First Erev Shabbat in Ramleh

I set aside today, Friday, to explore.  Unfortunately, I was very stupid, stayed up late the night before, and didn't get out of bed until after 9:00 am.  The result was that by the time I was up and out the door, it was already blazing hot outside.  I hurried to the shuk, and did my Shabbat shopping, picking up fruit and vegetables, bread, hummus, milk, grape juice, and candles.  I had eaten rather too many dates the night before, so I avoided buying any more dried fruit.  I took some photographs of the delicious-looking foodstuffs available, which I plan to post online soon.  My photos don't really do the shuk justice, due mostly to the fact that the shuk was packed with other people doing their Shabbat shopping, and it was very difficult for me to take good photographs while simultaneously staying out of everybody's way.  Nobody minded that I was taking photographs; I think that it's somewhat typically Israeli not to get upset if someone is taking pictures of your tomatoes or eggs.  Plus, all of these guys were too busy dealing with customers to get angry.  Nevertheless, had I been in France, I think that someone would have started accosting me for taking photos.

If you've been to the shuk in Jerusalem, Ramleh's shuk is very similar, with some vendors selling fruits and vegetables, while others sell dried fruits and nuts, while still others sell dairy product and olives, sandals, or watches.  There are even a few specialty produce stands, with vendors selling mostly different varieties of grapes, but also figs.  I had to go to a tiny grocery store, that reminded me of Carrefour and of Lidl in France, to pick up a few of the items, too.

I rushed my produce back to my apartment on Yoseftal, checked my e-mail while swallowing a few of the figs that I had just bought then went exploring for the next two or three hours.  I remembered to add the possessive when reciting "al ha'etz," changing what is ordinarily "al-haperot" (on the fruit) to "al-haperotah" (on it's fruit).  It was kind of exciting, knowing that the produce I ate was grown in Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.  (Wow, I sound like Peninah, don't I?)  Figs are particularly special because they are one of the shev'at minim, or seven species, used in the Torah to describe the agricultural richness of the Land of Israel.

I wandered around in the very hot weather to some places that I had never been before.  The cityscape is fairly monotonous, and most people were too intelligent to be wandering outside in the early afternoon, unlike me.  The street names here have a distinctly Zionist bent: 'Herzl," "Chaim Weizmann," "Tzahal," "Hashomer," "Hahagannah," Moshe Sharett, etc.  The name of the street on which the shuk is set up is named after Jabotinsky!  Also, the municipal park where the water tower is constructed is named Gan Golda, presumably named in honor of Golda Meir.  There are a few nods to the Jewish diaspora, with one side street by my apartment bearing the name "Vilna."  Some of the names of the businesses are a little bit over-the-top, with a shoe store being named "Na'alei Zohar," literally "Shoes of Splendor."  The houses are all the same sandy color, the color of the stone quarried to build them all, presumably.  I also visited the "White Tower," the remaining minaret of a very old mosque.  Although the White Mosque was constructed in the 8th century by the Umayyad caliph who founded Ramleh, earthquakes in the regions regularly demolished the edifices standing in this location, so this Minaret is from the 14th century.

I passed by at least three synagogues on my route, too.  None of them, unfortunately, had any written indication of what hours their respective congregations meet, or whether they are Ashkenaz, Sepharadic, Mizrachi, etc., in outlook.  This is important, because there's a Karaite synagogue somewhere in the city, which I would rather not accidentally wander into on Erev Shabbat.  There are also substantial religious communities from Ethiopia and India here, and in a synagogue of such a community, I would be spotted a mile away as an outsider.  I'd really just like to be able to slip in under the radar, without being immediately noticed.

This city feels incredibly different from Tzfat, up in the Galilee, by the way.  In Tzfat, Jewish tradition permeated the whole town, there were tons of tourists yet virtually no Arabs, and the city felt incredibly old.  Here, most of the people I see are not religious Jews; there are no tourists; the city has substantial populations of Arab Christians, Russian immigrants, Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews and various non-religious ethnic minority communities; and there are really only a couple of historic monuments.  Both cities, of course, are quite poor.

Well, I hope that I manage to enjoy my Shabbat here, in a new place where I don't know the language.  Unfortunately, my previous overseas experiences with new synagogues haven't always been the most enjoyable, but I'll do my best to avoid doing anything stupid (i.e. wearing shorts to synagogue).  Oh, man, the siddurim are going to be all in Hebrew again...

Shabbat Shalom, cool people!

~JD

ITF Opening Orientation

I had forgotten how early the day in Israel begins.  When I opened my eyes at 7:00 am, the light was already streaming into my window, and I could hear the steady buzz of traffic flowing by outside, four stories down.  As I ate my breakfast, I read the label on the apple that I was eating, and saw that the brand was "B'reishit," and that its motto was "Ta'am Gan Eden."  That is, the fruit enterprise was named after the first book of the Bible (literally the "in-the-beginning" book), and it boasted that its fruit had "the taste of the Garden of Eden."  Sure, this is marketing, but it's a particular kind of marketing, the kind that is typical of a country that takes as much pride in its ancient agricultural heritage as Israel.

I walked to Ramleh's local library, and read for maybe thirty or forty minutes while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive.  Carmel, the program director, arrived first, and he and I set up chairs in the library's conference room in preparation for our meeting.  I met the other participants in the program, whom I hope I will get to know well over the next few months.  Some of them are fresh out of college, like me, but a couple have a few years' experience teaching young children.  Based on our introductions, we're a fairly ideologically-motivated group; almost all of us chose to teach in Ramleh in particular because of the community's high diversity and low income.  Most of the others don't have many Hebrew skills, either, although one guy, Alex, seems to be able to form complete sentences, which is more than I can say for myself.  (Somehow, all of that vocabulary from Mishnah Nezikin isn't that useful; I don't find myself needing such words as "bull," "field," "heir," "gentle," and "cloak," to name just a few.)  My tour group displays a surprising collective gallery of tattoos, something I hadn't at all expected.  We reviewed much of the information from the webcast, and a few of the other participants asked questions about cell phones; I didn't know it, but it would have been better if I had brought my smart phone to Israel, and "unlocked" it here, buying a plan.  Now, I'll need to shell out for a phone, SIM card, and monthly plan.  After the meeting was over, and we had all agreed to meet again at 4:00 pm in order to take a walking tour of the city, I sat upstairs in the library and read for an hour.  I then walked to the shuk for the first time while it was open.  It's a lot like the shuk in Jerusalem, but with most of the tourist-oriented businesses (keychains, cheap souvenirs, Kippah Man, etc.) absent.  There were many, many piles of produce; Israel loves its fresh fruit and vegetables, its spices, its dried fruits and nuts.  I bought a box of figs at ₪13 per kilo (a touch high, I later found), or about $1.63 per pound.  I even tried to communicate entirely in Hebrew.  This is approximately how the conversation went

JD: Kama echad kilo shel ta'anim [How much is one kilo of figs]?
Seller: Echad-esrei [Thirteen shekels].
JD: Ani rotzeh liknot echad kilo shel ta'anim [I would like to buy one kilo of figs].
Seller [begins to weight out figs]: Atah im Taglit [Are you with Birthright]?
 JD: Lo, ani im Oranim.  Ani melamed Anglit, v'lomed Ivrit.  Ani ba'a b'yom revi'i [No, I'm with Oranim.  I am teaching English, and learning Hebrew.  I arrived on Wednesday].
Seller: Zeh chamesh-esrei [This is 15 shekels' worth of figs].
JD: B'seder, b'seder [That's fine]!
Seller: [Something I can't understand]
JD: ????
Seller: Where are you from?
JD: Ani m'Nyu York, m'artzot habrit [I'm from New York, from the United States].
 Seller [hands me figs with no smile]: Welcome to Israel.
JD: Todah rabbah [Thank you very much]!

I kind of miss my local bakery in Paris, where I once plucked up the courage to tell the baker that his were "les meilleures baguettes à Paris."

I walked back to my apartment to collect a few forms that I had forgotten to bring to my trip organizers that morning.  It was incredibly hot, and by the time I arrived back at my apartment, my entire back and shoulders were coated in sweat where my backpack and its shoulder straps had rested.  I ate, and returned to the library for the next few hours; my jet lag hit me a little bit at this point, early afternoon, and I uncontrollably drifted off for a bit.  Soon after, Carmel showed up, and told me that the walking tour had been cancelled.  He kindly sat down with me, though, and helped me navigate cellphone plans available in Israel, something that I simply cannot do with my limited Hebrew skills.  My SIM card will arrive in a week or two, a little bit longer than I had hoped to wait, but I partially blame myself for not knowing to have brought my cell phone overseas, as all of my peers apparently did (why does this trick work in Israel, but not in France, where my only option was to buy a new French cellphone?).  

I took another visit to the shuk, partially to look for stores selling phones, partially to pick up more food, and partially just to look at all of the vendors' wares.  I saw some enormous orange squashes that must have been around a foot and a half long, maybe two to three times the size of a large watermelon.  I don't even have a name for all of the different crops I saw for sale.  I stopped to buy some dried dates; just at that one stand, there were at least six varieties of dates for sale, each of slightly different size and color.  None were labeled; the discerning seller, presumably, would be able to distinguish and name, based on appearance, exactly the desired kind of dates.  I just pointed to the ones I wanted, and said "eileh" when the muscular vendor asked me of which kind of tamar I wanted one kilo.  I also bought what looked like small white-fleshed peaches going for just ₪5 per kilo.  They were excellent.  I wanted to buy milk from the shuk, but I couldn't find any, so I went around the store to a small convenience store to buy some instead.  I still can't read these Hebrew-Arabic milk cartons.

I again walked back to my apartment, and spoke to Ben (the Australian one, not the one whose bedroom I share) for about two hours.  His Hebrew skills are top-notch, especially for someone who has only been in this country for about four months.  He enjoyed practicing on me, and I enjoyed hearing as many words in Hebrew as possible, but I think that I understood far less than he thought that I had.  We also spoke about career paths, grad school, theses, research, teaching, law school, medical school, academia, etc.  Then I wrote this.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to try to explore more of the city, this time with my camera.  If I'm lucky, I'll also be able to find a family to host me for Shabbat.  We'll see how that turns out.

Also, quick reality check: why does there seem to be more moral outrage aimed at Miley Cyrus than at Bashar al-Assad?

~JD

First Look at Ramleh

            Shortly after I finished the last entry in the Frankfurt airport, I boarded the flight bound for Tel-Aviv.  I was fast asleep before takeoff, and didn't wake up until we began our descent, around five hours later.  By this point, it was just after 3:00 pm local time, or 8:00 am Eastern Standard Time.  I peered out the window, and saw desert beneath me; a completely different landscape and climate than the continental ones I had left far behind.  For the third time, I disembarked, and entered Israel.

            I staggered through customs and baggage claim, and managed to buy a train ticket for Ramleh, for ₪15.  There was a transfer at Tel Aviv, where I needed to wait for nearly an hour before the train for Ramleh arrived.  Although some information was posted and announced in English, there are many data available only in Hebrew; for instance, the intermediate stops on a particular railroad line, prior to its terminal, eponymous line.  I hopped off at Ramle, and from there, needed to make it to the other side of town.  I asked the railroad employee outside of the train station, whose job this seemed to be, to call a cab for me, which he did.  I don't think that he spoke any English, but I managed to make it understood that I needed a taxi to bring me to such-and-such a destination ("ani tzarikh moniyah," or its near equivalent, seemed to get the message across).  Likewise, the cabbie was a sabra who spoke rather quickly, but I knew the address, and could articulate "ani rotzeh linso'a l'" well enough for him to grasp my meaning.  He brought me to the address that I had specified in about 10 minutes' time, driving past the shuk, or market, on the way.  His fee was ₪25, making my trip somewhat more economical than the ₪92 estimated cost for a taxi lift directly from Ben Gurion Airport to Ramleh.

            The address to which the cab brought me was a beautiful house in a district whose architecture reminded me of the old stone-built district in Tzfat.  There were some American-looking student-age people standing outside, who told me that I had made it to the right place.  They were all about to leave together to pick up groceries, but called Carmel, the regional director for Oranim, to tell him that I had arrived, and led me inside the house, where eight or so of them, I think, will together be sharing.  It's a beautifully-furnished building that looks like a highly-fashionable apartment from New York City; no joke.  I saw a well-equipped kitchen, at least two televisions, and even Impressionist-style art on the walls.  I sat and read until Carmel arrived.  When he did, he made it clear that he was glad to see me.  He briefed me a little bit, gave me a couple of maps, and drove me, in his car, to the apartment where I'll be staying, not even 10 minutes' walk away.  I was grateful, because I still had my suitcase with me. 

            The apartment that I'll be sharing with three other men is on the fourth floor of a rather dingy apartment building.  There's an electronic code to open the door, and it's obvious to see the four digits that make it up, because the four buttons lack the layer of grime that coats the rest of the keypad.  I'll be sharing a very small room with one of the two Bens living in the apartment; the other bedroom is occupied by Noach and the other Ben.  The rest of the apartment consists of an entrance room with a television and a couple of couches, a closet-like bathroom, shower, a kitchen without chairs or a table, and a cramped hallway with some torn-up couches.  It's small, but certainly not the most cramped sleeping quarters I've ever inhabited.  I don't plan on spending much time inside after the first day or two.  More importantly, my housemates all seem friendly enough, something that matters to me much more than the physical facilities.  Noach took me on a tour of the neighborhood, showing me the local grocery stores, falafel stand, library, and shuk.  I hope that I'll be able to find everything again in daylight, it being after 9:00 by the time I finished.  I picked up some fruit and milk from the only grocery store still open, and hope to get some more at the shuk in the future.  My Modern Hebrew is almost painfully bad; reading the label on the milk carton, I can read that it's chalav, and see that it's pasteurized, but have no clue what any of the other words on the package indicate, except shamon, which I believe to be a reference to milkfat content.

            I spoke extensively to Noach on our walk, and we compared our backgrounds, educations, interests, etc.  Unlike me, he and the others in the apartment are in a 5-month program that began earlier this summer, and isn't strictly limited to teaching in a school.  Other aspects of his program, such as the inclusion of Ulpan lessons, for instance, are part of both programs.  The Ben who isn't my roommate is from Australia, and, like me, studied history in college.  We had a surprisingly large amount to talk amount, given the fact that I really don't know what I'm talking about, no matter what the period or region, because I have such shallow historical knowledge.  Ben knows a fair amount of theory, something I only really brushed up against at Cornell, where, if you're an undergraduate, it's possible to avoid theory if you choose to (as I did).  I'm hoping to have more conversations with him in the future.

            Ramleh is definitely a poor city.  You can tell; it reminds me of some of the poorer neighborhoods.  The roads are smaller, the buildings are shorter, and there are date palms planted on the traffic islands, but small-city poverty looks remarkably similar around the world.

            Alright, I'm going to want to go to bed soon, but promise to talk more about the city and its inhabitants in the future.  Tomorrow, I have orientation at 9:00 am at the library.  I hope that all goes well.  Regardless, I promise to tell you all about it!

~JD

Ithaca, Newark, Frankfurt

            My first flight of the day was scheduled to leave from Ithaca Airport at 9:29 am on Tuesday.  I said goodbye to my Father at 8:20 am, who had a meeting with some Biology and Society advisees later that morning, and my Mother and I drove to the airport.  My Mother is concerned that I'm going to be too excited and busy in Israel to eat well, and doesn't want me to return home looking thinner than I was when I left.  I'm hoping to see her, as well as the rest of my family, sooner than that, though; my parents, as well as all of my siblings, are planning to visit me during my sojourn in Israel.

            The flight from Ithaca to Newark was unexceptional: I fell asleep for part of it, as I often do on plane flights.  I had about a six-hour wait in Newark airport.  I finally finished reading William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, which I had begun in New York City, reading it on my Kindle during my daily commute to Drisha Institute.  It's a fairly boring book, in fact, and I don't recommend it to anyone; for the life of me, I can't understand how such a banal, dreary work ever made it into our canon of great literature (don't ask me about little Willy's younger brother, either, for that matter).  Luckily, this left me free to continue a book that I have been enjoying, Benny Morris's Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-2001, which I began reading last week.  Reading this book is part of my attempt to shore up my pitiful knowledge of Israeli history.  Until this summer, I had never read any full-length books on the history of the modern State of Israel, and I never took any classes at Cornell on Israel, or even on the modern Middle East.  When I left to study abroad in France, I went with a very rough sketch of the last few hundred years' worth of French history (thanks largely to Mrs. P-B).  I don't even have a sketch of Israel's history, though: more like a few crayon-strokes on construction paper.  I desperately need to learn more about the various aliyot, the Mandate period, both world wars, the Arab-Israeli wars, Israeli domestic policy, Israel foreign policy, Israeli agriculture and infrastructure, airlifts, Oslo, Camp David, the PLO, Chamas, the IDF, refugees, the Yemenite and Ethiopian communities, the intifadas, the government in Gaza, the religious authorities – there's so much I just don't know.  And this is just a short list of the items of the past century and a half; there's good things to be said to read up back through the Ottoman period, the Crusades, the early Muslim conquests and the Pact of Umar, the Byzantines and the Sassanid Persians, the Romans... I have a lot of learning to do, in other words.

            My Father mentioned to me the other evening that I was very calm for someone about to travel internationally, and leave the country for nearly a year.  I thought about my lack of travel anxiety when I was in Newark.  I have the same feeling that I did when I was abroad last summer; I am leaving Ithaca, but I have a clear goal, which I am excited to pursue.  I have commitments in the U.S., but that's also where all my problems are; when I'm abroad, I'm an ocean away from my biggest problems.  But I'm not running away from them; rather, just as was the case last summer, I'm going to return home more capable than ever of solving my problems, because I'll be a more skilled, more experienced, and (perhaps) more mature person upon my return.  Knowing this, and knowing that I have a fixed mission, has given me significant mental endurance in the past, even when I found myself in upsetting, unhappy situations.

            Yet again, I'm doing something I care about: teaching.  In the past few months, I don't think I've done a good job of emphasizing to those around me just how much I'm looking forward to the day-to-day work that this job entails.  I want to teach.  That bear repeating; I want to teach.  I want to be an educator.  Every time I've been in a teaching role, no matter how formal or informal, I've taken an enormous amount of pleasure in the act of explaining and communicating.  Just a few days ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with my friend Sammy, helping her to study vocabulary for her upcoming GRE.  I was sitting in 104 West!, surrounded by friends with whom I hadn't had a real conversation in months – and I was completely engrossed in the list of words in front of me, and trying to elucidate their meanings, that I spoke to nobody else, and completely forgot about the plate of food that was lying in front of me, despite not having eaten in about 18 hours.  Sammy, I'll admit, will be different from most of my future pupils, who will be neither my friends, nor smart students in Ivy League schools, but nevertheless, I'm looking forward to teaching them. 

            I'm now sitting in Frankfurt airport.  In Ithaca, it's 2:00 am, but here, it's not yet 8:00 am.  The flight from Newark to Frankfurt I spent entirely awake, reading maybe a hundred pages of Benny Morris, as well as watching Iron Man III.  Victor, you were right; it's not that good of a film.  Like Man of Steel (which I reviewed a couple of months ago), it lacks a good beginning-middle-ending arc, but whereas the latest Superman film dwells forever in the beginning, Iron Man III has almost no beginning, and is mostly middle.  The pacing is all wrong, in other words; the film-makers wanted to jump immediately to certain sections, without giving the viewer the opportunity to catch up with the characters' motives.  I still think that the villain's scheme is unbelievably complex, and doesn't really benefit him much, given the amount of risk involved.  The whole setup seems... contrived, and the plot twists failed to draw me in.  Also, it's a revenge story; I think that Hollywood produces altogether too many of those.

            Thank you, Frankfurt Airport, for 30 free minutes of Internet access!

            All right, cool people, you'll hear from me again once I'm in Israel!

~JD

Night Before Departure to Teach Abroad

I haven't updated this blog in about a month.  This has mostly been due to a lack of interesting events in my life.

This coming school year, I will be teaching English as a Foreign Language in a public school in Ramle-Lod, Israel.  I'll be teaching at approximately a fifth-grade level.  I'm hoping, when I return to the United States at the end of next June, to have found a place to teach somewhere in a school that needs me.  Specifically, I'd like to teach High School history somewhere.

Tomorrow morning, at 9:29 am, I fly out of Ithaca airport.  If all goes as planned, after stops in Newark and Frankfurt, I should arrive in Ben Gurion Airport, Israel at 3:05 pm local time on Wednesday.  That's a lot of flying, even taking the time zone changes into account, and I expect to be fairly wiped out by the time I arrive.  Somehow, I'll make it to Ramle-Lod, and, I hope, get some real sleep by that time.

I'm very excited; I'm all packed, and hope to have some interesting misadventures to write about soon enough.  Mr. Troy, I know that you'll be at the edge of your seat until then, so I hope to satisfy your curiosity sooner rather than later.

~JD