Day 17 - An Old Saying

Rivka found my camera! She's my guardian angel, perhaps. She's even going to drive back to the ruins next week to get it.  She's beyond a good friend.  I don't know what else to say about this except wow.

Anyway, this morning I took a bus from Rivka's to the central bus station, and then from there to Jerusalem.  Then I went to my hostel and got my bags and met the Tikvah group.  It's Sunday, so there were tons and tons of soldiers on all the buses, heading back to base.  It's fun. Is it just me, or do the girl soldiers wear really tight pants??? There's not much that's more humbling than seeing how amazing they look in drab fatigues. Israeli women are amazing.

The Tikvah group seems great so far, though it's still hard to tell.  Everybody brings something different to the table.  So far there's a lot of assumed knowledge, but I'm not going to let it bother me. I'll figure it out.

We all went to Mishkenot Shananim, which I gather was the first Jewish settlement of Jerusalem outside of the main walls.  It's totally gorgeous and fancy these days.

Wouldn't mind living here...

We sat in a little park and read and discussed a bunch of poems by Yehuda Amichai, who I gather is a rather against-the-grain poet in Israeli can(n)on. (How do you spell this word? I always get it wrong.)

This poem stuck out the most to me:

TOURISTS

Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.

Once I sat on the steps by agate at David's Tower,
I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists
was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see
that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch
from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!"
I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them,
"You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it,
left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

***

I'm probably missing the point, I tend to miss the point of poetry, but I don't really like what he's saying about tourists.  Iv'e never hated tourists or derided them the way most people tend to.  Maybe it's because I'm so often a tourist, or because I work with tourists constantly.  Is it better to have a longer term, truer experience of a place?  Sure. But I think it's better to be a tourist than not to experience a place at all.  It's better to learn a little than to learn nothing.  It's better to go to Yad Vashem for a few hours than not to go.  Better to visit Herzl's tomb than not to.

From our discussion, I think  most of this resentment basically comes from Amichai's frustration at living in Jerusalem.  Most of the poems we read were about some sort of disconnect when it comes to modern living in Jerusalem.  Here's another one:

MAYOR
It's sad 
To be Mayor of Jerusalem.
It is terrible. 
How can any man be the mayor of a city like that? 

What can he do with her? 
He will build, and build, and build. 

And at night 
The stones of the hills round about will crawl down Towards the stone houses, 
Like wolves coming 
To howl at the dogs 
Who have become men's slaves. 

***

I think he has a hard time figuring out how to live today in a place that's so eternal and larger than life.  Can you change or impact Jerusalem? Does it matter if you live there? Tourists will just look at you as a reference point in a much older, better story than your life. Does that matter?

We went to dinner and it was AWESOME.  So much food and it just kept coming. Hummus, felafel, beats, carrots, kababs, chicken, pastries, little potato things, more and more.  I stuffed my face.

I've already lost 6 lbs since I came here! More meals like this and I will quickly undo that, however.

There are two Israeli sayings I like a lot I want to share.

The first I learned from another Tikvah student, Yedidya.  His army time was in the Israeli navy.  I asked if he enjoyed it at all, and he said:

Yom asa

Yom basa

Which is basically "One day is good, the next day is onion" onion = bad.  Which I love because I hate onions. This is a saying for me.

The next is more like a joke Eli told me the other day, which is a commentary on Israeli (lack of) politeness.

Three couples are in a cafe, one American, on British, and one Israeli.

The American man says to his wife, "Will you please pass me the honey, Honey?"

The British man says to his wife, "Will you please pass me the sugar, Sugar?"

And the Israeli man says to his wife, "Pass me the milk, Cow."

I don't know why, but I laugh just thinking about his.