A note on language

An article in the NYT, "Modern Love: Once Political, Now Just Practical," has me thinking a bit about language, especially as I recently met a queer woman who is recently married and uses the word "wife." I really don't like the word "wife." I don't know why, exactly, but it sounds ugly. Maybe it's the historical background that this article talks about; I don't know.

Yet, our English words of "husband" and "wife" are far better than the Hebrew. Husband is בַּעַל - also the word for "owner." Wife is אִשָּׁה - also the word for "woman." A husband is the owner of his אשתו, his woman? That just reeks. And while I've never seen so many pregnent women in one place as I have since coming to Jerusalem, I have to wonder about these words in a time where women are enlisted in the army just like men are, if their mandatory service time is shorter (two for women, three for men). There aren't passive women here who are under the thumbs of their husbands. I can't imagine a woman coming back from service in the army only to become submissive to her husband.

I need to ask an Israeli about this. Is there, or has there been, a debate around this terminology? Are there people who use different words, like people in the US?

Somehow, though, I like the word אִשָּׁה better for a gay marriage. Maybe because there's no more connotation of possession than there would be if you said "my girlfriend."

כדורגל

Last night, Jeff Seidel took us to Teddy Stadium to see a soccer game between Beitar Jerusalem and HaPoel Tel Aviv. Soccer in Israel is intense. There were seats in the stadium, but nobody sat; everybody stood. The stadium was a sea of yellow (Beitar's color) with a small section of red (HaPoel's color). The fans screamed and cheered throughout the whole game. I took a few videos, but it was so loud that everything sounds like static. Think the Quidditch world cup from Harry Potter, only in a smaller stadium. That was the crowd at Teddy Stadium last night.

What surprises me is that team fan bases aren't based on geography. Some cities have multiple teams, and of these teams there are seven named HaPoel and five named Maccabi. An Israeli who went with us yesterday said that soccer in Israel isn't just a sport, it's politics. The match we saw was Beitar Jerusalem, a extremely right-wing team, vs. HaPoel Tel Aviv, a left-wing team. I was very surprised by the racism in the stadium. My attempt at video didn't work so well, but YouTube has a very clear one:

What are they saying? According to Shaga Elam, the lyrics are as follows:

What's Salim doing here? Don't you know?

What's going on here I ask?

Everywhere I hear that this is the land of Israel

Toama, this is the land of Israel

This is the land of Israel, Toama

This is the Jewish State

I hate you Salim Toama!

I hate all Arabs!

I am honestly appaled. Salim Toama used to be a member of HaPoel Tel Aviv; this chant is targeted straight at him. No wonder the Palestinians want the Jews gone, if this is how Israelis treat them! I know it's just a small fraction of the Israeli population, but sometimes it's the small fractions that make the most noise and cause the most damage. The mere fact that these people get away with such a chant is appaling. Is the government showing its approval through its silence?

Shabbat in Jerusalem

When I describe BUCO to people, I say that it's like Shira Hadasha without the mechitza. I am proud to say that I attended services at Shira Hadasha last night, and it really is an accurate analogy. It was a wonderful service; I wish I lived downtown so Shira Hadasha could be my regular minyan.

I'm spending Shabbat with Ahuva. Last night we went to services and dinner at the house of one of her friends from HUC, and then we came back and collapsed. Well, Ahuva and I both collapsed--as soon as Mr. FuzzFuzz (Ahuva's cat) decided to give up his half of the couch, I was out. Actually, he never did give it up - Ahuva's friend Alexis had to move him.

The annoying thing about Jerusalem is that the busses stop running between 15:00 and 17:00 on Fridays and don't start running again until an hour after the end of Shabbat, thus why I'm on Ahuva's couch. In theory I could take a taxi back to campus, but I'm a cheapy who doesn't currently have the money for such things. We've had a really lazy day, lots of sleeping and reading and talking. The sun's going down; the first bus reaches here in an hour and a half.

I'm currently reading Ahuva's senior thesis, which is entitled "Concessions, or the Relationship between Sexuality and the Pursuit of Holiness: a Comparative Exploration of Virginity, Marriage, and Contraception in Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism." I'm really enjoying it, and not just because it's an interesting topic. So far my only class here has been ulpan, and that's not academic in the sense of thinking and analyzing and the passage of knowledge from one person (or persons) to another. I'm realizing how much I miss such things now. I guess this is more proof that I'm going into the right field after college--what is sociology if not the making and passing of knowledge?

Spirituality

I have taken on a new morning spiritual practice: the daily feeding of the strays. I've noticed people feeding the cats in the afternoon--Mrs. Law Librarian seemed pretty set up the other day--but I haven't seen anyone feeding them in the morning. Since I tend to get to campus about ten minutes early, I bought a small box of cat food and started feeding the cats who live in the Humanities Building courtyard. They seem to really appreciate it.

The reason I call this a spiritual practice is how calming the process is for me. It doesn't involve much, just throwing some handfuls of dry cat food on the ground. Cats come running; I put more food in front of the new cats, and then just sit down and watch. I don't do anything, just watch, and it's very calming. Of course, Naftali wants to do more than just eat and watch others eat; twice now he's climbed into my lap and tried to stick his head in the box of cat food. He's very disappointed when I have to force him off to go to class. The rest, though, just eat. I like it. I don't necessarily need to pet the cats; just having them around me, happy, is an amazing experience.

Beer

Maybe I'm just sheltered, but beer is a much bigger thing here than anywhere I've ever been. The first sentence on the Student Resources page of Hebrew University's overseas website starts with "There's nothing like a beer after a long day of studying." At the lecture on Sunday night, the main rabbi of the JSSC asked if anyone wanted a beer. Last night I sat down in a park and a guy sat down next to me with a beer (and offered me one). I went to a social event at the Jerusalem Open House, and it was a "beer and pizza" night. I got on the bus to go home and there were two guys in the next row with beers. Today I went to a lunch & learn at Hebrew University's synagogue, and the rabbi announced that there were "cold beers in the fridge if anyone wants." JSSC has a Shabbaton this weekend, too, that's advertised as rafting/zip-lining/all-you-can-drink. Even though I'd like to go rafting, I'm skipping the Shabbaton because of that last part--I'm not ready to be stuck in a hostel with a bunch of drunk college students for Shabbat. Somehow, I've managed to avoid doing that so far, even after two years at Brandeis.

I know that the legal drinking age is 18 here, but I still can't believe how visible things are. It seems like everywhere I turn there's someone drinking and/or offering beer. Is it like this in the US, too, once you're 21? Are there rabbis offering beer?

Jeff Seidel Student Center

There's this thing here called the Jeff Seidel Student Center. I'd like to compare it to Chabad; it's a religious family who invites students into their house for Shabbat and Jewish learning-type things. Only, the family's not Chabad, and the house is more than a house - it's a student center with (supposedly) wireless and computers and a tv and free laundry. They also have this program, $$$ for Learning, where you attend a weekly lecture followed by chevruta learning every Sunday night and earn $60 a month, $100 a month if you also attend lectures at a yeshiva. Doing the math, that's $7.50 an hour, but I don't think I would do it if I wasn't interested in the learning in the first place.

I went to the student center for the first time tonight, mostly for the promise of free Chinese food. The Chinese was fairly awful--okay, really awful--but the lecture was interesting. A Rabbi Friedman talked about the different levels of pleasure--physical, love, meaning, and spiritual. It actually made me think; he said that you should be able to give up one for the next, though you don't necessarily have to. Would one really give up love for spiritual fulfillment? Not infatuation--he talked about the counterfit pleasures on each level (drugs for physical, infatuation for love, looking good but not thinking/acting good for meaning)--but pure love, like mother for child. Is spirituality inherently higher than love, or is this a religious belief? How inherent are our religious beliefs?

I had a good time tonight. I did get the talk about the invalidity of my conversion, and Tzipora (the head of the program for women) did say some obviously biased things about Conservative and Reform Judaism, but I can either keep my mouth shut about certain things or try to refute them when they're too outrageous. (There are more women graduating from Conservative rabbinical school because men no longer feel it's their place, they need to find something different? BS.) Overall, though, I think it will be good. I'm glad; I feel like this kind of learning is a big part of the Israeli experience--or at least, the religious Israeli experince--and I'm glad to be able to take part in it.

Shabbat

This weekend I had my first real Shabbat in Jerusalem. Last weekend was a bit of a let-down--on Friday night we students davened with a random group at the Regency Hotel who turned out to be some branch of Sephardim that mumble through everything, and then I slept through Saturday morning. This weekend was better. I moved into religious housing for the Shabbat aspect, but it turns out that my roommates either go home or visit family for Shabbat, so I had the apartment to myself. Friday night and Saturday morning I attended Ramat Gan, a Masorti (Conservative) synagogue just five minutes away from Kfar Studentim. I was really surprised to find a Masorti synagogue so close; Orthodox synagogues abound in Jerusalem, but Masorti synagogues are harder to find.

Ramat Gan definitely has an older population, but the congregants are friendly. I met multiple people who had ties to Brandeis, and others who were just curious about what I was studying. I find some comfort in the fact that I was able to understand when the gabbai called out page numbers in Hebrew, even though that's simple vocabulary--Level Alef (1)--and they weren't my page numbers anyway since I was davening out of my Sim Shalom. The d'var Torah was entirely in Hebrew, so I didn't catch much of it--he was talking about democracy and connecting it to the parsha somehow. Maybe I would have understood more had I read the parsha, but I don't know. I think the man who gave the d'var was American; he definitely didn't have an Israeli accent, and I could understand him better than I can understand Israelis. He spoke slower, too. But what good is my Hebrew if I can't understand it when Israelis speak?

I have to go back to class now. Break is over.

Cat food

Today I followed a string of meows and stumbled upon cat feeding ground. There I found a woman surrounded by what seemed like every cat on campus. The woman, I discovered, is a law librarian who took over the feeding while her friend was away. The cats are taken care of after all; my skinny cat even has a name already, Neftali (which is much better than calling her Bone(s)). Even with the food she brought, though, many of the cats didn't get to eat anything, and those who did eat did so by pushing each other out of the way. None of the cats ate much, but I could tell how glad they were to get what they did.

I think that I'm going to buy a box of cat food next time I go to the grocery store. It doesn't cost that much--10 NIS--and maybe it'll make some of these cats trust me a bit more.

More adventures with Egged

Tonight I went to visit Ahuva and her friend Alexis. Alexis is also a student at Hebrew University, so I just rode the bus home with her. We had a nice night (dinner and grocery shopping). I am now the proud owner of two bottles of shampoo.

And the night ends. Alexis took me to the bus stop for the 30, the bus she takes to campus every morning. After waiting for 35 minutes, we discovered that this particular bus stopped running at 20:00, and it's now 21:50. Okay. The 19 stops just down the street. Except... there's construction in Jerusalem, so all of these streets are one-way. We essentially wandered from the YMCA to the Old City without finding a stop headed in the right direction. Everywhere we turned there was a 19 headed away from campus, but I didn't want to repeat Tuesday's experience without knowing whether the bus would still run to take me back. It was a bit of a nightmare.

I ended up taking a taxi back, and getting ripped off while I was at it. In Israel you agree on a price before you get in the taxi--in this case, 30 NIS. Only, the taxi driver changed it to 40 NIS right after we left, and I'm exhausted enough that I didn't think to argue and/or find another cab. So I got ripped off. I think I've learned for next time. Only next time, I hope I won't have to take a taxi.

Let me say this once and for all: I HATE YOU, EGGED.

(I think if some third party rode the buses around and created a map of the system, that person would make a whole lot of money...)

Movement

The first question in a series of yes/no questions on the Hebrew University housing application is "Do you want to live in a shomer Shabbat apartment?" I left the question blank; I am not typically shomer Shabbat, but I wanted to live with other religious students. As a result, the school put me in non-religious housing. My first Shabbat came and went without even feeling like Shabbat. I slept in on Saturday morning and then spent the day on my computer. Friday night meant very little to me--we went to services, but with a minyan which mumbles everything. I know myself. If I'm not with other religious people, I'll ignore everything. There's no reason to do that while I'm living in Jerusalem. So I switched. My new roommates seem nice--a girl from CT named Esti and an Israel whose name I have yet to learn. I like the feeling of sleeping on sheets rather than having a sleeping bag spread over a bed as I had before I moved. The experience will be interesting, I think. Esti said she'd teach me enough about keeping a kosher kitchen that I won't mess up.

My room also has an excellent view. Take a look at this:

(It's even cooler if you click it.)

A move that happened, and another one that didn't. I have a love/hate relationship with ulpan right now. We're doing things that I learned freshman year at Brandeis and/or senior year at AHA--יהיו, תהיה לי, בואי! עליו etc. It's boring. I went to Eilat, the head of the ulpan, yesterday, and she told me that I couldn't move up because I don't have the vocabulary down. I went to her again today, and was told the same thing. I need to work on my speaking skills. I need to work on my reading comprehension. She can't move me; I just need to concentrate on understanding what I hear, and I'm to listen to the CDs of the textbook to learn to understand what I hear. And that's it.

I know that I have this problem. I had it in high school, and I never worked to fix it. I remember, senior year, we had an oral test in Hebrew class on a day that I missed, and Ms. Livnat never made me make it up because she liked me and she knew I'd fail. We didn't have oral quizzes and tests at Brandeis. I passed the classes, but every time it seems like I do it knowing less and less of what I should. Now I get to pay for that, I guess. I'm stuck in bet.

Then, of course, there are the things that are always moving: the cats. I have three whom I've named so far.

The first is WinkieTwin, the first cat I met here. I named him that because he reminds me of my friend Nonny's cat, Winkie. I'm not quite sure where to put him on the friendly scale. He let me pet him the first time I met him, but he ran away the next time. He let me pet him and lay down in my lap, and then he scratched me the time after that. I don't quite understand him.

(Picture to come when I can figure out how to get it off my phone.)

The second cat I've named Malka because I met her on Friday, when one of our teachers likened Shabbat to a queen. She's a friendly one. When I first met her on Friday morning, she followed me halfway down the hill from Kfar HaStudentim (the student village). I saw her again on Friday night with LynleyShimat, an aquaintance from NUJLS. Yes, she is sitting on my skirt. She is also the cat who taught me that cats, even street cats, don't eat PB&J.

The last cat I've already mentioned here, the skinny tabby. It's so sad; he's just skin and bones, and I found a host of wounds on his head and neck today. He's a fighter, I guess, even without getting enough food. I just want to pick him up and take him to a vet and take care of him... out of all the cats around here, it seems like he's the one who takes to being a stray the least. Some of the others--like WinkieTwin and Malka--seem to be doing okay, but he's not. I'm not quite sure about his name yet, but I'm thinking something like Bone or Bones (after the show, not The Immortals Quartet). I'm just not sure how I feel about calling a cat that yet.

זה כל. More later.

Ulpan

Today ended my first week of ulpan, the two months of intensive Hebrew that come before a semester--or a year--at Hebrew University. I'm really bad at leanguages so I've been joking for a while about it being "two months of torture," but it really isn't bad. In a way, it feels more like CTY camp than actual school. We're in one class for four hours a day, and then we're free. The only difference is that here they give us homework, whereas homework wasn't allowed at CTY.

My class is small, hovering around fifteen people, but I'm amazed at the range of students we have. At least half of the students are older, in their thirties or higher. We have students from Holland, Spain, France, Germany, and a couples places that I don't remember. It's interesting because it means that Hebrew really is our common language; although most of us can speak English, at least one girl can't. It's also a nice break from being around some of my fellow students who are making good use of the fact that the drinking age here is 18. Julia, a 31-year-old German woman, is my first friend here.

Surprisingly, I'm not drowning in my Hebrew class. I have to wonder whether I should be in level gimel (3) instead of level bet (2)--where I placed after forgetting four years worth of barely-learned Hebrew last year--but I like not feeling lost all the time. I may know most of the grammatical concepts we're doing, but I don't think I have enough vocabulary to survive level gimel right now. I do think I'm learning something, though, even if this probably isn't the right level for me. There's a big difference between a Hebrew class where speaking English is allowed and one where there's only Hebrew. We're not memorizing vocabulary based on translation; we're learning it by concept. I think it may actually stick this way, so I'm reluctant to even put words on flash cards as I normally do.

The worst thing about being in level bet is knowing that I will never be able to take a class in Hebrew. You have to be in level hey (5) or vav (6) to do that, and even with ulpan and two semesters in Israel, I won't be able to get that far. There's a class on Israeli children's literature during the spring semester; maybe I can convince the teacher to make an exception. Children's literature's got to be in easy Hebrew, right?

Of travel and cats

I can't say that I was a fan of the MBTA bus system when I rode it last summer. Busses to Waltham run infrequently, they don't always stop, and passengers don't only need to know what stop they need to get off at, but also the stop before.

The MBTA bus system is perfect compared to the Egged busses in Israel. Stops are not announced on the busses, so you have to know not just the street address of where you're going, but what the area looks like. Bus stops are not clearly labeled with which busses stop where, and the Egged website is really unhelpful—especially when the Trip Planner seems to be broken, because there is no other way to get the bus schedules.

All this amounts to one lost Dev. A friend from Brandeis is finishing up his time at the Conservative Yeshiva, so I went to spend time with him at Ben Yehuda. Had it not been for a friendly Israeli who heard me asking Ari about landmarks, I would have missed my stop entirely. Then, on the way back, I got on the bus in the wrong direction—because Hadassah Hospital and Hadassah University Hospital are not one and the same. I left Ben Yehuda at 9:23; I got home around 11. It was not fun, and I'm not particularly inclined to take the bus again any time soon. Then again, I'm going to have to—taxis are expensive, and there's no other way to get downtown.

In other news, I saw my first indication of kitty hardship yesterday. I sat down on the grass with two cats after class; one a skinny tabby, one a normal-sized black & white. There was no mistaking the tabby's hardship: I could feel his ribs, there were bumps in his fur near his neck, and the fur on his back was oily. The black & white cat didn't come to me for attention as the tabby had; he lay down on the grass a few feet away. He looked like a normal, well-fed house cat at first. Yet, when he got up, I saw a big, furless red patch on his skin where he'd gotten into a fight. Neither of these cats had both full ears—come to think of it, I don't think I've seen many cats with both ears intact, period.

Ulpan has started. I'll write about that later.

Arrival

I arrived in Israel yesterday, safe and sound but exhausted. The first thing I learned about Israel is exactly how informal things are; as another student put it, they basically said to us, “Great! You’re here! Now go at it.” We arrived at Hebrew University a bit before 8am; the only thing they had scheduled for us after we went through the registration process was a campus tour at 4:30 (16:30), which I slept through. Today’s a bit better: campus tour at 16:30, orientation at 17:30, shopping trip at 19:00. I wonder, though, how they’re going to orient us in an hour and a half to a whole new country. Somehow, I have a feeling that they’re going to leave us to our own devices, to figure out what stores are nearby and what interesting and exciting things are on which bus route—or even how the busses work! That’s what the madrichim are for—our Israeli RAs—but sometimes “just down the street” isn’t literally just down the street, and “the best place to exchange your money is the postal bank” doesn’t necessarily mean the people at the post office will know what you’re talking about.

I seem to have beaten the jetlag. I’m not sure what my body feels like right now, but I think it’s closest to “I just woke up at 7am and am still tired” than anything else—which is exactly where I want it to be. Minus the whole awake-at-7am part, of course. Maybe I’ll take a nap later; there’s only so much time that unpacking can fill, and I’m hesitant to wander around on my own, even with a map.

People say the cats are like squirrels here, and they weren’t exaggerating; they’re everywhere. (Story is that when the Russian immigrants got here they brought cats into the city to get rid of the rats, and they brought just a few too many cats.) I can’t adopt one because we’re not allowed to have pets in the dorm, but maybe I’ll make friends with one or two. There’s one cat that was hanging around the Social Sciences building yesterday who looks like a long-haired version of my friend’s cat Winkie, and I sorta fell in love. So cute; so friendly! My first kitty friend.

I have yet to meet many (any) students other than those who were on my flight with me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m antisocial, because I was absolutely dead yesterday, or whether it’s because most students are arriving today. It’s probably a mix of all three, but I refuse to generalize about my classmates based on meeting only six of them.

More updates to come. This is just the beginning.