A Place For This Baby

Today I went with Shai and Sam, from my program, to the Jerusalem bus station to get Rav Kav cards.  These are like Charlie Cards, rechargeable bus/train pass cards. I was nervous about getting it because the Hebrew form is intimidating, which is why Shai came along with me.  But in the end, they didn't even ask for the form. They didn't ask for anything but my name. The took a photo suddenly, with this camera velcro-d to the wall, which was totally off center, and then she just photo shopped it to just my face and printed by card. It was actually all really funny.

We got some hummus, went to the mall, and then I wandered around a bit until I was meeting a friend, and I saw this:

Lolol, I don't think that little thing was meant for babies? But it's so cutely perfect.  It's just the fencing inside the stone thing, and there's turf at the bottom? I think plants are supposed to go in there? But she put her baby in, hahha.

I went with a new friend to dinner and then we saw an improv show, and it was really fun! I volunteered from the audience for the "day in the life" game, and it really made me laugh.

I miss Huxley! I would like to be snuggling my dog right now.

Sleepy!

And at its heart -- a wall

I got a handy-dandy rocket alert app on my phone.  It tells me when there are sirens so I don't have to refresh the news.

Sirens in: Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ashkelon, Ashkelon, Ashkelon... All in one minute!

Ashkelon is 75 km, about an hour's drive, away. It's weird that they're under fire and everybody's going about their business here in Jerusalem.

I'm sure I'm going to get used to it, but I definitely jumped a few times at other noises today, like ambulences and stuff :). I love this video of Israelis mistaking various sounds for the bombs sirens:

I chose an apartment! I will post pictures after I sign the lease. Part of me felt I should search search search, but it got really old, really fast, and looking for apartments isn't how I want to spend these first few weeks.  The apartment I chose is gorgeous, in a great neighborhood, fully furnished, allows a 10 month lease, (instead of my having it for two months longer than my fellowship and having to eat it or figure something out), and I'll be living with a British girl who's also in ROI (one of my networks) and founded an organization to promote Israel/Asia relations, which is pretty badass.  Anyway, I will post pics in a few days, I'm moving in on Monday.  I have this temporary apartment for a few more weeks... but I don't like living by myself.  It's kind of sad.

Anyway, to clear my head of the apartment hunting miasma, I went to the old city! I like to start my stays in Israel off with a visit to the Western Wall to pray a little :).

Old city walls!

I ALWAYS get lost in the old city. I don't know how I always manage that. I think the alleyways move when you're not looking.  One second you're looking at scarves and the next you're in a weird back alley where they're throwing fish guts and the next you're outside a synagogue and the next you're on a residential street with a million tiny children and the next you're squashed into a birthright group and the next soldiers are warning you not to go any farther because Temple Mount is closed to non-Muslims right now.

But finally I found the Jewish quarter and knew where I was!

I always take a picture of this sign because it always makes me laugh. I am packing heat at all times as a woman. I can do serious harm to stonework and human beings if not properly concealed. 

The wall is the same as the last two years, of course :).

I put my prayer in and prayed for a bit. Didn't cry. Sometimes I do, but mostly I don't.  Everybody around me was crying though.  I prayed for a lot of things, and I signed my note "xoxo, Ariane" because that's how God and I roll.

I took these pictures for my dad, who is very interested in the Karaites and thinks I should be one because they embrace patrilineal descent. 

I passed a lot of birthright groups and it made me so nostalgic <3. I can't believe it was only two years ago that that was me. 

Aww, birthright 2012 Ariane! Experiencing it all for the first time!

It's such an intense, amazing experience. I wonder how it will impact all the people I saw on it today. It's cool to see birthright groups all over the place because it always makes me stop and look around and try to remember how it felt that first time I saw these things, and it's a constant reminder of how grateful I am to be living here.  

I was watching Munich, and there's this part when Avner's mom says:

"Everyone in Europe died. Most of my family. A huge family... I didn't die because I came here. When I arrived, I walked up to the top of a hill in Jerusalem, and prayed, for a child. I never prayed before but I was praying then. And I could feel every one of them praying with me. You are what we prayed for. What you did you did for us. You did for your daughter, but also for us. Every one of the ones who died, died wanting this... A place to be a jew among jews, subject to no one. I thank God for hearing my prayer... A place on Earth. We have a place on Earth. At last."

I wonder if that's why people cry. Sometimes you can feel every one of them praying with you.

Little Victories

I slept for about 6 hours last night! That's a record so far this trip. I sleep a tiny bit more each night, I'm slowly adjusting.

I saw an apartment this morning that I LOVED, and I loved all three of the Israeli girls that live there. They were so nice, and funny. We talked for a good hour. I know it's going to be super competitive though... we'll see what happens.

Then I saw another apartment that I liked very much, and I loved the roommates again, but there was weird painting on the walls and the roomies said I'd have to track down the ex roomie and get her to paint it as she was contractually obligated by neglected to do... I'm not very excited by that idea.

I was waiting for a light when a little girl with a gap between her front teeth came up to me, and we had this lovely interaction...

Girl: Slicha (excuse me), blah blah blah stuff I couldn't understand in Hebrew?
Ariane: Uh... At Medeberet Anglit? (Do you speak English?)
Girl: No... Rak Rega (one moment)... (she went to a group of other girls in similar clothes, campers maybe, and tried to get her to translate, but the other girl was too shy.)
Counselor: C'mon, girls! You know English.  Here, you speak and I'll translate for them.  They asked what you've done so far this summer?
Ariane: Oh! Well... I went to Paris, I went to Madrid, and... I moved to Israel!
Counselor: Blah blah blah Paris, blah blah blah Madrid, blah blah blah ISRAEL!!!!!
And when she said the last part, all of the girls went "AHhhhhHHHH!!!" and started jumping up and down and clapping and cheering for me. "Israel!!!!!"

Little patriots <3

I needed a little break from apartment hunting, so I went to the shuk (open-air market). I went to my favorite dress shop and browsed for a while... I didn't buy anything because I have all the time in the world! And I think I probably shouldn't buy more stuff until I'm settled in my new apartment.

The shuk is awesome. So many amazing tasty things, and so fresh. I didn't even know what to buy.

ENORMOUS POMEGRANATES

My haul: Some apples, two giant avocados, a giant mango, some olives and some stuffed grape leaves.

I may never buy from a grocery store again. It's way more fun to go to the shuk.

I also found handsoap in the shuk! It's been strangely hard to find.

And I took the bus for the first time! Now I'm addicted. So fast. So air conditioned.

Hebrew I learned today:
olives - זיתים - zitim

I got coffee with an Israeli who did linguistics in the army.  You might not know that army service includes a lot of different jobs, not just combat positions.  He was learning high level Arabic for intelligence and also teaching Hebrew to new immigrant soldiers.  He was telling me that the famous "chet" throat sound in Hebrew is actually a new Israeli thing, and that it should be a softer H, but the only people who still do it the "right" way are Yemeni Jews.  I found this very interesting.

When I got home, I was just sitting on my couch talking to Lily on the phone when I heard my very first red alert siren!  It's kind of a creepy sound.  Like this:

When you hear it, it means Hamas has fired a rocket over your area. If you're inside, like I was, you need to head into your building's shelter, if it has one.  Mine does have one - but it was locked, fascinatingly!  If that's the case, or your building has no shelters (and many buildings in Israel do not, I supposed their builders were optimistic), you hang out in the stairwell.

Israel has a great anti-missile system called the Iron Dome. It has a very high rate of interception, but of course it's expensive to fire.  So if it looks like the rocket will fall in an open area, they let it.  If it looks like it will fall on a populated area, they attempt to intercept it.

So when you hear the siren, you go into the safest place you can and wait until you hear a BOOM.  Hopefully the boom is an interception, although there's a chance it hit something.  You have to wait ten minutes after the boom, in case there's falling shrapnel or anything. According to the news, it was intercepted.  And Hamas is proudly owning their missile launch at civilians and a city they claim is holy to them.

Now might be a good time to say that things might get political on this blog, because it's hard not to feel political when people are trying to kill you. If politics is something you'd like to discuss with me, then feel free to schedule a coffee date with me.  But I'm just going to be blunt and say I won't post or engage with anti-Israel comments on this blog.  This is a log of my feelings and experiences and it's not open to critique.  There are other avenues for discussion if you want.

Anyway, I hung out in the stairwell with a nice family. The mom was telling her little son it was like a midnight pajama party.

Turn Your Frustration into Fascination

One thing my boss Jay taught me is the saying "turn your frustration into fascination."

I think this is a great idea.  It really feels a lot better to think about life that way.  Thinking about frustration just makes me more frustrated.

Let me tell you about my amazingly fascinating day!

I saw a bunch of apartments today, and I walked all over the city several times. I was coated in several layers of sweat! It's not humid here, so the heat doesn't bother me as much as it does in Boston, but everybody still develops a brine over the course of the day.

Also, I don't know quite how, but even keeping my sandals on, the bottom of my feet turned BLACK! I guess I was kicking up a lot of dirt or something?

My Fascinating Experiences Apartment Hunting

Honestly, I did meet some very nice people today.

I also met some really odd people, with really odd mannerisms. Both residents and other people that I ran into multiple times on the hunt.

A lot of apartments here are VERY inexpensive in my mind... $350 - $500/month, but they just... I don't know, they feel like where you might live in Allston while a poor undergrad.  Which actually, is basically the case for a lot of these people.  It's a cultural difference... Israelis do 2-3 years in the army or a bit more, then usually travel for a year, and THEN go to school.  So there are lots of 25 year olds who are still in school. So people who would have upgraded their living situation in the US are still on student budgets in Israel.

It might come down to living in a kind of meh apartment in order to live with cool people.

I did see one place that I LOVED. It was very pretty and very central, with two really fun guys.  But I just got the sense from them that they'd met a prospect earlier and already chosen.  Well, who knows? Maybe they were bluffing.

I'd be willing to pay more for a nicer place, but I'm not finding much in a higher price range. I know they exist in Jerusalem, I just don't know how to GET one...

Well it's only been two fascinating days. I'm sure there's a lot more fascination for me to come!

I did get to see a cool roof deck in Nachlaot. In the distance you can see the Supreme Court, Parliament, and the Israel museum.  I wish I could just live on the roof!

Someone asked me how my search was going, and I said, "the housing market is a little strange here." and he said, "don't worry! everything is a little weird here!"

My Fascinating Experience with Kashrut

Keeping kosher... it's fascinating!

You probably know you need to separate meat and milk. And you might know that you need separate dishes/utensils etc for both categories and they're not supposed to mix.

Today I was making spaghetti with tomato sauce. That's a vegetarian meal. In the apartment, there are HUGE pots in the dairy cabinet and tiny pots in the meat cabinet, and I need a big pot for the pasta and a tiny one for the sauce.

Can I use both pots since it's a vegetarian meal, not part of either group?  I asked my facebook wall, and my friend Ro called me to explain...

You can use both pots when cooking a veggy meal ONLY if you're not cooking vegetables like garlic or onions, which are "sharp" vegetables, or spicy, and can strip the meat-ness or dairy-ness out of the pots and corrupt them if mixed.

I told her maybe the can of sauce had garlic and onions in it... but apparently it's okay because they're already cooked.

I don't really know how "do not boil a kid in its mother's milk" turned into "you can use two pots if the onions in the sauce are already cooked" but it's fascinating ;).

Hebrew I Learned Today
delicious - טעים - taim

Today the guard outside Netanyahu's house was this cute young girl who was nodding off. :)

My lovely porch with the pomegranates growing!

How Is This Only Day 2

Life in Israel is insane. It's not like life in the States. It's not like life anywhere else that I've been. It's just so FULL. Every day feels so saturated to me, so much happens and everything is intense.  Turning the volume up to 11 :).

Arrival

My flights were fine, uneventful and on time. Baggage claim and airport security took me only 20 minutes! Amazing. And Ben Gurion is the easiest, most beautiful of all airports.  When I landed, it just felt right. I was beaming the entire time.

Rivka picked me up and brought her little puppy, Tuna! Here we are, all happy.

Rivka is the sweetest! We talked about all the fun things we're going to do together over the next year... she's a nursing student but she works as a tour guide part time, so she knows all the best places. We're going to explore caves, and go see my relative's sculpture in Tel Chai (Dad, she knew the one... I said "Do you know Tel Chai? there's a statue there..." and she said "The lion statue?" and I said yes, and that Avram sculpted it, and she said she'd go with me!), and do "sup" (which I think is a kind of surfing? maybe?), and eat wild grapes on her Moshav, and go to her parents house on the settlement, and all kinds of fabulous plans. She is so sweet to include me and I feel so welcome. I love her!

Anyway she drove me to Jerusalem and we found my temporary apartment and walked around a bit and got delicious food.  Tuna almost got eaten by a German Shepherd. And a pitbull! The pitbull had a muzzle on bit it was still terrifying.  Yeesh.

Jerusalem is so beautiful. It's called "jerusalem of gold" for good reason.  All of the old stonework just lights up from within when the sun is setting, like it's glowing.  And there are mountain breezes, and palm trees and pine trees everywhere. I just couldn't stop smiling. It feels so amazing to be in Israel and Jerusalem.

My apartment is great! Great location, with a beautiful balcony with pomegranate trees surrounding it. I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow. It's enormous... there are supposed to be 4 fellows in it, but they've already found permanent housing, so it's just me.  There are at least 6 extra beds... come visit :).

One funny thing is that my neighbor, a cute old man, is from Brookline! He lived near Washington Square, like me! I feel like this little happy bubble follows me everywhere here :).  He decorated the hallways outside our apartments with posters of Cape Cod, haha: 

There are a lot of religious people in the apartment. When Rivka and I got back for dinner, it was time for post-Shabbat prayers, and there was a huge minyan (gathering of pray-ers) in the front entry way. I thought maybe we had to wait, but Rivka just wove through them to the door so I followed her :).

A Funny First Date

Last night I admit I had a bit of a panic attack. I usually do the first night of a trip. I think it's mostly because I hadn't slept in a very long time. However, as my panic attacks go, I handled this one pretty well! I found a panic attack log thing on the internet and I filled it out and that was helpful, and I talked to a few friends online, and I watched Dr. Horrible for a bit.

The thing about when I panic is I fixate on a few things that really aren't a big deal but seem, in the moment, like a HUGE DEAL. Last night, it was the idea of going to the tech store and getting an Israeli sim card with limited Hebrew. Logically, I knew it would be fine, but I was not feeling at all fine about it.

I was talking to this dude on OKC, and he was like "hey, when I moved to Israel, I got pretty ripped off on my first cell plan, why don't I come with you and check the Hebrew contract for you?"

And I was like... SURE!

So today, the first thing I did was go on my own to get health insurance.  This felt like a big accomplishment because the office was not where it seemed to be on the map... so first I walked into the old Knesset (Parliament) Building, in which a soldier* asked me what I was doing and I said I was buying health insurance and he said not here in the old knesset building... and then I went into a Russian lawyer's office and sat in the waiting room listening to an old couple get agitated with the lawyer in Russian until I figured that was probably not the right spot, either.  So then I found it!  And they were super nice and helpful and I got my insurance card right there on the spot.  Whew!

So then I met  TheDude and we went to the tech store and got my sim card.  It was also really easy but I was grateful for TheDude's insight and Hebrew prowess.  I have an Israeli number now! E-mail me if you'd like it.

Then he got me some felafel and we sat by a fountain and ate it, and then we wandered alllllll over the city. Through some parks, the old train station, Ben Yehuda, other parks, German Colony.  He was just moving out so I decided to help him pack since he helped me with my sim card, which seems like a sketchy idea as I'm writing it but it didn't seem sketchy at the time.  So up we go into the German Colony apartment and as we're cleaning and packing he tells me he's a Cohen.

So I'm sure you know people with the last name "Cohen", but you might not know that this signifies they are in the priestly class of Jews.  Their ancestors were the priests of the tribe and it's passed down through blood. They don't necessarily have religious jobs or anything, the Cohens I know do not, but I guess they could? The rules are a little hazy to me.  Cohens have certain "privileges," I suppose, they're invited to read the first prayer at various services, they can deliver priestly blessings.

They also have certain restrictions, mainly concerning marriage:
-They can't marry a divorcee
-They can't marry a convert
-They obviously can't marry a non-Jew.
-I learned today they also can't marry someone who's had sex with a gentile. Huh!

They also can't enter cemeteries or be "under the same roof" with a "dismembered organ."

"Can't" carries various weight depending on where you are and what kind of Jewish you are. Lots of American Cohens don't give a shit and do what they want and nobody stops them.  If they were to ask an Orthodox Rabbi to marry them though, it wouldn't happen.  And in Israel, marriage is controlled by the Orthodox Rabbinate, and so they literally cannot marry against the rules.  It's not possible in Israel.  Just another one of those ways Israel likes to balance its extreme progressive awesomeness with medieval lunacy.

Anyway, this was an interesting conversation to have over the dishes.

Marriage laws in Israel complicate dating on all levels. Not that this came up specifically about us, or has come up for me before, but think about it.  If you know you cannot marry a person, how does that change things from day one of meeting them?

We got some pizza and then I went off to see an apartment. It was gorgeous! And the roomie is very cool. I'm seeing a bunch more, but this one has a lot of potential.  The view... whoa.  I can see myself writing there for sure.

Now it's 12:30 and I'm not tired at all.  Even though I've had 3 hours of sleep in the past 72 hours. I need to be sedated.

Tomorrow I'm seeing a few more apartments and attempting grocery shopping. Pretty sure that will quickly devolve into dress shopping :).

New Hebrew Words I Learned Today:

Slice (like of pizza) - משולש, Mshoulish? I forget the vowels. I guess I didn't learn it very well.
Your name? - שם שלך, Shem Shelach, "Ariane!" I told the barista at Aroma
Napkin- מפית, Mapit

Also, the guy at the corner store spoke to me very quickly, and I didn't catch all of what he said, but I think he said I'm יָפֶה -  pretty. Well thanks, CornerStoreMan!

Deeds warned me Israelis would make fun of my accent and give me a hard time, but so far they've been nice and very helpful. Maybe I just can't understand them making fun though, that's always a possibility.

Notes

*Soldiers are so funny here sometimes.  They're trained and armed and in uniform, but a lot of them are just kids doing their mandatory service.  I live right near the Prime Minister's house, and there's always a guard out front, and I watched the guard today get dropped off by what seemed to be his dad, carrying armfuls of snacks and drinks for his shift in the guard house, haha. It was really cute.

Orientation (flashback)

It was a packed few days. We met in New York and then bussed out to a retreat center in Connecticut.  It was a very beautiful site on a lake, and they grow almost all of the food they serve in the dining hall.

We got a ton of information about the transition to life in Israel, and did many many team building activities.  There was the old favorite - make a tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows, but with a twist that I liked a lot and made it a lot more interesting. Lots of games involving passing balls, some "are you more like the wind or more like a leaf?" type games, group discussions, etc. We also each gave 15 minute introductions of ourselves. 15 minutes goes by pretty quickly, actually!

I'm really impressed by the other fellows and excited to spend the year learning with and from them. There are some excellent writers, an environmentalist, a medical scientist, some academics, some dancers, an actress and advocate, an educator, a photographer, and these are all gross simplifications of what they do and who they are. It's fun to be around people who are informed about Israel again, some much more than I am, and fun to be around such diversity of opinion.  Everybody's really friendly, too.

I really loved learning about Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson, the founder of the Dorot Fellowship.  Her family had enormous wealth from the paper business and they've done some incredible things, including purchase the original Dead Sea Scrolls for Israel and build the Shrine of the Book in which they are now housed, constructed some very important buildings around Israel, funded several professorships at various universities in the US, and much more, including fund 10 Americans every year to go to Israel and grow and develop to hopefully bring change to the future of the American Jewish landscape :). But Joy was a really amazing woman beyond being generous. We got to hear from an old friend of hers... stories of how good she was to people, and how much she wanted to change the Jewish system.  I wish I could have met her, but she passed away some time ago.

I also loved hearing about the Dorot alumni, who come together at least once a year for Shabbat at the same retreat center. Dorot has some INCREDIBLE alumni! Wow, so much accomplishment and talent. I'm excited to meet them and be part of that family!

Why travel, Why Jerusalem

WHY TRAVEL

"We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what."
-George Santayana, "The Philosophy of Travel"

"For if every true love affair can feel like a journey to a foreign country, where you can't quite speak the language, and you don't know where you're going, and you're pulled ever deeper into the inviting darkness, every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where you're left puzzling over who you are and whom you've fallen in love with. All the great travel books are love stories, by some reckoning -- from the Odyssey and the Aeneid to the Divine Comedy and the New Testament -- and all good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder."
-Pico Iyer, "Why We Travel"

"We carry within us the wonders we seek without us. There is Africa and her prodigies in us."
-Sir Thomas Browne

"And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it's a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end."
-Pico Iyer, "Why We Travel"

"We travel not for trafficking alone:
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand."
-James Elroy Flecker, "The Golden Journey to Samarkand"

"And God shall make thy soul a Glass where eighteen thousand æons pass,
And thou shalt see the gleaming Worlds as men see dew upon the grass.
And son of Islam, it may be that thou shalt learn at journey's endWho walks thy garden eve on eve, and bows his head, and calls thee Friend."
-James Elroy Flecker, "The Gates of Damascus"


WHY JERUSALEM

"Jerusalem is a festival and a lamentation. Its song is a sigh across the ages, a delicate, robust, mournful psalm at the great junction of spiritual cultures."
-David Shipler

"When I saw the country from the plane I felt a twinge in my heart. Despite everything that's wrong here, and God knows there are many faults and evils, it's our country, and I love her as I always have."
-Yonatan Netanyahu

"Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity."
-Yehuda Amichai

"When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming."

-Eli Wiesel

"Jerusalem, for me, is above politics. Mentioned more than 600 times in the Bible, Jerusalem is the national landmark of Jewish tradition. It represents our collective soul. It is Jerusalem that binds one Jew to another. There is not a prayer more beautiful or nostalgic than the one which evokes the splendor of its past and the shattering and enduring memory of its destruction."
-Eli Wiesel

"By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat,
sat and wept,
as we thought of Zion,
There on the poplars
we hung up our lyres,
for our captors asked us there for songs,
our tormentors, for amusement:
'Sing us one of the songs of Zion.'

How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither;
let my tongue stick to my palate
if I cease to think of you,
if I do not keep Jerusalem in my memory
even at my happiest hour."
-from Psalm 137