My Journey

Hello, my loves. I'm sure no one is left reading this, as I haven't written in two months and wasn't really good about writing before that, but I wanted to make sure I at least signed off before I left Israel, and maybe filled you in on the things I would have written about, had I been in the business of writing.

On June 1, I fly from Tel Aviv to London and on June 15, I fly from Dublin to Philadelphia, which means that I have less than a week before I leave Israel and less than a month before I return home (with a sweet vacation in between). A lot of my friends have already left and I moved out of my apartment on May 15, which makes this week feel a lot like high school during that last week, when we had already finished finals but still had to show up everyday. That feeling--which made everything seem kind of surreal--makes it that much harder to process what now feels like the unprocessable (aka everything that I've done and experienced this year). That, and the lack of sleep--I think nerves and excitement about returning home have been keeping me up at night. Anyway, I'm hoping time and home will help me figure out what this year has been all about.

Here are a few things that the last two months of been all about:

Soon after I returned from the States, I participated in life-changing programs in Hevron and Bethlehem.
I experienced the joy and insanity of Passover in the Holy Land.
I witnessed and tried to comprehend Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day, and Independence Day.
I turned 25.
I had an adventure traveling to Cairo and the Pyramids.
Now, I'm watching all my friends go home and prepare for whatever the next step is, even though I suspect (based on my experience in the States in March) that we're all totally unprepared for the fact that going home will be the hard part.

I'll try to expand on some of these in the next couple of days, weeks, and months, but I may not. For what it's worth, it's definitely been a journey.



P.S. When I return I'll be moving back to Philly, and I have no idea what I'll be doing there.

Purim in Jerusalem

Purim is one of the most joyous and raucous holidays in the Jewish calendar. It's a normally a day-long celebration but in walled (or once-walled) cities, like Jerusalem, it actually takes place the day after the rest of the world, so in Israel it's a two-day celebration. Every holiday so far people have told me how great it is to be in Israel, specifically Jerusalem. But I think this has actually been exceptional. It's sort of like Halloween, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day all in one.

There are a few things that, according to Jewish law, one is required to do at Purim. These include hearing the Book of Esther, giving gifts to a friend or friends and to the poor, having a meal on the day of Purim, and getting so drunk you can't tell the difference between good and evil. I'll say that I didn't complete the final one, but I did enjoy the attempt. There are also a variety of customs that are not as popular, or are slightly more out-of-place, in the States, the most well known being the custom to wear costumes. I was a fairy. It seemed appropriate considering the company I tend to keep.

I think what stood out in particular with Purim (as opposed to other holidays that I've celebrated here) in particular in Jerusalem (as opposed to in the States) is that I never really understood what Purim was supposed to be like before. Both in childhood and adulthood it seemed to be a kids' holiday. I guess because it's supposed to be fun and your supposed to dress up, and those are kid things to do? This year I (between megillah readings) went to an all-night party and to three Purim meal open-houses on Purim day. It was a great answer to not really celebrating New Year's, and it was most-definitely not just a kids' holiday. (Although I did have an awesome time painting the faces of all my teacher's daughters with purple eyeliner.)

Unfortunately, I also think it's something that comes with being in a large community who all celebrate in a similar way, which is nearly impossible in the States. And it's this kind of issue of community and practice that I (and a lot of the people with whom I'm learning) am going to struggle with when I return to the States.

The only title I can think of is Lost in Translation, but it's just so trite

I received an e-mail the other day in Hebrew that was a little beyond me, so I ran it through one of those crappy online translating programs to get the gist of it. It turns out it was about a child with cancer who needed blood donated. After reading a couple paragraphs of broken English, I got to the syntactically perfect, but slightly inappropriate last line, "Let the kid live a little!" I went back to the original text just to double check that line, and it turned out the Hebrew was pretty simple. It read, "Give life to a small child!"

A Pocketful of Simchas

It must be my lucky week. Not only did I get called to the Torah last week at the bat mitzvah of a super-excited 50-something, but a week later I got to hold the chuppah at the wedding of two super-excited 80-something. Nine years into the second marriage for each of them, Norma and Len decided that during their trip to Israel, they wanted to have a Jewish ceremony. A friend of theirs from Jerusalem organized it and got rabbi, and it happened to take place at my yeshiva. For weddings as well as bat mitzvahs you need 10 people, and since the couple, their friend, and the rabbi only numbered four, they asked the yeshiva students if we would help make a minyan. I think we ended up having close to 20 people, and it was a beautiful wedding. Despite the fact that this was not only the second marriage for each, but also the second wedding for that couple, they both looked nervous and excited and had tears in their eyes the whole time.

At the end, a bunch of the guys grabbed a chair and lifted up the groom (who didn't seem to either walk or talk much), as is, I guess, customary at Jewish weddings. To my surprise, his bride was overjoyed. She said it made his day. Although, adorably, he barely seemed to notice.

Skipping Class

When I got home late the other night, my roommate told me that he had been invited by a friend of ours to go to Masada the next morning, and they wanted me to come along as well. (Well, not me specifically, but additional people so that they could have ten for a minyan.) Our friend's mom is in town and her mom had a friend who, in middle age, decided to climb Masada at sunrise and become a bat mitzvah by reading Torah for the first time on top of the mountain. They had already rented a van and they just needed people to fill it. As planned he bat mitzvah woman, Anne, climbed up at sunrise, and the rest of us drove down at about 8am and met her there.

Masada is an mountain next to the Dead Sea where an entire Jewish community that lived at the top murdered each other in resistance to Roman enslavement. I'm not sure I particularly feel that it was a great act of Jewish heroism, but I do appreciate the site as iconic, think the ruins are pretty interesting, and can't really get over the amazing view. I haven't been to Masada since I was here when I was 15, and whatever I may think of the history, it has stuck out since then as story of my own heroics, since I managed to climb up before dawn (with a lot of help from my friends) despite by crippling fear of heights.

We were on a tight schedule and didn't get to climb up or down this time (though I might have liked to), but it was all worth it. I've never, ever seen anyone so excited to become a bat mitzvah as Anne was this week. I had never met her before, but when we started to service, I could tell she was nervous. As soon as she finished reading from the Torah, though, she started beaming with pride and dancing around the little room we had designated for shachrit. This is the story I'm telling to every 12 year who doesn't want to be bar mitzvah'd, and I was proud to be a part of it.

The whole thing also reminded me of what a beautiful country this can be and of what amazing things I will see if I skip class once in a while and breathe some fresh air. Despite the fact that in this tiny country everything is about 3 meters from everything else, it all seems really, really far from Jerusalem. I think if I can get out of this city and see some more of what Israel has to offer, I'll may actually learn to love it.

What's New With Me (and, you know, Israel)

I don't know if there's so much new with me, but it's been an interesting week and it's worth an update anyway. Since the beginning of the semester I've been learning at the yeshiva full-time, which is about 8+ hours a day, 4.5 days a week. The first semester I was studying Hebrew in the mornings, and now I am studying Talmud. I read it without translation (which means, in Hebrew and Aramaic) and even after I finally figure out what it says (with a lot of help from my teacher), it still really hurts my brain to figure out what it means. I'm not sure I'm a natural-born Talmud scholar, but I do enjoy working my way through it. I'm definitely set on continuing my learning when I return to the States in whatever way I can.

On other news, yesterday was the first (and, as far as I can tell, the only) secular national holiday they've had here since I've arrived——Election Day. It was nice to have a day off; it was not nice, however, to see just how far right the war has turned Israelis. Months ago, when Livni was elected head of Kadima, the "central-left" party (which was not so very left) had so many seats in the Knesset it seemed pretty clear she would be the next prime minister. At this point, even that seems unlikely. I won't say anything else you can read in the newspaper, but I will say that it's difficult for me to watch. I typically think there's a lot of undue negativity about Israel in the foreign press, but I'm disheartened by a country that takes what happened in Gaza as a sign that the oppression is insufficient and the wars are not severe enough. I'm still trying to get familiar with the subtleties of all sides, but, in my mind, the big picture is definitely not a pretty one.

I'm fine, despite the fact that Israel is not

Since I've been getting a few calls in the last week, I wanted to let everyone know that I'm fine. Jerusalem is in general a pretty safe place, so, as it goes, my life hasn't really changed here. I was talking to a friend the other day and realized that one of the things that makes it hard for me to really comprehend what is going on is trying to compare it to home. If I were in the States and a rocket fell in New York or DC, Philadelphia would just shut down; here, I'm less than 50 miles from a war zone, and I get to keep going about business as usual just like everyone else. If cities in Israel shut down every time a rocket exploded somewhere in the country, nothing would ever happen. Nonetheless, people are definitely edgier—unsure of which places to avoid and which not to worry about—and are definitely discussing it constantly.

I don't want to get too much into facts and opinions beyond just my personal experiences because I'll probably get in trouble by saying stuff that's totally misinformed, but since I've yet to express any opinion about Israel and its politics on this blog, I will take this opportunity to say something briefly. First of all, the more time I spend here, the more clear it becomes that I mostly don't agree—or at least don't understand—with what Israel is all about. (I'm not up for getting into more details now, but maybe I can address that more at a later date.) Second of all, it's clear that the foreign press is not painting a very pretty picture of Israel right now, and I don't think bombing the shit out of a place is ever the best solution, or even a good idea, but I gather something like 80% of Israelis support this operation. On the whole, I'm not really sure what to think, but I'd like to support Israel right now. So that's that. Stay tuned and I'll try to get up a few entries about some relevant experiences I've had this week.