Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (feat. Eli Shaubi)

NOBODY GOT HURT!

I am emphasizing this because I read on Wednesday the 25th that the previous morning, the day in which I had visited Jerusalem, police had closed the Temple Mount to all non-Muslims.  Also, this blog post will end with me performing the single stupidest act that I have ever committed since I started blogging, and you should know in advance that nobody sustained any bodily harm because of it.

On Monday morning, I walked over to the house on Havaradim, because I had received an invitation to visit Tel Aviv with some of them.  Another group was going to the beach in Rishon, and I considered going with them, instead, but I hadn't brought my swim trunks or towel with me.  I hung out for a little while (Harry showed me the photographs from his visit to London), and a little after 1:00 pm, Natalie, Hannah, Noah, and I walked to Herzl street and caught a sherut (a sort of shuttle) to Tel Aviv.  The girls wanted to go shopping for a few items (power converters, etc.), and Noah wanted to see if he could find some protein dietary supplements (he's a big, muscular guy who works out frequently and intensively).  Our destination was the Mercaz Dizengoff, the central mall in Tel Aviv, and, as far as I know, the largest mall in Israel.  It's difficult to take in all at once; very sprawling, over several stories, and entirely lacking maps of any sort.  The others were hungry, and we left the Mercaz in order to search for food; they found a sushi restaurant where the servers spoke English.  While they were ordering, I left the restaurant in search of some small, out-of-the-way store where I could pick up a dozen postcards.  I walked until I arrived by the beach, in a neighborhood with many hotels and travel agencies.  This seemed like a good place to search; tourists typical flock to the beach, and where one finds tourists, one finds shops with wares intended for tourists (such as postcards).  I was in luck!  Although I totally failed in my ability to ask the price in Hebrew (the clerk switched to English because I was making such a fool of myself), I finally picked up 10 postcards.  They cost about eight times as much as they would have in New York City, but I was happy.  Postcards are an extremely special way to communicate with people across distances -- they are physical, tangible signs of oneself that one projects overseas, and are capable of making a much stronger impression of love and care than even the best-worded e-mail.  If you don't receive a postcard within the next few days, by the way, and are someone who regularly reads this blog, it's more likely because I intend you to be part of the second or third "wave" of postcards, than because I don't care about you (also, if you don't think that you are on the list of those to receive a JDPostcard, send me a message, and I'll make certain that you receive one).  Anyway, I returned to the restaurant (where someone was drinking wine), and I wrote to some very special people, until my friends had finished.  Next stop: athletes' protein.  Would you have guessed that it was so easy to find a specialty sporty-nutrition store in Tel Aviv, possibly the only such store in all of Israel?  Well, it was very easy.  Noah is a real expert when it comes to this stuff, and was conversing very fluently with the store clerks about the relative merits of different brands and formulae.  Afterwards, we cruised around the Mercaz a little bit, and, eventually, I went into a bookstore to sit and finish a few more postcards (note: I also missed minchah for the first time since I'd arrived in Israel, and felt rather annoyed with myself).

We took the sherut back to Ramla, where Hannah, Natalie, and Noah all expressed interest in returning with me to my apartment to celebrate my roommate Ben's birthday party!  Ben was happy to see us all, and we sat around and talked in our apartment's living room. I brought the fresh dates that I had bought from the shuk out of the freezer, and gave Ben the milk and juice that I had bought for him for his birthday (he really likes both of these products, by the way).  We had cake, etc., and I took pictures (which you can see on FB).  Rose was there, too, and soon after Noah, Hannah, and Natalie returned to their house on Havaradim, Rose, my roommate Ben, Noach, and I watched the movie Avatar, which Rose, Noach, and I hadn't yet seen.  It is one of the movies most jampacked with plot clichés I have ever seen, I admit, but I still enjoyed parts of it.  Afterwards, around 1:30 am, I walked Rose home, and then walked back to Havaradim, where I had left my backpack earlier.  I returned, packed, and, didn't get into bed until nearly 5:00 am.

I was up the next morning at 7:00 am.  On my way to the bus station, I mailed a few of the postcards that I had managed to finish the day before.  I caught the bus to Jerusalem that left before 9:00 am.  The bus, rather than a yellow tablet naming its destination, simply had a blue Jewish star.  I guess that that was enough of an indication?  I had expected to need to really fight for a place (my housemate Ben is brimming with stories about pushy Israelis on public transportation), but, unexpectedly, but very much fortuitously, I didn't need to be a jerk to get a seat on the bus.  Unable to doze, I wrote another postcard on the bus, and arrived at Jerusalem's Central Bus Station around 10:00 am.  One of my first sights (and a recurring sight throughout my trip) upon arrival was graffita "נַ נַחְ נַחְמָ נַחְמָן מְאוּמַן."  I sat in a sukkah outside of the station, and listened to a Chabadnik sing very loudly while shaking his lulav and etrog, while continuing to write, waiting for Eli.  Before long, he appeared soon, and we hugged; I had missed him (of course I had -- how could I do otherwise?).  We discussed where to go, and settled on the Israel Museum, which I had never visited before (why, exactly, does Taglit not make this a destination?), and which Eli had only visited once, at a time at which many of the exhibits were closed.

We took the bus (and met a visiting Australian theologian along the way), and spent three to four hours inside the museum.  We visited, in order, the Shrine of the Book (where the Qumrat Scrolls, the Aleppo Codex, and other rare texts are found), the scale model of Jerusalem, c. 50 C.E., and a temporary exhibit on Herod.  The Shrine of the Book is full of fascinating treasures.  Eli is exactly the person with whom to visit such a museum, and we discussed our impressions of the Qumrat sect of Essenes (?) in depth.  Eli knows so much Jewish history, law, and tradition, although we were both rather blown away by some of the findings.  Did you know that these guys deliberately turned away from Jerusalem when they prayed, because they believed that the Jews in Jerusalem (i.e. the Rabbinic Jews, better known to readers of Josephus and the Gospels as the Pharisees) were the "Sons of Darkness?"  They had a Spartan-style brotherhood of shared meals, had a 364-day calendar (in blatant violation of the calendar calculated in Jerusalem), and were heavily into astrology and tahara.  The white dome of the Shrine of the Book is constantly doused with a stream of running water, symbolic of their concern with keeping themselves ritually pure, as evinced by the high number of mikva'ot in their community.  Eli chanted aloud from the facsimile of the Qumrat sect's Yishayahu, and we looked in awe at the Aleppo Codex, the oldest known copy of the Hebrew Bible (although it's missing most of the Torah, up until Ha'azinu, also known as the Song of Moses).  The model of Jerusalem is stunning; it used to belong to a hotel, but has since been moved to the Israel Museum (we wondered at how it would have been possible to transport it).  For those of you who haven't seen it, Second-Temple Jerusalem, in fact, closely resembles many other Roman tributary cities, built in a high place with a cultic center at its apex.  Not until one sees the model, however, does one realize to what extent Herod renovated the Temple.  It dominates, in a truly incredible way, the entire rest of ancient Jerusalem.  The Roman amphitheater, by contrast, looks puny beside it.  It is also quite clearly a defensible structure, and it is easy to understand why it was the site of the last stand of the rebels in Jerusalem in the Jewish Revolt that ended so tragically, in the Temple's destruction.  Finally, Eli and I visited the exhibit on Herod, which was also fascinating.  The exhibit displayed many of the relevant artifacts (such as coins minted with the heads of Herod's successors), but drew heavily on classical documents mentioning Herod; not just Josephus, but Pliny the Elder, Petronius, etc.  Eli was amused by one author's dry remark that it was "better to be Herod's pig than his son."  This guy was both an egomaniac and a megalomaniac, and I'm somewhat surprised that he never tried to erect a gigantic cult image of himself in the Temple in Jerusalem (or elsewhere).

After leaving the museum at around 4:00 pm, Eli and I took the bus to the Temple Mount.  The bus drove us through Me'ah She'arim, the most ultra-orthodox of Jerusalem's neighborhoods, and the bus, before long, was packed with men in streimels and women in very long skirts.  I was extremely anxious about accidentally coming in physical contact with one of the women, and unintentionally provoking the wrath of every Charedi on board, but the trip passed without incident, much to my relief (hey, I worry about these things, OK?).  Anyway, Eli and I walked to the kotel amidst the thick crowds of other visitors.  Israeli Charedim predominated, although, as always, there were Jews of all sorts, wearing clothes of all kinds, from all over the world.  We prayed minchah; at the Western Wall, minyanim (prayer quorums of ten Jews) just pop up spontaneously.  So long as you're a male Jewish adult with his head covered, you can find a group of at least nine others with whom to pray.  Eli and I entered the residential section of the Old City, in search of the address of the Chabad Rabbi who had invited me over for an all-night study section in his sukkah. On the way, we met a man handing out free copies of Artscroll parallel Hebrew-English editions of Sefer Yishiyahu.  I took one; why not?  My friend Noah had also received one when he visited.  I just wonder who paid for them all?   And why, of all possible, probably the hardest to read in all of Nevi'im?  Eli and I also went exploring in the Arab shuk.  It was my first visit there, because we were strictly forbidden to visit during Birthright.  I really don't understand what the stigma is; this place was a completely normal commercial district.  Eli and I were far from the only openly-Jewish people there, and we were treated just like any other customers.  The shop where we stopped to look around was very religious-tourist oriented, and, sold ikons, among other trinkets.  Eli picked up a pair of oil lamps, which he plans to use for his Shabbat candles (Shabbat 2:2 --רבי טרפון אומר אין מדליקין אלא בשמן זית בלבד).  I gazed longingly at some trinkets that I had in mind for Someone Special, but I didn't think that I could, at the moment, afford (ironic, given what occurred later that night).  Eli and I stopped at a pita stand, and I got some warm, warm felafel -- my first since arriving in Israel.  We ate in a public sukkah in a square that I remember visiting during Taglit).  Eventually, we made our way to the Rabbi's, where he graciously welcomed us, telling us that the learning would begin at 11:00 pm.  What I hadn't realized was that the address of his business card was his home address, and that there would be no possible for me to stay the night, no matter how tired I was.  I had only slept two hours or so the night before, so I was not in great shape, but I at the moment didn't know what to do, exactly.  My ITF friends who had visited over Yom Kippur had spoken of a "hostel," which I assumed was the address of the card that I had received.  I unfortunately did not think to call any of them, and instead dropped off my bag, so that Eli and I could go and study by ourselves in a nearby Yeshiva.  Nobody bothered us, and we read about half of the first chapter of Mishlei together, in Hebrew (there was no other choice).  Eli had also been to a Yemenite ask-the-Rabbi the day before, and he shared some of the (rather interesting) things we had learned.  We walked to the Wall, to keep me awake, and also prayed arvit.  All this time, little did we realize, the window for us to leave Jerusalem was closing.  We finally decided, between the two of us, that we could not stay the night in Jerusalem, mostly because I needed to sleep, and couldn't do that in the city.  I collected my bag (Eli also called a certain Cool Chevruta of his at this time), and we took the light rail back to the Central Bus Station.  I unfortunately had had to make a somewhat disingenuous equivocation to the Rabbi, to explain to him my sudden departure, right before the beginning of the very activity to which I had come to Jerusalem expressly to do.  The station was dark, and I saw Eli off on the local shuttle back to his grandmother's house (I had decided that I would rather return to Ramla to spend the night, rather than spend the night with Eli, and need to bus back to Ramla the next morning -- very stupid of me).  You see where this is going; seconds before running out of batteries Eli's smartphone had told us that there was one more bus leaving for Ramla in thirty minutes.  It was wrong, and I was told to leave the (otherwise) empty station.

It was past midnight at this point, I was exhausted, and I had nowhere to go.  I thought (incorrectly) that I had only one choice -- I would need to take a taxi back to Ramla.  This makes my #1 Stupidest Things I've Ever Done In A Foreign Country, right up there with the time I nearly missed the Institut de Touraine bus from Chambord back to Tours, back in August 2011.  The driver saw immediately that I was foreign, and was almost aggressive.  I couldn't think straight enough to even show that I can speak functional Hebrew; in hindsight, all of the danger signs were there, and I should have known in advance that I was going to get skinned.  He told me that the regular price was ₪320 (I think that this part was true), but that he would take me for about ₪250 (about $70.00 -- bad, but non-lethal).  When we got to Ramla, he told me that it would cost me another ₪50 to bring me from southern Ramla, where we were, to northern Ramla, where I lived.  At this point, I should have stuck to my guns, and insisted that he either keep the price the same, or that he let me out of the cab.  Instead, I assented, completely defenseless.  Finally, at Yoseftal, I tried to pay with my credit card -- which isn't possible in Israel (another thing I didn't know).  I gave him every last Israeli bill, plus $40 left over from the U.S., paying him, in the end, the equivalent of nearly $100.  My wallet was left entirely empty (I showed him so that he would believe me).  I stumbled inside, feeling as if I had been skinned alive.  In one day, I lost half of my monthly salary, and realize that I will be unable to take any of the trips to Tzfat, Rishon, or Jerusalem that I had intended (I still haven't payed for my monthly bus pass, which will cost ₪181, and I am almost out of food).  This isn't the end of the world, but I feel intensely stupid.  If I had just gone home with Eli, or not tried to deceive the Rabbi, or called Noah to ask about the details of the hostel where he and the others had stayed, or even just decided sooner in the day that I needed to return to Ramla, none of this would have happened.  I'm such a fool (    .(כִּי מְשׁוּבַת פְּתָיִם תַּהַרְגֵם וְשַׁלְוַת כְּסִילִים תְּאַבְּדֵם

Anyway, I've had a good few days since then.  I enjoyed Simchat Torah, and I can finally eat all of my meals inside my apartment again! Also, as long as you're reading this blog post, please take a glance at this article, which happens to feature a friend of mine, Jeff Lipton, who has invested a lot of time and effort in 3-D printing.

The following image is meant to show the difference between standing in line in Germany (left) and China (right).  In fact, the diagram works equally well to compare the United States (left) to Israel (right).

Finally, I am going to take a moment to make a Noa/h disambiguation.  For those of you who don't know the code, and have found my messages somewhat confusing:
1) Noa is a woman, and lives in the house on Gil'ad.  She is a member of the 5-month community-involvement program in Ramla, and is very cool.
2) Noah is a man, and lives in the house on Havaradim.  He is a member of the 10-month Israel Teaching Fellows program, like me, but is very cool.
3) Noach is a man, and lives in my apartment on Yoseftal.  He is a member of the 5-month community-involvement program in Ramla, and is very cool.

Shavua Tov, cool people!  I start teaching for real this week!

~JD

First Sukkot in Israel

Wednesday was Erev Sukkot here in Israel.  I got up early, and left first for the mikveh on Rechov Vilna, where I immersed my new vessels, and then for the post office, where I bought a sheet of stamps.  I felt like a big spender as I walked on to the shuk, thinking about how I was going to find sufficient postcards to send to everyone back home.  For those of you who are wondering as to why you haven't received anything in the mail from me, it's because there are, to my knowledge, no postcards sold in Ramla.  It just isn't desirable enough as a tourist destination to generate sufficient demand to justify the expenditures, I bet.  Still, I'm betting that a smart entrepreneur could take a few distinctive photographs of the city hall, the tower of the white mosque, the library, the shuk, etc, print them up as postcards, and sell them in the shuk, ten postcards for twelve shekels.

I had my biggest shopping trip yet, not stinting on fresh fruit, and even picking up some hummus and zchug.  I also found the telephone store on Rechov Herzl, learned that I could get an extension for the SIM card in my Israeli cell phone.  I walked back to my apartment to drop off my groceries, and, by this point in mid-afternoon, ran back to Rechov Herzl, bought the extension, and found myself with a functioning telephone.  Unfortunately, it was, at this point, entirely in Hebrew (the keyboard, by contrast, has no Hebrew, only Arabic, and the manual is exclusively in Arabic).  As I had promised, I made my first telephone call to Eli.  He didn't pick up, perhaps because I had his number wrong.  Regardless, next I called my Sukkot host family, and told Ronit, the contact (and mother) that one of the three Oranim participants assigned to her house was not feeling well, and that there would only be two of us, one of them a vegetarian gluten-intolerant female (TZ), and the other a vegetarian male (me).  Luckily, in the host family, one daughter is vegetarian, and another is gluten-free, so our dietary restrictions didn't seem so outlandish.  I spent the remaining time writing my previous blog post about my trip to the Galil, showered, dressed, and, at around 5:30 pm, left for... 23 Yoseftal!  For those of you who remember that my current address in Ramla is 24 Yoseftal, you will realize that my host family lives literally right across the street from my apartment.

When I arrived, I met Ronit, whose English is a little bit better than my Hebrew.  She told me that TZ still hadn't arrived.  It was slightly concerned, because it was just passed 5:45 pm.  Thinking that TZ might have had difficulty finding the house (it's located a slight distance away from the street), I sat on a bench outside until around 6:00 pm, when I returned inside, telling Ronit that I was going to walk to TZ's house on Havaradim, to see if I could find her, and that I would likely stop in a synagogue on the way back, if I didn't find her (if I did manage to find her, I was planning to escort her all the way to Ronit's door, so that she wouldn't be lost).  Even though I had told myself that I didn't want to return to Havaradim (I had been spending the day doing everything except attending Perrin's all-day party), I nevertheless made the walk.  When I arrived, I rather curtly asked where TZ was, and was told that she was sick and asleep.  I stopped by the Beit El synagogue, where I had attended my first Kabbalat Shabbat in Ramla a few weeks before, and arrived just in time to finish minchah.  Arvit followed, and then I scurried back to my host family's house on Yoseftal.

When I arrived, I explained the current situation vis-a-vis TZ, then proceeded to help prepare the dinner table located in the sukkah.  My Sukkot host family was even larger than my Rosh Hashannah host family; I think that there were around fifteen of us crowded into the sukkah.  The grandparents are Tunisian (and, hence, the rest of the family), and spoke to each other in Arabic at least once.  Saba is apparently from a family that has produced many chazanim (cantors) and Torah chanters, and he was very proud of his adult son Asaph, who was scheduled to read Torah in synagogue the next day, on Sukkot.  I received an unexpectedly large number of political questions throughout the meal: my opinions of Barack Obama, the Syria situation, Binyamin Netanyahu, the poverty in the United States, charitable institutions in the United States, the Conservative and Reform movements in America etc.  In many cases, I chose to make what the French call réponses de Normand, which are equivocal replies that are deliberately vague, offered in order to avoid offense or dishonesty.  The family was very conservative, and thought that President Obama had entirely bungled his response to the chemical attack in Syria; they said that if Israelis choose to talk, then they talk, and if they want to shoot, then they shoot, but that the United States had revealed its own weakness in its apparent indecision as to whether to talk or to shoot. The dinner table was completely loaded with food; I've rarely seen so many dishes crammed together.  This is a very Israeli way of serving a meal, and I've seen it among Jews in the U.S. too; small bowls filled with various simple cold dishes collectively referred to as "salads," usually including foods such as hummus, roasted eggplant, eggplant dip, egg salad, mixed vegetables, Israeli salad, marinated peppers, etc.  Most of them are best eaten with bread.  Ronit wanted to deliver some food to TZ, so, despite my disinclination at this point to return to Havaradim, my sense of responsibility was stronger, and, along with two of Ronit's daughters and one of her sons, made the trip southwards to Havaradim.  On our way, we met a group of the kids' friends, who were surprised that I could speak any Hebrew at all, and even more surprised that I was actually Jewish (for some reason, many of the Israelis have seemed surprised   TZ was sleeping (it was well past eleven), but I presented my new Israeli friends, who presented the cool people still awake with the food from their mother.  We walked back to Yoseftal together, speaking in a mixture of Hebrew and English.  They're a really great group of kids, and I only wish that I knew more about basketball, for the benefit of the son.  Maybe I can somehow bring Eli along with me next time, who's a grade-A Knicks fan.

The next day, I was up at 7:20 am, and arrived at the Zer'a Ya'akov ("Offspring of Jacob") synagogue on Bar-Ilan street before the congregation had even reached baruch she'amar.  It felt good to be relatively on-time.  In case you haven't realized, I really love these early start-times in Israel, and love being finished with Mussaf on Shabbat and holidays well before noon.  Asaph gave one of the best Torah-readings I've heard in a while, pronouncing every single guttural ayin, enunciating marvelously, and chanting every cantillation mark with precision.  I'm getting used to praying with the Sepharadi nusach, although I still sometimes stumble over the sections that differ from the Ashkenazi nusach.  I had brought my own arbat minim, and shook them during Hallel, just as I do back home in the United States.  Americans typically hold their lulavim in wicker sconces made from palm leaves, but I didn't receive one when I purchased my lulav this year, nor did I see any of the other men with one.  Many of them had, however, decorated their arbat minim with what looked like colored streamers, and bound them together with rubber bands.  I found this rather surprising, that any additional entity would be added to the arbat minim.  I lost a lot of willow leaves.

We finished at around 11:00 am, and as we exited the synagogue together, I told the men in the family that I was going to walk to TZ's house to see if she was healthy yet.  The door to the house on Havaradim was locked when I arrived there at 11:30, and nobody answered my knock.  I walked back to Yoseftal, and helped my host family set the table.  I was very thirsty by the time we finally had our 1:00 pm kiddush (according to halachah, one is not permitted to not eat or drink anything before making kiddush).  The meal was even better than it had been before.  Yehudit had made a wonderful Tunisian dish just for the vegetarians at the table, called shakshouka (شكشوكة‎), which I had never tried before.  The best way I can describe the dish is as an omelet in which the vegetables have taken over, and entirely overhwelmed the eggs.  I believe that the dish is entirely kosher for Passover, and I think, Mom, that you might want to consider trying this at least once.  I would eat it, anyway!  I think I ate more at that meal in one sitting than I have at any other meal since arriving in Israel, my host family pushing ever more dishes on me, insisting that I have at least something of everything, and, when a dish was running low, that I be privileged with the last bite.

After lunch, it was time for "גלידה בסוכה" ("ice cream in the sukkah").  Again, I was obliged to eat a large amount, as well as to have several roasted marshmallows, while I sat and studied the first chapter of mishnaic tractate Sukkah with the other men.  My Hebrew really is improving, I guess, because I could understand several of the mishnayot, including the first one, without any assistance or translation.  After this, I walked back to my own apartment, where I studied Torah a little bit with my housemate Noah, after which I returned to the synagogue at 6:20 for holiday minchah and arvit.  I listened to holiday Havdallah in the synagogue's sukkah; the holiday was over.  During arvit, I had realized how absolutely stupid and needlessly stubborn and prideful I had been with my friends, and walked the long walk back to Havaradim to apologize for having been so rude to them since the trip to the Galil.  They were very friendly about everything, but I still felt guilty.  I also stopped in to see TZ, who had been asleep for nearly twenty-four hours.  I walked back to my own apartment.  I was hungry, so walked back to the synagogue with some bread and fruit, and had a meal, while a group of women cleaned the synagogue, and spoke to each other entirely in undecipherable (to me, anyway) Russian.  Afterwards, I walked back to my apartment, and finished and published the last blog post before going to bed.  The one-day festivals inside the land of Israel is surprising to actually perform (in the entire rest of the world, the first day of the three festivals is repeated for a second day, so I would have had three back-to-back days in which I could perform no work, out of contact with the rest of the world), even though I've known about this practice for my entire life.

I was up late on Friday morning, not getting out of bed until nearly 9:00 am.  I left for the house on Havaradim after I had finished with my morning routine, and found Noah, to whom I also apologized (he wasn't around when I had visited the night before, and I had probably been ruder to him than I had to anyone else).  I walked on to Herzl and from thence to Jabotinsky, making a very large pre-Sukkot shopping trip.  In addition to going to the telephone store to finally have my telephone language switched to English, I purchased new sunglasses, figs, pita, hummus and zchug, and some slightly overripe dates.  Unfortunately, there was a bit of a misunderstanding about the dates, resulting in an Arabic man yelling at me, and me being too ashamed to try to explain to him in Hebrew that I had walked away with twice as many dates as I had paid for.  To make up for this, I visited a kuppat tzedakah, and deposited what I hadn't paid, plush a couple extra shekels, even though I had already donated that day, in preparation for Shabbat.  I returned to Havaradim in the early afternoon, bringing a bag of mixed fruit to TZ (for the sake of ביקור חולים), and hanging out with the others, ending up watching a movie that I had never seen before with Emma Watson.  It was called The Bling Ring, and, as one of my friends aptly commented, was a story about the dumbest teenagers in America stealing from the dumbest celebrities in America; it wasn't such a good film, but I was happy to be hanging out with my friends again.  They told me that there would be a Shabbat dinner later that night, at 7:00 pm.  I knew that I wouldn't be finished with Erev Shabbat arvit until after 7:30 pm.  I wrote part of this post before I left for synagogue Zer'a Ya'akov, which I think I am going to make my default synagogue from now on.  After minchah, I kept up with the reading of Shir Hashirim, savoring hearing, as always, my favorite line, מַה יָּפִית וּמַה נָּעַמְתְּ אַהֲבָה בַּתַּעֲנוּגִים זֹאת קוֹמָתֵךְ דָּמְתָה לְתָמָר (if you know why I love this line so much, you know what it reminds me of, which I haven't forgotten).  After arvit, I walked to my host family's sukkah (they were out-of-town for the weekend), where I had left a bag of food and my siddur, and recited kiddush, followed by a very, very brief Shabbat dinner.  From there, I walked to the house on Gil'ad, and came in singing Shalom Aleichem (it's a song about angels visiting one's home on Shabbat evening, although I'm not certain that the others got my joke), and most of the others joined in.  Everyone was friendly, and acted happy to see me.  I was so happy to be with my friends again, and had a very good night.

Shavua Tov v'Chag Sameach, lekulam!

~JD

Trip to the Galilee

It seems as if I have a new audience; two of my housemates have learned about my blog, so I had better be careful about what I write.  One of them, at least, appreciated the complimentary mentions of his biceps and triceps; the other told me that I should reconsider the teaching career, and instead become an academic.
Monday and Tuesday, the Oranim participants from Ramla, Ashdod, Tel Aviv, and the other locations took a trip to the Galilee.  The preceding Sunday, though, was also a fairly eventful day.  In the morning, I visited the house on Havaradim, now that everyone in the house had returned from their visit to Jerusalem.  (I alone among the ITF participants did not go, because of my promise to my Savta to attend her breakfast following Yom Kippur.)  The gate was bolted, so I climbed over, half-wondering what the friendly sukah-builder next door would think of this.  I hung out a little bit, then Alex and I took a trip to the shuk together, where I needed to purchase my arbat minim, and he needed to purchase ingredients for a very exotic-sounding salad from his Jerusalem cookbook.  Natalie also wanted us to pick up ingredients for Israeli salad (tomatoes, cucumbers, and a lemon).  We had a good walk, and it was still early enough that the sun wasn't blazing hot.  There were several vendors who had set up tables to sell lulavim and etrogim, and I stopped by the first one we passed.  The man wanted ₪60 for all four, but I (truthfully) told him that all that I had in my wallet was ₪50.  He accepted this, much to my surprise, and even allowed me to pick out my etrog from all of those available.  I guess that this was the first time that I haggled in the shuk?  Cool, I guess.  But ₪50 was a pretty standard price, from what I could tell, based on what I heard from other people purchasing their arbat minim.  However, later the day, I spotted a poster advertising the set of arbat minim for ₪65, so I guess I got a pretty good price.  By the way, if it seems as if I'm too preoccupied over how much I paid, my interest is partially motivated by this article about international etrog-smuggling, according to which "Customs tariffs for importing etrogs are assessed at 2.7 shekels per kilogram, plus 18% value-added tax. Importers also require permits from the ministries of health and agriculture."  Also, I just saw "Ushpizin," in which the protagonist spends 1000 shekels on an etrog.  Alex got his and Natalie's ingredients, and we parted ways.  I returned to my apartment with my four species.  In the afternoon, the Oranim Ramla participants met at the English Center and the Campus to plan upcoming English-language activities children and young people in Ramla.  I ran in the early evening, and walked to the house on Gil'ad (which I had never visited before), where I had heard that there would be some low-level partying in honor of Perrin's birthday on September 17th (Becky had invited me).  People applauded me when I came in (they just really hadn't expected me to come, in spite of the invitation), and I spent a happy hour or so with the others before I returned to Yoseftal (I successfully didn't get lost on the way back in the dark).  I packed, showered, and went to bed.

I overslept through my 6:00 am alarm on Monday morning, and didn't get up until 6:37.  I was lucky, though, and just barely had enough time to finish everything that I needed to get done before leaving to catch the bus at the campus.  I walked with Noah, and we were actually the first to arrive at the campus, after Carmel.  We climbed aboard (it was already half-full with Oranim people from Ashdod, the other Oranim ITF location), and had a somewhat sleepy ride.  I sat next to Alex, and the two of us took turns reading and dozing.  I had brought my Kindle, where I had begun reading my complete works of Philo of Alexandria.  I'm finding it a little bit dull at first.  The preface noted that Philo might have been a Pharisee (i.e. a Rabbinic Jew), which doesn't seem very likely, given that his dialectic is not at all midrashic, at least as I have seen so far, and seems overwhelmingly influenced by Greek philosophy, which the Rabbis knew somewhat selectively.  Regardless, after a few hours (and a couple of rest stops), we arrived at a hiking trail in the Golan Heights, not far from the northern borders to Lebanon and Syria.  Now accompanied by another bus full of still more Oranim participants, we hiked down into the lush, verdant valley.  This area is incredibly abundant with water, especially compared with the rest of the country.  The Heights were captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, and many who have not visited Israel and seen this region probably don't realize just how many valuable water resources (including most of the sources of the Jordan River) Israel appropriated.  At one point, our group stopped to paddle around in one of the wading pools -- the water was cool, clear, and clean.  There were swarms of small black fish, ranging from the size of a baby carrot to that of a cucumber, that nibbled surprisingly aggressively at our feet.  Throughout the hike, I had several good conversations with Rose, Hannah, Noa, and several of the people from Tel Aviv and Ashdod.  Afterwards, we loaded onto the bus again, driving to... Tzfat.

Last year, I spent two and a half weeks studying in Tzfat.  For those who don't remember me blogging about this experience, I was rather unusual in the group of students at the Yeshiva, in my lack of any real Kabbalistic inclination.  This made me feel somewhat intellectually isolated, because I felt as if I could not freely share my thoughts about the texts we were reading, and felt pressured to give explanations and interpretations in which I did not really have my full heart. Nevertheless, I kind of hoped that I would be able to find some of the students or instructors that I had known in Tzfat, and when the bus dropped us off, I walked down the familiar long rocky staircase into the Chassidic neighborhood.  I stuck out enormously, in my swim trunks and turquoise Taglit t-shirt, but just ignored all of the stares that I received from the modestly-dressed children, and the black-dressed men with long peyot.  My former dormitory had apparently been converted into someone else's living space, and the Beit Midrash was open, but in the process of being cleaned.  I asked the woman mopping the floor if Rav Asi (the instructor of whom I had the fondest memories) was around, and she directed me to the Chabad House.  I met there, of all people, the custodian of the Beit Midrash, the only person in the building capable of speaking English.  I remembered him (I think that his name was Eliezer, maybe?), but he didn't remember me; nevertheless, he completely believed me when I told him my story.  I asked about the Rabbis and about Yosef-Yitzchak, an Israeli student with whom I had gotten along tremendously well.  He allowed me to call Rabbi Gorenstein on his cellphone, and I told the Rabbi that I had stopped by in order to thank the Rabbinic staff for giving me such good instruction, also letting them know that I had remained observant even after leaving Tzfat (last year, a lot of the other students, in fact, had not-so-subtly implied that they thought that I wasn't legitimately invested).  He told me that he remembered me, and invited me back for a future Shabbat!  I left the district for the Artists' Colony, quite happy.  I also found Natalie wandering around the same district -- it seems as if she, too, spent time in Tzfat last summer, and our visits might even have coincided.

Tzfat has a number of artists who work in a number of media.  Most of their art is somewhat spiritually-influenced, probably because only a very pious Jewish artist would choose to live in Tzfat, one of the poorest cities in Israel proper.  There's a fairly large tourist draw for the art, some of which is quite interesting.  Alex and I browsed the shops looking for cheap postcards.  We found some very poor-condition and aged cards (celebrating Israel's 40th anniversary, for instance) going for ₪3 each, a little pricy for me, and some very high-quality cards going for ₪5 each.  I bought one of the latter, and have since sent it to its destination in the states.  We passed by the Zionist Teimani felafel-maker (I remembered him from Taglit).  Alex and I were also drawn aside by a very aggressive artist trying extremely hard to pressure us into buying his art.  He was trying to sell me a piece of micro-calligraphy, all of Shir Hashirim in the shape of a red rose (I didn't count the petals, but there were probably thirteen).  The price tag read ₪90, but at the end he was trying to push it onto me for just ₪20.  He didn't seem to understand that we were volunteers, and genuinely uninterested in buying his art, regardless of how much he dropped the price.  He was amazed that we weren't receiving a substantial salary, and that we didn't really care if we lacked the funds for going out to clubs, etc.  I insisted to him, quite earnestly, that we had everything that we needed (an apartment, food, high-speed Internet, a house full of friends right around the corner, and a job that we loved -- a very great deal, when you think about it).  He, after all, was the Kabbalist, and I was the American tourist.  After a brief stop by Yosef Karo's synagogue, Alex and I hung out a little bit with the other Oranim participants while waiting for the bus.  We heard about painful Taglit experiences; one person reminisced about how two of her groupmates had been involved in sexual foreplay in Yad Vashem (Israel's Holocaust museum, located on Har Herzl), saying that this was the epitome of Taglit.  I remember similar levels of sexual fever during my own Taglit experience in January 2012 (the version of my Taglit journal entries published on this blog is highly expurgated from the original), but never anything so disrespectful.  But, really, what else can you expect when you put together 40 young middle-class Americans and half-a-dozen IDF soldiers the same age, and give them some of the greatest freedom they've ever had in their lives?

Afterwards, we drove to Degania, the Kibbutz where we stayed the night.  The "guest house" was pretty much a hotel, and a surprisingly nice one, too.  Each room had its own TV, bathroom, linens, etc.  This was a far cry from the dumpy European hostels where I spent last summer -- a far cry indeed!  I was rooming with the same three gentleman with whom I live on Rechov Yoseftal in Ramla -- Ben, Ben, and Noach.  I ran to the swimming pool, paddling around with some of the other Ramla participants for about 10 minutes before the pool closed.  It was fun.  Then, I showered, and we all went to dinner in the cheder ochel, which I managed to located along with my newfound friend Lily, an Oranim Israel Teaching Fellow in Ashdod.  I ate an enormous amount -- I hadn't had anything that day except for the pair of apples that I had thrown in my backpack before scooting out the door.  I even managed to get some vegetarian food, by speaking the magic words (yesh lecha ochel tzimchoni?).  I sat with Hannah and Natalie, and, later, my housemates Ben and Noah. 

After dinner at the kibbutz, we had karaoke and salsa dancing, starting at 8:30 pm.  Carmel sang for a few seconds (how do we continually make this poor guy do so much for us?!), then there was a song signup.  Salsa dancing occurred in the middle of this; one of the participants, Felix (I think from one of the Tel Aviv programs) tried to get as many of us out dancing as possible.  I've never danced salsa before, and did my best to practice the 7-part step that Felix was demonstrating.  Then she wanted us to find partners -- and told the men not to pick women (why, to prevent aggression?!).  I was all ready to dance by myself, because the girl I was randomly assigned to refused to dance with someone like me, but then, first Becky, then Veta, from Ramla, felt some sympathy, and took me as a partner.  I was really grateful, especially because Veta actually pointed out what I was doing wrong with my feet (I was forgetting to join my feet together again, between the forward and backwards steps), and then showed me how to indicate an upcoming spin to a dance partner.  I of course thanked my two partners, and, the next day, thanked Felix, too, for giving me the opportunity. 

[NOTE: This post previously contained some upsetting material involving karaoke.  I have expunged it, as well as a short paragraph at the end of this post, to avoid any hurt feelings].

The song I had hoped to sing was "All the Small Things" (no surprise, right, Jacob?).  The unexpected rebuff made me think of a lyric by the same band: "I traced the cord back to the wall / It seems that it was never plugged in at all."

I was up early the next morning.  After our 7:00 am breakfast, our tour group headed out for another hike.  I sat with an Ashdod ITF participant, Sam, so as not to be forced to look any of the Ramla ITF participants in the eye.  We had been told to wear some form of footwear that was suitable for hiking in water.  I have nothing, either in Israel or back home in the United States, that matches this description (no Crocs, no water shoes, etc.), so I just walked in my shoes, and removed my socks.  The trail went directly through a river.  It was kind of a novelty, but I would have much preferred a hike with some historical or archaeological significance than one that simply took us through the water.  There was a lot of splashing going on, which, had I not been wearing my backpack with my electronics, I might have been more willing to enjoy.  I was mostly just worried about being the victim of collateral damage, a phrase that I taught to our tour-guide Revital.  Afterwards, I sat a little bit with Jessica (from Gil'ad) and my housemate Ben, waiting for everyone to rinse off their feet.  I had brought my towel, and, after drying my feet, putting on my dry socks, and shaking out my shoes and inserts, felt almost as if I had dry shoes.

Our next stop was the Mekorot plant.  Thanks to many a shiur with Eliana and Rav Ami, I know that mekorot are literally "sources;" in Rabbinics, this implies textual sources in a halachic lesson.  The "sources" that we were visiting, however, were the sources of Israel's water supply.  Our guide at the water pump plant was Shani, an engineer with excellent English skills, despite his incredibly heavy Israeli accent.  In addition to Lake Kineret and a couple of aquifers, Israel also makes great use of both recycled sewage water and desalinated water from the Mediterranean Sea.  Israel, it turns out, is far and away the global leader in its sewage-water reclamation, recycling of 80% of its sewage water, mostly for use in irrigation (Spain ranks second, recycling 17% of its sewage water).  I also learned that Israel uses small, highly-sensitive fish to monitor its water levels; if the water quality drops significantly, these fish will notice immediately, and the water pumps will shut off in less than a second.  Israel has international enemies that might be eager to attack its water supplies, but Mekorot provides water to both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and most of Israel's international enemies might hesitate to take any action that would hurt these populations (not because they genuinely care about their condition, but because it would reveal just how little they truly care about these populations).

The last destination on Tuesday afternoon returned us to the arear near Tzfat.  We had previously planned to have a visit to a winery on Monday, and have free time in Tiberias on Tuesday.  The winery trip had been cancelled, only to have it restored on Tuesday, in place of the visit to Tiberias.  Although I've never before been to Tiberias, and would like to visit sometime, I would rather have some form of set activity.  Our tour-guide delivered disappointingly few facts and points of interest (nothing at all like Avishai on Taglit, who was just bursting with information), so a visit to a winery at least would mean information, rather than empty time spent wandering and wondering in an unfamiliar city.  Dalton winery produces kosher wine, and employs at least one worker with excellent English skills, who led our tour of the vineyard and the associated fermenting facilities.  Wine production has a very ancient history in the land of Israel.  But even in terms of only the modern State of Israel, wine has an important place in labor history.  Because of its ritual importance in the ancient world, there are many (Rabbinic, not Toraitic) strictures of kosher wine production and handling in Jewish law.  One stringency is that all workers in the production process (but not necessarily any of the shipment or retail) must be observant Jews.  The Jews of Second Aliyah, the Bilu'im, desperately wanted to unionize agricultural workers, but there were not only too many Jews available for the limited number of jobs, but also an almost limitless number of disenfranchised landless Arabs.  The Jews of the First Aliyah who were lucky enough to operate vineyards insisted that their wine be kosher, which severely limited their pool of potential employees.  It was a then-young David Ben-Gurion who managed to initiate a successful strike for higher wages among the Jewish grape-treaders in Palestine.  The pious Jews saw their comeuppance, and had to shell out.  Anyway, I don't have a very discerning palate, but, when it came to tasting, I'd give the wine a B, or, maybe a B+.  It was rather unexceptional in quality, and about half of the people at my table didn't even want to finish most of their glasses.  I am extremely reluctant to waste food, and offered to finish several of my neighbors' glasses for them, rather than see the wine go to waste.  I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and, as expected, was feeling a mild buzz by the time the tasting of the four wines (rose, white, red, and dessert) was over.  We had a long bus ride ahead of us, and I was well-hydrated, so I wasn't too concerned about my health.  With alcohol-induced glibness, I began to talk to Alex (not Coco; the other Alex) about my international experiences in France and the rest of Europe, and, in retrospect, I wonder if he could tell that I was under the influence (note: this was my second experience with alcohol in the past few weeks; the first was Saba's scotch on Shabbat Teshuvah)  Regardless, it was an easy trip back to Ramla, and by the time we reached our destination, I was entirely sober.

The next day, Erev Succot, I will describe tomorrow.  Right now, it's Thursday night, and for the first time, I'm experiencing that strange phenomenon, the one-day Chag.  I'll talk all about it, and my wonderful host family, in the next post.

Shabbat Shalom, and Chag Sameach!

~JD

Second Day of Teaching (And Yom Kippur) In Israel

          This Wednesday, September 11th, was an incredibly long day for me.  It was, first of all, my second day of hands-on observation at the Rambam school.  I took the 7:30 am bus from my apartment, planning to arrive at Rambam at 8:00 am.  TZ rode the bus with me, as did Perrin and Natalie, and Noah and Devin.  TZ and I had no trouble finding the entrance this time.  I had brought my tallit, tefillin, and Ashkenazic siddur with me so that I could pray tefillat hashachar with the boys in the morning.  I thought that this might be a good way to further endear myself to them, so that they would more fully trust me (not all of them believed that I was Jewish, I should add).  One student, who shares my name, and is already quite attached to me, was anxious that I sit with him.  The students use a Sepharadic liturgy sung to Sepharadic tunes, and are overseen by a Rabbi.  For those of you interested, the students' liturgy, ignoring the changes caused by the fact that it is the time between Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur (known as the Days of Awe) consists of: birchot hashachar, pesukei dezimra, the Shema and associated blessings, the Shemoneh Esrei with a heichi kedushah, Tachanun, Ashrei and Uva le'Tzion, and aleinu.  This is somewhat minimal (pesukei d'zimra consisted of just baruch she'amar, Ashrei, Kol Haneshama, and Yishtabach), much more suited to students' attention spans than the somewhat longer, more hurried version that I am used to.  The Rabbi, after Tachanun, gave a very brief lesson on Yom Kippur.  I couldn't, unfortunately, accurately follow all that he said.

          Afterwards, I joined Moshe, TZ, and the 8th-grade girls in their English class.  I was trying to work with a pair that later became a group of three to understand the lesson of Monday, a story by Isaac Asimov called "Sarah Tops."  One of the girls was moderately receptive to me, but the other one actively tried to make learning more difficult for her partner.  She refused to speak in anything but Hebrew, asked me a series of unrelated questions in order to distract me from the lesson at hand, turned her back on me and refused to listen, covered her head so that she couldn't hear, and, whenever her partner showed interest, jabbed her.  I believe that she might have some form of ADD or ADHD.  I did not lose my temper with her, even when she said some rather cruel things to me, knowing that when the teacher loses his temper, everyone loses.  That was my only teaching for the day, and I felt rather bad about my inability to teach anything substantive.

          At 10:30 am, the school population (consisting of maybe around 80 students, by my estimate) walked to a nearby synagogue, where the same Rabbi who had overseen tefillah led the students in some simple s'lichot (prayers of forgiveness), and taught them how to perform kapara with coins.  On the way back to the school, TZ told me that her father received a doctorate in Biblical literature, having written at thesis on Kohellet.  This excited me to no end; I told her how much one of my best friends, who is also my first learning partner, really loves Kohellet, (yes, that's you, Peninah♥♥♥♥♥), and got me into it.  For those of you who don't know about my personal relationship with Kohellet, I think that it's one of the finest books of philosophy from the ancient world, which asks some of the profoundest questions about the human condition, and brings together some of the most beautiful language (even when translated into English) found in the Bible.  TZ explained to me that she's pretty much been living with Kohellet as a brother for the past couple of years, which really cracks me up.

          Anyway, we had taught our last English classes for the day, and TZ and I spent the rest of the morning, and until around 12:30 pm, touring the English facilities, and thinking about lesson plans.  We not only need to teach language, but also need to convey literature and culture, which might make things difficult.  The textbooks are so-so, and don't seem to teach very consistently, or in very good ways.  I think that even my High School French textbooks were better than these.  I think that TZ and I, although we might use the textbooks as a guide for what grammatical structures and forms we will be teaching to each grade level, might end up diverging sharply from the content and vocabulary.  We're trying to really motivate these students to learn, and that isn't easy, as I know from personal experience.

          We met other ITF participants on the bus, and rode with them to their house on Rechov Havaradim.  I was still in my long dress pants at this point, which I will be wearing every day to school (none of the other teachers wear shorts, although my short-sleeve button-down shirts, sneakers, and small grey kippah are very much within the bounds of the dress code).  We had only around an hour before our 3:00 pm meeting at the English center, so I took time to teach a few of the others a little bit more Hebrew.  I am really trying, as are they, but I'm not an experienced teacher, and we don't have much time to practice.  We had some programs at the English Center and at the Kashtot Center downstairs on the campus, ending with Carmel showing us the Israeli film Ushpizin, with English subtitles.  For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it, as a story that tells a lot about Israeli society, simultaneously about its internecine conflicts and its unities.  It noticeably doesn't mention anything about the other populations in Israel (there are no Arab characters, nor are there even any references to any land-conflict, an omission easily noted by a foreigner such as myself who hears a great deal about this subject).  Speaking of the Arab-Zionist conflict, did anyone notice who Assad just put the onus of getting rid of chemical weapons in the Middle East on Israel?  The conflict, which blew up into an international human rights issue when he (probably) used chemical weapons against his own people, has become soluble only if Israel signs a nonproliferation treaty.  I don't know if this was his plan from the beginning, but now Assad (who now admits that he has had chemical weapons this whole time), is trying to strongarm Israel into giving up its WMDs, using his own civilian population as his hostages.  Even if one believes that Israel should sign such a treaty, I find it hard to deny that the Israelis have next to nothing to do with the chemical weapon attack, and that Assad's recent statement (ultimatum?) diverts international attention from the actions of the Syrian government onto those of its neighbor and enemy.  Perhaps Assad hopes that international anger at the State of Israel (never in short supply in the UN) can be used as either a shield, to ward off world scrutiny into its actions by reminding it of all of the issues in its southern neighbor, or as a sword, to earn a "freebie" Israeli disarmament as part of its own Russia-negotiated disarmament, striking a blow against its hated enemy.

          But I digress.  Afterwards, I took a run in Gan Golda.  At around forty minutes into my run, I felt another runner approaching me from behind.  I decided to pace him, or her, and for the next few minutes, ran alongside him, shadowing him just slightly on the outside of the track from him.  He was a much faster runner than I was (based on the rough shape of the shadow-runner, I guessed that he was male, but I didn't look directly at his face).  He was doing some kind of sprinting exercise, in which he would speed up, and I could barely even stay even with him, even though I think that he was waiting up for me.  Finally, I look directly at him – and he's a handsome 5'11" Ethiopian guy in his late 20s.  Wow: what a guy!  There we were, ontologically just runners, sharing everything in common because of our athletic striving. 

          Back at my apartment, I learn that the Internet is still down, as it had been since I returned home on Tuesday (FYI, it's still down).  Carmel was doing his best to fix it, but the customer service people with whom he was communicating were being very rude to him, and supremely unhelpful.  By the way, I don't know to what extent this has come out in my blog, but Carmel is absolutely superhuman in the energy that he devotes towards making all of the Oranim Ramla-Lod participants happy and comfortable, and does the work of two to three people.  After showering, downing some milk, and putting on a nice button-down shirt, I ran off to my friends' house on Rechov Havaradim to have my 2:00 pm EST interview with a public school for which I'd love to work in the 2014-2015 school year (really, it's my dream job for next year).  Just so that I won't keep anyone in suspense, I learned on Thursday night that I had not received the job.  This is nothing new to me: I've been turned down more times than I can count, literally.  However, the stress of the interview probably contributed to me getting into the closest I've gotten to a fight with my housemates.  I attacked an argument that Noah had made, and completely began an altercation that I shouldn't have.  The worst thing is, that I did it at the very time of year, the days between Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, during which, ideally, I should be on my best behavior. 

          Thursday, we had another of these trips to get ITF teacher training.  Our entire group was wholly unimpressed.  Although we all agreed that having teacher training was important, we got very little concrete information, and mostly just inspirational messages.  It really felt like a waste of a perfectly good 7-hour period.  Afterwards, in the heat of the day, I took a trip to the shuk, and picked up groceries for the upcoming few days.  Fresh dates were going for ₪8 per box, a box holding around a kilo and a half.  And these were literally fresh off of the frond; good stuff, that.  I need to find myself a place to get some good zchug, though; I had some at the Kashtot center the other night, and had forgotten how good it tastes with hummus.  I took a run in the park, and again met new friends.  This time, it was a group of three Israeli kids who couldn't have been older than 15, who told me that I was like Superman for running around the track so many times.  Their English was unexpectedly good, far better than my Hebrew, and they even knew the word for "pushup" in English (they asked me to do 20, which I did).  I unfortunately needed to leave, on account of having promised Noah (ITF Noah, not my housemate Noah) that I would help him with Hebrew sometime that day.  I ended the evening by giving another Hebrew lesson to TZ on Havaradim, reviewing yesh/ein statements and the verb lalechet with her, and teaching her pronouns.  Maybe, we can get to possessives next, using shel phrases.

          I was back on Friday morning, seeing the group out on their way to Jerusalem.  The entire ITF Ramla group had decided to spend Yom Kippur in the Israeli capital, but I had already promised to break my fast with my host family, which I wouldn't have been able to do, had I been in Jerusalem.  Hannah gave me her housekey, so that I could enter the house, and use the Internet, while they were away.  This was incredibly kind and trusting of them all, to trust me in this way, and very sweet of Hannah in particular.  I got to make Goldilocks and the Eight Bears jokes about the whole incident after the fact, too.  The rest of Friday passed rather slowly, Noah, too, leaving for Jerusalem.  On his way out, I apologized for my complete rudeness to him the night before, and he forgave me.  I genuinely felt terrible about the whole incident, and hope that I won't be the cause of future conflicts in the Yoseftal apartment.  I had read about a hundred pages worth of Benny Morris, too, since the day before, which I hope will pay off.  I've made it to Israel's war in Lebanon in the mid-80s.  I deliberately use the term "in Lebanon" rather than "with Lebanon," because the main target of the operations was the PLO, and the main adversary quickly became Syria, which had troops stationed in Lebanon.  Also, I had no idea about all of the Christian Phalange massacres of Muslims that went on in the camps outside of Beirut at this time; I really hope that this reading is shoring up my ignorance of such important issues.  On Friday evening, I left for the Sepharadi synagogue on Rechov Tzahal, but needed to return to my apartment after walking the entire way, because I had forgotten to wear my tallit to arvit.  I returned, tallit and back, and saw that my detour had probably cost me my place; there were no machzorim left.  I had no desire to be left without a synagogue for Erev Yom Kippur the way I had been on Erev Rosh Hashannah I, so I walked to the Sepharadi synagogue at the far end of Rechov Bar-Ilan.  I arrived towards the end of Kol Nidrei, and although the synagogue was packed, I managed to take one of the few remaining machzorim.  As I was walking in, the honors for Kol Nidrei were being auctioned off, and one honor went of the high price of ₪3000 (that's nearly $820, by the way, for those of you keeping track).  I ended up staying for around two hours, because after arvit, we recited a long litany of s'lichot.  I really love these Sepharadi tunes, and got several of the refrains stuck in my head, especially "עלינו רחם לפנך חטאנו."  The fast was quite easy for me, and I went to bed fairly soon after returning from synagogue.  Outside, by the way, the children had taken over the streets with their bicycles, and it looked like an elementary school bike rodeo all across Ramla.  On Yom Kippur, the entire country comes to a halt; traffic disappears, and Israel becomes a no-fly zone.  The only vehicles at all are ambulances with muted sirens, and I regret to say, for the victims' sake, that I saw several of these throughout Yom Kippur.  My housemates were disappointed when all but one of the television stations switched off in honor of the holiday.  I don't live anywhere near any of the Arab neighborhoods, and can't say what was happening there.

          On Saturday morning, I got up late.  Very late.  It was nearly 8:30 am when I finally dragged myself up and out of bed.  I donned my tallit, and hurried to the synagogue, arriving there just after kedushah.  Of shacharit, not of musaf, in case anyone was wondering.  I had caught up by the post-shacharit s'lichot.  There were s'lichot galore. Surprisingly, there were fewer people in the synagogue during shacharit and musaf than there had been during arvit the night before.  During the middle of the musaf repetition, there was a long descriptive passage about the process of the goat sacrifice from the traditional Yom Kippur ceremony in the times when the Temple in Jerusalem still stood.  I can't be certain of the source, but the language seemed very reminiscent of the Mishnah.  I stayed until aleinu, which occurred at just after 1:30 pm.  I was thoroughly exhausted, and went back to my apartment to rest.  No sleep for me, though; my roommate Ben needed help with his Ulpan homework, and so I helped him.  I learned a couple of words in the process.  I also had time for myself, reading Sefer Yonah and Shir Hashirim in honor of the holiday.  These two might be my favorite book of Nevi'im and second-favorite of Ketuvim, respectively. When I returned at what I thought was the beginning minchah, they were just beginning the repetition.  Oh, well.  Again, I caught up during the post-minchah s'lichot, which were very similar to the s'lichot that I had been saying all day.  After ne'ilah, at around 7:30 pm, the shofar was blown, and a large contingent of the men left the synagogue.  I stayed on for arvit and havallah, and drank a couple of cups of water before leaving for my Moroccan Savta's house for break-fast.  I had thought of a plan ahead of time to avoid taking any meat dishes: I would say that I wanted to drink milk later, which I knew they would understand, and, also, which was true.  When I entered, I met a few new family members (cousins).  We sat down, and Savta began to pass out bowls of thick vegetable soup.  When mine arrived – it had a whole leg of chicken in it.  Yes, you read that correctly.  A whole chicken leg, sitting in my veggie soup, because I was the guest of honor, and deserved to have the best cuts of meat (only one other person, Micha'el, who is Savta's nephew, received a whole piece of meat in his bowl of soup, and it was not nearly as juicy-looking as mine).  I dutifully cleaned my plate, including the bones.  But, boy, it sure is difficult to be tzimchoni in this country!

          Lots of fun stuff planned for this coming week, including a group tour to the Golan Heights, which, on Birthright, I found to be one of the most beautiful places in the world I had ever personally visited.  It ranks with Acadia, up in Maine.  On my mind now is making certain that I will have a sukkah in which to eat, and can find a way to purchase my arbat minim, preferably for a price under ₪50. 

          Thanks again, Hannah, and everyone else living in the house on Rechov Havaradim, for allowing me to use your Internet, and making the posting of this blog entry possible!

~JD