smells nice. There should be more things that smell nice. ¶ Most olim are weird. ¶ I am very not productive this week. Next week I start working for real. Should I be worried?

Vanity and Vexation of Spirit

2008-10-18T23:00:00.000+02:00

On the Saturday of Sukkot, Ecclesiastes is read in the synagogue. I know myself to be something of a curmudgeon, and one who is prone to doubt traditional Judaism’s comprehension of life’s realities on occasion. And every year, Ecclesiastes is there to remind me that cynicism predates me by a couple millennia. Futility of futility, all is futile! Kohelet begins. What profit does man have for all his labor which he toils beneath the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever. I am of no consequence. My work is of no consequence. Whatever has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. There is no invention. It is useless to try. For with much wisdom comes much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases pain. Ignorance is bliss. Intellectualism begets only anxiety. And so on.

Wise aphorisms speak across the epochs. The uncaring, unflinching eventuality of death is constant, unavoidable. But lo, the occasioned refrain: I observed that there is nothing better for man than to be happy in what he is doing, for that is his lot. For who can enable him to see what will be after him? Halfheartedly uplifting, at best. A carpe diem as a poetic depressive. Yet it remains truth. There is nothing new, indeed. Cynicism is optimism weathered by experience. I need the reminder, and appreciate it. Ultimately, man cannot fathom the events that transpire under the sun; inasmuch as man labors to seek he shall not find it. And even though a wise man presumes to know, he shall not find it. Bleak, yes, but far from disheartening. The world is as it is, brokers Kohelet. Don’t stress yourself out. They are words for all times, and our times.

Confident, Confident, Dry and Secure

2008-10-17T10:00:00.001+02:00

Following the barbecue yesterday, I got a ride to Beit Shemesh where I was meeting up with an old friend at a concert. The concert was pretty lame—American-born bands like Schlock Rock and Shlomo Katz playing to an audience of mostly American olim and yeshiva students, a slice of Five Towns NCSY in Israel—but what struck me was all the security I see.

We leave Alon Shvut through a manned security gate, and we nod to the guards on our way out. On the road, we go through two army checkpoints and they give us a once-over to make sure we’re not Arab (in which case they’d ask some questions and maybe search the car if they think something is suspicious) and wave us on. A bridge in the road has a concrete wall on one side to prevent snipers on the hill opposite from taking potshots at passing cars. I get dropped off outside the venue (a stage set up in the park) and the armed guards look me over and search my backpack. I get a ride from the concert to Jerusalem, passing more checkpoints, and meet my brother at the bus station. My bag is x-rayed and I walk through a metal-detector on my way into the station. The bus has bullet- and stone-proof windows, which makes them cloudy and nausea-inducing (think driving a windy road in a closed box with no windows). The Wall is ever-present in the distance, and each town we stop in on the way has a manned security gate. We get dropped off by the old gate in Alon Shvut, which we find out is locked after 10:30 or so. We call Micah to come pick us up and he takes in through the new gate which closes around 2:00 am. Every home is built with a bomb shelter or safe room. Bags are searched at the entrance to the mall. The synagogue has a guard with an M16 standing outside. The rabbi carries a handgun—even on Shabbat and holidays—when he walks to neighboring Efrat. I feel safe, and question the society that makes these steps necessary.

Smells Like Burning

2008-10-16T15:00:00.002+02:00

Today we had an awesome barbecue. Kabob, hot dogs, sausages, circle steaks (not sure what they are supposed to be because I can’t understand the packaging), and chicken skewers. The most interesting part was the conversation. We had over two of my cousin’s friends from LA, their wives—one Israeli and the other from Latin America—and their kids—both have girls about 2-3 and a baby, matching up pretty well with my cousin’s little girl and twin baby boys. My cousin and his wife—American born but raised in Israel—speak to their kids in English so that they can communicate with the rest of the world and the rest of the family, knowing that they’ll learn Hebrew in school and from their environment. The couple with the Israeli wife speak to their kids in Hebrew, this being the land of Israel and Hebrew being the language of the Jews and all. The other couple speaks to their kids in Spanish, keeping that part of her heritage alive. At the table, the men spoke English, the wives had their own conversation in Hebrew, and the three little girls played nicely together, one speaking English, one Hebrew, and one Spanish, and still somehow managing to communicate.

Otherwise Occupied

2008-10-15T21:00:00.004+02:00

My cousin and his family live in Alon Shvut, a town in Gush Etzion, a settlement bloc 20 minutes south of Jerusalem. There is archeological evidence of Jewish communities here dating back 2,300 years, and was settled again by Jews in the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s. The communities in the region were evacuated or killed in 1947 and ’48, and once Jordan took control of the area in the 1949 Armistice Agreements after the War of Independence, all buildings were razed. Following Israeli assumption of control after the Six-Day War in 1967, Jewish communities were reestablished here.

The legal status of these communities remains in question. I am technically on the other side of the Green Line, meaning I am in the West Bank (where to list my location on Facebook?), though in an area that will likely not be included in any peace agreements (the same for which cannot necessarily be said for the community of Tekoa down the road to the east). Israel claims that the land these towns were built on was public Jordanian land, though some Palestinians dispute this and claim that some it was privately owned. Past the edge of town is a small cluster of caravans (what the Israelis call trailers, after their British overlords) in an outpost whose legality and foundation is more tenuous. I don’t fully understand the issues surrounding the outpost, but I heard that the builder of the one actual house there has a restraining order against him that prevents him from living in the permanent building he built, but the wood house, the only other non-trailer home, is fine because wood houses are legally considered temporary buildings.

I bring this up because I went to the outpost today do drop someone off and saw essentially a trailer park that is seen by some as a human rights violation and others as manifest destiny. I have complicated feelings about “land for peace” and a pragmatic endgame to the conflict, but the thing that bothers me the most is the supposition the Jews living here in the Gush would have to leave and their homes possibly demolished should this land become part of a future Palestinian state. It is a given that anyone of any religion or ethnicity can be a citizen of any modern country. Israel is an increasingly melting pot society, and roughly 10% of the Knesset is Arab. Why, then, would these residents not be allowed to stay as Jewish residents of a future Palestine? Settlement expansion in light of International Law is purportedly a hairy topic, but I see this as a fairly straightforward point. Any voices to the contrary?

The caravan neighborhood of Givat HaHish.

Happy Holiday (in the singular)

2008-10-13T15:00:00.002+02:00

We’ve been putting all fresh vegetable waste (peels, rinds, stems, wilted lettuce, etc.) in a bag and today I started our compost heap by alternating layers of carbon-rich dried grass and leaves from our gardening last week and nitrogen-rich green waste. For now, we’re just putting everything in a pile, but may change to some kind of box or enclosure if we can find or make one with minimal effort and money.

In unrelated news, I’m intrigued by the prospect of my first one-day yom tov. In ancient times in the land of Israel, the Jewish festival days of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot were celebrated for one day. Because the first of the month was decided by the Sanhedrin court in Jerusalem based on witness reports of the new moon, Jewish communities outside the land of Israel could not always be sure what day of the month it was if word from Jerusalem took too long, and therefore celebrated the holidays for two days to be safe. This custom of two-day holidays in the Diaspora persisted even after the standardization of the Jewish calendar, with related halakhic repercussions like the prohibition to cook on the first day for the second day.

Most communities in Israel now keep one day, and there is a lingering question of what visitors to Israel should do: hold two days, as is their custom, or hold one day, as is the custom in the community they are visiting. Some authorities say the former, some say the latter, and some propose a sort of compromise of “one and a half days” where no work is done, but special holiday rituals are not performed either. (The same question pertains to Israelis in the Diaspora, but I won’t get into that.) After considering the issues involved, I decided to hold one day as per minhag ha-makom (custom of the place). Granted this does go against another Jewish tradition of asking your personal rabbi’s opinion, but I’ll call myself a Jewish humanist and leave it at that. Chag sameach.

Do They Know It's Sukkos?

2008-10-12T20:00:00.002+02:00

On Shabbat, I heard a mother reviewing with her elementary school-age son what he had learned in school about the biblical story of the spies who were sent to scout the land of Canaan. When asked why the spies didn’t take off their kipot and cut their payot so they would blend in better, he responded, because then they’d look like chilonim (secular Israeli Jews).

Then today, among our various errands, we drove out to an outlying community of Jerusalem to buy lights to hang in our sukkah from a woman who sells them out of her house. In a combination of broken Hebrew and broken English, the woman, Asian and married to an Israeli (presumably, though it’s very difficult to get an interfaith marriage in Israel) with a beautiful little girl of about three in a Dora the Explorer shirt, showed us all the various lights she had, and explained that she didn’t know if the lights would survive the rain in the sukkah because she only hangs them around the house. This was a chiloni community, and Micah mused that we were probably the frummest people ever to have ventured there. We bought two awesome strings of lights, and our hosts wished us a chag sameach (happy holiday), though we knew they wouldn’t be celebrating it.

Unlike in America and elsewhere in the Diaspora, Jews are the majority in Israel. Demographics force Diaspora Jews, to some extent, to identify as a unit, despite strong unwillingness to do so by many of them with assorted religious and political leanings. In Israel, Jews are the majority, but the Jews still manage to make things difficult, as they are often wont to do. Here, in an effort to self-define, every little detail is used to separate one group from the next. Various groups dress differently, live separately, and build their own communities. I may have been the only one in shul not wearing a srugi (a kipah srugah, or knitted kipah, mark of the dati leumi, or religious Zionists)—granted my suede one has choochoo trains on it.

But at the same time, as a Jewish state, there is a shared heritage. Everyone here knows it’s Sukkot, regardless of personal religious observance, the same for which cannot be said of America. Here, all the meat in the grocery store is kosher. Traditions, even those of others, are common knowledge. It’s an odd paradox of prizing both personal and national identity. The dichotomy of distancing the other and celebrating commonality is an inherent part of Israeli culture. Achdut, or togetherness, is a virtue here. Kinda.

Dirty Jews

2008-10-10T15:00:00.003+02:00

Today Micah and I began our adventure in composting. In conversation, we realized that we were both independently interested in composting, opened his copy of Gardening for Dummies, and resolved to become proficient gardeners. Or at least reasonably competent gardeners. Composting not only reduces the waste that would otherwise fill landfills, but also recycles nutrients back into the earth. Especially in Israel, trash reduction and soil improvement are both essential tasks. We spent much of the day clearing out the weeds, branches, leaves, and dead grass that made up a thick layer above the ground, exposing the topsoil and tiny green grass shoots that Micah thinks have already grown, and starting what will be our compost heap. I had a massive allergic reaction to something in the dried plants and dust, and we were both sore and filthy by the end of the day. It dawned on us that while we’re no Halutzim, we were, for a few hours on a Friday, involved in physically working the land of Israel. Updates on compost, gardening, and our burgeoning rugged masculinity will be forthcoming. Also, any advice on composting would be much appreciated.

Hineni

2008-10-08T14:00:00.001+02:00

I find one of the most affecting parts of the Yom Kippur service to be the short prayer the leader recites before the Musaf: Hineni, Here I am, impoverished, trembling and afraid. In it, the leader confesses, I have come to stand before You for Your people Israel who have sent me, although I am unworthy and unqualified to do so. Thus I plead of You … do not hold them to blame for my sins and do not find them guilty of my iniquities. It is a powerful admission, before the entire congregation, that even I, the appointed leader, am not without sin. There is no concept in Judaism of infallibility. Even Moses sinned against God, and willfully, despite his status (according to Maimonides in his 13 principles of faith) as foremost among the prophets. No one is perfect, and at the same time, no one can atone for your sins for you. You’re on your own. As we all accept responsibility upon ourselves for our actions, we pray that God accept our prayers and aid us in our repentance. I ask forgiveness from those who I have wronged, and I pray for focus and direction in the coming year. Blessed are You who hears prayer. Gmar Tov.

Good Walls and Good Neighbors

2008-10-07T20:00:00.002+02:00

I landed yesterday, saw the baby twin cousins for the first time, hung out with the family, and successfully staved off jetlag. The secret: sleep as little as possible the night before—I was at the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the NuArt Saturday night and got four hours of sleep—and as little as possible on the plane—three hours Sunday night thanks to a crying, flailing toddler—then sleep a full night on arrival—Monday night, making sure to stay up to a normal hour—and awake on Israel time. Today I walked the Old City, visited the Kotel, got lost in the maze of stone streets, found my way out to the market at Machane Yehuda and then to Ben Yehuda Street. I saw kids no more than fourteen smoking, fish heaving their last in a bin in the market, live chickens in small cardboard boxes in line for kaparot, two people I knew walking on the street, and lots of walls.

There were bullet-riddled walls, 16th and early 20th century, scarred in the War of Independence. Herodian walls with more recent improvements: the Western Wall with Montefiore’s additions, a sleek new area under Wilson's Arch, and spotless bathrooms. Offices with electrical wiring in plastic runners over the stone and swanky new commercial and residential complexes rising above dilapidating homes and shops. Metal gateways, to markets and holy sites manned by army personnel checking IDs of Arabs, and others keeping everyone out of the rampant construction sites. And off in the distance, the new walls separating Israel from the West Bank, demarcating with cement and steel the boundaries of old feuds. In archeological sites around the city, the past emerges from hiding; generations of building, each directly on top of the last, making strata like that of canyons, with the modern city emerging above it. This is a place adamant about living in the past as it reaches into the future. The struggles are apparent. Languages shout for priority in the streets and on signs, dogma fights dogma for dominance, ethnicities hold to their heritage as they navigate the waters of nationality. There are old walls and new walls, and people who build them and curse them. Welcome to Israel.

Flying

2008-10-06T02:00:00.007+02:00

I’ve always loved flying. Not the experience of sitting in the same position for untold hours, stuck between a plastic pillar and a feisty two-year-old, but the feat of human ingenuity that propels a big machine into the sky, rising high above the land to afford impossible views of the world below. Today I saw the wasteland of the Mojave, unimaginably huge, stretching out endlessly to the distant horizon. I saw its mountains, thrust upwards by the earth itself, its fine filigree of dried riverbeds, each in actuality wide enough to swallow city blocks. I saw its splayed fingers of plateau dropping sharply to the flats below, spawning smaller cliffs, ultimately feeding into an extinct mesh of varicose rivulets leading to nowhere. There was water here once, a lot of it, successive riverbeds and shorelines carefully tracing the desert’s history over the eons. Layer-cake strata appear where the land melted away before forgotten torrents. I watch the ochres and umbers give way to Martian red, knowing that millions of tiny ferrous ions erupted from stars to color the landscape I see before me, the earth Cartesian-smooth until broken by bolts of rock violently ejected through the surface. The clouds float in, a small delegation at first, then a quilt of gray and white, as topographically exciting as the ground it cloaks. I feel incomprehensibly small.

I know what it is to be Moses, leader of the people, but awed to the extremes of humility by the sight of the corner of God’s throne. Harassment of stones and chattering masses are inconsequential amidst mountains that dwarf cities. Man is from dust and returns to dust, and Thou art King, living and everlasting God. And I have to close my window so as to aid in the creation of an artificial night for the rest of the passengers on board. We pray this week and throughout the year for healing, for providence, greedily for personal things alongside our pleas for forgiveness for similarly insignificant transgressions. And then we cry out that we are but clay in the hands of our Maker. Like the microscopic minerals that paint the desert, do our strikes to the chest make up something bigger, or are they largely irrelevant in the greater scheme? An optimistic view says this is the actualization of unified field theory. The micro and macro are different aspects of the same process. A compassionate view says it’s just different strokes. Now over Vinland, with my window open to see the circuit board towns pulse in the dark, I can’t say. I feel entitled to my bitterness by the flailing toddler in the seat next to me and the belligerent El Al flight attendants. But I am also overcome by majesty of the world.

To Begin

2008-10-05T23:00:00.001+02:00

Google/Blogger blocked my blog almost immediately after I created it, so these first few entries were written earlier but only posted now that Google no longer thinks I'm spam.

I write this from 33,000 ft somewhere over the Plains and Midwest on my direct flight from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv. For the last year and a half I worked as a production artist at a TheHuckGroup, a litigation graphics and legal consulting firm in downtown LA, and online at thehuckgroup.com, putting together presentations for attorneys visually illustrating their cases. I left my job a week ago for a number of reasons, among them an ongoing frustration with always being on-call to provide the clients with whatever they want whenever they want it, and a desire to do something more stimulating than legal support. As I figure out where to go from here, I will be spending the next three months in Israel, partly working for my cousin Micah’s film production company, and partly taking time off and getting a change of environment.

I’ve never been to Israel longer than two weeks, once on a family trip when I was about twelve and then on Birthright in 2004. I never had the allegedly formative experience of a gap year program in Israel, nor a high school summer program in Israel, nor study abroad in Israel. Rabbi Daniel Gordis, thinker and family friend, wrote a book called If a Place Can Make You Cry. I don’t have anything remotely resembling that kind of deeply rooted emotional attachment to the land of Israel, and I’m curious to investigate what it is that inspires such passion. I spent my semester abroad in London, which was an indescribably inspirational experience, and there developed an intense wanderlust that recently awoke from dormancy to push me to quit my job and fly across the world. I also figured that three months in Spain or Thailand would elicit raised eyebrows and assumptions of slacking, while three months in Israel garners congratulations. I come to this with no real expectations, only the hope of finding something that will help me see what it is I will do next.

It is fitting that this juncture falls on the cusp of the new year (intentional as it may be: I quit when I did so I wouldn’t have to deal with missing work for the holidays). A new year marks a new beginning, grants new opportunities to move forward, provides a fresh impetus to explore and try new things. I stopped for tashlich on the way to the airport, appropriately on a bridge, shedding the last of the past year into the mildly pathetic waters of Balogna Creek before leaving everything behind and watching it get smaller and smaller and disappear from view. Among other things, I resolve on this new year to work on being more self-disciplined and productive with my free time, and I hope to share the results here. I am starting this very blog to share my thoughts with those of you who care to read and keep you updated on what I’m doing. Shana Tova.