20 November 2006

First, let me say that I'm completely exhausted. Maybe it's because of the Thanksgiving dinner I'm planning for 150+ people, maybe it's because I have yet to find a balance that makes school a priority and allows work to be done as well....I'm pooped.

This evening, after shopping for decorations for Thanksgiving, I met up with a friend at the Save Darfur rally in downtown Jerusalem. As opposed to the last rally, where there were only a handful of English-speaking yeshiva students and a bullhorn for the few speakers, this rally was notably different. It took place in Zion Square, the epicenter of downtown Jerusalem, with a full stage, sound & lighting systems, and a bigger array of speakers. The crowd was still overwhelmingly English-speaking, but more speeches were in Hebrew, more rabbis and teachers spoke, and attention was paid to the 250 Darfur refugees currently in Israel, mostly incarcerated as security prisoners. I never got into Darfur as much as others -- Tibet was always my cause, and in the absence of working on that, joining the rally on a cold Jerusalem night felt appropriate.

I left the rally early with the same friend, grabbed food, and bumped into another student from my Arabic class. It was finally a relief to talk with another student, an atmosphere that's definitely missing from campus. He said something profound about the course, which in retrospect I've heard before and currently couldn't say as succinctly (certainly in Hebrew): The MidEast Studies and Arabic Departments are full of wannabe intelligence and security-minded students. All our reading comprehensions for homework, he pointed out, are about "Gen. Chief of Staff said" and "the bilateral communiqué between Iran and Yemen" and so on. Hell, even one of the dictionaries we have to use is published by the Defense Ministry. Whereas in the States MidEast Studies is plagued by partisanship and subjectivity, here it's so pareve (neutral), lacking any cultural enrichment, no wonder it's so connected with the defense establishment.

Off to do Arabic homework and dream of a post-Thanksgiving 2006 reality.