Birthday party

I turned 21 last Sunday, and to celebrate a bunch of my friends went bowling last night at Lev Talpiot Mall, one of the two alleys in all of Jerusalem. Most people actually didn't make it; it was a miserable night, rainy with lots of puddles to soak your feet through your shoes, and Lev Talpiot Mall is far away from just about everything. It still ended up being a lot of fun, though.

The original idea was pretty simple: do some bowling, eat some cake, go home. Little did I know that if you want to go bowling in Israel, you have to make a reservation or wait, nor did I realize that we wouldn't be able to bring food into the bowling alley--cue Alexis, already on her way to the bowling alley, heading back home to put a cake in the fridge. Meanwhile, Ahuva, her friend Rosanne, and I waited what we were told was going to be an hour and a half for a lane. We ate some really expensive fries and wandered around the arcade for a bit. We discovered that Ahuva's still really good at basketball, and only in Israel is whac-a-mole really whac-a-wolf which looks a lot like whac-a-cat. Also only in Israel: being assigned a bowling lane next to a Haredi family.

The hour and a half waiting period thing was a lie; we really only had to wait half an hour, which was nice except for the fact that Alexis hadn't made it. We didn't realize how long it would take her to get there, so we bought a four-player game and ended up taking turns playing for Alexis. (Bowling is expensive in Israel; 28 NIS per person per game!) "Alexis" almost won, too--Ahuva and I tended to bowl better for "Alexis" than we did for ourselves, though Rosanne was really good all the time. I also learned the importance of having a ball that a) isn't too heavy and b) your fingers fit into; a mysterious new ball showed up at our lane halfway though, and I stopped throwing balls into the gutter. (My hand stopped hurting, too.)

Alexis and LynleyShimat showed up later, after our insanely priced game of bowling and a game of air hockey for Ahuva and Rosanne. I got to whac-a-wolf/cat (followed by Ahuva whacing-a-wolf/cat), Ahuva and Lynley played more basketball, and Lynley and I played this really messed up bowling arcade game where throwing the ball in the middle always caused a split and throwing into the side didn't necessarily result in a gutter ball. Afterwards we sat and ate some popcorn and redeemed our tickets for a couple of spinning tops, which were way too amusing for our own good. A couple of the people who worked at the bowling alley looked at us like we were crazy; then again, I think we've mostly come to expect as much. (Note: you have to turn your volume all the way up and/or plug in speakers to hear the sound on these videos.)

After we left the bowling alley, we wandered into a massive SuperSol which was pretty much a mix between a grocery store and a Target. Seriously; there were a whole two aisles of clothing, and another few of kitchen appliances and electronics! It was sort of amazing, especially when I found marshmallow fluff and a version of Pocahontas that I remember from when I was little dubbed in Hebrew (10NIS!). I knew there was a reason I bought a region-free DVD player last year.

After spending a while in the grocery store (which also, btw, featured a whole aisle worth of ice cream--both sides of the aisle), the five of us squished into a cab and went to Alexis's house for cake and a very late (11pm) dinner. Alexis made fried mushrooms and pasta with pesto sauce, mushrooms, and onions, which was wonderful (especially the mushrooms!). This was followed by a really interesting non-chocolate mousse cake, of which I managed to drop my piece and catch it in mid-air, which was really funny and amazing. There were actually a lot of funny and amazing stories throughout the night, which is what you get when you start Ahuva talking on AHA. Also funny and amazing: Ahuva on birthday candles.

Before we knew it, it was 1:05 AM--way past the time that the buses stopped. I figured it was time to go when I started getting silly and making wing motions with my arms at the mention of something I don't even remember, probably birds of some sort. Almost definitely birds of some sort. Because it was raining we all caught a cab back, first to King David for Ahuva and Rosanne, then to the Kfar for Lynley and me. The cab fare was actually also sort of amazing; for the entire trip from Talpiot to French Hill it only cost me 22NIS when it cost 40NIS from the Old City a few weeks ago. Granted, there were four of us in the car for the first half of the trip and then two for the second, but it was still a really nice price. It made me sorta happy, especially after all the money I spent on the night overall. I haven't calculated how much I spent, and I don't think I will; it was a large amount, but I'm okay with it because I had a fabulous time. I have some very good friends here in Israel.

Bigotry in Jerusalem

Lately, I've been feeling really sick of this city. I've already mentioned the anti-Arab bigotry that I saw on Rosh Hashanah and around Yom Kippur and at the soccer game, but I feel like I've been experiencing it a lot more recently--and not just bigotry against Arabs, but against anyone who's not Orthodox.

First, there was Masa's Security Issues Shabbaton on the last weekend of November. The weekend began with a Friday tour of the security barrier, run by the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem. We heard stories about families and villages cut arbitrarily in half and people who can't get past the checkpoints to receive medical treatment, and the absurdity of the situation hit me. I don't know much about the effects of the barrier--I am not an Israeli resident, but a representative from Stand With Us emphasized the effectiveness of the thing in stopping terrorist attacks--but couldn't they build the barrier around said villages, rather than straight through it? What security does splitting up families and communities provide?

And then there's the issue of Sheik Jarrah, where a Palestinian family was evicted from their home to be replaced by Jews (this over and above the houses that are being demolished), and the people who protest it keep getting arrested! Yaron, the youth coordinator of JOH, was one of those who got arrested the two weeks ago; he told us the story on Sunday, at which point he told me to be careful of what I do because they were deporting the non-Israelis who were arrested. (Whether that actually happened or not I don't know.) It's all really frustrating because really, there's nothing I can do. While others I know do go to said protests, I don't feel like I can ignore Yaron's warning--and even if I did go, what good would it do? Are these protests really doing anything?

Switch topics of a second to Orhodoxy in this city. I already posted about the protest I went to on the same weekend of the MASA thing. That occurred in the middle of a personal struggle of mine, in which I came out to my chevruta partner at JSSC and she freaked out. The following Sunday, the director of the women's learning program nearly kicked me out, telling me to "think seriously" about whether or not I wanted to be in the program, and lectured me about being a non-Orthodox convert and how she wishes the other movements of Judaism wouldn't call themselves Judaism because "Judaism has 613 commandments" and the other movements "are really different religions." The next week, someone else called me a "bad Ashkenazi" when I told her that my family's tradition is to follow the Sephardic rules for Pesach--because obviously, where my family's originally from matters much more than the customs of my family now. The same person compared my LGBT Jewish community at home to Sodom and Gomorrah, and none of the other (also Orthodox) people stood up for me. The head of the Hillel-Hecht Beit Midrash program "reserve[s] the right to talk to [me]" when I told him about what happened at JSSC and why--although he has since requested a copy of Rabbi Steve Greenberg's book.

And then there's Women of the Wall; the arrest of Nofrat Frankel which I have mentioned multiple times in this blog, and the abuse that we suffered last Friday. I am reminded of this every time I ride the 4א through Ge'ula and see the streets full of men who look exactly like those who were yelling at the Women of the Wall and women who look exactly like those who have insulted me for my identity. And I think, how can one live in this city. How can one take insults to oneself, and then look up and see all the other, much bigger bigotry going on around her? And when I mentioned it to one of our madrichim, his only response was, "What bigotry?" What bigotry, indeed. Have you lived here so long that you can no longer see it?

I know that America is not innocent of racism, but I still look forward to my upcoming month there. I need a breath of fresh air, or at least air filled with problems that I'm used to.

Women of the Wall

This morning I got up really early to head down to the Kotel for Women of the Wall’s monthly Rosh Chodesh minyan. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have made it: it was rainy and windy enough that my umbrella kept turning inside out; the friend who was supposed to go with me slept in; I wasn’t exactly awake at 5:50am when I had to leave the apartment; and I don’t really go out of my way for feminism in the first place. (Blame it on reading books and articles from the 1970s.) However, last month’s arrest of Nofrat Frankel made me determined to attend, if only to support a fellow queer Jew who wanted nothing more than to daven at the holiest Jewish place in the world. Besides, I haven’t been to shacharit for a while, and I miss singing Hallel.

As I mentioned, the weather was miserable, but there was still a nice group of us huddled together under umbrellas. Someone behind me commented that if they wanted to break up the Women of the Wall by arresting one of their members, they failed and did the opposite; I’m inclined to agree, since someone else said that this was the worst weather she could remember meeting in.

For the first few prayers, everything was fine. But by the time we got to Psalm 150, men were gathering next to the mechitza and behind the women’s section shouting something at us—maybe “ki va,” maybe “toeva,” maybe “give up.” Of these “toeva” makes the most sense, except that… it doesn’t. What were we doing wrong? We were on the women’s side of the wall. We were in the back, so we weren’t interfering with religious women who wanted to go up to the wall. We didn’t do any parts of the service which require a minyan, even though there were definitely at least a minyan of us there who count women. I saw very few women wearing tallitot, at least outside of their jackets (I didn’t even bring mine, since I was warned that being an American meant I could get deported if I made trouble) and while this is something Orthodoxy forbids, it isn’t listed as a toeva (abomination) in the Bible. Also, while one woman came up to us and started screaming, everyone else was a boy or a full-grown man standing on the periphery. They didn’t have to look at us. They didn’t even have to listen to us; we weren’t being very loud, and they certainly could have overpowered us with their own prayers rather than shouting at us. Of course, their shouting forced us to raise our volume; we spent the rest of the service struggling to hear where we were in the service, and when one of us picked it up we had to sing loudly to signal others of our place.

After we finished the Amidah, we headed—slowly, so as not to slip on the wet Jerusalem stones and drop the Torah—to Robinson’s Arch, the area designated for women and mixed groups to read from the Torah. The men followed us, still screaming, held back by the police. To drown out the screaming, we sang—Al HaNisim, Banu Choshech, Ahavah Raba, Esa Enai—songs of strength and hope. Because it was raining we were told we could read the Torah in a covered space near the Arch, but then that permission got revoked. “It’s an archeological site,” we were told, “tourists are going to be coming through.” (Even though the site didn’t open until 9am, and it wasn’t even 8:30 at this point.) We ended up going to the actual Arch, huddled once again under our umbrellas, where Nofrat Frankel chanted the Torah portion out of a chumash rather than risk the Torah getting wet. We, of course, did not get this privilege; I left the service soaked through multiple layers, and too cold and wet to walk to the bus stop. I paid 40NIS to take a taxi home, but at that point I didn’t care.

I’ve read people wonder why the Women of the Wall can’t be satisfied with praying at Robinson’s Arch in the first place, since it is, after all, still part of the Wall. But from what I saw this morning, I have to wonder how anyone can pray there. There’s just one long path leading up to the wall, no space to really gather. It is, after all, an archeological site and not a prayer site (but somehow still acceptable for us to use, and whereas the space indoors is not?) Imagine praying in a synagogue the width of your bathroom; that’s about the width of the space at the Arch. And they wonder why we can’t be content to pray there!

You may notice that I’ve been using the word “we” a lot in this entry. This is natural for an entry about an event I attended, but I feel like it’s more than that. As I get more and more fed up with the Orthodoxy of this city (more about that to come), I’ve come to identify with this group of women a little bit. All they want is to pray, once a month, at a holy site where some people pray every day. They’re not there to be disruptive; they just want to be themselves and practice their religion in a way that’s meaningful to them. And if this minyan is a way to carve out a little space each month to do that, and in the process perhaps show those bigots that there are other people in this world who are entitled to pray at the Kotel too, all the more power to them. They’re not meeting next month—nor will I be here—but come February, I’m definitely going again.

If anyone is interested, the New York Times ran an article about this same minyan. I'm under the rainbow umbrella, and no it isn't mine.

Added 11 March 2010 - Youtube now has two videos from the December meeting of Women of the Wall. The first gives the overall experience (minus the bulk of the service where we were being screamed at); the second shows the Haredi reaction to our davening.

Protesting in the Holy City

Last night, I attended a protest in the center of Jerusalem. I'm rather surprised by the lack of media coverage of it; it seemed like a big deal, with thousands of people marching down King George and Ben Yehuda, culminating in one very full Kikar Tzion. Yet, somehow, it wasn't mentioned in either the Jerusalem Post or the English edition of Ha'aretz. (There is a Ha'aretz article here.) The best coverage I can find is from EuroNews. (Note that the guy holding the flag in the first frame is Andy Dubin, one of my former teachers from high school.)

After reading that article, I have to wonder--what were we actually protesting? The protest was billed as

“Taking back the city, by walking!”
Secular, religious and masorti Jews:
say put an end to attempts of haredi coercion
and unite to restore sanity, freedom
and mutual respect to the city!

which is entirely consistent with the newspaper articles. Yet, what is it specifically that we were protesting? According to EuroNews, we were protesting the Haredi protest of Intel, which I didn't even know about until now. According to Facebook and the Masorti movement, we were protesting the arrest of Nofrat Frenkel at the Kotel. I couldn't understand the speeches because they were in Hebrew, so I don't actually know what we were officially protesting. All I could really catch were a few phrases about Jerusalem belonging to everyone--which, of course, I fully agree with. I was told that the general message was "Why do we let a minority who doesn't even serve in the army control our capital?" but I have to take other people's word for that. It's gotta be true; why would they lie?

Anyway, I hope that we actually accomplished something with our march/rally/protest combination. I'm not particularly hopeful considering the lack of media coverage, but maybe we at least sparked something. Maybe. And with that, I leave you with some footage of the event itself, courtesy of my and Alexis's cameras. Mine's the one that sucks.

Reconstructionist Shabbat in Jerusalem

It's amazing how different this past Shabbat was from the previous Shabbat. Last Shabbat I was in the Kfar, sick, and didn't do anything Shabbatistic other than consume a challah. This Shabbat was Shabbat.

Friday night was disappointing at first because I didn't realize how early Shabbat started (3:58 candle-lighting time!), so I didn't have time to walk down to Shira Chadasha for services. Instead, I hung around Ahuva's until Alexis arrived, at which point the three of us experimented with porridgey couscous. The result: fried couscous with mushrooms, onions, poultry seasoning, zatar, and whatever other spices Alexis put in there. It was actually really good, and a testimony to what creative college graduates can do if they actually learn how to cook. (Read: a testimony to the awesomeness that is Alexis in the kitchen.)

After dinner we settled down to watch Swing Kids (or rather, let it load on MegaVideo) until Ahuva's roommate and one of her friends came in with Mr. Fuzzfuzz, at which point we proceeded to talk about kitties and tell funny stories from high school. But really, while Friday night was a lot of fun, it's not the main point of this entry. The real reason I was downtown, intruding on Ahuva's hospitality, was that this week was the monthly Reconstructionist minyan, which I am absolutely in love with.

They've said that Reconstructionist services are never the same twice in a row, but I've now attended twice in a row (this Shabbat and Parshat Noach last month) and it seemed pretty similar to me. A lot of the tunes used in Psukei D'zimra were Reform, but there actually was a Psukei D'zimra, as opposed to it just meshing into Shacharit. I was very happy to hear a tune of Elohai Neshama which I know and love from Temple Emanuel. We also did Ahava Rabbah entirely out loud, which I haven't heard since sophomore year at AHA, before Rabbi Stein started valuing time over singing.

The gem of the service, though, was the Torah service. The Reconstructionist minyan in Jerusalem reads only three aliyot, but all of the aliyot are communal. Each one has a theme relating to the portion to be read. I don't remember what the first one was, but the last two this week were for anyone struggling with jealousy or feeling under-appreciated (for Esau's pleading for his blessing) and for anyone who was searching for something (for Jacob's being sent out to search for a wife). After each reading, the gabbi rishon gives a mi sheberach blessing based on the theme - that we should overcome our jealousy and see that we are loved, that we find what we are searching for, etc. It's really moving to stand up there and have someone say a blessing over you, especially one that's produced on the spot and not one that's just being read off a sheet. Before the third aliyah they do the normal mi sheberach for the sick, but they do it in the form of a chant of "ana el na refa na la," the words Moses prayed for Miriam when she was sick, and while it's being repeated people say the names of the people for whom they are praying. This is also really moving because the entire congregation is chanting it at once, rather than just one person standing in the front reading off a piece of paper.

After services is a potluck with lots of good food--mostly carbs. People like to bring pasta to these kinds of things, it seems. That and dessert. This week there were also two different kinds of lentil soup (in honor of the parasha, where Esau sells Jacob his birthright in return for lentil soup), tofu, pumpkin cake, and bread pudding - all of which were very exciting. Lunch was nice; I sat with Noam, Devorah, Alexis, and a rotating couple of RRC students. It's hard to describe, but the potluck is both part of the Reconstructionist minyan and not a part at the same time. I mean, it's a potluck, and a potluck is a potluck is a potluck. Yet, the potluck begins with kiddish and motzi, and if you stay till the end they do birkat, too. But it's not the full birkat, not at first at least. First they do a really interesting alternative birkat:

בריך רחמנה מלכה די עלמה מריה דהי פיתא
(Brikh rakhamana malkah d’almah mareh d’hai pita)
You are the source of life for all that is, and your blessing flows through us.

Oh Lord prepare me
to be a sanctuary,
pure and holy,
tried and true.
And with thanksgiving,
I’ll be a living
sanctuary
for you.

ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם
V’asu li mikdash v’shakhanti b’tokham

The middle part and the melody are taken from a Christian prayer that's apparently very popular at multifaith gatherings, but it works and it's pretty, especially when combined with with the relevant Hebrew. Our table did the traditional Birkat Hamazon afterwards, but most people just started to clean up. I think that's pretty much indicative of the Reconstructionist minyan; do everything, but maybe in an abbreviated form which still retains the beauty and meaning of the prayer. I think that's what I like about it. It's a nice balance.

Rosh Chodesh Kislev

If you've spent any time around religious Jews, you know that there's a whole ton of holidays around September/October and then nothing until December. It's the longest stretch in the Jewish year, and it's especially visible in Israel, where the entire country goes from Rosh-Hashanah-Yom-Kippur-Sukkot-Simchat-Torah insanity to two months without a single break. It's so bad that, here at Hebrew University, the Jeff Seidel Student Center had their "Hanukkah" event 25 days early, on Rosh Chodesh Kislev.

I put Hanukkah in quotation marks up there because while the event was advertised as a Hanukkah event, we never really got to the Hanukkah part. Instead, Rebbitzen Tsipora Dahan cooked up a storm and had the best meal ever at her house. I'm not kidding: homemade bread (including rolls with an onion filling!), soup, kugels, eggplant parmesan, sweet potatoes, pecan pie, cheesecake, sufganiyot, peanut butter balls covered in chocolate, lots of other small chocolate things - all made by Tsipora, except the soup. It was amazing, seriously the best food I've had in a really long time. I asked Tsipora afterwards if she was going to become a chef when her kids grew up, and she just laughed and said that it's a hobby.

We were supposed to do Hanukkah crafts after dinner, but we didn't finish eating until 10pm--after starting around 8:15. During dinner, however, we had the obligatory Jeff Seidel Orthodox idealism. Stacy and Tsipora brought in a musician, 12th grader Hadassah Haller from Ramat Beit Shemesh, who sang what must be the Jewish version of Christian music - not religious songs, per say, in that they weren't prayers, but songs that are focused on Hashem and religious life. One that really struck me was Chanale's "My Business":

Is the way to happiness the path to success?
Can I be satisfied if I'm something less
Than the doctor, the lawyer, they hoped I would be
So what if I'm happy, just to be me?

Each day, every hour, on me they depend
To be mother, a sister, plus a wife and a friend
I have a profession, though no PHD
Yet today I am happy just to be me!

Chorus: I don't need a license, don't need a degree
For I'm in the business, of a woman, you see
My life's full of meaning and my home's full of light
I don't need all that money to be doing all right

I don't need a mansion with riches inside
My children are diamonds, and my family's my pride
Why should I travel, I'm where I want to be
Can you find me a woman who's got more than me?

There's not much vacation, get no time to rest
My house is my office, and my kitchen's my desk
I work for Hashem, yes, the Torah's my trade
Maybe I'm overworked but I'm not underpaid

Chorus

I really don't know what to think about it. On one hand I'm all for going after what you want and not what people expect from you and I completely agree with not needing to be rich to be happy, but I have a problem with the rest of it. "I don't need a degree... I'm in the business of a woman, you see"--are you saying women don't need an education? Are you saying that the purpose of a woman's life is to take care of the house and the children? If that's what you want to do, fine, but... the business of being a woman, really? I feel like the song "Just A Housewife" from Working conveys the same thing but in a much better way. Otherwise it just feels like they're shoving the wonders of Orthodox living down your throat--which, I guess in a way, is the purpose of Jeff Seidel.

Overall, though, I had a really good time at the Rosh Chodesh event. Hadassah's voice and music was really beautiful, even if I had to take the songs themselves with a grain of salt, and I still can't get over Tsipora's cooking. You know, I could really get to like Rosh Chodesh this way.

Drag queens and swing dancing

This week was a very busy one for me at the Jerusalem Open House. Not only did I spend most of Sunday at the community center, working on the newsletter and the database with Dalit and the other interns/volunteers; I also attended two big events, the opening of the Hakafot café on Tuesday and my own event, the English Speaker’s Group swing dance night (“Swinging Queerly”), on Saturday.

While the café’s grand opening was advertised as an English-friendly event, I was disappointed to see the only English-speakers there were Ahuva and myself. This made the first hour or so rather boring, since we were isolated among a bunch of Hebrew-speakers who already knew each other. I did, however, get to consume some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (Cookies & Cream, 7NIS) and pie (apple, 10NIS). I would have just gone for the pie, but it wasn’t out at first so I didn’t know about it.

And then the drag monarchs came out—two drag kings and two drag queens, regular performers at HaKatze. I am happy to say that my videos from Open House came out much better than the ones I took at HaKatze, and now you can actually see the drag:

The event was also advertised as an open mic night, but there was no open mic about it. Once the drag monarchs (yes, I know I’m making up this phrase), the night was basically over. I don’t know how much café-related items JOH actually sold, but the drag drew a nice crowd.

Between Tuesday night and Saturday night I had my longest stretch of time away from the Open House in a long time—or maybe it just seems that way because I was there almost every other day for a week and a half prior. Saturday night, however, was our first English Speakers Group event of November, “Swinging Queerly,” in which we invited Shirley of the Tel Aviv Swing Club to teach a lesson in East Coast. It was really interesting to watch her teach because she didn’t teach it as East Coast, she taught it as six-count Lindy Hop, which actually makes a difference. I didn’t even realize before now that East Coast starts on a step-step, whereas Lindy (six-count or eight-count, whatever) starts on a rock-step. The moves also had different names; the inside-turn was a “window,” for some odd reason. I have no idea.

I spent a lot of the event running around—figuring out how to turn on the fan, finding tape so someone could tape her flip-flops to her shoes, helping Shirley, etc. I guess that’s why I lost track of time and the lesson went an hour and a half before Shirley realized people were getting tired and it was time to stop. We were supposed to have open dancing after the lesson, but that failed. People were just too tired. I think they had fun, though. They look like they were having fun:

Note that the people in the second video, Ahuva and Alexis, learned Swing at AHA, which is why, as Chelsie put it, "they look so good." Yes, I also spent a decent amount of time taking video--and stealing follows when Shirley was working with their leads (or vice versa). That's how I got to dance once we had an odd number. (Before the last person came, I was just in the line.)

And that was that. When things ended I went to get malawach for the first time with Ahuva and Alexis, and then I went home. Game over.

Shabbat in the Holy Land

I had this very idealistic idea of Shabbat is Israel before I came here--something that involved Shira Hadasha and lots of spiritual experiences. Now that I'm here, however, I'm realizing just how idealistic that was. Yes, there are a lot of Jews in Israel, which means a lot of synagogues and people celebrating Shabbat. However, you need more than a place to go for services to make Shabbat. Not any place works. It's not fulfilling to walk into an Orthodox synagogue where the ruach is in the front and you're stuck in the women's section in the back--at least, not if you're not used to that kind of thing, and these are the majority of the synagogues in Israel! You also can't walk into a synagogue that does most of the service silently, regardless of its movement affiliation, if the ruach is what makes Shabbat meaningful for you. And of course, even if you find a good minyan--Shira Hadasha, for instance, or the Reconstructionist movement's monthly minyan--this means nothing unless you have a community of friends with which to spend the holiday. Meals, conversations, board games--these are important parts of Shabbat! And I have seen glimpses of all these things in the past few months, the good bits and the bad. Honestly, after all this time, I'm not finding Israel particularly spiritually fulfilling. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough; I don't know. Maybe the spirituality of the Holy Land is confined to the Orthodox majority; I don't know. All I know is that I feel like I'm still searching for something, and I haven't found it yet.

The call

Hebrew University is geographically located in East Jerusalem, though it’s considered West Jerusalem. The French Hill is ambiguous; not considered a Jewish settlement, but not considered West Jerusalem, either. All of this geography is a prelude to a very simple point: from campus and my apartment, I can hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day (or rather, whenever I’m awake and in a place with an open window). And oddly, it’s a very comforting sound. I have no idea what the words mean, but the very sound is a comfort. Even knowing the politics, even knowing that many of the religious people who heed this call wish I wasn’t sitting where I’m sitting, in this land—their land—the sound is a comfort. It’s a reminder that this country is home to devout people of many religions, and that Jews don’t have a monopoly on religion here. It’s like a wish, like it’s saying respect us, too! A constant coming out, perhaps. A five-times-daily Pride, a reminder to everyone that we’re here, respect us, too! It’s an odd comparison, but maybe it explains things a bit.

Classes

You know how when things get busy, all you want to do when you have a spare moment is lie down and do nothing? That's been me lately. Classes started three weeks ago already, and I haven't written a thing. I've been so busy with schoolwork and dealing with idiot banks and phone companies... well, that's another story. Right now I just want to write about The Big Thing, my classes.

The first class I'm taking, of course, is Hebrew. I'm in Ramat Gimel intensive, which means we have an extra half an hour of class each day so that we can get through the entire level and enter Daled next semester. That is, of course, in theory; my teacher is adding in additional classes so we actually finish everything. Read: Instead of having class 8:15-10:15 Monday/Tuesday and 8:30-10:15 and 10:30-12:15 Wednesday, I will soon have an extra 10:30-12:15 class on (some) Mondays. Sound like Ulpan, anyone?

I'm learning how wise the Ulpan program was. We had class from 8:30 until 1:15 (I think--I can't even remember anymore!), which was a lot, but we always had a break after an hour and a half. Now we have two hours straight, and it's really hard to concentrate that long without a break. I also think that my Ulpan teachers are better than my current teachers, even though one of my current teachers is a PhD and the other one wrote our textbook. During Ulpan, our teachers couldn't rely on translating words into English to convey their meaning to us because not everyone spoke English; now it seems like it's all they do. I miss the pictures and the wild gestures and understanding the words for what they are rather than what they mean in English.

Long story short, I'm not enjoying Hebrew, nor do I really feel like I'm learning much. I don't know how we're going to get through the level, nor do I know how I'm going to learn enough to take a class in Hebrew next semester. In theory I'm working my way through Daled on my own; not in theory, I don't have time and will have to see how much cramming I can do during break / whether I can convince the teacher I can work really hard and puppy-dog my advisor into letting me take it even though technically Daled is required. Israel is supposed to be full of loopholes.

My other class on Mondays and Wednesdays is Talmud, which I don't really understand. I was supposed to be in the lower level Talmud class because I've only ever studied Talmud in high school (and that was my first trimester!), but the lower level class was full of Nativ kids who joked throughout the whole first class without the teacher saying anything. I left half-way through; I can't learn anything in an environment like that, let alone Talmud.

Now I'm in the more advanced Talmud class, Critical Readings in the Talmud: The Talmud as a Path to Tikkun. Technically I have the prerequisites--Hebrew level Gimel and a class in classical Jewish literature (Kimelman's Liturgy class), but I feel like everyone else in the class has studied some Talmud before, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be getting out of it. What's the point of Talmud study? What are we supposed to be learning? My tri-chevruta (the product of an odd number of students in the class) is working off of the original Talmud page, which means we're reading and translating the Aramaic and... not much else. We're not really questioning it. Should we be? And even if we do, of what value will our answers be, when there are no real answers to be found?

My internship class, In the Community I: Israel Case Studies - Academic Internship, is also a mixed bag. The main thing that I'm learning from the class itself is that I really don't like psychology; sociology is much more interesting to me. It's mostly a waste of time, a lot of people sharing what's going on with their internships mixed with a bit of organizational psychology from the teacher. The good thing about knowing that I have to write a paper connecting the readings to my internship is that I'm connecting things as I go along; I guess I'm learning something there, but it doesn't merit an hour and a half every week.

My internship itself, however, is wonderful. I'm doing a whole bunch of things for JOH: running the English Speakers Group, helping to write and edit articles for the newsletter, helping to put the donor database in some sort of order, and helping to catalog and order the library. All in eight hours a week. I really like it, though, because it means hanging out at JOH a lot, whether I'm there for my internship or not. It means spending time out of my American study-abroad bubble and with Israelis in an Israeli setting, not just Israelis that were brought in like, "Oh, look, kids--it's Israelis!" I really like being able to meet people and work with people by myself and not just spend time with people the university presents to us. It's not helping my Hebrew much because everyone speaks at least some English, but I get to overhear some stuff in Hebrew, and there's more to a culture than just the language. I'm also beginning to get used to things here, and I'm starting to see how I'm going to get some degree of culture shock when I go back to the States in January.

By far, my favorite class this semester is one that got added on a whim: Nafez Nazzal's The Palestinians: Modern History and Society. Professor Nazzal's a wonderful lecturer. Everything he says is imbued with passion because he's speaking about his people and things that he can see but can't fix. Class is filled with tangents, stories of his life, but every tangent is relevent because his story is the story of the Palestinians. He knows leaders on both sides, has been threatened by leaders on both sides, teaches Palestinian students and Jewish students, gains perspectives from those he teaches... and tries his best to open everyone's eyes. Another student and I are recording his lectures because his wisdom is too important not to be recorded. It's amazing, and I can't believe I almost didn't take it. I know that I'll listen to the recordings again later, and share them with friends if I can, legally. Can I? I feel like everything Professor Nazzal is teaching us is too important not to spread.

Outside of this, I have a bunch of Jewish learning classes. I'm still doing Jeff Seidel, though I'm not really enjoying it and would definitely drop it if it wasn't my only way to earn money in Israel. My old chevruta partner gave birth over Sukkot break, and I don't know yet what to think about my new partner. My roommate Estie has also convinced me to go to the Hillel-Hecht Beit Midrash on Monday nights, which is where my tri-chevruta is going to do our Talmud homework. Wednesdays are the Masorti learning community (read: beit midrash, just not called that for who knows what reason) where Woty and I are learning bits of queer Talmud--see my original questions about Talmud study above.

With all of this, I feel like I have very little time. I'm beginning to miss Sundays, as Shabbat begins earlier than ever right now and my pre-Shabbat Fridays consist of sleeping in, cleaning the apartment, and going downtown to Ahuva's, where I've spent four out of the past six Shabbatot. I really need to learn to walk the 3.3 miles from the Kfar to Emek Refaim, or the 2.67 to Ahuva's. Those are the main places where Cool Shabbat Stuff happens...

Aliyah

I think the weirdest part about Israel, and the thing that sets it apart from other study abroad locations, is the big emphasis on aliyah. Most people who speak fluent English in Israel, which is the vast majority of the people we meet on campus-sponsored outing or events, made aliyah at some point in their lives. Even in the Forum, amidst a very, very Hebrew-heavy "Welcome back to campus sign up for our bank/buy our books/come to our events!!!"--I turned to the older lady next to me to ask what the word for popcorn was in Hebrew (one of the stands is for the cinemateque, and they've been giving out free popcorn for the past two weeks) on Thursday, and she's American! She's from DC and her husband is from Boston. Maybe it's just because I'm in Jerusalem--I've been told that if I wanted real Israeli culture, I should have gone to Haifa--but there are a lot of olim here.

It's not just bumping into them, though, either! From my first weeks here I met people who had either just made aliyah or were about to, and the reaction they got from the other people around us--usually olim themselves--was one big "MAZEL TOV!" Last Monday I "attended" (read: went for an hour and then left due to a headache) an Idan Raichel concert sponsored by MASA, one of the organizations I'm getting money from for study abroad, and in the speeches before some Important Man told us all how he hoped we'd go back to our homes, be advocates for Israel, and then came back in a few years as olim. So then, the whole point of the MASA grant is to make Jewish kids want to move to Israel?

I have to wonder, at this point, how many native Israelis I'd meet and really speak to if I weren't interning at the Jerusalem Open House. I have yet to go to any events outside of the English Speaking Group, but once a week I'm there with Dalit and Or and Yotem, and whoever else happens to be there that day. Since my fellow intern and I have meetings with Dalit at 11:00 and I don't have class until 16:30, I can hang out there for a few hours after the meeting, soak in the atmosphere. If I wasn't there, would I really see anything but olim?

Theater and niggunim

After two and a half months in Israel, I have finally discovered Merkaz Hamagshimim. I've been on their mailing list for a while, but I never managed to get downtown for anything. I guess I'm making up for lost time now, since I'm in the middle of a "three events in a week and a half" spree.

My first trip to the Merkaz was last Thursday for Spontaneous Combustion, a 48-hour theater project for which Lynley was a writer/last-minute actress. I have to say, the plays were a mixed bag. Some were funny, some were a bit pathetic, but that's what you get when people have 48 hours to write and rehearse an 8-minute scene. There were a couple that were really impressive, though. There was one called "Grow Up," written and performed by Daphna Tadmor and Dayna Moses, which was done in monologues, each actress telling multiple girls' stories of childhood. Then there was one written by Anna Gerrard and performed by Micky adiv and Margalit Rosenschein, "Drink to Me," in which a woman meets with the girl she thinks her husband has been cheating with, only to find out that she was his very neglected daughter and she murdered her husband for nothing. Both of those were very well-done, and I can't believe they were produced in 48 hours! Lynley's scene was one of the humorous ones--an actress auditioning to be a teletubby. Okay, so it was very funny; I'm laughing just thinking about it.

I went back to the Merkaz last night for Erev Niggunim, a night of prayer-song-tunes co-sponsored by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. I almost didn't attend because of laundry issues, but I'm really glad I did. The niggunim that were taught were really beautiful, and the first few reminded me a lot of Nehirim's alternative prayer services. A couple of the niggunim were actually nigguns that we've done at Nehirim, which made me really nostalgic. It was really nice. I didn't learn any of the niggunim well enough to be able to repeat them by myself, but I could definitely join in if I heard them again. Also, I really hope the niggun Alanna Sklover wrote spreads; it was beautiful and very much deserves to be spread.

To conclude my spree, I'll be back at the Merkaz on Monday for The Children of Qassam Avenue, a play written and performed by high school students in Sderot. I really don't know much about what's going on there, so I really look forward to hearing their stories. I learned at AHA that plays of this sort can be very powerful, and I can't imagine this one being anything but.

Correction: I did not return to the Merkaz for The Children of Qassam, since the show ended up being by invitation only.

The Bank Saga

Financial situations are tricky when you go abroad. Student visas don't allow for employment, so work-study is out. If your student loan is through a school with semesters and your study abroad program wants you to pay everything up front, the money available to you will be extremely lopsided. And then there are the banks and the credit cards, which charge you extra to withdraw money from ATMs (for banks) or use your card in a currency other than dollars. Capital One gets around the fees when you're looking to use a credit card, but unless you're lucky enough to have a bank without an external ATM charge (or you think to change banks to one before you go abroad!) you're sort of stuck when it comes to banks.

I was not one of the smart ones. I did not change banks before I left for Israel, and my bank is one of the worst for charges--$5 for every non-Bank of America ATM withdrawal plus a percentage of the withdrawal for being in a foreign currency. When you're living on $500 a month, that actually means something.

I thought I'd found a solution. I thought I could just open an Israeli bank account, withdraw a ton of money at once from Bank of America, and put it in the Israeli account before I became a pickpocket's jackpot. It should work, right? This is what I thought on my second day in Israel, when I was still jetlaged and clearly not thinking.

Opening a bank account in a foreign country means trusting the bank completely. You sign a bunch of forms without being able to read them and hope that your friendly neighborhood banker is telling you everything you need to know. Something seems weird? Oh, that must just be how it works in this country.

So I opened an account with Discount Bank on the second day of orientation and was told to come back in a week to get my ATM card. I come back and it's not there yet--come back in a few more days, they say. So I come back, get the (activated) card, and am told to come back tomorrow to get my "secret code," as they say here (which, btw, you don't get to change). This is weird, but okay. So I come back, get my PIN and try the card. It doesn't work. The bank worker doesn't understand what I mean, but she does manage to help me fill out the paper deposit envelope so I can put my first ever 200NIS into my brand-new bank account.

I leave and walk back to the Student Village. My phone rings; I'd dropped my wallet at the bank and I had to go pick it up. When I got there, I discovered Warning Sign #1 (which I promptly ignored and chalked up to "this is how it is in Israel"): they had given me one person's ATM card and another person's PIN. So she helped me change that deposit envelope to my account number and told me, "Come back in a week and we'll have your card." One week later, I'm told that I'll get the card in the mail.

At this point I had a whole host of other problems--including an inability to find the mailboxes and the discovery that I was given the wrong mailbox key (thus confirming my theory of "this is how it is in Israel")--which delayed this whole process. At some point, I received an ATM card in the mail. During the first week of break--now the week before Yom Kippur--I went down to the branch in Ramot Eshkol to get my card activated. Once again I tried to use the card and it wouldn't work. The bank worker wouldn't believe me and made me show her, and the ATM ate my card (because apparently that's what the machines do here if you type in the wrong PIN more than three times in a row). Turns out that while this was my card and was my PIN, it was my original card and PIN, the ones that had been cancelled when I had received that other person's card and PIN. "You'll get your new card in the mail shortly," she said. ''And I ordered you a new PIN before we figured this out, so you'll get two PINs. Just try them both and one will be right."

Okay, now this is ridiculous. It's been two months and I still can't get my money from an ATM--which is important because, as I discovered these past couple weeks, while there are many branches of the bank, not so many of them actually contain tellers. (This is doubly important during Sukkot, when the banks are only open for half a day.) The few times I could actually get someone to talk to me, they told me that they couldn't help me; I had to go back to the branch that issued the card. Well, which one? The one on campus where I opened the account, or the one in Ramat Eshkol with actual tellers?

Now classes have started, which means I'm back on campus and that original branch on campus is once again accessible. "Are you sure it's not in your mailbox?" the woman kept asking me when I told her it's been two and a half months already and I have no card. "Are you sure." YES. "Okay, I've ordered you a new card. I'll call you at the end of the week."

Is it just me, or have we come full-circle here? Honestly, I'm about ready to strangle someone. At this point all my money is in that account, and I can't get to it. I'm ready to just close the account and forget about it, but then what would I do with all that money? I'm not ready to be a walking jackpot, and there have been break-ins at the dorms so I can't even hide it somewhere in my room.

Lesson learned: if you don't know the language or the culture, don't open a bank account. Period. It's not worth the risk.

There will be another post about classes once I've had more than two of them.

The art of toveling

Today I discovered the art of toveling. Or rather, my roommate needed to tovel her utensils, so I figured I might as well do mine too. Why not? I'm in religious housing, after all. Besides, I never managed to ask whether it was a problem with the sponges if I didn't.

It's actually a beautiful ritual. The point of kashrut is that eating is an act of worship, one of many that we compare to worship in the Temple. Thus, we treat dishware the way we would have treated articles of sacrafice preparation in the Temple times: we dunk them in the mikveh to make them holy. It's not something that I would particularly care about normally--I don't pay attention to the kashrut of dishware, period, nor do I really concentrate on the meaning of what I eat--but that doesn't mean it isn't a beautiful analogy.

Estie and I took the trip to the mikveh this afternoon. It was a nice walk, since it's actually not overly hot in Jerusalem for once. And there are so many mikvehs here! The shul we went to--right down the street from Kfar HaStudentim--had three of them: one for men, one for women, and one for dishes. (Estie said that at her shul in America they only have one that's used for all three purposes.) The one for dishes is a little structure in the middle of a courtyard, with two steps leading up to it and a metal lid. It wasn't very deep, but sitting on the side and looking into it reminded me of our foremothers drawing water from their wells. In a way, we were drawing water from this mikveh, as holy water dripped off our utensils and pots when we brought them out of the mikveh.

The process is simple. Open the lid, say the blessing, submerse the spoon/fork/pot/whatever into the water, let go for a second, take it out. Repeat until everything is done. Then you close the lid, gather your dishes, and leave. That's it. And yet, walking away in the sun with a plastic bag full of toveled items felt really, really nice--even if I know that the feeling will completely the first time I go to make pasta and burn myself on that newly holy pot. Oh well.

Gateways

Sukkot in Israel is not just a festival of sitting in booths outside but an all-out break. Banks are only open half the day, schools (and JOH) are closed, and there are festivals all over the place. One particular festival that caught my eye was the Gateways Festival, a series of shiurim held over the course of two days. I ended up attending only four sessions during my time there, partly because of my all-nighter at Ahuva's, but they were generally good.

The first session I attended on Wednesday, "Mystery of Mikveh" led by Rabbi Miriam C. Berkowitz, was a bit of a let-down. It was just a powerpoint overview of the concept--what it is, who uses it, etc. I knew this stuff already. I mean, I've been to a mikveh before. I've read a little bit about it for class. Been there, done that.

My next session--Rabbi James-Jacobson Maisels's "The Meaning of Forgiveness"--was much better. I went to it thinking it was about seeking forgiveness, but it was really about giving it. I took a lot away from it, the biggest being that if you remain angry at a person, the pain they caused you once just keeps repeating itself over and over and over until you let go of that anger. It sounds pretty simple, but it's a really big realization for someone who's stuck in the cycle. New year's resolution, perhaps?

The sessions I went to on Thursday were more fun and less serious. The first session was "Creative Connections to Sukkot and Self" run by Yael Unterman and Ilene Prusher. Basically, creative writing in which we pretended to be a sukkah--such as this one, where I write as the sukkah outside Village Green:

There are so many different people in me. In and out, in and out, all kinds of people. Haredi men, with their long beards and dark suits. Young men and women, tourists, with their tank tops and shorts and cameras. All come bearing trays of food. Pizza. Quiche. Chocolate cake. All kinds of food for all kinds of people. Some sit down quickly, eat, leave. Maybe they bentch. Others stay, talk, dwell in me. Maybe they come in a group, maybe they come alone. Some meet old acquaintances. I recognize you, they say. Were you at Mati’s sukkah two years ago? Yes, I was! I can’t believe you remember me.

Three girls sit at the next table. Who are they? They’re not daitim. They’re not tourists. There’s no Hebrew in their conversation. Americans. “This is the first time I’ve eaten in a sukkah this year,” one of them says. I’m her first. I’m many people’s first, over the course of these seven days.

The girls leave, and their trays remain on the table. What are they? Just one of many. In and out, in and out, leaving no trace but an empty tray. Then even those disappear, and new people arrive.

It was really fun. Yael teaches a creative writing on the parsha class at Pardes on Sundays, but I can't go to it because I don't really have 800 NIS to spare. It's sad, but I gave her my email address so she can tell me when she does random workshops like the one at Gateways. Sigh. I forgot how good writing feels, and how I can't do it without prompting but once I'm given something to go on... it goes.

My last session was "Song and Soul" run by Dr. Elie Holzer. It was beautiful right from the beginning, which meant I had to capture it. (Thank goodness for my voice recorder!) I have two clips to share here which basically sum up the entire session. Blogspot won't let me upload mp3s, so they're in video form with random pictures. Just ignore Garfield there, okay?

First, the meditation:

This was only done once, but it was enough. I'm not a big fan of meditation (I left the forgiveness session before the meditation bit), but this was extremely calming. It was followed by a bit of text study out of Heschel's Man's Quest for G-d and then a bunch of prayer-songs such as this:

My voice recorder is not quite so wonderful at capturing music, which is sad. It was beautiful. It also made me wish I had gotten up for the 10:00 Musical Hallel session, but oh well. Nothing I could do about that.

I had intended to go to one more session--A Taste of Gan Eden--but a need for food and quiet down-time one out. Instead, I discovered tuna pizza (much better than it sounds) and returned to the festival in time for "Jammin in Da Sukkah," (acapella) which I found a bit too quiet for my taste. Again, oh well. I got to play with a kitty in the sukkah, and it delayed doing my laundry that much longer.

And... that was that! Really, there enough jammed into one wonderful week that I think one more even would have driven me overboard. Now for a nice, quiet week of emails and scholarship essays...

Simchat Torah

A few weeks ago, Woty invited me to an event on Facebook, “Simchat Torah in Netanya.” At the time, I thought it would be perfect. I’d get off the French Hill for the holiday (because I have a mostly unfounded dislike of spending Shabbat in the dorms) and I’d get to travel to a different place for the holiday. Do the non-tourist touristy thing, experience the holiday as it’s done in non-Jerusalem Israel. I’m still glad I came, but I have to say that I really wouldn’t have minded staying home. I did a little too much moving around this Sukkot.

The trip was open to “15 CYers and Shechterers and Kedemers and their friends,” but Abigail and I were the only people not from the Conservative Yeshiva, which was sort of weird. (On a side note: I spent Yom Kippur with a bunch of people from Pardes, Shabbat of Sukkot with a bunch of people from HUC, and now Simchat Torah with people from CY; how is this happening?) Congregation Bet Israel in Netanya, as we discovered, is sort of like the Florida of Israel—it’s right on the coast and mostly populated by older, grandparently-people. Abigail and I stayed with a woman named Ruth, and she was really nice. I wish we had gotten to talk to her more, but we spent most of our time either at synagogue or asleep.

Services themselves were… interesting. Long, The rabbi said multiple times that if anyone needed to put a Torah down, they should hand it to one of the “young people” because “that’s what they’re here for.” Which… is pretty true. Very few of the congregants could hold or dance with a Torah. I almost feel, though, that if the congregation only had one Torah instead of five, the Rabbi could have done it all by himself. He was so full of energy; the only rabbi I’ve ever seen with that much energy was (ex-)Rabbi Stein. I heard one congregant make a comment that “he’s not a rabbi, he’s a shaman! He’s just putting on a show,” which is actually a pretty accurate description (the show part, not the shaman part). On Friday night the dancing concluded with the rabbi and a little boy (one of, like, four kids there) on a table carried by a bunch of students. When he took the Torah out of the ark again to read it, he did the blessings while on a student’s shoulder, and I was sure that all three of them—the rabbi, the student, and the Torah—were all going to drop and we would have to fast. This morning it was the limbo and dress-up hats. It was a little bit too crazy for my tastes.

In a way, I wish that I had stayed in Jerusalem for Simchat Torah. There would have been a lot of people dancing with the Torahs, not just a few students—and as the hakafot went on, the number of students dancing really dwindled. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten to hold a Torah, but maybe there would have been enough energy to keep me from being exhausted, and if there wasn’t I could collapse in my own bed. Okay, so maybe I lied up there. But hey, I went to Natanya. I met a few people, had some good conversation, and danced with a Torah. I’ll just have to come back and spend Simchat Torah in Jerusalem sometime. Maybe after I get done with all this school stuff I’ll come back to Israel and do research on the holidays in Israel.

A very queer Sukkot

My facebook status a while ago proclaimed that I was going to have a busy Sukkot, but I really had no idea just how busy it was going to be. I had no idea how queer it was going to be.

Sukkot started off with Shabbat at Ahuva's, which was pleasant but fairly unremarkable. Sunday was also fairly unremarkable; I started my internship at JOH, but all I did was meet with my boss, Dalit, and do some brainstorming. The excitement really started on Monday, and it really hasn't stopped since.

I've been told that there's very little gay stuff in Jerusalem. There's Jerusalem Open House, of course, and a few gay-friendly cafes, but there's pretty much no nightlife--with one exception. On Mondays, Hakatze has a gay night complete with drag queens. Since we are both on Sukkot break right now, Ahuva and I decided to check it out. I forgot to ask the people at JOH what time things start there, so we went by the website: the show starts at 22:30. Yeah, right. Well, we got there at 10:30, or rather a bit before because Ahuva wanted to make sure we got good seats. The place was empty. We waited a while, and the place was still empty. We knew we were in the right place--our entrance receipts said Hatatze--but there was just no one there. Finally I went up to ask the bartender what was going on. Yes, it was drag night. No, she doesn't know what time the show is gonna start. "It's drag queens," she said. "You never know with drag queens." Apparently, all the Israelis knew this already. They started trickling in around 11:15; the show didn't actually start until 12:30.

It was worth the wait, especially since this is the first time I've seen drag outside of Pride events. I took some videos of the performance, but they're currently not working. It's very sad, especially because I can't really describe it in words. It was mostly in Hebrew, but a lot of the songs were in English and the drag queen MC would periodically joke with the audience in English. There was also a drag king there, but I wasn't so impressed with him. Overall, though, it was good. They took a big break in the middle, during which Ahuva and I attempted to swing dance to music that very obviously not created for that purpose. We are also both very out of practice, so it was more funny than anything else. And a nice change from standing on a chair for forty-five minutes, of course.

We left at 2:30 and went back to Ahuva's apartment, where I promptly collapsed. (I'd expected this and arranged to stay with her overnight--the buses don't run that late.) I was up again around 7:00 because of the sun and noise from the construction, read a bit, and then fell back asleep. Next thing I knew it was 14:52 and I'd missed a call from Jessica about our JOH event.

That night was our second JOH event, a showing of The Bubble. We (Ahuva, Alexis, and I) arrived at JOH at 19:30, at which point I spent an hour trying to locate various pieces of technology and convince the movie to play. It mostly failed since Yotem told me to play the movie from my computer, which Dell apparently didn't fix. We finally got it going with a JOH DVD player--which we really should have tried in the first place.

That is one powerful movie. I mean, I knew it was. We watched it at Brandeis, but I still wasn't prepared for the ending. I don't think anyone was. We had some pretty intense discussion afterwards about it, which was nice. Then, as I was cleaning up (around 22:30), Ahuva asked those people who remained to relocate to her apartment and eat birthday cake--because she'd been eating cake nonstop since Friday and still hadn't finished it. So we (Ahuva, Alexis, Devorah, Lynley, and I) bought a carton of ice cream and went back to Ahuva's. And... never left. We were just talking, telling funny stories, and it was fun. We completely lost track of time. Alexis left around 4, but by that point Lynley, Devorah and I figured that we might as well wait another two hours and take the bus back to campus. So... we did. Just stayed there talking from 23:00 to 6:00. And then it was all over. I went back to campus, went to bed, and got right back up again for the Gateways festival.

(To be continued)

Village Green

Yesterday I discovered a really cool restaurant: Village Green. Really, this place is cool because it reminds me a bit of the US. While I can easily find falafel and pizza and pasta places in Jerusalem, I've been mourning the lack of pie and muffins in my life. They just don't seem to exist in most places (other than a 32NIS piece of pie at a couple places - way too expensive!), and it's sad. I love pie, and I mill my normal Brandeis breakfast of yogurt and a carrot or corn muffin. I walked into Village Green yesterday to give them a flyer for our next JOH event and there they were, among other things, right near the register: carrot muffins and apple pie. Pie! Muffins! And cheesecake (which is a pie), and a bunch of other kinds of muffins. Heaven. Pie and muffin heaven.

I will gladly pay 18NIS for a piece of cheesecake. I miss it that much.

Yom Kippur

I spent Yom Kippur 5770 in downtown Jerusalem with my friend Jessica from JOH, and I can honestly say I enjoyed it. I don't know how much repenting I really did, but I love a lot of the Yom Kippur liturgy and it was a really easy fast. I drink for health reasons, but I wasn't hungry at all.

On Sunday afternoon Jessica and I went to Alanna and Rebecca's house for our pre-Shabbat meal, as did Woty (also from JOH) and a girl named Julia (I think) from the Conservative Yeshiva. The food was wonderful--lentil soup, sweet potato lasagna, baked potatoes, broccoli, and honey cake--and the company was even better.

After our meal, we all headed down to services at Kedem--where, to my great surprise, Leora Perkins (from Brandeis) led services! I didn't even know she was in Israel, and apparently she didn't know I was here either, despite the fact that she's living with Noam and Emily Jaeger. Anyway, she led services, and there was a lot of mingling afterwards. Yom Kippur in Jerusalem is amazing; everything shuts down and people walk in the streets because the only cars are police/army/emergency. Of course, I knew this from my time here in high school, but I don't remember people congregating in the streets. It was like one big party (without the music or dancing), or oneg Shabbat at the biggest outdoor synagogue in the world (without the food, of course). Emek Refaim, the street which houses Kedem and Shira Hadasha and probably about a million other services, was full of people standing around talking, and we couldn't walk more than five steps without bumping into someone Jessica knew. The intersection of Ein Gedi and Derek Chevron (another really big street) was the same way.

On Monday we (Jessica and I) went to two different minyans: Mayanot in the morning and Kedem in the evening. It's remarkable how different these two places felt, even though they're both lay-led traditional egalitarian minyanim that meet in school buildings. Kedem has the feel of a Hillel in that (as far as I saw) it's populated entirely by students in their twenties, whereas Mayanot is a congregation of people at all ages--from people who are definitely someone's grandparent to the little kids playing Twister outside. I definitely preferred Mayanot to Kedem. I think there's something special about davening with people from all generations. It gives it a feeling of connection with the whole Jewish people--many of whom are praying these same prayers at this same time in their own synagogues and time zones--and not just with Kids (Students) Like Me. It's a nice feeling, as is davening without a big, solid curtain separating me from the ruach.

Between services we went back to Jessica's and slept, and after Yom Kippur ended--around 18:00, since we changed our clocks on Saturday night--we went to the house of one of Jessica's friends from Pardes for a break fast breakfast. I like that idea; I may very well steal it. And btw, Miriam Farber (a Brandeis alum and a Pardes student) makes the best cinnamon rolls ever.

One thing that I forgot to mention is that Jessica's roommate has a really cute hamster named Rimon, and now I really wanna get a hamster. Only problem is that I don't know what I'd do with him when I go on vacation or when I leave at the end of the year... not to mention that I don't know whether they're even allowed!

A bit of politics

I'm not so sure that I want to get into politics here, but I feel like it's necessary now. I have now been to/through three "settlements" in the West Bank: Me'or Modi'im, Chevron, and the random settlement that our tour guide for the Chevron trip was from (the "through" it the above sentence, as we drove through it on our way back to Jerusalem). I didn't even realize that Me'or Modi'im was beyond the green line until we were coming back and passed through the checkpoint--which, by the way, was nothing. I really don't understand it. If all of this land is Israel, why can't Jews form communities on land that is otherwise uninhabited, no matter where in Israel it is? Why can't Arabs? If Chevron is a part of Israel, why can't Israeli citizens who just happen to be Jews move there if there are houses and/or land for sale? I'm not looking to start a discussion on either side right now; I am just expressing some confusion. I hope to form my own opinions based on my time here before anyone tries to convince me of anything.

That said, this article bothers me. Take a look:

Two policeman and two Muslim worshippers were lightly injured in riots which erupted Sunday morning at the Temple Mount holy site in Jerusalem.

The incident began when a group of tourists entered the Temple Mount compound accompanied by a police force. At a certain stage, some 150 worshippers started gathering around them and calling out towards them.

Some of the worshippers began throwing stones at the group. The police force fired stun grenades in an attempt to gain control of the riot. Two police officers were lightly injured by stones and received medical treatment on the site. They were later evacuated to the Shaare Zedek and Hadassah Ein Kerem hospitals in the capital.

Two worshippers were lightly hurt by the grenades and were evacuated to the al-Maqasid Hospital in east Jerusalem. According to Palestinian sources, 13 people were hurt after inhaling tear gas. Adult worshippers attempted to calm things down, while the group of tourists was removed from the site.

Were the tourists really allowed on the Temple Mount? If not, why were they there? Why were they accompanied by police? What happened before the violence broke out?

And then there's this:

The defense establishment has declared a heightened state of alert across the country ahead of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. On Saturday evening, a closure was imposed on the West Bank until Monday at midnight. Residents will only be allowed to cross into Israel in humanitarian cases.....

Vehicles will not be allowed to pass from east Jerusalem to the western part of the city in order to minimize the friction between Jews and Arabs.

I do have to wonder what time this went into effect last night, since we passed through the checkpoint around 20:30 last night with no line, no hold-up. But what in the world? How is this okay? What's happened in the past that's necessitating this? Did anything happen, or is this another example of Israel not really being one land one country after all?

Me'or Modi'im

I spent this Shabbat at Moshav Me'or Modi'im with Devorah and Abigail from JOH. (Well, Devorah's also a Hebrew University student, but whatever--the common link between the three of us is JOH.) We were hosted by Rabbi and Rebbitzen Trugman, who have open home hospitality Shabbats twice a month. Estie, my roommate, was given a flyer about it a while ago, and I thought it would be cool.

Me'or Modi'im is also known as the Carlebach moshav, since it was founded by Rav Shlomo Carlebach and his followers. I think this is another situation like Kibbutz Hannaton, though - they call it a moshav, but it's really (according to Wikipedia and what I saw of it) a community settlement. And that's what it is: a community of people who believe in and live by the teachings of Rav Shlomo Carlebach--or "Rav Shlomo," as they call him, because he is The All-Important Rabbi and doesn't need a last name (or they just knew him--one or the other).

It was a very pleasant, quiet Shabbat. We started out with singing niggunim before Shabbat even started. Services were not as wonderful as I'd expected, but egalitarian me isn't a fan of synagogues where the women's section is in the back to begin with, and all the ruach was up front with the guys. That's okay, though. It just means I didn't rush to get up for Shacharit this morning, nor did I go to mincha or ma'ariv.

Friday night Devorah, Abigail, and I took our sleeping bags outside to the porch, and it was really wonderful. Okay, so maybe it was a little bit hot in the sleeping bag, but it would have been worse inside and the air was so good out there. Everyone else was inside, so it felt like we were little girls having a sleepover. It was nice. We spent this afternoon on the porch, too, reading and playing bananagrams and rummy cube.

Once again, the best part was seuda shlishit. The food was wonderful, and we spent a lot of time singing--songs and nigguns with really upbeat melodies. Everyone was really into it, too, which is a nice change from what I'm used to from AHA. I'm learning the traditional Shabbat zimrot, so maybe I'll actually be able to join in when I get back to Brandeis.

The whole Shabbat was just so relaxing and pleasant. The rebbitzen told me to come again sometime, and I think I will. I liked it.

The end - #1

Yesterday was the last day of summer ulpan at Hebrew University. It's hard to believe I have three whole weeks off already before the regular university semester starts. It went so fast! I expected it to be torture because I'm really bad at languages, but it really wasn't. It was boring at times because I knew the grammar already, but my teachers--especially אירה--did a really good job of keeping it interesting. I feel a lot more comfortable with Hebrew now, and as much as I wish I could have moved up to Gimmel, it's probably a good thing I didn't. HU ulpan is "learning Hebrew in Hebrew," and I think I was in the perfect level for adjusting to this. It was overwhelming at Brandeis, for all of the couple weeks that I was in 40 level Hebrew, and I think I would have had the same problem here if I was in a higher level.

It's amazing how much I've improved. It's still hard for me to speak, but if people are talking slowly enough I can definitely comprehend conversations with words I know. There was also a rather amusing incident in the Old City last week in which someone asked me in English if I was looking for a hostel and I answered "לא"--"no"--in Hebrew without even thinking. It's a small phrase--just one word--but the man's reaction ("Oh, you speak Hebrew!") was priceless. No, I'm not an American tourist who can be taken advantage of. Yes, I'm an American, but I'm here for the year and I'm learning. This is after two months; where will I be after a year?

Yesterday was also my last day of feeding cats before class. This week I realized that there's no predicting my audience. I'm pleased to say that they recognize me now and come running when they see me--even before I sit down if the law librarians haven't fed them already--but other than that, it varies. On Tuesday I had 14 at once, and there was enough turnover that I don't know how many I fed. On Wednesday there were only 8, but a grey cat curled up in my lap. I ended up being late to class, but I didn't care. The only thing that would have made me move would have been if someone had yelled "Fire!" and then I would have taken the kitty with me. Usually the cats get along, but there was a day this week when they started howling at each other. Not hissing, howling. What in the world does that mean? I've never seen it before.

I can't say goodbye to my cats now. I know we're on break, but I'm going to continue to go up and feed the cats on weekdays, at least until I see that the librarians are getting there first. They know me. They want my food. Who am I to withhold it? Estie pointed out that I won't always be here, but I don't want to think about that. January--and my winter break in the States--is a long time away.