I'm preparing for my last week spent in Israel, at least for the foreseeable future. I'll be going to work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, and I am very much looking forward to seeing my students one last time, during my final week of school. Among the Israelis whom I have befriended here in Israel, I am not as close to any as I am to my students, many of whom I will very much miss. My greatest concern is for their continued education. As I've mentioned in the past in this blog, many of my students come from very disadvantaged families, and the more time I spend with them improving their English skills, the greater their opportunity to improve their own educational and economic chances. I choose my diction carefully: it is my students who have the opportunity to improve their own selves, all I do is offer them the possibility, in granting them access to a native English speaker who, I hope, has been a good instructor. Many of the students whom I have taught reject the opportunity that I proffer to them, because they don't realize (or don't care) that it is by excelling in school, learning, and understanding, that they will be able to make their own lives as well as the lives of their families much happier. Still what will happen next year, when I will not be around to help, to encourage, to guide, and to motivate? Will my students realize that, although I'm gone, they are still just as capable of excelling? Those that do understand that will be the ones who continue to improve.
Meanwhile, almost the entire West Bank is being searched high and low by Tzahal for the three kidnapped teenagers from Hebron. It's been more than a week so far since the three boys went missing, and the Israeli media, especially the right-wing Times of Israel, has been putting the story into its top headlines. To my grief, if not to my surprise, Tzahal soldiers have already clashed multiple times with protesting Palestinian youth, throwing rocks and homemade bombs. Israeli soldiers have already killed two Palestinians with live fire, one of them fourteen years old, sent several others to the hospital, arrested several hundred Palestinian men (most of them with ties to Hamas), and damaged hundreds of buildings. The Palestinian Authority, despite its support of the pursuit of the terrorist abductors, is showing signs of impatience at the thus-fruitless search. The Israeli government continues to broadcast optimism that the boys are alive and will soon be found, and the international community seems to be condemning the kidnapping as an act of terror. I'm upset. Interestingly enough, the story is not very prominent in the U.S. media. Checking the websites of a few major American newspapers (plus the BBC), I can't find anything about the kidnappings; the only Israel story being featured in the American news seems to be about the Presbyterian divestment (which, unsurprisingly, made top headlines in Times of Israel and Haaretz, but not Jerusalem Post). I wonder if NPR's "On the Media" will mention anything about this discrepancy.
As if there weren't enough strife in the Middle East already, the radical Sunni uprising in Iraq is getting worse each day. There are only few thousand insurgents who make up the army of the ISIL (which is sometimes also referred to as ISIS), although reportedly as few as 800 captured Mosul. In response to their takeover of regions in the north, including Mosul (from which around half-a-million people fled, many of them to the the Kurdistan region), the country's most respected Shi'ite cleric, Ali Sistani, issued a fatwa calling for "all able-bodied Iraqis" to suppress the insurrection. Although the counter-insurrection (I don't know what else to call it; most members are volunteers, with only a small percentage of the troops made up of Iraqi regulars) speaks the voice of Iraqi unity, by the numbers, it's a Shi'ite force. There are paramilitary parades in several cities in Iraq. According to the New York Times article on these events, "The Mahdi Army rally in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad on
Saturday was the largest and most impressive paramilitary display so
far, but there were also mass militia parades in other cities, including
Najaf and Basra on Saturday, and smaller rallies in Baghdad on Friday,
equally motivated by what participants described as patriotic and
religious fervor... as Iraq lurches toward sectarian war, the prominent role of
Shiite-dominated militias could also exacerbate sectarian tensions,
hardening the sentiments that have allowed the Sunni militants to
succeed... Some commanders have been linked to death squads that carried out
campaigns of kidnappings and killing against Sunnis, including from
hospitals [all italics added for emphasis]." In other word, what could unfold in Iraq over the coming weeks (and months) is civil war with religious, ethnic, nationalist, and revenge-driven motives. I don't foresee a happy ending or peaceful situation in Iraq anytime soon.
I remember how, as a freshman in university, I read about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, and about how, in their ignorance and arrogance, the Europeans broke apart and shoved together various regions to be divided among the victors as colonies, dependent kingdoms, and, of course, "mandates." The creation of Iraq was among the most egregious cases of European hubris; had Wilson, Lloyd-George, and Clemenceau not all had classical educations, they might not have reified "Mesopotamia," and decided that it was a good idea to turn it into a unified country under West-friendly Hashemite client-King Faisal I. I am, of course, exaggerating the ridiculousness of the situation, and glazing over details, but I truly wonder if the Middle East would not now be a safer, more peaceful place had the Paris Peace Conference been a more democratic process, rather than a foursome of old white men sitting around a table giving away countries that they've never visited, belonging to peoples that they've never even heard of.
On a significantly happier note, my older brother Sam is now engaged! I'm extremely excited to see him and Sarah again soon, presumably on Drew's wedding, the week after I return.
I'm looking forward to seeing Becky, as well as the remaining members of my group, one last time before I leave on Thursday evening to visit Eli for my last Shabbat in Israel. Perrin is going to come over tonight, and I'm hoping to have a pleasant evening with her :).
~JD
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Father's Day 2014
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| JD and Dad at Cornell Graduation, May 2013 |
1) Science is a method and an approach, not a collection of facts. For those of you who don't personally know my Father, or haven't heard me speak about him, my Father is a professor in Cornell Univerity's Department of Plant Biology. He is, in short, a scientist. Although the U.S. public education system (New York's, in any case) does a better job than Israel's at informing its students about the fundamentals of science, many people in our society don't really know what "science" is (for my criticism of how the movie industry mis-educates people about science, see this post). Science is not a list, however accurate, of facts about the natural world. Science is the method of collecting data; it is a form of empiricism, but not all empiricism is necessarily science. A true scientist formulates a hypothesis, then designs a replicable experiment, the results of which are capable of disproving her hypothesis. Aristotle made many empirical observations; however, he never once in his life conducted an experiment. Aristotle was not a scientist. Neither were many of the great thinkers of the middle ages, such as Maimonides. Galileo, by contrast, was a true scientist, and designed and conducted experiments. He even used a precision water-clock in order to time very exactly his experiments on acceleration. This lesson which I learned from my Father is something that I encounter time and time again, often when speaking to misinformed people with strong opinions. Interestingly enough, one of my favorite writers produced a short article addressing just this point, back in 1945, in the wake of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
2) Thoroughly study subjects outside of your own area of expertise. My Father, as I mentioned, is a biologist. That being said, he is conversant on a number of other topics, including geology, baseball, linguistics, politics, and various fields of history and literature. Knowledge broadens the mind, and the more that one knows, even if the material is outside of one's field of expertise, contributes to one's understanding. It is because of my Father that I make a serious effort to acquire more of the fundamentals of fields other than my own specialty, history. One of the best classes that I took in university was my course on Vertebrates, out of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I distinctly remember that I was the only student in the entire class outside of the sciences, but probably asked more questions than anyone else. Likewise, readers of this blog probably remember my discussion on the books on physics that I have borrowed from Eli recently, and, back when I had access to a university library, I made it my business to investigate books on topics that seemed interesting, which often proved to be some of the most interesting reads. I hope that I am not coming off as self-aggrandizing; rather, I am trying to explain how many of my choices to delve into new books and new intellectual topics have been encouraged by my father.
3) Be considerate around the workplace, and don't take your job for granted. On my first day of my first student job, working as an assistant in the archives at the Kheel Center, my Father told me that I should be ready to work hard, act professionally, and do everything that my supervisor asked of me with a smile on my face. This is what I told myself every single day of my first job, and I believe that, because of this advice, I conducted myself well throughout both of my student jobs; I was a professional, and could not afford to be the child in the room. Although I sometimes have difficulty maintaining all of my composure in my current job as a teacher, and committed an embarrassing mistake during my first month of work, I have since maintained more control over my emotions, and my expressions thereof.
4) Work hard, and take pride in your work. I really don't know anybody who works harder than my parents. My Father devotes many, many hours to his research and to his students. He very frequently has a six-day workweek, entirely self-imposed, and works late. The rest of the family always knows when he is aligning sequence of DNA in his office, because we can hear him playing the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Although I am prey to distraction, which plagues many others in my generation, I nevertheless try to maintain my focus.
5) When you read, read well. When you write, write well. Something that multiple professors of mine in university noted about my work was that it was always very thorough and detailed. This I attribute entirely to method of reading that I learned from my Father. I do not know anyone else who is as careful to read every word printed on every page, not missing any of the details. Regardless of whether the book you are reading is Of Mice and Men or The Mismeasure of Man, the author wrote every word with intention and deliberation, and understanding of a text comes with thorough reading. This is an appreciation that comes with being a writer and an editor. Unfortunately, clear writing, as championed by authors such as E.B. White and George Orwell, is incredibly rare. As someone who peer-reviewed many papers in my years as an undergraduate, I was frequently astonished at the flagrant imprecision and poor syntax of many of my peers, however, gifted they might have been in other fields. Unfortunately, undergraduate education leaves many students with their writing problems even more engrained, and, according to my Father, who is a painstakingly careful editor of his biology publication, poor writing is especially common among students of the natural sciences. One of the most memorable moments of my senior year was reading a Nutrition paper (on the metabolic effects of the consumption of green tea) written by my friend Sarah, and being amazed at the high quality of her writing. Her paper was more clearly-written and more thoroughly-edited than most other papers I had read that year, even when editing Ezra's Archives, Cornell's undergraduate history journal, which demanded a high caliber of writing from its contributors. George Orwell (of whom my Father is also a reader) has made one of the best statementsof why the clarity of writing is important: "If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy... When you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Let's all try to read a little more slowly, to think a little more clearly, and to write a little more accurately.
Happy Father's Day to all!
~JD
Saturday, June 14, 2014
ITF Graduation, English Day at Sapir, and Pride in Tel Aviv
I have just two short weeks left in Israel before I return to the United States. What can I say? יש סוף לכל דבר. I'll soon be moving on to a different stage of my life. For those of you interested, I now know that I will be spending next year in North America, although where still remains to be seen.
School began again this week, I'm pleased to say, and after six days without my students (due to Shavuot break), I returned to school on Monday. I had a busy week, and did my best to stay on top of my workload. My students seemed happy to see me again, too, and some of them behaved surprisingly well. Throughout the week, more of the school's walls received decoration and embellishment; there seems to have been a real effort to beautify Rambam over the past few months, and it's a much more attractive and colorful building than it was when I first visited it nine month ago.
On Thursday afternoon, ITF Ramla had its graduation ceremony, even though the program doesn't officially end until June 27th. Veta and I had spent most of our free evening hours together preparing the slideshow for the event. It was a lot of fun, except for the moment when I thought that I had irretrievably corrupted the entire file (I hadn't). Guess who fixed my bungling? There is a reason why the file name of the final version of the show included the acronym VITB: Veta Is The Best. We watched the video at the Veradim House, then Carmel and Einav drove us to Palmachim Beach in Rishon Letzion. Carmel brought fruit, and made fondue, and we had a small picnic on the beach. Alex, Veta, Natalie and I all frisked about a little bit in the Mediterranean, which was quite warm. Our pedagogical advisor Marsha, as well as Moshe and one of Noach's teachers joined us. Carmel spoke a little bit about each of us, and handed us our diplomas. I had my favorite job as tzalam rash'i. I got quite a few good pictures, thanks partially to my having adjusted my camera's settings ahead of time (check FB, for those interested). If during the Community Involvement graduation, Juliana and Alex were the most photogenic, Natalie and Alex win this award this time around. After everyone except Noach and I went to Tel Aviv, I realized that I had forgotten to ask Veta or Alex for the key to my apartment, and was locked out for the night. Eventually, I ended up spending the evening with Noach, which was fun (I even had the opportunity to annotate his siddur). When Perrin arrived, she gave me Veta's key, and I arrived back in my apartment at around 12:50 am -- not terrible, really. Throughout the whole process, I remained calm -- I was in too good of a mood to be upset.
I was up at 6:00 am on Friday morning. I needed to finish my morning routine in time to catch the morning bus to Sapir school, where Natalie and Perrin were having their English Day. Alex and I rode the 247 together, and arrived well on time. Scott (from Petakh Tikvah) and Noah were also at Sapir to help. I had maybe twenty minutes to meet the Perrin and Natalie's students. I spoke mostly to the eighth graders. They were quite diverse; most were chiloni Jews, but there were also a few datim, Christians, and non-Jews. The level of English (and academics in general) seemed to be, on the whole, higher than that at Rambam, but not as high as that at Ofek (where Noah teaches). When they realized that I was dati, they gave a surprisingly positive response; it seemed to endear me to them quite quickly. Noah and I were assigned to help out with a basketball-themed English game, but, unfortunately, there had been a printing error with the schedule, and nobody ever came to our station. We spoke in English to the older students assigned to help us. One of them, Dani, seemed quite anxious to continue spending time with us, and when we eventually moved to Scott's soccer station, he ended up running half of the station. It was a lot of fun to work with Scott. He's a very friendly, energetic person, and I wish that he were part of our program, so that we would all see him more often. I think that Natalie and Perrin did a much better job with their English Day than I did with mine. They were very well-organized and well-prepared, and the activities that they planned were both fun and informative. Although I do not question that I made a difference while teaching English here, I honestly do believe that the other members of this team are better teachers than I am. After 10:00 am, we had finished helping, and we all said goodbye to Perrin and Natlie, who needed to assist with a spelling bee, and to Scott, who wanted to remain until the end of the school-day. Before I left, Scott revealed to me that one of the eighth-graders had offered to sell him marijuana, presumably seriously. All the more reason that this city needs more volunteers. Noah returned to Ramla, while Carmel drove Alex and I to Tel Aviv for the Pride Parade.
The atmosphere in Tel Aviv right before and during the parade reminded me a little bit of Slope Day from Cornell. The main differences were more politicization (I ended up wearing a rainbow-sticker from the Meretz party) and less clothing. But the event was a real party. Unfortunately, there was less of a cohesive message than I had expected (there were no speeches about human rights, about harassment in school, about restrictions on marriage, etc.), and, like Slope Day, it was a whirlwind of colorful clothing, loud music, and alcohol. Carmel had to leave, and we never met with Veta and Maor, but Alex, Alex's boyfriend Dennis, Alex's co-worker Lior, Lior's cousin, and I all marched together. I was still wearing the button-down shirt and dress pants that I wore to school that day, and because of that and my kippah, I attracted a lot of interest from passers-by, who thought that I was gay and dati (they were only half-correct), because, unfortunately, there aren't many dati gays or allies in Israel. To me, this is perplexing, to say the least. As an American Jew, I am accustomed to Jews taking especial interest in causes of social justice, especially younger Jews, of my own generation. Several people asked to take my picture (or just took pictures without asking), and one person even had Alex and Lior pose for a picture kissing me. I had an enjoyable time, and it lightened my heart to see Alex excited by the drag-queens, etc. I headed back to Ramla at around 3:00 pm, went shopping for fruit, and then, tired and sweaty, returned to Ramla for the evening, taking one of the most welcome showers of the day. I went to synagogue in the evening, and was so exhausted that I fell asleep at around 10:00 pm, while Alex was at Maggie's birthday party.
I spent most of today, Shabbat, reading Homo Mysticus, which I have nearly finished. I only have two more Shabbatot here in Israel, and two more weeks of school. I am becoming increasingly anxious to return to the United States, especially due to recent developments.
Love from Israel
~JD
School began again this week, I'm pleased to say, and after six days without my students (due to Shavuot break), I returned to school on Monday. I had a busy week, and did my best to stay on top of my workload. My students seemed happy to see me again, too, and some of them behaved surprisingly well. Throughout the week, more of the school's walls received decoration and embellishment; there seems to have been a real effort to beautify Rambam over the past few months, and it's a much more attractive and colorful building than it was when I first visited it nine month ago.
On Thursday afternoon, ITF Ramla had its graduation ceremony, even though the program doesn't officially end until June 27th. Veta and I had spent most of our free evening hours together preparing the slideshow for the event. It was a lot of fun, except for the moment when I thought that I had irretrievably corrupted the entire file (I hadn't). Guess who fixed my bungling? There is a reason why the file name of the final version of the show included the acronym VITB: Veta Is The Best. We watched the video at the Veradim House, then Carmel and Einav drove us to Palmachim Beach in Rishon Letzion. Carmel brought fruit, and made fondue, and we had a small picnic on the beach. Alex, Veta, Natalie and I all frisked about a little bit in the Mediterranean, which was quite warm. Our pedagogical advisor Marsha, as well as Moshe and one of Noach's teachers joined us. Carmel spoke a little bit about each of us, and handed us our diplomas. I had my favorite job as tzalam rash'i. I got quite a few good pictures, thanks partially to my having adjusted my camera's settings ahead of time (check FB, for those interested). If during the Community Involvement graduation, Juliana and Alex were the most photogenic, Natalie and Alex win this award this time around. After everyone except Noach and I went to Tel Aviv, I realized that I had forgotten to ask Veta or Alex for the key to my apartment, and was locked out for the night. Eventually, I ended up spending the evening with Noach, which was fun (I even had the opportunity to annotate his siddur). When Perrin arrived, she gave me Veta's key, and I arrived back in my apartment at around 12:50 am -- not terrible, really. Throughout the whole process, I remained calm -- I was in too good of a mood to be upset.
I was up at 6:00 am on Friday morning. I needed to finish my morning routine in time to catch the morning bus to Sapir school, where Natalie and Perrin were having their English Day. Alex and I rode the 247 together, and arrived well on time. Scott (from Petakh Tikvah) and Noah were also at Sapir to help. I had maybe twenty minutes to meet the Perrin and Natalie's students. I spoke mostly to the eighth graders. They were quite diverse; most were chiloni Jews, but there were also a few datim, Christians, and non-Jews. The level of English (and academics in general) seemed to be, on the whole, higher than that at Rambam, but not as high as that at Ofek (where Noah teaches). When they realized that I was dati, they gave a surprisingly positive response; it seemed to endear me to them quite quickly. Noah and I were assigned to help out with a basketball-themed English game, but, unfortunately, there had been a printing error with the schedule, and nobody ever came to our station. We spoke in English to the older students assigned to help us. One of them, Dani, seemed quite anxious to continue spending time with us, and when we eventually moved to Scott's soccer station, he ended up running half of the station. It was a lot of fun to work with Scott. He's a very friendly, energetic person, and I wish that he were part of our program, so that we would all see him more often. I think that Natalie and Perrin did a much better job with their English Day than I did with mine. They were very well-organized and well-prepared, and the activities that they planned were both fun and informative. Although I do not question that I made a difference while teaching English here, I honestly do believe that the other members of this team are better teachers than I am. After 10:00 am, we had finished helping, and we all said goodbye to Perrin and Natlie, who needed to assist with a spelling bee, and to Scott, who wanted to remain until the end of the school-day. Before I left, Scott revealed to me that one of the eighth-graders had offered to sell him marijuana, presumably seriously. All the more reason that this city needs more volunteers. Noah returned to Ramla, while Carmel drove Alex and I to Tel Aviv for the Pride Parade.
The atmosphere in Tel Aviv right before and during the parade reminded me a little bit of Slope Day from Cornell. The main differences were more politicization (I ended up wearing a rainbow-sticker from the Meretz party) and less clothing. But the event was a real party. Unfortunately, there was less of a cohesive message than I had expected (there were no speeches about human rights, about harassment in school, about restrictions on marriage, etc.), and, like Slope Day, it was a whirlwind of colorful clothing, loud music, and alcohol. Carmel had to leave, and we never met with Veta and Maor, but Alex, Alex's boyfriend Dennis, Alex's co-worker Lior, Lior's cousin, and I all marched together. I was still wearing the button-down shirt and dress pants that I wore to school that day, and because of that and my kippah, I attracted a lot of interest from passers-by, who thought that I was gay and dati (they were only half-correct), because, unfortunately, there aren't many dati gays or allies in Israel. To me, this is perplexing, to say the least. As an American Jew, I am accustomed to Jews taking especial interest in causes of social justice, especially younger Jews, of my own generation. Several people asked to take my picture (or just took pictures without asking), and one person even had Alex and Lior pose for a picture kissing me. I had an enjoyable time, and it lightened my heart to see Alex excited by the drag-queens, etc. I headed back to Ramla at around 3:00 pm, went shopping for fruit, and then, tired and sweaty, returned to Ramla for the evening, taking one of the most welcome showers of the day. I went to synagogue in the evening, and was so exhausted that I fell asleep at around 10:00 pm, while Alex was at Maggie's birthday party.
I spent most of today, Shabbat, reading Homo Mysticus, which I have nearly finished. I only have two more Shabbatot here in Israel, and two more weeks of school. I am becoming increasingly anxious to return to the United States, especially due to recent developments.
Love from Israel
~JD
Thursday, June 5, 2014
חלב ודבש וחברים
Shavuot has just passed, and it's now Veta's birthday, another important festivity. I continued to count the Omer right up to day forty-nine, although there's a small possibility that I forgot to count to seventeen. School and Hebrew both continue fairly well, although I know that they will both soon end; or, more specifically, when I am back in the United States, they will both continue in significantly altered forms. Also, I've had to say some goodbyes in the past few days; you'll here all about this presently.
To begin with, after Ulpan on Thursday (May 29th), I collapsed in my apartment. More specifically, I collapsed on a fantastic book about spacetime that Eli had lent me, entitled The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene. If this name and topic sound familiar to you regular readers of this blog, it's likely because I wrote a review of another one of Professor Greene's books, The Elegant Universe, after my time serving in Sar-El. The Fabric of the Cosmos, despite overlapping slightly in theme, is nevertheless an altogether different book than The Elegant Universe, and although I greatly admired and enjoyed reading them both, I consider The Fabric of the Cosmos to be slightly more appealing to the general readership. On Friday morning, after stopping by the Ramla shuk for a few items to bring with me, I rode the train to Savidor Station, and even managed to exit from the proper side of the station, into Ramat Gan. I walked to Eli's apartment on Bialik, where I met up with both him and his sister Judy, whom I'd only met briefly before. Judy, like her older brother, is serving in the IDF, but services humvees, rather than working at a desk job as a jobnik. The two siblings remind me a little bit of Sam and Andrew, and are more similar than I think either one of them realizes. Eli and I identified what ingredients we needed to make Eli's Grandpa Salad and to cook Josefin's lentil soup, and went shopping on Herzl street for everything we needed. It was surprisingly difficult to find lettuce that didn't look suspiciously old, but we succeeded. Soon after our return, Josefin arrived. When we realized that Josefin actually knows how to cook the Persian-style rice that Eli wanted, we realized that the most efficient division of labor was also the most sexist: Josefin and Judy remained the home (specifically, the kitchen), while the men went out and bought last-minute ingredients, and we thus chose competence over progressiveness. At least the rice turned out well. Soon afterwards, Eliana showed up, and we found ourselves, by the end, lighting candles just moments before sundown, but we made it to synagogue, and then back. There were no running-up-and-down-the-stairs adventures this time, unfortunately. I really need to be with Rachel Silverman for that to work out, I guess. The five of us stayed up quite late eating and speaking. Judy and I slept on couches in the main room, and I fell asleep first, predictably. My body just isn't used to the kind of strain with which I encumbered it throughout my years as an undergrad at Cornell, and it's hard for me to go to bed much earlier or later than midnight. I did manage to finish The Fabric of the Cosmos before bed, and was therefore able to pick up Jose Faur's Horizontal Society the next day.
On Saturday, I was up a little bit before eight, and had several uninterrupted hours of reading, of which I took full advantage. Then, Josefin got up, and the two of us spoke for about an hour, mostly about our academic plans for the upcoming years. Josefin is going to learn Ancient Greek, which is going to be very hard, but, I hope, rewarding, for her. Although, it probably won't be as difficult for her as it is to the typical monolingual American -- Josefin can already speak a few languages, two of them fluently, and Ancient Greek will probably provide less of a mental stretch for her. Anyway, eventually, all five of us were up. I read a lot throughout the day, and enjoyed Eli's Grandpa Salad; I think that it gets better every time that I've tried it :). Somebody found a copy of Isreali pseudo-monopoly (Kesef Gadol; grandparents' houses always contains games, if you search hard enough). After Havdallah, Josefin and Eliana returned to Jerusalem, leaving just Eli, Judy, and I in Ramat Gan. My reasons for not returning to Ramla immediately were two-fold: 1) I love being around Eli; 2) Elliot was arriving, and I hadn't seen him in a few months (last I saw him, I was driving him to Wegmans and the wine store downtown, and trying not to kill us both in my parents' car). Elliot arrived shortly after midnight, in the middle of our viewing of Revenge of the Sith (which I still hadn't seen), and I was very excited to see him. I wonder if I came across to him as tired and worn-out as I've begun to feel. My job in a school has been wearing me down, mentally and physically, and, much as I enjoy it, and am proud to have an opportunity to do the work that I have been doing, I think that I need a vacation. At least my Hebrew has improved since I last saw Elliot (and since I last studied in chevruta with his sister Ranana), but there's not much more that I can say for myself.
Sunday morning, I headed back to Ramla by train, while Judy returned to her base, and Eli and Elliot left to visit a museum. I returned to my apartment, took a run, and went to where I was supposed to meet a student, who never appeared for the lesson that we had arranged. At around 6:30 pm, however, I arrived at the English Center for the Community Involvement graduation. For those of you who don't live with me here in Ramla, my group of Israel Teaching Fellows lives in the same town as another group of volunteers, whose job it is is to volunteer in various capacities in the community for five months (for those of you who remember my former three roommates, they were enrolled as part of the same five-month program). Both programs, ITF and CI, are sponsored by the same company, Israel Way (also known as Oranim). In short, volunteers were leaving town, and we decided to have a party for them in the English Center, where several of them volunteered. Carmel was there, of course, but Amit, sadly, left two weeks ago :'(. I hope that I'll see her at the ITF graduation next week. I took pictures, and had a fantastic time because of this. Note to those planning to take part in a photographed ceremony in a room painted entirely white; wear brightly-colored clothing! Juliana won the "most photogenic subject of the evening" award in my book. The highlight of the ceremony for me was telling my story about why I will miss Florencia. Afterwards, we all decided to party in Tel Aviv (20 minutes away), in order to celebrate both the CI graduation and Veta's birthday, and those with cars drove those without. I got to drive with Carmel ha-ahuv <3, as well as Julia, Juliana, and Noah. There was some confusion about the restaurant where Natalie had made reservations, but we (almost) all eventually ended up in the same place. Ma'or even made a surprise appearance :). I ended up splitting a drink three ways with Natalie (who became very, very sleepy) and Shira. After a couple of hours, those of us returning to Ramla took a monit sherut to the bus station, and, from there, a monit sherut to Ramla. The sherut to Ramla took a while to fill up; Noah made a new friend (he's much better at that than I am), and Florencia made a surprise appearance.
On Monday, I was back to work, and had what was probably the worst day of school that I have had yet. I should have predicted it though: we were giving the students a test, and test days are always the worst. The way that the school system gives students evaluations that are too difficult for their ability level makes them feel cornered, powerless, resentful of those administering the tests, and altogether willing to cheat in any means possible (often without realizing that extracting translations from proctors, sharing solutions with classmates, opening to the dictionary appendices in their textbooks, and using computer dictionaries all qualify as "cheating"). As the son of two academics, I have always been taught that cheating (only one step away from plagiarism) is anathema; clearly this creates conflict when testing occurs, and I honestly would rather that I never again be in a position where I am administering a test in an Israeli school. I was exhausted by the end of my schoolday, but, luckily for me, I still had my private lesson with Nati and Yosi afterwards. I taught them about comparisons in English (extremely useful, although probably seemingly arbitrary to a non-native speaker), and also ended up helping Yosi's father with his fax machine, the interface of which is entirely in English. This is not the first time I have needed to come to the rescue, so to speak, with my English; Sabba also had a medicine, the label of which was printed only in English (can you believe this? Imagine if there were medications that were sold in the U.S. and designated for senior citizen use only, but with directions written only in Japanese. It would rightly cause an outrage). Anyway, I took the bus directly from my students' apartment to the house on Veradim, where I came 20 minutes late (I had already told Carmel not to count on my arrival), at 4:20 pm, to the Shavuot enrichment. Perrin and I were teaching Underground at 6:00 pm, and I begged some chumus off of Natalie to last me until night. Natalie was my hero for the day for feeding me <3. Underground was excellent, and continues to be one of my favorite parts of volunteering here. Perrin is 100% in charge, and very good at instructing, and it is my job to provide Hebrew support to students who are lagging (this time, it was two Arabic women). I finally returned back to my apartment, and continued to read Horizontal Society.
Tuesday was Erev Shavuot. I took a nice long shopping trip to the shuk where I picked up, among other things, fresh dill and sale-price medjoul dates for the holiday. I ran, prepared food, and invested a fair amount of time in studying Hebrew. Then I went to synagogue in the evening (running into Micha'el, Tamar, and Shiloh on the way), and, after a dinner that included some excellent homemade flan by Alex, I tried to stay up all night reading. I failed miserably, and fell asleep around 1:00 am. I'm just not the student I was when I studied at Cornell.
Wednesday, Shavuot, was a day of getting up early and immersing myself in study, for most of the day. To my enjoyment, I also visited the Veradim house. Natalie was in Eilat, but I talked to Noah for a while until he left to attend his teacher's barbecue, and then spent about two hours speaking with Perrin. It was time well spent. I do wish that I had made more friends here in Israel, but I do feel as if I can rely on those that I have.
Today, I woke up feeling disgusting. This is the second or third time in a row that I have developed coldlike symptoms, most notably a sore throat and clogged sinuses. I am getting quite tired of it. I spent a rather unproductive day. I unsuccessfully tried to pick up something that I needed from the pharmacy, although I did manage to finish the end of vol. I of Horizontal Society, and write down a few thoughts to some friends. Now, it's late, and I need to get to bed. Before, I do, however, I'll just mention the following slideshow that I made for my school's English Day (see last post). Enjoy!
English Day at Rambam Slideshow
~JD
To begin with, after Ulpan on Thursday (May 29th), I collapsed in my apartment. More specifically, I collapsed on a fantastic book about spacetime that Eli had lent me, entitled The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene. If this name and topic sound familiar to you regular readers of this blog, it's likely because I wrote a review of another one of Professor Greene's books, The Elegant Universe, after my time serving in Sar-El. The Fabric of the Cosmos, despite overlapping slightly in theme, is nevertheless an altogether different book than The Elegant Universe, and although I greatly admired and enjoyed reading them both, I consider The Fabric of the Cosmos to be slightly more appealing to the general readership. On Friday morning, after stopping by the Ramla shuk for a few items to bring with me, I rode the train to Savidor Station, and even managed to exit from the proper side of the station, into Ramat Gan. I walked to Eli's apartment on Bialik, where I met up with both him and his sister Judy, whom I'd only met briefly before. Judy, like her older brother, is serving in the IDF, but services humvees, rather than working at a desk job as a jobnik. The two siblings remind me a little bit of Sam and Andrew, and are more similar than I think either one of them realizes. Eli and I identified what ingredients we needed to make Eli's Grandpa Salad and to cook Josefin's lentil soup, and went shopping on Herzl street for everything we needed. It was surprisingly difficult to find lettuce that didn't look suspiciously old, but we succeeded. Soon after our return, Josefin arrived. When we realized that Josefin actually knows how to cook the Persian-style rice that Eli wanted, we realized that the most efficient division of labor was also the most sexist: Josefin and Judy remained the home (specifically, the kitchen), while the men went out and bought last-minute ingredients, and we thus chose competence over progressiveness. At least the rice turned out well. Soon afterwards, Eliana showed up, and we found ourselves, by the end, lighting candles just moments before sundown, but we made it to synagogue, and then back. There were no running-up-and-down-the-stairs adventures this time, unfortunately. I really need to be with Rachel Silverman for that to work out, I guess. The five of us stayed up quite late eating and speaking. Judy and I slept on couches in the main room, and I fell asleep first, predictably. My body just isn't used to the kind of strain with which I encumbered it throughout my years as an undergrad at Cornell, and it's hard for me to go to bed much earlier or later than midnight. I did manage to finish The Fabric of the Cosmos before bed, and was therefore able to pick up Jose Faur's Horizontal Society the next day.
On Saturday, I was up a little bit before eight, and had several uninterrupted hours of reading, of which I took full advantage. Then, Josefin got up, and the two of us spoke for about an hour, mostly about our academic plans for the upcoming years. Josefin is going to learn Ancient Greek, which is going to be very hard, but, I hope, rewarding, for her. Although, it probably won't be as difficult for her as it is to the typical monolingual American -- Josefin can already speak a few languages, two of them fluently, and Ancient Greek will probably provide less of a mental stretch for her. Anyway, eventually, all five of us were up. I read a lot throughout the day, and enjoyed Eli's Grandpa Salad; I think that it gets better every time that I've tried it :). Somebody found a copy of Isreali pseudo-monopoly (Kesef Gadol; grandparents' houses always contains games, if you search hard enough). After Havdallah, Josefin and Eliana returned to Jerusalem, leaving just Eli, Judy, and I in Ramat Gan. My reasons for not returning to Ramla immediately were two-fold: 1) I love being around Eli; 2) Elliot was arriving, and I hadn't seen him in a few months (last I saw him, I was driving him to Wegmans and the wine store downtown, and trying not to kill us both in my parents' car). Elliot arrived shortly after midnight, in the middle of our viewing of Revenge of the Sith (which I still hadn't seen), and I was very excited to see him. I wonder if I came across to him as tired and worn-out as I've begun to feel. My job in a school has been wearing me down, mentally and physically, and, much as I enjoy it, and am proud to have an opportunity to do the work that I have been doing, I think that I need a vacation. At least my Hebrew has improved since I last saw Elliot (and since I last studied in chevruta with his sister Ranana), but there's not much more that I can say for myself.
Sunday morning, I headed back to Ramla by train, while Judy returned to her base, and Eli and Elliot left to visit a museum. I returned to my apartment, took a run, and went to where I was supposed to meet a student, who never appeared for the lesson that we had arranged. At around 6:30 pm, however, I arrived at the English Center for the Community Involvement graduation. For those of you who don't live with me here in Ramla, my group of Israel Teaching Fellows lives in the same town as another group of volunteers, whose job it is is to volunteer in various capacities in the community for five months (for those of you who remember my former three roommates, they were enrolled as part of the same five-month program). Both programs, ITF and CI, are sponsored by the same company, Israel Way (also known as Oranim). In short, volunteers were leaving town, and we decided to have a party for them in the English Center, where several of them volunteered. Carmel was there, of course, but Amit, sadly, left two weeks ago :'(. I hope that I'll see her at the ITF graduation next week. I took pictures, and had a fantastic time because of this. Note to those planning to take part in a photographed ceremony in a room painted entirely white; wear brightly-colored clothing! Juliana won the "most photogenic subject of the evening" award in my book. The highlight of the ceremony for me was telling my story about why I will miss Florencia. Afterwards, we all decided to party in Tel Aviv (20 minutes away), in order to celebrate both the CI graduation and Veta's birthday, and those with cars drove those without. I got to drive with Carmel ha-ahuv <3, as well as Julia, Juliana, and Noah. There was some confusion about the restaurant where Natalie had made reservations, but we (almost) all eventually ended up in the same place. Ma'or even made a surprise appearance :). I ended up splitting a drink three ways with Natalie (who became very, very sleepy) and Shira. After a couple of hours, those of us returning to Ramla took a monit sherut to the bus station, and, from there, a monit sherut to Ramla. The sherut to Ramla took a while to fill up; Noah made a new friend (he's much better at that than I am), and Florencia made a surprise appearance.
On Monday, I was back to work, and had what was probably the worst day of school that I have had yet. I should have predicted it though: we were giving the students a test, and test days are always the worst. The way that the school system gives students evaluations that are too difficult for their ability level makes them feel cornered, powerless, resentful of those administering the tests, and altogether willing to cheat in any means possible (often without realizing that extracting translations from proctors, sharing solutions with classmates, opening to the dictionary appendices in their textbooks, and using computer dictionaries all qualify as "cheating"). As the son of two academics, I have always been taught that cheating (only one step away from plagiarism) is anathema; clearly this creates conflict when testing occurs, and I honestly would rather that I never again be in a position where I am administering a test in an Israeli school. I was exhausted by the end of my schoolday, but, luckily for me, I still had my private lesson with Nati and Yosi afterwards. I taught them about comparisons in English (extremely useful, although probably seemingly arbitrary to a non-native speaker), and also ended up helping Yosi's father with his fax machine, the interface of which is entirely in English. This is not the first time I have needed to come to the rescue, so to speak, with my English; Sabba also had a medicine, the label of which was printed only in English (can you believe this? Imagine if there were medications that were sold in the U.S. and designated for senior citizen use only, but with directions written only in Japanese. It would rightly cause an outrage). Anyway, I took the bus directly from my students' apartment to the house on Veradim, where I came 20 minutes late (I had already told Carmel not to count on my arrival), at 4:20 pm, to the Shavuot enrichment. Perrin and I were teaching Underground at 6:00 pm, and I begged some chumus off of Natalie to last me until night. Natalie was my hero for the day for feeding me <3. Underground was excellent, and continues to be one of my favorite parts of volunteering here. Perrin is 100% in charge, and very good at instructing, and it is my job to provide Hebrew support to students who are lagging (this time, it was two Arabic women). I finally returned back to my apartment, and continued to read Horizontal Society.
Tuesday was Erev Shavuot. I took a nice long shopping trip to the shuk where I picked up, among other things, fresh dill and sale-price medjoul dates for the holiday. I ran, prepared food, and invested a fair amount of time in studying Hebrew. Then I went to synagogue in the evening (running into Micha'el, Tamar, and Shiloh on the way), and, after a dinner that included some excellent homemade flan by Alex, I tried to stay up all night reading. I failed miserably, and fell asleep around 1:00 am. I'm just not the student I was when I studied at Cornell.
Wednesday, Shavuot, was a day of getting up early and immersing myself in study, for most of the day. To my enjoyment, I also visited the Veradim house. Natalie was in Eilat, but I talked to Noah for a while until he left to attend his teacher's barbecue, and then spent about two hours speaking with Perrin. It was time well spent. I do wish that I had made more friends here in Israel, but I do feel as if I can rely on those that I have.
Today, I woke up feeling disgusting. This is the second or third time in a row that I have developed coldlike symptoms, most notably a sore throat and clogged sinuses. I am getting quite tired of it. I spent a rather unproductive day. I unsuccessfully tried to pick up something that I needed from the pharmacy, although I did manage to finish the end of vol. I of Horizontal Society, and write down a few thoughts to some friends. Now, it's late, and I need to get to bed. Before, I do, however, I'll just mention the following slideshow that I made for my school's English Day (see last post). Enjoy!
English Day at Rambam Slideshow
~JD
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