i drove under the suez canal...twice

I have a huge number of things to catch up on with the blog here. Like a couple of days spent in Bethlehem, Hanukkah in Jerusalem (and elsewhere), a beautiful wedding of some friends, and a recent trip to Cairo with my sister (who is visiting for a couple of weeks). Anyway, here's Cairo. Stay tuned for more soon!

Cairo is the largest city on the African Continent and in the Middle East. Roughly it is the size of New York, with 8.5 million inhabitants within the city limits and 18 million in the metro region (New York has 8.5 in the city limits and 19 in the metro region).

To get there, we took a bus to Eilat, at the southern tip of Israel, spent the night there, then crossed the border at the crack of dawn and took another bus on to Cairo. From this bus we had a view of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all at once! Alas, there was no way to capture it on film. In Egypt, we drove under the Suez Canal. Somehow it had escaped my thinking that we would have to cross the Canal. Then when I did realize that this was a necessity, I would have figured a bridge, but I imagine a tunnel is just more practical in a lot of ways.

We went through a tour company, because otherwise we would have had many hassles at the border, and then trying to get across the Sinai Peninsula (which is not exactly safe nor is it replete with public transportation). It was great to have the tour company take care of these things, the rest of the things they took care of... Let's just say that neither my sister nor I will ever be going on a planned tour again. And really who were we kidding in the first place? Heckler children just don't behave themselves and listen to a tour-guide when they could be off exploring subways and street food.

Anyway, Cairo is vivacious, dirty, and full of people. Just the kind of thing a New Yorker (even one living in exile) finds beautiful in a city. Our guide, Mohammed had the theory that if you drive or walk past something, even if you don't notice it was there, you've seen it. This posed a slight problem to the residual five year old in me who thought King Tut was the coolest thing ever and could have spent hours looking at his funereal mask (eleven kilograms of gold). It also posed a slight problem for the ceramicist, who when in a room surrounded by Egyptian Faience (an interesting self glazing clay that is one of the earliest examples glazed ceramic) was told to hurry up. Nonetheless, I made a good time of it and got to see a good number of the artifacts from King Tut's tomb.

the pyramids

Annabelle could have skipped them I think, in favor of more walking around Cairo. That residual five year old I mentioned earlier was really excited about them. Rather than post two many photos (you've seen them all I'm sure), here is a photo of Annabelle and me in front of the Pyramid of Khafre. And a photo of the same pyramid, without the siblings. The Egyptian Antiquities Authority has done a good job of preventing the area directly around the Pyramids from becoming the disgusting tourist trap I thought it would be. Not to say there weren't plenty of men on camels trying to sell us things (no, really), but the whole place was relatively quiet. Immediately outside the gates... Not so much.

the market and the food


We wandered around the Bazar. I've probably posted more than enough photos of markets, but this one was really beautiful. Here are some of the shops we walked past. I didn't include a few, like the live chicken store, or the haberdasher, who was busy making traditional and contemporary hats with a coal fired steam table. But here is a beautiful little coffee shop, the charcoal vendor, some pottery fresh from the wheel drying in the open, and a textile merchant. I'm kicking myself a little that I didn't purchase any of the textiles.

And what would a Travel Blog from Paul be without some notes about food?

An Egyptian staple is called Qoshari. It consists of noodles, lentils, other noodles, rice, chickpeas, a spicy spicy tomato sauce, and crispy onions. The cart pictured below sells Qoshari.

The dude with the deep frier was making felafel and fries, and fish cakes. I had some felafel. The photo (credited to Annabelle Heckler) does a pretty good job of describing my feelings about it.


the minarets



Cairo has been a muslim city since the tenth century. It is called the City of a Thousand Minarets. I think the City of Ten-Thousand Minarets might be more accurate.

The Mosques in the old city of Cairo were filled with life. The Madrassas (the same root as the Hebrew Midrash, and the same idea as the Jewish Beit Midrash) were full of young men studying (there were several Madrassas for women as well, but I wasn't welcome to enter). I think that Muslims and Jews must use the same printers to publish their holy books. They had the same red blue and green leather bindings, and similar patterns on the pages. To anyone who doesn't know the difference, the barefooted men in skullcaps studying in a Madrassa couldn't possibly look all that different from their shod cousins in a Beit Midrash. In point of fact, I do know the difference, and yet was struck by how similar everything was.

I didn't go into the prayer hall. Something about being a tourist where people pray makes me uncomfortable. This might come as a surprise being that right now I live in one of the prime locations for religious tourism, but there it is.

I could have stared all day at the repeating geometric patterns that are basis for the architectural elements of the Mosques I went in or walked past. I probably would have if Annabelle hadn't dragged me away.

life on the streets (and roads)

Almost every intersection in Cairo has a traffic light. Most of the traffic lights just blink orange all the time. Some of them actually go through the proper cycles. No one seems to pay any attention to any of them. We were given advice by many people on how to cross the street. The advice differed, but ended the same... Take a Deep Breath and Pray. People just kinda walk along the highways, and cross where ever they'd like (with a tinge of fear in their eyes). Everyone uses their horns continuously, although it isn't the angry "get the hell out of my way" horn usage one sees in Israel. It is more of a conversation. One driver starts "I'm here," another chimes in "You're THERE?" "Yes I'm here," replies the first "Oy, I'll move," finishes the second. And what a collection of vehicles! From the tinted window Mercedes with armed guard, to the refurbished 1950's Peugot still sporting the French license plates (under the egyptian ones), to the vintage vespa, to the truck that I can't even begin to describe. And yes, there were even a few donkeys and camels.



Driving back, we went under the Suez Canal again, and enjoyed the stars, which, even from the inside of our van, were brighter than I've seen in years. It was a bit a of a whirlwind. But oh, how about that Qoshari? Oh, I nearly forgot about the subway. I didn't really get a good photo of the subway itself. But here's the sign...

this past week in photos and anecdotes

In Jerusalem, the curbs are painted different colors. Blue and white means pay to park, red and white means don't park, black and white means don't park or stand or even think about slowing down because it's a main thoroughfare and we'll tow your ass (more or less).

Imagine my surprise the other day when I discovered yet another color scheme on my walk to Ulpan. I'm not sure what this one means. Parking for princesses only? Perhaps it's an attempt to make new a tired old color scheme?

Maybe they just ran out of red paint, but then why did the municipality have pink curb paint on hand?

This week included a four day festival Muslim festival, Aid al Adhan (with lots of guttural inflection). It is the festival of the sacrifice, honoring the story in the Koran where Ibrahim (Abraham) was supposed to sacrifice his son Ishmael (whose name is about the same in Hebrew and Arabic). It differs from the Judeo-Christian story where Isaac is the son bound on the alter. The rest of the story is about the same, an angel stays Abraham's hand, and his son goes on to find a mighty people.

Anyway, the point is that many of the students in my Hebrew class are Muslim, and they took the time off from school in order to celebrate. With our class at less than half it's normal size we had a slightly different game plan, including small conversations in class about whatever topics we wanted (I talked at length about Psalm 92). The next day included a walking tour of Jerusalem with our teacher, who, it turns out also has a certificate in Jerusalem guiding... Go figure.

Having heard of the walking tour, several of the Muslims made their way back to class to hear what Renana had to say about Yemin Moshe, an old neighborhood overlooking the old city. Sharif, the young man who starred in the moonwalk of my last blog entry, was dressed to the nines in order to honor the holiday. Here we are.

i loving learning languages...i just hate memorizing vocabulary

So I realized it has been almost two weeks since I posted anything! Deepest apologies, I've been insanely busy.

Here are a couple little anecdotes about my Hebrew class. Hopefully they'll tide the hypothetical you over for a couple days when, hopefully, I will be able to post something more substantial.

Anyway, we've been doing oral presentations in Ulpan. These are in order to prepare us for a ministry of education test that includes an oral component. This test, which I will probably write more about as time comes certifies me as having taken roughly the equivalent of two years of college level Hebrew. A useful piece of paper indeed.

I figured that the best way to get through my presentation would be to speak about something that in English I would still be able to speak about after a root canal (which is more or less where my Hebrew is). This left two options, pottery or restaurant work. I went with pottery, figuring it was more professional than some of the stories I could tell about my restaurant jobs. And so I spoke, for five minutes, with photographs to support me, about pottery through history and then my own work. It went okay.

But today's presentation really took the cake for creativity. Sharif, a friend of mine who lives near the Mount of Olives, speaks English, French, Arabic and a lot more Hebrew than I, and is eighteen years old. He spoke about the many different styles of dance in the world, starting with Dabket (which is worth youtubing), a traditional Lebanese dance which has seemingly migrated throughout the Muslim World. He moved on to a discussion of breakdancing, which included a demonstration (complete with music blaring from his cellphone). And most importantly, American pop. It featured non other than the King of Pop, MJ, singing Billy Jean (again from Sharif's cellphone). Learning about the moonwalk from a young Arab Israeli man in Hebrew language class might not be exactly the experience that the Jewish Agency was thinking of when it gave me the scholarship to come here. But really I think it's a lot better this way. Besides, Sharif really rocked the moonwalk better than I've seen in a long time, maybe ever?

some lighter notes

In lieu of yet another heavy political post here are some photos and anecdotes from the past week or three.

The vegetable that kicked my ass...

This is called a snake gourd. It's really beautiful, it looks and feels like something between a cucumber and a zucchini... It tastes like no such thing. I've tried roasting it, braising it, sautéing it, currying it, eating it in salads. Nothing works, it's just weird.


Lots of dates (the edible kind)...

Here are some almost ripe ones (a little late in the season) they turn that dark luscious carmel color as they dry. The dates here are amazing.




A nice view of Jerusalem-Al Qudds...

This is a view of East Jerusalem from just above where the Nof Tzion (View of Zion) planned community (read settlement) is under construction... Okay maybe in lieu of heavy politics was a misleading subtitle for this entry. You'll forgive me I hope.

Just to the left of center is a gold splotch. It's the Dome of the Rock and the Old City. Between that splotch and the foreground is Silwan, the village through which I walked and posted my first mamoth blog entry. You can also see the Mount of Olives to the right of that. It was a spectacular view

olive picking (an introduction to the skills required and some anecdotes)

Apple picking is a pretty ubiquitous activity in Maine in the fall. I always enjoyed it when I was in college. We would go pick apples, get away from school, from studying, etc. It was relaxing and felt so wholesome. Later, when I worked at Willow Pond Farm, apple picking took on a different meaning. I no longer went out to the farm to regain that feeling of connection with the earth that seemed lacking in college. It became work, exhausting work that held a certain satisfaction at the end of the day, when the other farmers and I would sit down to a huge supper that we had harvested and cooked that day.

Apple picking is the nearest activity I can relate to olive picking. There are some important differences to note. For one, apples on the tree are fragile, if the picker grasps them too hard, they bruise and are no longer fit for sale, only for cider. If an apple falls on the ground, it is automatically a cider apple, although the FDA and USDA are trying to make that illegal out of concern for food borne disease. I could get into the politics of orcharding in New England, but I'd rather talk about olives and their politics.

Olives are neither fragile nor tender when they are on the trees. In order to eat them, one needs to cure them for a month or so in a fairly strong brine. There are two uses for olives, to eat and to press for oil. Most of the oil in a olive is actually in the pit, so if one is cultivating olives for oil, than it doesn't matter anyway if the olive bruises.

This leads to the primary method of collecting olives for oil. Lay tarps and other drop cloths out on the ground. The smallest child in the group climbs into the tree, he begins to shake the branches as best he can while an older family member goes around beating at the branches with a stick. Jill,my farmer at WPF, would have drawn and quartered me if I had done this to her apple trees. What's left, one goes through and rakes by hand (something like raking blueberries, but without the benefit of those nifty ergonomic rakes). All the olives fall on the tarp and then get put into giant bins, bags, whatever is at hand really, until they get taken to the olive press (which is more like a cider press than I would have thought).


The biggest difference though, between olive picking and apple picking is the political climate in which these lovely fall time activities take place. In Maine, apple picking was an escape for overwhelmed students and families looking for "agri-tainment" (this is what the USDA calls it). Then apple picking became an exhausting but satisfying job for a student who didn't want to be a student anymore. The olive harvest has far more political implications.

In 1949 during the armistice, a group of diplomats and generals drew a line (with a green pen) on a map that became the accepted border between the new state of Israel and the Jordanian administered Palestine. The saying goes, and It seems like there is a fair bit of truth in this saying, that the green pen was wide and the map was small. And based on my own observations, none of the diplomats or generals had any idea of the either the geography or the demographics...I guess that's not a huge surprise, when do they ever?

This is by way of introduction to the idea that the green line was never perfect or sacred or well thought out. It is however, internationally recognized as the closest thing to a border between Israel and the future state of Palestine.

After the second intifada began in 2001, Ariel Sharon began construction of a "fence" to separate Israel from Palestine. It very loosely follows the track of the green line. But it cuts broad swaths of what would otherwise be Palestine and effectively makes it Israel. Water sources, arable land, and olive groves often end up on the "Israel" side of the line. Farmers who own the olive groves between the wall and the green line are supposed to be able to attain permits to harvest their olives. The permits are at the discretion of the army and don't necessarily line up with the agricultural calendar. Often the IDF will issue a permit only to one member of a family for one or two days during the harvest. It just isn't enough time or labor power to get everything done.


The wall where it is really more of a fence (above) and the gate where farmers are let through to pick their olives with the proper permits (below)

Another and slightly more difficult problem arises in areas of Palestine that are near Jewish settlements. The settlers are an interesting group of people. They are by no means homogenous, but tend towards the very orthodox and fundamentalist. They are not particularly open to non Jews, and not particularly respectful of any law but their own (which they misinterpret as God's). They resent the IDF (although they rely on the IDF for their security) because the IDF removed the settlers from Gaza. They resent Jews who don't agree with the settlement policies. They resent the Israeli Government for the possibility of dividing the land (the two state solution).

The settlements are built high up on hills, surrounded by walls, fences, floodlights and guard towers. The follow the ridge-lines. As a settlement grows, it expands by setting up an outpost further along the ridge-line. The outpost grows until the two connect. I wrote, in my post about Tzfat, about heights and the safety of the hills (thousands of years ago when Tzfat was founded). It didn't occur to me just how much height still means security.

Itamar (above) and one of its outposts (below)


I should mention something here about the landscape of the West Bank. As I was driven through the West Bank, I saw more olive trees than I have eaten olives in my entire life. It is a forest of olive trees, thousands, millions, I don't really know. But everywhere I looked was filled with olive trees. Except on the hilltops, where the settlers, in their western style ecological arrogance, have planted many other non-native trees. Like kudzu (in the American South East) or zebra muscles (in the American North East), the result is something of an ecological disaster.

Regardless, olive trees, everywhere, as far as the eye can see. They are beautiful, silvery grey, short trees that require almost no irrigation after the first four years. They are a wonderful crop, perfect for this area of the world.

The settlements are built on top of the olive groves. I can't find a good verifiable statistic, but many of the settlements are built on seized land, land that was, before the settlement, filled with Palestinian olive groves. To compound the problem, Palestinians are not allowed within 200 meters of the settlements, even when they have trees within that 200 meter ring. Permits are hard to come by, and by the time a family has received a permit to pick its trees within the 200 meter boundary, the olives may have already been picked (by the settlers presumably). Even with the permits, the settlers often harass and throw rocks at the palestinians, or sometimes worse. The army is supposed to protect the Palestinians in this case, and, so far as I've seen their presence does differ violence. But their presence is neither guaranteed nor is it a guarantee that the settlers will behave. When the settlers misbehave, when they assault and attack Human Beings, they are given a slap on the wrist if anything... When the Palestinians misbehave, they end up in prison without any pretension of Habeas Corpus. Sometimes Palestinian misbehaving is as violent and destructive as a suicide bomb. Sometimes it isn't. One of the days I went to pick olives the IDF had arrested two men for not having the proper permits to harvest their olives. The IDF had been alerted to their presence by the settlers who claimed that they were Jewish olives (there are no Jewish olive trees in the territories outside of the walls of the settlements, and there is almost no chance that the Palestinian men could have gotten inside those walls). The Palestinians were arrested, their olives and identity cards seized, and they were put in what's called administrative detention (the inspiration I think for Guantanamo Bay). The same settlers could have attacked and thrown rocks and even wounded the men, and unless the IDF had witnessed the incident, there would be no consequences.

A quick note on time frames.

Jamal, and his extended family have many olive trees near their village, Awarta. Awarta is near the settlement Itamar. The settlers arrived in the early 1980s. Jamal's great grandfather planted the trees, I don't know exactly when, but I can guess that it was around 90 years ago, give or take. This is long before the establishment of the State of Israel (60 tears ago), and long long before the Itamar was established.

Awarta

Jamal works as a building contractor during the rest of the year, he takes time off for the olive harvest. His brothers are electricians and mechanics. His son Jihad is in primary school, but also takes time off to help with the olive harvest. The oil they make from the trees is their oil for cooking throughout the year, and a nice secondary source of income. But it can be difficult to obtain the permits and to pick the trees when the settlers are feeling feisty. The army helps but is inconsistent in its help.

A group called Rabbis for Human Rights is working to help (in the short term) with the problems of the olive harvest. They organize trips to help the farmers who are stuck between the wall and the green line, and to help the farmers who are attacked by the settlers. To help the farmers stuck between the wall and the green line is easy, help them pick their olives, and act as mediation between the army and the farmers.

To help the farmers whose trees are around the settlements is more difficult. The settlers are better behaved if Jews and foreigners are present, especially if those Jews or foreigners have cameras and video cameras. One of the settler tactics has been to throw rocks at the Palestinians then claim in court that the Palestinians attacked them. The courts have been less favorable towards the settlers since RHR started video taping the interactions.

I've now gone out on both types of trips with RHR. The activity itself, as apple picking used to be, was a relaxing and fun way to spend a morning, feeling connected to agriculture. But the political climate changes everything.

It was interesting to hear the perspectives on the conflict here from the farmers who are so often victimized by it. Jamal for instance, who is both secular and moderate, told me in some combination of Hebrew and hand gestures (our common languages) about how the Palestinians blame the settlers for everything bad that happens to them. And that the settlers do the same thing. But he also talked about how much more power the settlers have. Although they aren't supposed to, they come into Awarta and exact eye for eye types of retribution. If the Palestinians get anywhere near the 200 meter fence, first the private security forces of Itamar and then the IDF arrest them. Jamal didn't dwell on this point though. What really struck me about his viewpoint was that he wanted to move forward, past the injustice, towards reconciliation (which isn't exactly the sense of what he was talking about, but peace and justice don't seem right either)... Maybe the best way to describe it is to say that he just wanted to move on with his life.

Jamal with his son Jihad (above) fed us massive amounts of coffee, spiced with cardamom, in little tiny glasses (below). I like anyone who force feeds me coffee.


There wasn't as much in the way of conversation with the family between the fence and the green line. I was with a group of Rabbinical Students from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS, one of the two Conservative Jewish seminaries). I let them speak in their much stronger hebrew, and did my best to listen. The story was much the same. Instead of coffee, this family fed us tea from small glasses. The recipe was simple. Fill the glass half full with sugar. Fill the rest with tea and fresh mint (a particularly strong and fragrant variety of which grows in and around the olive trees). I wont' tell my dentist if you won't.

A teapot (above) and a break for tea (below)


The Palestinians are not allowed to use mechanical equipment near the settlements. Donkeys are okay. Working between the wall and the green line, we got a ride on a tractor. It was a Fiat, an Italian brand. Jill at Willow Pond had a beautiful Fiat that I sometimes still dream about, it was also orange and two sizes up from the tractor pictured here.

I do so love tractors...

p.s. here is an article that just appeared in the New York Times that is pertinent to this entry. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/world/middleeast/14settlers.html

it's four a.m. do you know where your presidential candidate is?

So it’s 3:30 am here. Which is 8:30 pm Eastern Time. And, although I’m rather tired from a long day of learning the how the הפעיל verb binyan (class) conjugates in the past tense, and how there is this thing called compensatory lengthening whereby the ultra-short vowel שוא lengthens to compensate for the inability of the consonants ה and ח to perform…errr…double when they need to.

Anyway, back to the point. When I woke up at 6:45 this morning, it was not yet Election Day in the United States. Yet I’ve been worried about the election all day…when the polls opened it was 2:00 p.m. my time. I had already been worried and anxious for 7 hours and 15 minutes. Awesome. Now we’re finally having some results after a good 21 hours of worrying. Fortunately there are a few of us here, and I splurged on a bottle of bourbon.

The political climate here, which I’ve written a bit about, and will write more about, is an interesting one. Overwhelmingly, the young Israelis (whom I spend time with) tend to support Obama. The young Americans in Israel also tend towards Obama, but slightly less universally. The young Americans who have made Aliya (immigrated) to Israel tend to be much more conservative. One of the new Olim (the plural noun form of Aliya) was telling me about how worried he was, having made this investment to move to Israel that Obama wouldn’t do enough to protect Israeli Interests. I didn’t really push him about what that meant.

In my Ulpan (Hebrew Class) there are a good number of Muslim students. They seem to all be supporters of Obama, whom, Mohammed expressed to me yesterday is more concerned with external issues than McCain.

So I’m going to post this and get back to watching the election. We’re watching it on Fox News International, which is the only channel that is offering full coverage. It’s like regular Fox News, as yellow as yellow journalism can get. BUT it has the added bonus of little three-minute human-interest stories about American Citizens living abroad instead of commercials.

They also seem to be having major technical malfunctions. I think the teleprompter operator must be an Obama supporter and trying to sabotage the uber conservative anchorman. Also, said anchorman just said "Why don't you come on over here, big boy," I don't know why. Maybe we're just too tired and heard it wrong...

cold weather and part one of the special election edition

I remember my third winter in Maine, specifically when I was still in college. It was the coldest winter I have ever seen. There was a two month stretch where it didn't get above 15 below. It's possible that I'm exaggerating, but I don't think so. It was really really cold. Three winters ago saw an insane amount of snow, as did this past winter. Portland doesn't ever get as cold as Lewiston. But Lewiston is bone dry in the winter, skin cracking sucks the moisture from your lungs as you walk to class dry. Portland is not. Although the winter is still much drier than the spring or summer, it sometimes has a humidity to it that makes the cold feel even worse than lewiston.

Regardless, I thought after eight winters in Maine I would be pretty cold hearty. This past summer, I think my cold tolerance must have sweat out. It must have happened sometime in August, around the start of my second month directly under a blistering sun.

According to my i-google home-page it is 74 degrees Fahrenheit here in Jerusalem. It is just a little under twice the temperature in Portland Maine. It is almost 11:00 p.m. here. The high today was something like 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm pretty sure that 37 is going to be the high in Portland. And yet somehow, it feels cold here. I think it's related to two main factors.

1. The houses here are meant to stay cool during the summer. Stone floors, stone walls, etc. They are NOT meant to stay warm during the winter.

2. My first three days here, I sweat buckets. It is the hottest I have ever been in my life. After a week, I acclimated enough to be able to breath without sweating (it had been a challenge). After a month, the heat didn't bother me much. Now, it's finally cooled down and I feel a bit chilly.

So I feel silly, but also need to get a couple of warmer layers.

The election is tomorrow. I have plans to go to an all night election party. Should be interesting. The California polls close sometime around 6 or 7 a.m. (I'm not feeling exactly mathematical at the moment). I don't know if I'll make it the whole time...or if I want to. I'll write something soon about the perceptions and attitudes about the election here.

thoughts on vampires in the holy land (traveling pt. II)

During my travels a couple of weeks ago I ended up in Tzfat. Tzfat is one of the four holy cities of the Jews (along with Jerusalem, Tiberias, and Hebron). Safed (the Arabic name) was a safe haven in the 15th century for the many Jews fleeing the reconquista of Spain. The Sultan who was in charge at the time allowed the Jews to settle and live mostly autonomous lives. Safed became a center of Jewish life.

Tzfat is built at the top of a hill. Instead of a grid, or a random zig-zag (which seem to me to be the predominant plans for cities) Tzfat is built in a series of concentric circles with steep alleyways/stairs in between. At the top of the mountain (2600 ft or 800 meters) in the center of the concentric streets of Tzfat, is a park.

Most of the towns, villages and cities in the States are in valleys. Or at least not at the tops of mountains. It's easier to build in valley, it's easier to get to and from places and it's easier to grow things in valleys. This all depends on the a relative peace and calm in the region. If there isn't peace and calm, it's better to be fortified and in the hills. This is the case with Tzfat and most of the old old cities in this area. Jerusalem is in the mountains (also about 2600 ft.), as is Hebron (around 3200 ft). When these cities were established the heights meant security. Today they mean beautiful views and roads that just shouldn't be roads. They twist and turn and go down steep blind curves. On the bus-ride down from Tzfat, the boy sitting three rows in front of me threw up. His father held back his peyos.

I was in Tzfat for Shabbat. Staying in a hotel for Shabbat presents a series of problems involving the prohibted activites of cooking, travelling, handling money, working, and benefiting from the work of others. They've figured out ways around most of these problems. They are somewhat creative solutions including the hiring of non-Jews to be the waiter's in the dining room. Specifically the waiters in our hotel were Israeli Arabs. Their Hebrew was heavily inflected with Arabic. Arabic inflected Hebrew is a bit easier for me to understand, because, when it is spoken slowly, it's constituent phonemes and allophones are more distinct.

For instance, Arabic has a distinction between the Alef and the Ayin (which are pronounced the same in modern Hebrew). Arabic has a distinction between the Tav and the Tet (Yiddish and Ashkenazi Hebrew also maintain a distinction but in a much different way), modern Hebrew does not. This is all an aside. The funny part is that despite the Arabic inflection of Hebrew, the servers managed to use the Ashkenazi pronunciation of all the foods they put down in front of the the Ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews from New Jersey. I'm not sure whether this was done by choice or by training, or in the immortal style of servers everywhere, in order to humor the high maintenance customers. Regardless it was a funny linguistic moment. And now it occurs to me just how much of a dork I am. Really, who thinks linguistics are funny??

The rest of Tzfat was a bit strange for me. It is ORTHODOX in the most dramatic sense of the word. I'm remarkably uncomfortable with Orthodoxy. I worry about the literalism, fundamentalism and sexism of Orthodoxy. Tzfat is also very well known for it's arts and crafts scene. But having toured the artist's market, none of it was all that special from my snobish perspective. It is also regarded as this very spiritual place, having been the home of the father of Kabbalah (Isaac Luria) and the writer of the most highly respected book of Jewish Law (Joseph Caro, The Sulchan Aruch). Because of it's "spirituality" it draws a huge number of tourist/pilgrims.

For a great number of these tourist/pilgrims, Israel has always been regarded as the center of the Jewish experience. It has not ever been the center of mine, rather, my family, New York City, matzoh ball soup and my grandmother's brisket are my Jewish center. I go to places like Tzfat and as the other tourist/pilgrims kvell about how beautiful the city is, I wonder why there's trash everywhere and why it's so dirty. As they extoll how spiritual it is and how welcoming everyone is, I try to refrain from mentioning that most of the inhabitants of Tzfat are very wary of outsiders and try to avoid eye contact...unless that is you're in their market stall and thinking about spending money. At least we all agree that the view from mountain is stunningly gorgeous.

Alright, you're probably wondering about the name of this blog entry. In Tzfat, one of the artist's Studio's, I noticed this door.

It got me to thinking about vampires and the Holy Land. Something like 45% of the water supply of Israel comes from the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee). You may recall from my last post that this is where Jesus walked on water. The Kinneret is fed by the Jordan River, which is where John the Baptist did a lot of his Baptizing, including (a bit apocryphally I think) the baptism of Jesus. This makes the Jordan River holy water, and therefor the Kinneret. And so In Israel we drink holy water all the time. Now, according to my source on Vampires (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), holy water burns vampires. This makes us the vampire equivalent of the craziest vindaloo you can imagine. Also, there is a church, mosque or synagogue on every corner, a tomb of some prophet or saint every third corner and people eat an insane amount of garlic. All this is to say that I don't think that it's entirely necessary to put garlic on your door in order to keep the vampires away.

one of those cultural moments...or something (traveling pt 1)

Tiberias is on the coast of the Sea of Galilee [ים כנרת, yam kneret]. It is has a lot in common with every disgustingly ugly resort town I've ever been to: bad seventies architecture; run down shabby feel; hideous boardwalk; bizarre streetmall. You know the type. Tiberias is particularly strange though. The street mall is built next to an abandoned Mosque. The Muslim community fled Tiberias in 1948, under the protection of the British Army. The Mosque hasn't been touched since. Although it seemed to me that the strip mall brilliance of Tiberias was extending into the courtyard of the Mosque.

I stayed in the second seediest hostel I've ever seen. What it lacked in character and cleanliness, it made up for in people who were just slightly off. The only other person in the dorm for instance, was a man from VanCouver, originally from Mumbai. He was a Christain, who felt, wholeheartedly, that things have clearly gotten so bad in the world that Jesus should be coming back any day now. I can't say I disagree with him about the state of the world. But I'm as yet unconvinced that that leads to the return of Christ. He journeyed here so that he could experience the holy land before Christ came back. He tried to explain why buy I lost him a little. Something about how dramatically it's all going to change and wanting to see it first.

The manager of the hostel was a very nice guy, he even complimented my Hebrew (should have been my first clue). Everything seemed normal until I realized there was a parrot flying around the reception area. Then the manager sat down to watch TV. The TV in the lounge kept flickering on and off, broken, unwatchable (at least if you want to avoid having an embolism). He sat there, unconcerned with his impending brain hemorrhage, smoking cigarettes at an astounding rate. Eventually the parrot came over and stood on the back of his chair and squawked in his ear. I must be in the twilight zone I thought to myself.

One of the Rabbis at my Yeshiva told me that Tiberias is the home of the best Kosher Chinese restaurant in the country. I asked the manager (in Hebrew) if this was true and where it might be. He told me that it was indeed the best Chinese restaurant in the land and told me how to get there. Pagoda, spelled out in Hebrew characters is the restaurant in question (for the record Pagoda is the English corruption of the Dutch corruption of a Sanskrit word). As I walked out the door he threw a fifty shekel note at me and asked me if I could bring him back some food. Sure, why not.

Pagoda is on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where you know who walked on water and fed a lot of people with not a lot of bread or fish. Specifically, it is on the boardwalk. I sat with my water view and my view of tourists reveling in the run down resort town glory. The food was delicious. Certainly the best Kosher Chinese food I've ever had (but to be fair, it was also only the fourth time I've eaten at a Kosher Chinese restaurant). There is something about New York style chinese food that really does transcend the need for pork or the five boroughs. It hit the spot, and gave me some reason to think that a pilgrimage to Tiberias isn't completely bizarre, some people go for loaves and fishes, others for tombs of Jewish philosophers. I went for the dumplings.

There isn't much else about Tiberias worth reporting. The Sea of Galilee is stunningly beautiful , the towns surrounding it are not. There are a myriad pilgrimage sites for Jews and Christians. The Christian association with the place is obvious. The Jewish one is not quite as obvious. After the complete destruction of Jerusalem (c. 160 CE) Jewish life in the land of Israel centered on Tiberias. It is one of the locations that saw the transition from nationalist sacrificial cult to a prayer and law and prayer focused community (an important step in the direction of our understanding of religion today). It is the home of many graves (some of them are likely to be apocryphal). Maimonides, the Spanish born philosopher and doctor was re-interred in Tiberias. I have a hard time relating to pilgrimage sites that are so touristy. Capitalism and the selling of souvenirs and cultural artifacts doesn't really relate to my sense of spirituality. Then again, fried dumplings do, maybe I'm the crazy one.



More to come on my trip to Tsfat, and the Golan and Tel Aviv.

dwelling in booths and waving palm fronds

In my Yeshiva, we study the holidays as we approach them. This seemed like a very good system until we got to Sukkot. All the lectures went so far over my head that I was left wondering not only what the Holiday was about, but was I in the right religion. Did I take a wrong turn at Yom Kippur? My confusion happened for several reasons. The first is that there are a huge number of practical things that an observant Jew is supposed to do on Sukkot. One of the Rabbis here spent about four hours (in several class sittings) describing the correct procedure for building a sukkah (a booth, dwelling in which helps the Jews recall the Exodus from Egypt). This is all very interesting stuff, for instance, you can use an elephant for one of the three walls of the sukkah, but not a camel. If the elephant dies and falls over it will still be the minimum height of a sukkah wall. If the camel dies and falls over it might not be tall enough, therefor it cannot be used as a sukkah wall. WHAT??!???!?

If one is travelling, it is possible (and even desirable) to build a sukkah on the back of a camel (providing as explained before) that the camel doesn't make up one of the walls. REALLY??!?!?!?!?

Three people holding up Schak (organic material that makes up the roof of a sukkah) can make a sukka for a fourth person who sits underneath the schak. Somehow this doesn't make sense given the camel rules we just talked about but whatever, let's just move on. The problem with this sukkah is that on the first day of the festival (it lasts seven days) it is forbidden to build or unbuild the sukkah, so the three people would have to hold the schak for the entirety of the first day (first two days in the diaspora). Boy are my arms tired...

There are more rules, many many more rules. But even the ones that weren't quite as specific or far out as the camel laws weren't particularly pertinent to me, because, I don't have a place to build a sukkah. Oh well.

Jerusalem is now a city full of sukkot. Almost every building has at least one Sukkah in the front yard, on a porch, on a roof, etc. No elephant sukkot yet, but I'm hopeful. I don't have any pictures yet but will try to take some in the next few days.

Another part of the part of the holiday is waving of the Four Species: Lulav (Palm), Etrog (Citron), Hadass (Myrtle), Aravah (Willow). In a particularly beautiful (but bizarre) ceremony, the four species are waved around and marched around the synagogue. The four species are mentioned only rather cryptically in the Torah. Rabbinic tradition holds that they were part of the rites in the Temple, and that their inclusion in modern synagogue rites today is a reference to that tradition. Really, I think its a very old agricultural rite that became part of Judaism as it evolved. Later, when the Exodus narrative became so central to the Jewish religion, the celebration of the Festival of Booths was added to the existing agricultural rites. But I could be totally wrong. The lectures on the four species weren't any more accessible than the lectures on how to build a sukkah.

Overnight, a market sprang up in the religious neighborhood in Jerusalem. Going there to buy the four species was a cultural experience. I don't think I can describe it, I'll just show some pictures and we'll call it good.

dumplings, new years and absenteeism

Some of you may know that I am a big fan of dumplings. Rather than have one of my parent's write in and remind all of us how far back this love goes, I'll just fess up now. When I was a little guy, I used to just eat the skins of the fried dumplings from the Flower Dragon, this American-Chinese restaurant not too far from our house. I was afraid, I think, of the onions and chives in the (pork) filling. Later, I grew to love even the onions and would eat the entire thing.

I discovered (at some point) that there are many categories of dumplings, the filled and the solid, the poached and the fried, the potato and the pasta, the list goes on and on. I love them all. My favorites are the matzoh ball, and the fried American style Chinese dumpling (whose resemblance to traditional dim-sum is passable at best), filled with chicken, beef or vegetables please as I am off the pork.

קובה [Kube] are a very popular dumpling here in Israel. Like a great many of Israel's culinary delights, Kube are borrowed from neighboring traditions. Kube, are Kurdish in origin, but are popular in many middle eastern cultures. Kube are a remarkable combination of the boiled dumpling and the filled dumpling. A semolina and bulgar dough is stuffed with spiced beef or lamb. The dough cooks up like any good gnocchi, matzoh ball, or southern american dumpling. The meat inside is just delicious. Kube can be fried or served in soup. There are probably other ways too that I haven't encountered yet.

The most uniquely Isreali (read middle eastern) restaurants I've been to are humus restaurants (מסעדות חומוס). They sell humus, topped with cooked vegetables or meat, red or green Kube soup, (red is a tomato and pepper base, green is delicious, but as yet unidentified), shakshuka (an egg and tomato stew that merits and will have it's own blog entry soon) and other things as well. Whatever you get at a humus restaurant, it comes with a plate of pickles, probably a small cucumber-tomato salad, and pita. It's delicious. Down the street from my house is a little restaurant called מאזא לברלין (It's at the corner of Azza [Gaza in Hebrew] and Berlin Streets, hence it's name From Azza to Berlin. They have wonderful humus, usually freshly pureed. This is the most recent meal I had there, sitting outside enjoying the views of passing traffic (Israeli drivers actually do provide interesting entertainment in that edge of your seat horror movie kind of way). Instead of the kube soup, I had a fried kube with my humus.

A little more than a week ago was Rosh Hashanah, for which Ilana and I cooked a large celebratory lunch on the second day. I made kube soup. Or rather I should say I made a fusion version of kube soup. I made kube, and put them in an Ashkenazi (Eatern European Jewish) chicken soup instead of the traditional green or red variety. Something like matzoh balls only filled with beef and no unleavened bread in sight. I have to work out some kinks in the recipe. The kube were a little dense, not as fluffy as they should have been. Once I work on the recipe I'll post it here. I'll try and do a vegetarian version as well.

To make them, you roll little balls of dough, essentially make a pinch-pot, fill it with the meat and close it up. They were a pretty big hit at our lunch.

Rosh Hashanah itself was very nice. With the minor exception of my ability to sit still, which does fine for the standard two and half or three hour Shabbat service. Past four hours, I get antsy. Past five hours, I get positively squirmy. But the services themselves were very beautiful, with lots of good singing and even some dancing at the small Shlomo Carlebach (a twentieth century Rabbi who sang a lot) inspired shule we went to on the second day...But really, do they have to last almost seven hours?

Yom Kippur starts tonight. Well really Yom Kippur starts this afternoon. We've studied Yom Kippur in all of my classes, from quite a few perspectives. It will be interesting I think to experience it tomorrow with all these things in mind, I'll try to post more about it after the fact.

On one final note. My absentee ballot is on it's way back to the lovely state of Maine. I'm not going to say who I voted for, but let's just say that neither the candidate nor the running mate is a moose hunter of any renown. Can you imagine if Dick Cheney had been using a moose rifle instead of a vintage bird gun?

the priest, the minister and the rabbi(nical student)

In my Hebrew class, there is a young Catholic Priest named Phillipe. He is from Paris. There was also, until a week ago, a Protestant Minister named Bernard, from Geneva, Switzerland. Bernard finished up his month here and is now back in Switzerland. Both Bernard and Phillipe came to Jerusalem to study Hebrew, in order to study Biblical texts in Hebrew.

Ilana, my housemate, and I invited Bernard and Phillipe over for the Shabbat prior to Bernard's departure. We wanted to share a very important part of our lives in Jerusalem and a very important part of both traditional Judaism and our contemporary outlook on it.

We went to services together at the little Conservative Shule that is in the same complex as my Yeshiva. It is a very American style service, and a crowd of mostly American ex-pats. Phillipe and Bernard are the first people I've seen get so completely frisked on the way into a Synagogue (you really can't trust a guy in a clerical collar). Stranger than the intense security was the attitude of the Rabbi. Perhaps I am spoiled by the incredibly welcoming nature of my Rabbi in Portland (the way she welcomes everyone to the Temple Beth El community could well be what brought me to involvement with Judaism). He didn't once acknowledge the sore thumbs in the midst of his congregation. I was a little saddened by that. Here are two men who belong to different traditions and who are looking to understand and learn about my/our tradition. What does the Rabbi do? Ignore them. Rabbis, I think, should be ambassadors for the traditions they have studied, to congregations and to the world. Ignoring people is just not a good way to build constructive relationships across religious lines; something that absolutely needs to happen here. Regardless, both Bernard and Phillipe enjoyed the services, and asked me the many questions they had about why things happen the way they do. I don't think I messed anything up too badly.

Dinner was lovely. We also invited a friend of ours named Michelle, who is a Rabbinical student spending the year here. Michelle (a fluent French speaker and a knowledgeable and kind teacher of Judaism) sat beween Bernard and Phillipe and guided them through the sometimes bizarre but very beautiful traditions of the Shabbat table. We also had several other guests, who did a wonderful job of teaching and a less than stellar job of learning. We ate my grandmother's brisket (I don't make it as well as she does). We discussed the rabbinic view that the Shabbat table is the replacement for the sacrificial alter. We ate delicious rugelach and drank wine. We sang Shabbat songs. It was really lovely.

This past week was Rosh Hashanah and my birthday...I'll try to post some thoughts on those events in the next few days.

Shabbat Shalom

a hip party and the politics of conflict

Last monday I went to the hippest party I've ever been to. It involved performance art; live discordant music; paint by numbers on a re-appropriated billboard; a DJ spinning a really wonderful combination of hip-hop, eighties music and Arabic pop; and vegan food (or parve, depending on your outlook) cooked and sold by my friend Oliver. The entire shebang took place on the streets of a quiet neighborhood on the border of East and West Jerusalem, not far from the Old City. Actually quiet neighborhood is the wrong way of describing it. The party was not exactly quiet, nor was the pissed off old lady on the third floor of the neighboring building. The party seemed like a good time, but my lack of Hebrew kept me from really engaging anyone other than the three friends I came with.



Someone made mention of leaving and after six or so minutes of saying goodbye, using the bathroom, giving phone numbers and finding lost jackets we left. Walking home, we heard gunshots. They were loud but not as loud as one might imagine, and eleven shots (says the army) from an automatic weapon happen very very quickly. The shots were close enough that we ducked behind a building, and watched as cars pulled crazy illegal U-turns and blew their horns in alarm about whatever was going on ahead. Minutes after that, police cars, army vehicles, ambulances, first responders on motorcycles, and unmarked governmental SUVs arrived, more sirens than I have ever seen. Bewildered, we turned around and walked the long way home.

Turns out we were about 100 yards (or meters) from where a car driven by a young Palestinian man drove through a crowd of off duty soldiers, one of whom then shot him eleven times. The official story is that the young man had just proposed marriage and been turned down. The IDF claims he had ties to Hamas, and after his rejection went on a rampage with his father's car. But it just seems so much more complicated than that. And the responses from either side are just ridiculous.

The Haredi, (ultra-orthodox Jews) for instance, somehow heard about the incident and within minutes began streaming from one of their neighborhoods to the place it happened (right next to the Old City). Watching this mass migration I gave them the benefit of the doubt, that they were on their way to the Western Wall for the prayers of repentance that happen late at night in the week leading up to Rosh Hashanah. I was wrong, they were going (angry mob style) to harass and chase any Arab they could find. My friend Oliver said that they found a few, and made trouble. He also said the secular folks at the party went toe-to-toe with the Haredim

The Israeli government's response isn't wholly more enlightened. Before having a full story (especially difficult when the driver of the car is dead), the IDF prevented the family of the driver from erecting a traditional Muslim tent of mourning. Defense Minster Ehud Barack called for the demolition of the home of the family of the driver. It turns out this is a standard policy, to demolish, without due process, the homes of suicide attackers. This seems akin to putting the family of a criminal in jail.

I remember watching Bowling for Columbine the first time, and being slightly shocked at the apparent craziness of James Nichols, the brother of the Oklahoma City Bomber Terry Nichols. Nonetheless, there would be a righteous uproar if in retaliation for Terry Nichols' part in the Oklahoma City Bombing the FBI demolished his crazy brother's farm.

Hamas, for their part, has done a great job of conflating this stupid kid's love sick frustration (if that's the story) with General Eisenhower's invasion of Normandy...that the forces of good will cast off the Zionist oppression, etc. etc. Although the number of responding sirens and helicopters might confirm Hamas' statement, truthfully there are worse car accidents much more frequently. Sometimes, the people who are hurt in those car accidents have to wait much longer before the police and Magen David Adom (ambulance corps) arrive. There was an accident on my street a month ago, (no one was hurt), but the police didn't arrive to deal with it for an hour and a half, leaving the people involved in the accident to direct traffic and try and keep calm.

The kid's family deny his affiliation with Hamas, and have stated their hope for the speedy recovery of soldiers hurt in what they insist must have been a traffic accident. The families of suicide attackers don't usually deny Hamas affiliation, or wish for the recovery of those injured. I should also point out that his attack only became a suicide attack when the soldier fired into his car eleven times (it had crashed into a wall). My sense is that it wasn't a traffic accident...It just seems difficult to injure 19 people with a car by accident, even if you've just had your heart broken.

But that doesn't change the attention getting tactics of both the Israeli Government and or the Palestinian radicals. Nor does it change the fact that house demolition with due process, like the death penalty, seems a pretty questionable deterrent. When it is done without due process, it crosses a moral line in the sand and the fourth Geneva Convention...but that's another blog entry.

I came here to learn about this conflict, about the politics, the economics, the history, and the personal stories etc. This week, trying to process all the new information has been a crazy one. I hope to come out the better for it.