11 January 2007

At NYU we were warned about drug-dealers in Washington Square Park, and for women to be careful of their surroundings. What do we have to be careful of at Hebrew U? Packs of wild dogs.

Getting ready for a meeting in the evening, I heard the odd sound of dogs barking on campus. As the campus, like all of Israel, is overrun with feral cats (cats are to here what squirrels are to the States), the sound of barking dogs was very strange. I looked out the window, and sure enough dog after dog was pouring into a walkway between buildings, to the extent it looked like a remake of the scene from "A Christmas Story" where the next-door beighbors have a horde of bloodhounds that terrorize the protagonist's family. Ten dogs were now swarming the campus -- I called campus security, who promptly said "we already know the situation" and "we're taking care of it, someone from the Municipality is coming." The thought of running to my meeting for fear of running into this pack of wild dogs had me laughing to myself, something I definitely needed.
From the last post, not much as changed with work, I'm progressively unhappier there. I didn't get a job offer I was hoping for, but they promised to find work for me in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the lack of recent posts has to do with the fact that my computer is once again going blank on a regular basis. I've diagnosed it as either a faulty screen, an overheating battery or the fan is not working well enough -- because of the last two, I end up putting the laptop in the fridge to chill, on the top shelf just under the freezer with its beard of ice. It really does work, and back in the States I've seen a "cooling" mat for laptops that I'm intending to buy (I was actually thinking of buying it before moving here, but for some reason I didn't).

Two more finals to go, both in prerequisite classes, so I can hopefully be done with htem and start the process of writing a thesis.

31 January 2007

I'm sick again, the second time this winter. This never happened in all my 25 years in the States, so to say "this sucks" would be an understatement. The weather has changed from bright, sunny and warm on the weekend to cold and rainy once again. While it's great that the rain returned...
I woke up this morning with a painful itch in the back of my throat, making me wince every time I swallow. As I began to go about the day, my sinuses felt like they were going to implode. I got through my work, and decided to go to SuperPharm to get throat lozenges. Wouldn't you know it, the day I'm sick and need to go there, only one register is open, and the guy behind it is not only a moron in that he can't properly ring up the woman employee who cut in front of me in line, but doesn't have the guts to say "sorry for the wait;" instead he proceeds to give me the same cold shoulder that I'm giving him. There's something about working in a convenience/pharmacy/toiletries store, whether it's Superpharm, Duane Reede or the infamous CVS that makes people turn into idiots, or else they're just hired that way. Either way, yet another thing in common with the States.
I have to now go back to the accursed store for better throat lozenges that have medication other than Ricola's elderberry extract flavor. Not to mention at some point soon keep working on my take-home test on Lebanon. Take-home tests: sounds like a great idea, until the attached procrastination kicks in and forces you to watch clips of "West Wing on YouTube. And/or makes you sick for the second time in a month.

29 January 2007

I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence when I write the following: I'm fine, nowhere near the suicide bombing that happened today. I don't assume everyone who reads this blog knows Israel's geography -- Jerusalem is in the center, and Eilat is the southernmost town in the country, a four-hour drive away.
That being said, it's rather scary that Eilat was hit. On the one hand, there hasn't been an attack in the country for a long time, in part thanks to the security buffer; on the other hand, Eilat, being a resort town for Europeans, never gets attacked and this could be a huge setback for the tourism industry in this country.

Thought I'd update the blog while taking a nap after Part 2 of my Arabic final (it went well, although I didn't remember the literal translations of some of the words that we were assumed to memorize. Once again, it's all about the assumptions here.)

20 January 2007

My computer is working for the moment, after finally deciding to reformat the hard drive (i.e., erainsg all files and starting from scratch). I saved what I could triage-wise on a USB key, completely forgetting all my Favorites page and a good percentage of mp3's (they still exist on my iPod, so we'll see what happens when I reinstall the iPod software).

All Saturday I wanted to take a walk, yet I knew it was at some point going to rain. Just as Shabbat ended, the wind picked up, the sky turned an ominous shade of mauve, and the rain began. Just like three weeks ago, it poured and poured. I guess the best equivalent to this kind of rain is a monsoon -- seasonal and when it arrives, it arrives in buckets, complete with thunder/lightning. I had an engagement party to go to, trudging through the rain to get there. After a little bit I left, only for the hail to begin. With no cars out, the sound was amplified, as if I was walking in the middle of one of those "rainsticks" they sell in nature stores. My normal way of walking home was blocked by a huge tree which had fallen over, taking some power lines with it.
It's amazing how a Mediterranean storm can make me feel like I'm back in DC.

19 January 2007

My computer has gotten possessed by some sort of demon, which in a fit will cause the screen to start flickering, eventually turning the screen completely gray with several white horizontal lines placed in a way that would make a great design for a sweater at Gap, but not on my computer. If I start up the computer in "debugging mode," it seems to help. The demon is probably a Luddite, and as a result I haven't spent hours on You Tube or a new site I just hear about from a friend with full TV shows and movies.

Where to start? Last weekend I went up to Tel Aviv for a few hours to see good friends from college. As soon as I got out of the minibus, I took a deep breath of Central Bus Station air, full of smashed Russian beer bottles and illegal migrant workers, and was so happy to be in Tel Aviv/out of Jerusalem. We sat outside at a café notorious for poor service, and I absorbed the warmth and view of the sea.

Flash forward a week and it's surprisingly warm here in Jerusalem. So much so that I opened the windows in my apartment. While it's great that it's somewhere in the 60's today, we haven't had any rain since the Great Flood two weeks ago. If the dew point is at a certain level (I never understood the dew point), everything is covered with a skin of moisture, and when one inhales the moisture fills one's lungs. An odd feeling, but that's life on a mountain surrounded by desert.

Sunday brings another strike by the Student Union, making students go a bit berserk because exams are soon approaching; not to mention the new overseas students for the spring semester arrive on Sunday for registration. More than 200, to be exact. Hebrew U is going to have an amount of students that it hasn't seen in several years, which is amazing, even if I'm still part-time staff.

The computer is starting to flicker again, especially when I started playing a movie. Damn. I'm hoping it's a software problem that can easily be fixed.

08 January 2007

After weeks and weeks of resisting getting sick, the cold/flu/virus/whatever that been spreading through Jerusalem finally caught me. This morning I was able to get to my 8.30 class relatively on time, which definitely meant something was different. As the morning progressed, the pressure in my head increased. After grabbing lunch on campus with a great friend from high school, I told work I had to go home. I had to stop at the pharmacy downtown, and unfortunately took the bus with the scenic tour of Jerusalem. The pharmacy, part of a chain in Israel, was having a Buy One Get One Free sale, so the customers and staff were going insane. The pharmacist was kind enough to explain the difference between two different types of cold medicine, and I was soon enough out of there.
Looking at the box, which contained both day & night medications, I regretted that it included the dreaded pseudoephedrine, but my throbbing sinuses couldn't wait. I got home, took the pills and ate food, and tried to rest by watching a movie. Turns out watching "Donnie Darko" (an amazing movie) while on Dexamol Cold daytime formula leads to some odd feelings, one of which being a near-complete blurring of time. Not quite sure if I was asleep or not, I got out of bed, made sure to eat something, and eventually met up with two friends for a drink. My drink being hot tea.

07 January 2007

PS: One of the other rules I forgot to mention in the previous post was that I am also forbidden to get involved with any one named Tiffany, Brittany, and Brandy.

The strike last Wednesday really did happen: The gates to the university were closed, covered in posters and locked with thick chains. The main gates for cars and buses were blocked. There was a gate open for campus staff only, which I begrudgingly entered. Anyone who showed a student ID to the security guard would be heckled by an intimidating member of the Student Union, wedged into the entrance.
After a 2-hour meeting which was uneventful, to put it mildly, I ran out of the building to get off of campus. Members of the Student Union were blowing whistles at any student they saw, despite the fact that the overseas and pre-college prep students were not affected by the strike. While they stated in an email/communiqué that due to the upcoming finals period, they will wait to wage a protracted strike until next semester, I am nonetheless impressed with how well the protest went, even though pictures from the protest showed them burning tires. As if Jerusalem wasn't polluted enough.

Regardless of the strike, I was in a hurry to get off of campus to see my mom. She was asked to co-staff a 2-week trip for DC area college students, many of whom I know as birthright israel past participants. Although I have lots of friends in Israel, and plenty of work to keep me busy, it's a whole other experience to have a family member be here. Despite keeping a very busy schedule, we managed to see each other several times in the course of her program, including coming over for lunch this past Saturday.
On top of my mom's visit, I have lots of friends visiting from the States now. Friday night dinner saw the reunion of several friends from DC, all of us managing to resort to our once-usual conversations on politics, Israel and Jewish identity. I've definitely missed those meals, as they fed my native Washingtonian soul. This week sees no less than ten people from various walks of my life passing through Israel, and with the semester for overseas students over, I can actually go out during the week to see them, and even invite them over to my recently-cleaned apartment.

This past weekend saw one of the most vicious storms in recent memory. The rain began Friday afternoon with buckets of rain pouring down on a friend & me, as we bought food for Shabbat dinner. The rain never let up, eventually escalating into hail, and then very dramatic bouts of thunder & lightning, eerily bright and booming. In Israel, it's not very common to have long thunderstorms with thunder that rattles the windows. Those of us from DC who were at dinner are used to this kind of weather, albeit not normally in the winter. I couldn't help but think about the native-born Israelis in Jerusalem, who are not only unaccustomed to such weather, but don't have the happiest of connotations with bright flashes of light and crashing noises. On the plus side, the Kinneret/Sea of Galilee, Israel's main freshwater reserve, rose by 5cm this past weekend.

02 January 2007

Tomorrow there is a planned general strike on campus by the Student Union. While I understand the strike is about the proposed increase in tuition at public universities, the concept of an organized group of students striking, not to mention canceling classes, is foreign territory. The last new I heard is that classes are cancelled, it's going to be hard to get onto campus, and they're going to let campus workers in the gates. I have a staff meeting at 10am, and while I'm planning to go, there's the issue of having to potentially cross a picket-line.
I may not take my father's advice to heart all the time, but there a few principles I've been taught to live by him: Don't get involved with a woman who's from New Jersey and/or a Republican, and never cross a picket-line. The first tenet is pretty easy to live by, but I've never encountered an instance where the second one would need to be followed. After I graduated from NYU, the graduate students held a strike in front of the library – had I been there, I would not have entered the building. Regardless of the issues and whether I support them or not, this is a legal demonstration that is planned, enshrined in Israel's young democracy, and as such should there arise the issue of facing a "mishméret shovtím" (in this country, of course there's a parallel phrase in Hebrew for a picket-line), I would have to go all the way to campus only to turn around.

To add to the sanity that is tomorrow, I'm volunteering with my old job, Taglit-birthright israel, at the "Mega-Event" this Wednesday and Thursday nights. The M-E is non-creative title for thousands of participants from around the world who come together at the convention center here in Jerusalem to hear politicians, philanthropists, and celebrate their ability to be in Israel for free. I'm manning the Alumni Association booth, and as such will be likely to bump into lots and lots of people I know, plus all the familiar sights I've grown to love: The Brazilian/Argentinean fights, the drunk American students, and the roll-call of countries present and the subsequent upping the ante of who can scream the loudest longest when their country is named.

30 December 2006

The snow came, freaked everyone out, and has just about disappeared. The resulting pandemonium on the faces and in the voices of Israelis, coupled with the instant turning of freshly fallen snow into grey slush, brought back warm memories of DC. Although it may be cold here, bright blue skies trump any possibility of slush turning into ice.

Shabbat was spent catching up the news and much needed English-language magazines on culture and music. I have just about lost all patience for the two English newspapers in Israel, which either suffer from a horrible translation job or a lack of coverage beyond the often self-enclosed English-speaking communities here in Israel (known as "Anglo-Saxons"). As for the magazines…they cost a bloody fortune here, but well worth it. If this MidEast Studies gig doesn't work out, I'm going into the print importing business.

27 December 2006



Any reader of this blog will quickly understand that I am missing the entire Christmas season. Looks like we got a little bit of the season spirit here.

After a long dry spell here, it began to rain last night. No drizzle, no sprinkling -- serious downpours with thunder & lightning. The rain continued through this morning...then turning to hail...then sleet...and finally at about 2pm, snow.

The snow went in and out in terms of intensity, but think snowflakes were soon covering the entire area, eventually sticking to the ground. My view from campus of Jordan got fuzzier and fuzzier with time, until it was a total whiteout. The Israeli students and staff were flipping out, getting their pictures taken outside. They all kept asking me if it felt like Christmas, which of course it did. Soon enough the Israelis, myself included, started acting like Washingtonians in a snowstorm -- freaking out. Rumors were spreading of classes being cancelled, and everyone was abuzz with what would happen with the multiple high-profile programs at Hillel tonight. By 4pm, all events and classes were cancelled, even mine which was supposed to be at one of the dorms.

WOOHOO! Snow Day in Israel! We had it comin', not getting off for Christmas.
I get on the bus, and as we pull into the winter wonderland, I turn my iPod on the random shuffle mode. What comes up as the first song? "Snowstorm," by an indie rock group named Galaxie 500, only to be followd by the Xmas carol "Joy to the World" in Arabic. Coincidence?

Getting home was surprisingly unadventurous, through the slick and mucky streets and the incredible views of this city under snow. The pictures above are from my balcony at around 6:30pm, so the lighting isn't as dramatic as it was before.

I'm still doing my homework, so as to fulfill the requirements of Murphy's Law for school to be cancelled tomorrow. My street hasn't been plowed nor treated with snow, and when I left campus, the outside walkways were filled with slush and liable to freeze over into ice tonight.

If I dare to venture outside tonigh , I'll bring the camera.

23 December 2006

I don't know what others dream in their sleep. Sometimes it's several different thoughts or experiences from the last few days that are mushed into one seamless narrative that is on par with work by Dali. And then there are dreams which fall somewhere between memories and predictions that leave me with constant bouts of deja vu.
Take the other weekend for example. I was helping lead a group of overseas students to Eilat for the weekend. Eilat is the southernmost town in Israel, located on the Red Sea, with Jordan and Egypt visible from the city center. In the past 6 months, I have had two dreams about Eilat which left me rather reluctant to go down there.
The first was connected to a beach that I grew up going to on the Delmarva Peninsula (I've taken a vow of silence in naming this place, for fear that the encroaching tourism from other locales will soon reach it). The ocean has been slowly but surely encroaching on the beach, to hte point where every few years the parking lots on the other side of the sand dunes are covered in water. My mind equated this already tiny piece of land with Eilat, with my entire extended family trying to flee the encroaching water by driving endlessly. The second was again had my entire extended family as cast, this time going on a vacation to Eilat. The land got progessively narrower and and narrower, to the point that at the last hill overlooking the town, once could see the ferries that took passengers to Eilat, which was now an island in the middle of a raging sea.
There's a lot more for me to explore in this country, and every time I take the train here I'm amazed at how big the land feels here....yet we're still talking about a country whose length is less than that when I drive with my parents from DC to our realives in Cincinnati. Part of immigrant absorption here is not just the culture and bureaucracy, but the compactness of things. Interesting that this lesson got taught through dreams.

It's Christmastime and I'm missing it intensely. I've downloaded more than a dozen songs, watched "Charlie Brown Christmas" and "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" online, and my mom (who just arrived the other day staffing a trip here, definitely nice to see her), brought me my CD of a famous Arab singer and her Semitic covers of classic Christmas songs, and a copy of "A Christmas Story," a true classic that I grew up watching.
It's going to take a long time to get the Christmas affinity out of me. There's something about the lights, artificial happiness, and constant biblical-themed programming on cable stations that gets me very excited in a way that Passover only can vis a vis Jewish holidays. Despite living in Jerusalem, there's very little awareness and visiblity that it's Christmastime. The other week I had to go to the city center by chance, and lo and behold the main pedestrian throroughfare was decked in lights. The parallel road was covered in icicle lights, leaving me speechless. The flower stores in the shuk are selling poinsettias, almost tempting me to buy one.

I make no apologies about my connection with Christmas, not when I sang carols with the overseas students while in Eilat, and not tomorrow when I listen to them on the way to work and classes.

12 December 2006

Postscript to the previous post: You absolutely have to click on the link for the Lottery here, www.pais.co.il. Click on the blue button at the bottom of the screen and you can see the taped lottery drawing from tonight. All I wanted were the numbers, and instead I good a huge dose of laughter.
In anticipation for the drawing, there's a studio that looks lie it's from the early 1990's (i.e., contemporary Israeli), with an orchestra andsingers performing everything from "The Impossible Dream" in Hebrew, "If I Were a Rich Man," "Money, Money, Money", and the drawing is set to a live jazzed-up redntion of the theme song from the promos. This is too good.
Much to my astonishment, I did not win. The most I got in one row (the ticket looks a lot like Powerball from the States, but a LOT more expensive) was two. Oh well, better luck next time, right?

11 December 2006

Tomorrow, in my required course entitled "Problems and Methodology in MidEast Studies," I'm giving a short presentation ("Refarat," the Hebraized form of "report") on the biography of the late Edward Said. I'm working on polishing up the 15-minute report now, including translating it into Hebrew (I'm not quite at level of original compositions in Hebrew).
A few things struck me as I was reading up on his life:
-For a moment, skip his politics and ideologies regarding Israel, American Jews and the West. The trained English professor was intellectually and academically dishonest. In his seminal work "Orientalism" he not only chose works that proved his already-formualted thesis regarding the West's inherent racism and feelings of superiority over the East (and thus left out even more evidence that contradicts his thoughts), but he lumped together writers and thinkers with varying levels of academic background and respectability. His insistence to generalize and leave out other, non-supporting examples sounds a lot like, um, his argument against the West's generalizing of the East.
-"Orientalism" was introduced as an upcoming topic to the class last month, so people could read it. From the reactions of students, I have to unfortunately assume they never read it as an undergraduate. Again, say what you will about the man and his influence on making my field of study one bug subjective mess in the States, but this is a pretty important book. And these students are only now reading it??
-This Methodologies class feels incredibly out of place in Israel. The class is an ongoing discussion on history and social theory, with philosphy thrown in for good measure. For a system that's that seems driven (at least by the students and administration) on final examinations and a "getin & out of class fast" policy, this class is out of place. Mind you, I think it's great.

I broke down this evening and bought a lottery ticket for tonight's big 50 Million Shekel drawing ($11.5 million). Supposedly half of Israel's adult population has bought a ticket in this drawing, whose promotion has gone on for way too long. You can see the promo at www.pais.co.il, but I'll explain its significance: The zero in the "50" is shaped like a hamsa ("five" in Arabic), a common Middle Eastern symbol meant to bring good luck and more importantly keep away the Evil Eye. Just as some people will say "tfoo tfoo tfoo" to ward off bad luck, many in ths neck of the woods will say "hamsa hamsa hamsa." The jingle, "50 Million, Let's hope it's for me" is set to the tun of a recent and famous Mizrachi ("Oriental") song that anyone in Israel recognizes.
Granted, the liberal arts-NYU alumnus-DC liberal in me wants to tear apart the promotional posters in the name of ending the commodification of the socio-economic lower class' cultural and ethnic traditions for the sake of a product that naturally preys on the lower classes...but I still haven't found the corresponding word for "commodification" in Hebrew. Not to mention I cannot stand Marxist theory.
It's interesting, I bought a ticket, and that's all for now.

29 November 2006

I get all sorts of looks when I say the following, but I could care less what others think: I like Christmas, from the near seizure-inducing flashing lights and metallic tinsel, to the cartoons and music I have memorized over the course of many years, to watching Midnight Mass from The Vatican on NBC. I will find some way of celebrating the holiday in this country -- I'm sure I can find some Christians hawking some Xmas gear (there's always good Jesus memorabilia to be had near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher), find a recipe for egg nog that doesn't leave friends stricken with salmonella, download music and movies (including an album of classic songs in Arabic, which I left back in DC), or go shopping until my wallet shows signs of wear-and-tear.

I've been thinking about Christmas, despite the 62 degree F weather here, especially after going to the supermarket. Slowly but surely, the cheap Menorah wax candles are making their appaearance, along with sufganiyot (more or less a jelly doughnut), a traditional food during Hannukah (hell, anything deep-fried is traditional food on this holiday). I was joking the other week with some of my Israeli co-workers that the only flavor North Americans know from sufganiyot is "red," that indeterminate filling that's somehow a combination of strawberry/raspberry/cherry/Red #4 yet tastes like none of the above. Once they understood I wasn't making a mistake with my Hebrew, they erupted in laughter. So far I've seen "Red" and Dulce de Leche, but more should be coming.
Despite how great it is to see Hannukah goods front and center in a store, instead of in the back corner with the numerous jars of borscht and boxes of matzah, I miss the tinsel and vain attempts to mask a decidedly Christian holiday with consummerism. Sigh.

On the socio-economic flip side, we're in the middle of a general strike here. The Trade Federation in Israel is pretty powerful, able to collpase everyday society with one cellphone call. No flights are leaving or entering the aiport, garbage isn't being collected, banks and post offices are closed, and a whole host of other basic services are halted.

How is this affecting me?
Not so much:

-I took out a lot of money the other day from the ATM. Today, the lines were ridiculous at every ATM on campus, since once the strike began they won't be refilled till it's over.
-Garbage collection is every other day on alternate sides of the street. Regardless of sides, the can are piled to the brim and slowly cascading into the streets.
-There's a package waiting for me at the Post Office, which will continue waiting for me for the time being.

For those of you in the States, soak up your Wal-Mart ads, auto-sensor Santa Claus robots that make you jump with their bellowing greetings, and the nonstop playing of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" that quickly becomes psychological warfare and less of a holiday greeting. I'm envious.

The weather forecast on weather.com said it was going to rain this weekend -- instead it's going to continue being in the low 60's, brigh and sunny, deep blue skies, and incredibly dry. Everyone has been getting sick lately, and I made sure to stop at the drugstore to pick up a new bottle of vitamins, Samubcol which is available in the States and is incredibly effective, and Israeli generic acetaminophen. A co-worker of mine who shares an office laughed at my American ways when she was getting sick and I popped a few aspirin. The next day, she was home sick and I was at school/work as normal. Neurosis some times has its benefits.

27 November 2006

The students and staff are still glowing about Thanksgiving, which has given my professional ego a much needed inflation. With only a month left in the overseas school's semester, and approximately 8 more programs, I'm feeling better for the time being.

I was making copies of some bills today at work when I turned around too look at the view. Mt. Scopus, where I sutdy & work, is on the east side of Jerusalem and one of the highest points in this mountain town. The views from any window here are spectacular. From the stairway up to my department's office there's a commanding view of the Old City and Western Jerusalem, undulating and rolling across the hills.

The view from the copy room, adjacent to the balcony, is just as majestic. Facing east, one sees the surrounding Arab villages, Judean Desert, and a dark patch of green that is the remainder of the Jordan River before it meets its end in the Dead Sea. At the right time of day, the Moab mountains that make up the border with Jordan come into focus, their mauve (comes from Moab, the Biblical term for the area) facade seemingly a stone's throw away.

I got home by 6pm, an amazing accomplishment. Aside from nights I have programs (2 per week maximum), I'm gonna try to make this a regular ritual: I got lots of books from school calling my name.

24 November 2006

Turns out there is an Autumn in Israel. Yesterday and today, a muted smell of autumn was detectable -- a combination of crisp, dry air and fermenting leaves still holding on to the last drops of moisture.

Thursday night was the annual Thanksgiving dinner for overseas students at Hebrew U, organized by yours truly. As the night started, I began to feel like I had just turned in a 20-page paper: Relief and freedom. In three weeks, I had managed to organize a 5-figure event at a hotel with dinner and a live band, sell 100 tickets, and annoy the hell out of multiple businesses in the greater Jerusalem area. Normally this job takes two months with a volunteer staff of at least a dozen...but why should anything be normal? Sleep, serenity, sanity: who needed those for three weeks?

The night turned out great, the students were happy, my colleagues and supervisors were happy, and I slept incredibly well Friday night. I'm hoping the rest of this semester (i.e., one more month) goes by much more chill than the last month, where I've managed to make some small and medium-sized mistakes and incur the wrath of two different organizations.

On a much more positive note, I caught up on some reading by going to the bookstore and buying a whole stack of the magazines I grew to like from the States (though considerably more expensive here, even if they're European in origin).

Next week it's off to the university's fitness center, in the hopes of getting a membership.

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.

12 November 2006

Instead of coming up with something witty, I figured I'd finally show some more interior decorating pics from my place (furniture as seen in the IKEA Winter 2007 catalog, assembled by yours truly)

9 November 2006

As I haven't written in some time, on account of both not having an internet connection in my apartment and the encroaching cold outside, I thought I'd restart this blog with two vignettes.

(1)

Jerusalem is burning, literally. For the past week, there have been riots in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She`arim every night. Every night, regardless of when I left campus, the ritual was the same: My bus would approach the neighborhood from across the intersection, only to make a sharp detour around the entire area. Only once did the bus driver announce the change; otherwise, as the bus was filled with college students going home for the night, there was an unspoken understanding of what was going on. Police cars and red tape would block every street entering the neighborhood, and if one looked hard enough beyond the barricades, one could see dispersing hordes of males of all ages. The detour was abnormally packed, making an already long trip even more unbearable.
In the morning, so long as there wasn't another riot, the bus would take its original route and showcase the events of last night to all its passengers: Garbage either in large piles, or strewn about in stream-like lines alongside the curbs; Green garbage cans turned black from the smoke of burning trash, some still smoldering with thick black smoke; And the occasional fire, still raging, with pedestrians quickly walking by without a notice. The bus passengers would be glued to the windows, astounded at the third-world setting they were witnessing.
The smell of the smoke from the riots has engulfed the entire city, even on days with the bluest of skies. If one left a window open, whether on the west side of town or all the way on the east side up on Mount Scopus, the pungent smell was impossible to ignore. The association with something pleasant began to change in me, not entirely, but slowly reaching a darker period of history: September 12-14, 2001. When the smoke from the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the two planes changed direction, all of lower Manhattan (and my apartment at the time) was permeated with the smell of Burnt. This week couldn't be over sooner, because the smell is getting intolerable.

(2)

Bus 28 from Mount Scopus on a Thursday night is a sight to be seen. I had to go to the phone company's store to pick up an external modem, which is by the central bus station, and thus a different bus line from my normal one. I'm one of the first to get on, which means I have a window seat. Slowly but surely, the bus fills with students with duffel bags. The majority of students at Hebrew U are not locals, so they live in the dorms or in town. As this is somewhat of an elite university, there are no classes on Friday and few activities on Thursday night, meaning students can go home. At each bus stop the bus picks up more and more students with duffel bags, to the point where the bus is just as stuffed as the bags. Most people have two bags, one of clothes to be worn and one to be washed. People are crawling into the bus at this point, gasping with the contortions of their bodies for the last cubic centimeters of space to claim as their own. The sight of all these students, grungy guys and headscarved Muslim women alike, going home for the weekend was very sweet, even if they were clamoring about the bus.
The bus entered the main streets of Mea She`arim, but went through similar neighborhoods. At one point, in the middle of one of Jerusalem's many steep hills, an ultra-Orthodox man pushed his way onto the bus. I could clearly see him from my seat, and from his body movements it was clear he knew there was little chance of him entering; yet something internal made him try. He forced the bus doors to open to such an extent that the bus' engine shut down. The students are obviously not happy, and all I think of is walking in the middle of this neighborhood and getting attacked just for not wearing a 17th century Polish fashion trend (a friend of mine, only hours before, was on a bus that was stopped by protesters, when they hurled a flaming garbage can into the streets. The passengers were forced off the bus and my friend safely got home on foot). I gave the guy such a dirty look, hopefully it was part of the reason he didn't get on the bus.

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The rest of this story has to do with getting an internet connection, which I'll detail in its absurdity here very soon

15 October 2006

Even though I prefaced this whole keeping-a-blog-venture by promising I wouldn't harp on more superficial differences between Israel and the States, I have to share just one.
At the end of Sukkot is another holiday that gets lumped into the former. I won't go into its significance or what happens on it, except to add that one of the additions that are added to daily prayers are two lines, praising God who "makes the wind blow and the rain fall" and asking to "give dew and rain for a blessing." Regardless of where on is in the world, at the end of Sukkot one adds these lines and continues to say them until the next Passover, so as to coincide with the rainy season in the Land of Israel.
The weather reports have said that today it would rain. This morning I looked out at my balcony and at the road, and sure enough, at some point last night, it rained. "Amazing" isn't really the word to describe this liturgical and meteorological synchronicity – more like "right on time." The first rain in modern Israel is the official start of winter, and Israelis react to winter a bit like Washingtonians react to rain or other weather patters: they don't really know what to do with themselves.