Kibbutz, petach tikva, journey to eilat

Last post continued!

KIBBUTZ TIME!

We spent the night at Geva’s house in Kibbutz Zikkim.  It is very near the Gaza border.  It’s been quiet lately, but just in case, Rivka showed me where the house bomb shelter is should I awake to the sound of a rocket alarm. Good times.  Actually, it really was good times, the home was lovely.  Geva’s mother is very sweet and showed me photo albums of her children and we ate avocados that they grow… delicious!

Yum

Best avocados ever.  Geva’s dog’s name is Pas, and it looks like Solacious Crumb, so of COURSE I loved Pas.

BWEEEHeheheheheHEh!

 They found Pas three years previously in a gas station, abandoned, so he’s very timid but he loves to cuddle.

His timidity evaporates when he sees peacocks. He barks and chases after them and gets them out of the yard.  There are peacocks because the kibbutz has a zoo but the peacocks leave their pens all the time and just go back to eat.

They ran from Pas into the street

The kibbutz is still communal, which is very rare in Israel.  Geva gave me a little tour.

He's a great guide.

The dining hall is interesting because recently it stopped being 100% traditional.  What happened was people took way more food than they needed that meal.  Soldiers would take loaves of bread or gallons of milk to share with his buddies back on base, for example.  So now, although members are not paid, they have a kind of credit account with the kibbutz, and every meal the food they take is weighed and taken from the credit account.

Everybody was chatting together

Geva told me what it was like growing up in the children’s house (on traditional kibbutzim, children are raised in a children’s house by nannies and only stay with their parents for Shabbat) and the activities they had on the kibbutz and how close he was with the other people in his age group.  As we strolled around, everyone recognized him and stopped to talk.

Each Kibbutz is known for something.  This one is known for making mattresses and dairy cows.  This is a special pen for pregnant cows! I saw one cow's water break!

Something on the dining room bulletin board about Tu Ba'av, the Israeli valentine's day

There’s a beach about 2 mins drive from the kibbutz so we took a little walk there.  It was beautiful and there was not a huge crowd.

Geva... and the beach... and the power plant...

Those are all shells!

Ankle deep in shells, and I'd have been deeper in if I'd done a little digging.

There were SO many shells!  Growing up on the North Atlantic, I’d never seen so many colorful shells.  I saw some fragments and got so excited and started scooping them all up into my purse.  Geva was confused and then led me to a HUGE ENORMOUS PILE of shells.  Look!

I was so happy

I took a big bag home with me and my Israeli friends have all made fun of me and said that’s what 4-year-olds do, but I don’t care.

Then I met up with Ream, another friend from birthright, who picked me up in Ashkelon, where he’s from, and gave me a ride to Tel Aviv.  Matat met us at his apartment, along with Gal, Ream’s lover, and her little sister. We drove to Jaffa, which was not what I expected.  It's super super chic, with tons of cute cafes and bars and shops.  Next time in Israel I could definitely spend a whole day there poking through the market.

I think this is the central square.

We also got these DELICIOUS pastry things filled with tomato sauce and cheese.  So fresh and amazing, I gobbled it up.

This bakery was amazing

Ream, Me, and Matat in Jaffa, in front of the Tel Aviv skyline!

You can't really see it in this picture for some reason, but the last graffiti on the right says ETHER

 Ream said he had a surprise for me at the beach, and I thought it was going to be a cupcake or a treat or something…

My phone rang and it was Amitai, a close dear friend from Birthright who said he regretted not being able to make it I was bummed, but I accepted it… until I heard him speaking right next to me, and I looked up and there he was!!

Love these guys!

So great to all be together.

Yay!

We had a nice afternoon at the beach, and then I went with Matat to her parents’ home in Petach Tikvah, a suburb of Tel Aviv, for Shabbat.  This was a really awesome experience. Her parents’ names are Anati and Dudu.  Here we all are:

Yay!

Anati’s parents built the house and their entire family stays really close. Aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and on and on.  Last Passover there were 70 people for dinner!! Wow.  In their house!  Anati is an amazing cook and said she didn’t go all out but all the same there was delicious chicken, salmon, lasagna, potatoes, rice with raisins (one of my new favorite foods), two salads, and more. And wine, of course.

After we ate, Anati told me about her army service.  She was stationed in Sinai and guarded airspace, and she described the strange, sad feeling when her service ended as Israel was withdrawing from Sinai, and they closed down the base.  She said Sinai was the most gorgeous place in the world and she really hopes the political situation will improve so that people can safely travel there again.  I hope so, too.  Then she showed me an amazing photo album of her nearly 2 year long road trip/wok experience in the US.  She went all over! I want to mimic her map someday.

Mother and Daugthter

Shes' only really missing New England... I told her to come!

Then Matat, Danielle (Matat’s awesome cousin from the states), Adi (Matat’s friend) and I went back to Jaffa for a drink.  Jaffa nightlife is apparently where to be on Friday night, when most of the other cool things in Israel (including Tel Aviv) are not very happening.  There were tons of people in Jaffa, and I guess that’s where all the beautiful people are.  Everyone was so good looking and fashionable. The bars were all super chic and fun. One rum and coke did me in and I was so exhausted that that brings us to me passing out in Matat’s bed last night with my makeup still on.

Matat and Adi

This morning, Dudu made us traditional Yemenite food that Matat’s family eats on Shabbat.  It was delicious… Elon, Matat’s little brother (he’s going to be SO handsome when he’s grown, don’t you think?!?) showed me how to mash up the egg yolk into the tomato paste (it was kind of like a salsa) and spread it on the doughy bread.  YUM.

Father and son!

The photo doesn't look that great, but it was great!

Then Dudu told me some really cool family story.  These are his parents, Moshe and Malka.  They were each orphans in Yemen.  Malka married when she was 12, but “luckily” her husband died and she was widowed very young.  She fled Yemen to the British colony of Agron where she got a job in a synagogue cleaning the floors nad making sandwiches for the congregants.  She saw Moshe sleeping in the doorway of the synagogue one day and saved sandwiches for him because she thought he was cute. He’d also fled Yemen when he was orphaned at 9, and now he was working on the pier.  They got to talking and found out that they both had fled Yemen because orphans and widows would be forced to convert to Islam if they stayed.  They were now both saving up money to go to the Holy Land, Israel. They married and went to Alexandria, and from there they walked by foot (Dudu said this was common at the time) to Israel.  Moshe built a house near the beach in Petach Tikvah, but Malka got tired of being surrounded by noisy Ashkenazim, so they moved to another part, and that old house is now super expensive in a very poshy place.  A neighbor once described to Dudu how they’d been used to Yemenites being stocky and burly, and they remembered clearly seeing Moshe enter town… tall and proud with bright blue-green eyes.

Moshe and Malka in the photo they took for their registration photos in Alexandria

And this is Juju, Anati’s mother. Anati’s family goes back in the Israel area for 9 generations.  Juju was super smart.  She was raised in Sinai, and could speak Hebrew, English, French, and Arabic fluently. This photo was restored by the famous photographer, Michal Rovner.

She looks like such a pioneer!

Michal also did the opening “movie” at Yad VaShem, the holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.  And she also prepared all the photographs for the children’s memorial, in which thousands of children who were murdered are memorialized.  She said it was incredibly painful work, seeing how unsuspecting the children were in the pictures.  “Children,” Dudu told me, “Always expect good things to happen to them.  They always experience the good.  No matter what’s happening in the larger world, if they win a game vs. the kid next door they feel great about their lives, they feel like heroes.  We adults always expect bad things to happen to us.” And he told me about the Zen principle that we get what we expect to get, although that seemed at odds with our conversation about the Holocaust.

Dudu also told me about how in the Second Intifada, every day on the news were stories about people who’d been killed in terror attacks, and there were always lots of photos and testimonials and music and things.  Except one time, when a bus full of Haredi children was blown up and they all died.  On the news, there was only a brief, business-like announcement of the event, with no memorializing. Dudu said this is because the Haredi don’t treat tragedy the same way, they believe that God is correct in his actions, the Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh away.

Dudu recommended, if I want to make Aliyah, to write down my reasons for coming to Israel on a piece of paper and put it somewhere safe.  He said American life is easy, and Israeli life is rich but hard, and there will always come trouble and it’s important to be able to remember your reasons.  He wrote down his reasons for wanting to stay in Israel when he toured the US and was offered a job.  He had a friend who left Israel for the US who told him, “My life here is good, I have everything I need, but it’s so empty that it eats up a bit of my soul every day.”  Yeah, I hear that.

Matat then drove me to a sheirut that I took from Petach Tikvah to the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv, where the drive told me I’m bonkers because there are no busses on Shabbat.  I insisted I’d reserved a ticket to Eilat, and he laughed at me but let me off.  The bus station was totally shut down, all the doors locked, lights off.  I asked some people standing around, and they all said I was mistaken and that there are no busses until sunset.  A cab driver offered to drive me to Eilat for $400.  HA.

I had to get to Eilat so I can join the tour at 7 am tomorrow to Jordan/Petra.  I was already emotional from so much traveling, and so many goodbyes with people I love, and so many intense experiences, and so many all the rest.

(I pause in typing this as my bus is stopped at a checkpoint and two armed soldiers board and make sure we’re not suspicious.  I can see this makes some other passengers uncomfortable, but the soldiers are SUPER handsome and wearing green berets so I don’t mind at all.)

Anyway I get overwhelmed and burst into tears.  I called my Dad and he talked through it with me and checked on the internet and confirmed I was right - there WAS a bus from Tel Aviv at that time. This random guy comes up to me and says he’s a doctor and what’s wrong? And as I start to tell him he gives me a hug and invites me for coffee and then I notice he’s kind of like… foaming at the mouth.  Like, there was foam around his mouth.  Either not a doctor or an evil doctor and either way I shoved him away and shrieked at him every time he approached. Did I mention the Bus Station is in a super sketchy area? Yeah it’s super sketchy.  It’s all illegal immigrants who don’t have work or papers and evil doctors.  And the building itself is totally dilapidated.  I think Israel should funnel some of it’s money from the settlements into fixing the atrocious central bus station.

Then I call Gabby, who calms me down a bit but also doesn't have an answer.  As I’m talking to her, I notice a tiny door on the side of the station with a lone security guard, who when asked confirms the station is open ONLY for my one bus to Eilat, and attaches me to a really sweet Chinese woman in a bonnet who is also going to Eilat. We trekked through the empty station and onto on our bus!

And now we’re arriving!  It was about a 5 hour trip.  We made 2 stops of 15 mins each and I’m glad I pee fast because each time we pulled away people chased the bus down so as not to be forgotten.  Eilat appears like most beach cities I’ve been to.  I’ll take pics!  I won’t be online for a few days while I am in Jordan… wish me luck!!

(That was written on the bus to Eilat... I have since been to Eilat and Jordan and am now home safe in Jerusalem! I'll post about my adventures in Arabia tomorrow...)