Jerusalem

February 13

after leaving kibbutz beerot yithak, i spent a very refreshingly secular weekend in jerusalem with my friend dahlia and her husband menny. they are very sweet, hippy, secular folks (dahlia and I met at elat chayyim, the Jewish retreat center in 2001).

dahlia is 7 months pregnant! and works for a social service agency studying poverty in israel, menny is a sweet and dorky math grad student at hebrew u, he's very musically inclined and has a stuffed turtle named tsavvy (tsav is Hebrew for turtle). we spent the weekend cooking yummy food and hanging out with the near continuous stream of friends who stopped. it was nice to chill and play music, sing, talk, read, and just kick back....in a pleasant and relaxing environment. And, it was nice to see a side of Israeli culture that i could relate to more directly.

after the weekend i spent several relatively uneventful days back in tel aviv with gershon. i saw his klezmer band play again, this time a more formal show in the performance space at a bar. it definitely felt a bit weird, this music is so essentially jewish but it had the feel of some far away culture, like we were watching Australian aboriginal music or something. on Tuesday I met up with the ulpan again for a guided tour of the Diaspora museum. the message that I took away loud and clear was that the jews have been persecuted constantly and consistently over the years, and we all have a duty to help build the land of Israel. yee haw. i did enjoy having more in-depth discussions about the history, though I was left with a strong desire to understand Jewish history in the context of all other groups of people that have been persecuted over the years...

afterward we went to this GIANT mall downtown, and were set loose with the task of compiling a list of reasons why this mall was a jewish mall. (!!)

i left my ulpan friends after that and spent the rest of the week back in Jerusalem, mostly wandering around in the old city getting lost in the maze of alleys and winding little streets. its stunningly beautiful and nearly impossible to navigate, so wandering and getting lost is pretty much unavoidable. there’s a huge Arab shook (open market) in the middle, very hectic w/ folk selling everything from baklava to scarves to whole pigs. i managed to get lost in the arab quarter, and kept accidentally wandering into people's private home areas. one guy finally invited me in for coffee. his wife and new baby were inside watching a bizarre Jordanian "sitcom"/drama show, which was fascinating—it featured fully religious garb etc. but was also very dramatic. we had a hard time communicating between my horrible Hebrew and total lack of Arabic...but they gave me coffee and offered me cigarettes, makeup, and read hair dye (?!) . we sort of "chatted" for a while, the baby was absolutely adorable and I got to hold him for a while. The couple was very sweet and invited me back anytime.

i also went on the rooftop of one of the hostels, and its was quite spectacular to look out over the whole city and hear the Muslim call to prayer echoing from all sides, drinking sweet mint tea from the shook.