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...)

Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Moroccan Henna Ceremony!

I have SO MUCH to write about!  I’ve barely had a moment to breathe.  At the end of every day since the program I’ve fallen right to sleep.  And last night was the first time in my life I was ever so tired (and tipsy) that I fell asleep with my makeup on.  We’ll get to that.  I’m writing this on the bus to Eilat… we’ll get to that, too.

Post Table of Contents :)
1) HAIFA and some Racial Tensions
2) TEL AVIV
3) MOROCCAN HENNA CEREMONY and KIBBUTZ
4) PETACH TIKVAH SHABBAT
5) JOURNEY TO EILAT

PART 1: HAIFA and some Racial Tensions

Right after Tikvah ended, I stashed my things in Ayala’s apartment in Jerusalem and set out with a big backpack and a little backpack to Haifa.  It was a really pretty bus ride, and I felt kind of emotional seeing Jerusalem from the road. I wonder if I will always feel emotional when I enter or leave Jerusalem.

Matat is a sweetheart and called me often to check up… that I was on the bus, that I was off the bus, that I was at the train station, that I was on the train, that I arrived at the Haifa train station, that I was walking to the café to meet her, that I was at the café… once maybe 10 mins went back uneventfully and she called me just to say “You didn’t call me for too long and I worry.” I adore her.  Adore.

Matat’s friend works at a café on Ben Gurion Avenue, one of the central streets of Haifa, so we hung out there for a bit and soaked up the Air Conditioning and caught up.  Mostly we talked about boys, but also life, jobs, our studies, taglit, and everything.  I can’t believe it’s been a year since I saw her last, we picked right up where we left off.

Haifa is SO HOT. It’s the hottest I’ve been in Israel so far. It was just so incredibly humid.  It really effected our moods and I’m sorry for that.  I think if Matat and I had been hanging out in Haifa in January it would have been different.  But we had to be really careful not to be murderous because the weather was just so stifling.  We had our best conversations when eating in air conditioned restaurants or drinking iced coffee J.

We packed a lot into a few days. Haifa is a very interesting city.  It’s been compared to San Francisco, and it’s actually the sister city of Boston.  It’s home to Technion, which is Israel’s version of MIT, as well as other schools I’m blanking on the names of.  Matat studies architecture there. It was really cool to see her apartment and all her things… so Matat.

Anyway, Haifa feels like a city stuck in a bunch of really different eras. We went to Hadar, which means “glory” and it’s kind of in the middle of the city.  It’s where the city hall and the old court house is, and this place called “Memory Park” which overlooks the harbor.   Matat said of the park, in a perfect tour guide voice, “And this is where you can find drugs after dark, and lots of homelesses!” Basically this area was the posh, or “poshy” or “Bougie” as Matat likes to say, area of Haifa back in the day. All the houses are made from beautiful Jerusalem stone.  But these days they’re mostly in disrepair.  Now it’s mostly “arsim” and “cousins.”

Let’s detour to talk about these two terms. “Arsim” is a slang term used to describe a particular class of people in Israel.  It’s not exactly racial (although most Arsim are Middle Eastern looking) and it’s not exactly financial (although most Arsim aren’t really financially stable), and it’s not religious… Geva told me Arsim are Jewish, though I think there are Muslim and Christian Arsim as well. Yonatan told me when he was little he thought he was one of them, hung out with Arsim and dressed and behaved like an Arsim until he wanted to go into a club that was really only for Arsim and he couldn’t go in with his friends, and his mom had to explain to him that he was super Ashkenazi. (Although maybe he was making up this story and I couldn’t tell.) I think the real indicator of arsim is tacky clothing and jewelry and a tendancy to play loud Mizrachi music.  To be honest I really like Mizrachi music!  I think I’ve got some Arsim in me.  People usualy describe Arsim using the American term “Guido” as in, Italian Americans.  But Arsim remind me more of the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans who hung out at Silver Lake when I worked there.

This term makes me uncomfortable a lot because usually it’s said disdainfully by Israelis.  “Don’t go to that beach because there are too many Arsim…” “New immigrants need to be careful or they’ll end up dating an Arsim and not know it until their friend tells them…” “This is a nice neighborhood, you won’t find Arsim here…” etc. I’m not sure it’s really worse than similar resentment in the US though. If I wanted to advise someone not to go to the beaches on the North Shore of Boston, I wouldn’t say because of guidos or because of any other group, I’d said “Because they’re tacky” or “because they’re trashy.” or sketchy.  But what do I mean by that?
“Cousins” is a term that should probably also offend me, but the sounds of it makes me laugh every time. Matat and I were talking down the street, and this guy speeds up in his car, then slooooooows down as he’s passing us, then starts to back up.  I’m a little disturbed and Matat says, “Pffft, he’s fine.  He’s just bored out of his mind because he’s a cousin.”

“A cousin?” I ask.

“Yeah, you know.  In the Tolah.”

“The Tolah?” (I had a hard time understanding her accent, she sometimes puts on a fancy fake Israeli accent when the mood strikes her, even though her English accent is great.)

“Yeah, you know.  The Bible and shit.”

This made me laugh because I’d just spend four weeks studying the Torah.  “Uh huh.”

“It comes from the descendents of the first Arab…”

“Ishmael.”

“Uh huh.  They’re our cousins.”

I laugh a little even as I write it.  Cousins. It reminds me of all the different people you can play as in Katamari. I asked later why they’d be bored out of their minds just because they’re “cousins.” And Matat’s friend, Vered (who is awesome and sweet), said “They have nothing to do.  They have no money to go to the mall with.  Sometimes they have no mall.”

The class strata are really visible in Haifa.  They’re literally strata. Let me explain…

We took the subway.  The subway is adorable, it’s so retro.  It has only 6 stops.  It functions like an underground, diagonal elevator up and down the mountain.   It works on pulleys.  The platforms are sloped and kind of terraced, and so are the cars:

 

Matat’s neighborhood is called Massada and it’s halfway up the mountain, about.  It’s super cute, like the 60s, lots of little shops and cafes and vegans and hipsters, and it’s a mix of “cousins” and well… non-cousins. We took the “subway” from Massada to the top of Mt. Carmel, which is super fancy.  It has fancy hotels and shops and restaurants, and amazing views. Here are some views:
 

At the top is also the entrance to the Bahai Gardens.  We couldn’t go very far in the gardens because you need to go with a tour and the timing didn’t work out.  But here are some pictures:

Main Gate

We had to dress modestly. I am so done with modesty.

What is Bahai, you ask? I don’t really know.   The Gardens were lovely and reminded me a lot of Peterhof in Russia, though.

Matat did some yoga, and I strolled a bit and got some iced coffee (I have no idea how many I’ve consumed this trip but I’m sure it’s a hilariously high number.  I know there was one day I had 5, just that day.) and then we walked down the famous Haifa Steps.

I wish I had photos, but it was really too dark.  These are steps that go all the way down the mountain, and we went all the way from the top on Mt. Carmel to the bottom back to Ben Gurion ave. The steps basically go by the back door of all of these houses, and because of the slop, they all have little bridges and walk ways from their back doors to the steps, and lots of them had interesting lanterns. And there are trees all around the steps.  It was very Lothlorien.

Anyway, as you descend the mountain, you can see the houses go from extremely nice to less nice to even less nice. The social and economic status of the homes decreases with height.  It’s zany.  It was really fun to be with Matat, the future architect, who told me about the different types of buildings and the considerations of building on a slope like that.

The gardens from below, and lit up at night.

Mata made a fancy breakfast on her balcony for me and her two friends, Vered and Asher.  They were so nice and the food was amazing!

"Achot" / Sisters

PART 2: TEL AVIV

The next day, Gabby was in Haifa and we met up and went back to Tel Aviv together.  Because there was construction on the rail tracks the trains were not running so we got a sheirut to Tel Aviv.  A Sheirut is like… a 10 person van that costs about the same as a bus.  I think most of my friends (except maybe Kelsey) would find this very sketchy, but you kind of get used to it in Israel.  People sit in the back and pass their money to the front and then the driver passes their change back, and no one takes anything.  It’s strange.  But cool, I guess.

Gabby and I got a hostel on Montefiore street, of Allenby.  We were gross from travel but a group of guys (who seemed potentially good looking from afar but weren’t so much up close) lured us out to the courtyard where they were pregaming for a pub crawl. They were crazy Germans and already very drunk.  They sang this song and we took a picture:

70 years ago they'd have reacted differently to me and Gabby

And I drank some arak and got pretty smashed right away.  Man, being small rocks. They tried to get us to go on the pub crawl with them but we wanted to shower and look nice, and they said, “But you’re already george-ous!!!” as in, gorgeous with a soft G. Better luck next time, guys.

This was the first time I’d ever had to put my makeup on drunk, which was an adventure.  Gabby helped.  We met some friends from ROI at a brasserie in Rabin Square, which we found out after was supposed to be one of the best restaurants in Tel Aviv.  It was tasty, but it didn’t blow my mind.  I had chicken cordon bleu, and the waitress asked me if I knew what that was… chicken… AND cheese… and HAM?!?  I said yes.  Bwahahaha. We went looking for a bar after but it was already nearly 2 am, which is insane. I don’t know where the time goes sometimes.

We spent the next day eating and in cafes and kind of shopping and traversing town, then I got a train to Ashkelon, which is a port city about an hour south of Tel Aviv.  I’m not going to lie, I get really excited whenever I successfully navigate public transportation on my own, especially in Hebrew. I’m pretty sure I was beaming the entire train ride.

Bread Story, my favorite Tel Aviv cafe

PART 3: MOROCCAN HENNA CEREMONY AND KIBBUTZ

Geva picked me up and we met Rivka at her friend’s Moshav where they were having a Jewish Moroccan Henna ceremony.  I looked this up in advance online, and I read that it was festive but also kind of sad.  It celebrates the woman leaving her parents’ home the day/week before the wedding.  They tattoo her with henna and protection charms and the name of her husband and stuff. And then the married women give her bedroom advice. But it was really different from what I read!

Rivka pointed out this was an interesting group because the bride is Sephardi from the moshav, and the groom is Ashkenazi from the kibbutz, so it was a clash of cultures.  It was fun seeing all the kibbutzniks awkwardly going along with the ceremony, although they were all smiles and tried their best and it was fun. There was tons and tons and tons of food.

So much food!

Tons of people, men and women, and there was nothing really bitter sweet about it.  There was also tons of arak, and I think that’s all I need to say for you to guess my condition.

After dinner, they dressed us all up in “traditional” garb.  It was so fun!

Cute!

This is my favorite... Geva's face, hahaha!

Love!

We danced in a circle for a long time, the music was really fun Mizrachi music. People waved dishes of sweets and cookies over their heads and threw sweets and people and the bride’s grandmother (I think) waved the steaming henna pot around for a bit.

Then the bride and groom sat on these thrones (so funny),

 and the matriarch put a big glob of henna on their hands and covered it with a little corsage type thing.  Then we all got one!









I was afraid people would think it looked like my hand was just dirty, but so far every Israeli who has seen my hand since (I think it lasts for about 2 weeks) has no said, “Did you press your hand into a pile of shit?” but instead said “Ah! A Henna Ceremony!! How did you go to a Henna Ceremony?” I like looking at it because it makes me think of such a fun night.

I got to try lots of traditional deserts and I even got to try some sabra.  Here’s me eating one.

A wanna-be sabra eating a sabra.

It had a nice flavor but it was full of a million seeds so it was hard to eat. The other people at it were super nice and friendly. Most of the Israelis I’ve met have been really well traveled, since it’s tradition for them to take a big trip after their army service is done and that kind of gives them the travel bug, so I always have something to talk about with them.  And many of them have seen much more of America than I have.


 Bride and Groom Dancing!


Lifting the Groom up on a chair!

(NOTE it's 12:30 and I gotta get up at 6 to go to Petra  I'll post this for now, come back in a day or two for me to post the rest!)

Homesickness

I love Israel.  Sometimes it even feels like home. I know next week when it's time to leave I'll love it more than ever, and I know I'll miss it when I'm in the US.  But tonight I'm feeling homesick for my American life, and I'm going to write about that.

Things I miss most...

~Not feeling so stupid. It's more than just the language barrier (though that does make me feel stupid, there's something so demoralizing about never getting my coffee order quite right.), it's mostly not knowing when people are kidding and not knowing what people mean a lot.  I miss feeling competent.

~Things being open on Friday night and Saturday. Shabbat in Israel is INFURIATING. I miss not having to think hard about how I'm going to get somewhere or how I'm going to accomplish something on a Saturday.

~Mom, Dad, Jake, and Huxley. Home space where I don't feel like I'm imposing or have to ask permission for things.

~General shallow politeness.  People saying excuse me. People actually moving when YOU say excuse me. People asking before they reach into your bag of food and eat it.

~My friends, who know me. My colleagues, too.

~How beautiful and clean Boston is, and mostly, how well I know it, how comfortable I feel in it.

~People investing in me as a friend because they don't think I'm going to disappear and never see them again.

~Being around other humanities majors.

~Being around people who recognize the victory theme from FF7 when I sing it after accomplishing something.

~Fewer stray cats, especially their screaming all night.

~Having a home, not living out of a backpack, not worrying so much about my "stuff."

~Personal space. Alone time.

Some fantastic Matat lines already...

Matat: Listen, Ariane.  From Jerusalem, take Bus 940 to Haifa.  Do NOT take 947.  Not even if you miss the 940.  The 947 is hell on Earth.  Do you understand me?  Hell. On. Earth.

later

Ariane: Okay, I'll call you Monday with my ETA!
Matat: Yes! Or call me to chat.  Or if an idea pops into your head.  Or if an opinion strikes you. Or If you feel like it.  Call me WHENEVER!

I love her <3 <3 <3

To Mourn or Not to Mourn?

Tomorrow is Tisha B'av, which commemorates the day the second temple fell to the Romans.  But more than that, it commemorates all the tragedies of Jewish history... Egypt, both temples falling, the exiles, our treatment in Spain, The Holocaust, you know, our history.  It's a day of mourning in which everything you do should simulate (or not simulate, if you're very into it) mourning.  No eating, no drinking, no showering, no listening to music.  You're supposed to wear shoes that let your feet feel the ground.  You're supposed to sleep on the floor or with a rock under your pillow to make yourself uncomfortable.  You're supposed to refrain from greeting anyone... no hi! how are you doing?  As my Dad reminds me, you never ask someone in mourning how they're doing, even reflexively. You can read or watch movies, but they should be sad ones.  Even Torah, you should only read sad parts.

We're all going to hear some lamentations tonight.  I regret a little not being at the Kotel (Western Wall) tomorrow.  It seems like it would be very powerful, although everyone has told me that it's super crowded and difficult to even approach.  And if the plaza is full of jacket/hat wearing people in super desert July heat who aren't showering because of the holiday....

Anyway. If you choose, Israel can be a place to keenly feel mourning. There's evidence of tragedy everywhere. Most of the time the fall of the Temple feels incredibly distant to me, and indeed it was almost 2,000 years ago.

But a few weeks ago we were at the City of David, which is an archaeological site that's excavating the old, old old city of Jerusalem.  One part they uncovered is a very long, wide road that leads from the outskirts of the city all the way up to the Temple.  Jews were commanded to go to the Temple to make sacrifices a few times a year, so it was a route every pious Jew took on those special days in their lives where they left their farms and journeyed to the center of the universe. It was really cool to stand on those same stones.

Then the guide pointed out fallen bolders, cracks in the street, evidence of the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans.  And the thing he showed us that really got to me and still kind of gives me the chills is how there were these big flat slabs on both sides of the street, and every third one was missing.  The guide described how under the street was a very shallow sewer, really just the size of a crawl space.  And in that crawl space were found pots and pans and cooking utensils and all of this evidence of Jews who'd lived down there during and after the attack by the Romans, retreated to this tiny 2ft by 2ft (maybe) tunnel and existed down there.  And the missing slabs are from when the Romans figured this out, and legionnaires methodically lifted road stones, in all their gleaming armor, and reached down and dragged the Jews out from under the road and slit their throats.

And here I was standing both on the place of joy and piety and then a place of final hiding, the last resort, from which the Romans hauled my ancestors and murdered them.  All the Jews had to be smoked out, plucked out, one by one, and killed and tossed aside.

So yes, Israel is a place where it's easy to recall the destruction settled on Jewish shoulders continuously throughout the ages.

But the other thing that I've been doing a lot of (compared to my usual life) here is Torah and Talmud study.  We studied Daniel, who was a governor in Babylon when Nebuchanezzer destroyed the first Temple and he did nothing, nothing at all.  We studied rabbis who bargained with the Romans for the lives of Talmudic scholars and let the rest of Jerusalem burn.  We've studied the strife between the Jews, how little they did to defend or prepare themselves, how they watched tragedy approaching and did nothing (which is of course eerily repeated in the Holocaust to an extent.) We read about the Jewish bandits who destroyed Jerusalem's food supply and refused to let anyone leave the city as the Roman troops camped outside.

And then I think... what are we mourning exactly? I asked Eitan about this, about how we mourn the fall of the temple when the Jews rather brought it upon themselves.  He said that's part of what we mourn - our behavior and what became of our society and perhaps how it even brought our own destruction, and we mourn any evidence of a similar downfall we see in Israel.

Maybe that's true, but there's something that really chafes me about how much mourning Jews do.  We're such a weepy group in general. We have a tragic past but there's something so masochistic about it.  I'm really not into victim blaming, and I realize this is how it might sound.  But I feel like people who are used to abuse, we just roll in it, we just bathe in it, we're drawn back to it over and over.  We have this strange love for our own agony.

Someone referenced the "Yiddish mother" this morning, who would say to her child, "Sure, go out with your friends.  I'm just your mother who birthed you, I just slaved all day making this dinner for you, but don't worry, I'll sit here staring at the wall and wait while you're out having a nice time and I'll stay up all night and heat it up for you when you come home.  Go ahead. This isn't the worst thing that's happened to me yet today and worse things will happen still."

There's something particularly troubling to me about this designated day of mourning where you try to make yourself upset.  It really does feel masochistic to me.  Rocks under pillows, only watching sad movies.  It feels like theater when I'd think of something sad to make myself cry.

On the one hand, I believe in remembering pain and acknowledging it.  I think history is so important, and I'm a big "never forget" type. On the other hand, remembering and wallowing feel different to me.  Are we paying respects to someone? That's not what this feels like.

The issue here is not to criticize observance of this day.  Far from it, I always think people should practice as suits them.  The issue is I'm trying to decide if I want to partake.

Part of me thinks of those people getting dragged out from under the road and I want to fast.  And I think, I'm in Israel, I want to participate as much as I can, I should put my mattress on the ground to sleep tonight.

But then I think of Ursula LeGuin writing "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."*

Again, I'm not saying that people who observe Tisha B'Av are saying happiness is stupid.  I'm not concerning myself with them at the moment.  I'm thinking about the heaviness of Judaism as a whole, the focus on rules and rules and rules and rejection of sensation and the intense, boa constrictor embrace of pain. I'm getting bored of pain. I don't want  my Judaism to be a masochistic on, a self-flagellating one.

(*On the other hand she might be speaking sarcastically given the nature of the story.)

Gush Etzion Settlement Visit

Now I'm going to talk about Zionism!

I am hoping people reading this blog will read this entry with as open a mind as they read the West Bank one.

Zionism is just the belief that the Jewish people should have a sovereign homeland and that homeland should be in the historic Land of Israel.

A friend from home cautioned me about using this word, saying it has a lot of stigma.  Another friend found out I was going to Israel this summer and paused and said, "But you're not a zionist... are you?"  And one time on an online dating site, this guy meant to make a note about my profile to himself but accidentally sent it to me, and it said: "the bad kind of Democrat (zionist, .....)"  Followed by: "I feel terrible. I didn't mean to send that to you"

Obviously this is discouraging to me.  I think people hear Zionist and think "Zionist conspiracy" as if it's some secret that we Jews have spent our entire history yearning for a place to self-actualize.   Or as if our desire is for world domination instead of just self-governance. I don't think Zionism is any more disturbing than any other movement of peoplehood.  I mean, I find Zionism very beautiful, but that's me.

I won't disown the term Zionism just because it makes people uncomfortable because of previous connotations with the word.  Just like I won't disown "Feminism" because some women have taken that and translated it into hatred against men.  Man-hating is not feminism.  World domination is not Zionism.  People need to learn these things and I won't help the situation by letting movements I love be twisted and misunderstood and so disown them.

I think in part because the world is so uninformed about Zionism and thus so critical of it, Zionists can be overwhelmingly self critical.  This really played out in our field trip last week to Gush Etzion.

I've misplaced my camera (not lost... I'm convinced it's just under a pile of clothes somewhere), so I'm gonna use internet pictures again to illustrate.

Gush Etzion is a block of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (aka The West Bank).  I think it's the largest collection of Jewish settlements in the area but I'm not positive, with nearly 100,000 residents.  It's mostly agricultural and it's also home to some very famous yeshiva, or religious study schools.

It's obviously a very controversial place.  To give you some background, Jewish settlers tried to settle the (empty) land many times in the early 20th century (this was when the land was still under British control.  It was not a Jewish or Palestinian state.) but  they were chased off by Arab raiders many times.  The most famous attempt was the kibbutz (farming collective) Kfar Etzion, which flourished for some time.  When the UN proposed a partition plan to divide the British land into two states: The Jewish State and the Palestinian State, the Arabs refused to partition plan and launched heavy attacks on Jewish settlements.  Kfar Etzion was completely wiped out, with over 200 people killed (Mostly men, most of the women and children had been evacuated shortly before hand).  We heard some testimony about how the surrendered defenders were rounded up in the center of town and told they were going to take a picture, but they were all shot.

And remember, of course, that a great portion of the membership of settlements like this were holocaust survivors. Being rounded up and shot in the street in the place they sought refuge is...

I think you get it.  Some time after Israel won the conflict against the Arabs and founded its own state, the children of these killed settlers returned to the spot and build the settlements of modern Gush Etzion. These kids had harbored this dream of going back to their home town their whole lives.  We heard a story about how they were gathered around a radio saying hi to their dads when they heard the defenses breached and gun shots and then nothing.

One part of the field trip was visiting one of the only buildings standing from the attack which is now a museum.  We went into a theater and there was this really weird dank smell, like a basement.  We watched a film about Kfar Etzion that ended with a description of the attack and how the wounded and a nurse were gathered in the bomb shelter under the building we were then sitting in. And an Arab came over and dragged this woman out and pulled a pin out of a grenade and handed it to her, and ordered her to toss it into the shelter where her husband was wounded, and when she refused, he did it.  The movie ended with a shot of the blown out bomb shelter with the gnarled steel girding on top.

Then the screen raised up and behind the screen we could see into the floor and see the bomb shelter were the people died!  That was the smell!

Oh SNAP!

bunker

I'm pretty sure my eyes were like this O_O.  SHiiiiiiiiiiiit.

Then we all went down the stairs and circled the bomb shelter and there was a memorial with all the names of the dead and electric candles.  It was intense. I was stunned, and yes, I was moved.  Some of the girls in our group were sniffling.  It was powerful.

But about half of our group got very grumpy and started talking about the propaganda of it all. How manipulative it is.

And then my eyes were like O_O.  WHhhhhhaaaaaaaaat?

This goes back to what I was saying earlier about the extreme skepticism about Zionism. Was it trying to tug at our heartstrings? Yes, of course.  All memorials do.  The Hiroshima Peace Memorial.  The Boston Holocaust Memorial.  The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I mean really, every memorial I know is designed to kick you in the teeth with the memory of the tragedy.  This one was, too.

But as we stood a foot away from the place were people had been killed, this time the topic was propaganda.

I say, think what you want about the settlements and the politics of them. But regardless of where you lean, Kfar Etzion was a group of Jewish refugees who settled semi-shitty land that no one else was occupying and turned it into a nice farm. They were survivors from all corners of the world, including Auschwitz. And then they were all killed.  Can't we mourn them, regardless of if you want that land to belong to Palestinians? Can't you remember in an intense way the loss of life? People died trying to be free.  People died.  If they'd been any other people I really don't think the bitter propaganda reaction would have happened.  But they were Zionist people, people who gave their lives for a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel and so their stories can't possibly be authentic...?

Did this happen on both sides? Yes, of course. And I think we should remember the heavy Palestinian losses as well. And I hope, in my West Bank entry, I conveyed that there are multiple narratives here and each has its truths and its legitimacy. But one of those narratives, with its truth and legitimacy, is the Jewish one. Is the Kfar Etzion one. It was painful for me to hear so much bitter denial while basically standing next to a grave.

Later on I was talking to Deeds, who is from Efrat, one of the settlements in the Gush Etzion bloc.  I asked him if they were always taught over and over the story of Kfar Etzion.  I pictured it being like the American Revolution in New England, I feel like we studied it every year and we're always hyper conscious of it, especially in Boston.  But Deeds said not at all, because it wasn't a solitary event, it's an on going thing.  It can still be a very violent place to live.  Two of Deeds high school friends were shot and killed by terrorists in the street of his home town.

I wish we'd talked to more people from the towns. I wish we'd heard more about their feelings about living in the West Bank and what their experiences were. I'd especially have liked to talk to some young people.  Maybe I'll as Rivka about it.

The end of our trip was probably the most awkward moment of my trip to Israel and definitely the only time I've felt ashamed.  Our tour guide had been talking about how he was friends with these Palestinian Arabs living in Gush Etzion. They are one huge family who basically have their own tiny village. He volunteered to show us around and of course we wanted to go.  When we got there, it was pretty run down and empty.  We didn't see any people to talk to.  We followed our guide into a building and down some stairs and were told to take off our shoes, so we did.  We'd been instructed to dress modestly for the trip, so we were, by modern Jewish standards... covered shoulders, knee-length skirts, etc..

Then we went into this little village mosque in the basement. I was really really surprised we were going in.  It didn't seem to fit our program. But I thought it was good we were trying to see Palestinian life, what they're facilities were like, etc..  It was strange, a bunch of us Jews barefoot in the mosque, nobody really knowing what they place was about or anything.  Our guide started talking about Arab life in Gush Etzion and then a Palestinian woman in a hijab came over and was very distraught that we were there and the way we were dressed... and then of course I recalled that all women should have their hair covered in a mosque, among many other rules we were probably breaking without knowing it.  We left in haste.

And you know, I was pretty pissed at the situation.  We were lead into this place because it seemed like we'd had prior arrangements or something.  We were misinformed about how to dress. And of course, we really violated the sacred space of a people who already feel oppressed and abused and appropriated by occupiers. It was a Divinity School grad's nightmare. I felt sick to my stomach.  As we were leaving the woman said, "I'm sorry, but you just can't." And I said, "No, we're sorry."

So it was a really tense, emotional day over all. There were so many compacted frustrations. I'm frustrated that the Zionist narrative is ignored or assumed false.  I'm frustrated at the insensitivity (including my own ignorance) shown to the Muslim Palestinians. I think everyone is frustrated.

Micah said there were two goals of our field trip.
1) To see how settlements are in ridiculous places.  Gush Etzion is in the middle of the West Bank.  It would be very difficult to negotiate it to be absorbed into Israel if two states are ever split up.  It's just kind of... PLOP, there. And these days it's surrounded by Arab towns. No wonder the Palestinians are pissed.

ON THE OTHER HAND...

2) How necessary they are for Israel's security.  We stood on a hill in Gush Etzion and we could see the Mediterranean.  The distance between these hills in the West Bank and Tel Aviv, the center of Israeli society, is only 38 miles of lowlands. And giving up the West Bank would be giving complete visibility of all of these lowlands at all times to the Palestinians. To withdraw and give complete control of the West Bank over to the Palestinians is military suicide.

Fabulous.

***

I'm not sure what else to say about this right now and I feel like ending on a positive note, so I'll say...

TEL AVIV!

Gabby and I spent the weekend in Tel Aviv in a hostel right on the beach.  It was beautiful!  We ate a lot of good food and met up with my friend Reuel from ROI for lunch and we went shopping a bit and had lots of good coffee.  We went bar hopping Friday night and I got pretty tipsy and couldn't remember my own phone number when a guy asked for it so Gabby had to give it to him for me, which amuses me to no end.  Gabby got stung by a jelly fish in the Mediterranean so we bought her some vinegar. We played Never Have I Ever with 5 or so Israeli guys on Dizengoff street and the Israelis kept losing.

Tel Aviv is not really my kind of city, but I enjoyed it and I'd like to go back.  I think the history and style and vibe of Jerusalem is much more me. But they're only an hour bus ride (18 shekels.. about 5 dollars) apart, so I can like both :). Next time I want to walk to Yaffo and maybe go to some art galleries.

Love you all!