11.09.2009
11.05.2009
"And David danced before the Lord with ALL his might": Day 6
Tsfat/Safed was amazing. We were only there for one afternoon and a crazy evening. I'll let these pictures we took of Safed-ian street dancers do the talking.
And that's it for our trip. We had a marvelous time and got to see a lot of Israel's North. ...and C.J.'s beardy Jewish twin dancing on the streets in Safed.
And that's it for our trip. We had a marvelous time and got to see a lot of Israel's North. ...and C.J.'s beardy Jewish twin dancing on the streets in Safed.
11.04.2009
A Spin Around the Sea of Galilee: Day 5
There was a very small moment taking place just in front of us where a Dad took his teenage girl into the water to baptize her while the mother looked on. Very sweet.
But perhaps my favorite was a small group of three priests of the Greek Orthodox Church who were swimming around in the river just after baptizing a couple. Most of the Greek Orthodox men I’ve seen around the city are very serious, very reserved, and very “hard” looking. In Jerusalem they where they long black robes and black hats and they usually have very long beards and long hair. Their buildings here are very ornate and filled with gold everything – they are usually constructed in caves and crusader constructions, so the spaces are often times dank, dark, and mysterious. But these three priests had their shoes off and were swimming around in the river with such joy. They were talking to each other and splashing a bit. When they got out of the water, black garb soaking wet, they sat around and read a few scriptures, sang a few beautiful songs, and “shot the breeze” as much as someone in their position can. It was the first time I have seen the seriousness and over dramatic decorating I associate with the Greek Orthodox give way to something that looked more like Jesus would have been doing in this spot so many years ago. I still can’t get over the sight of their bare feet, kicking around in the water and then being propped up on the stones around the river’s edge. It donned on me that maybe this more relaxed attitude is a product of being in the Galilee instead of Jerusalem. People are always talking about the tension in Jerusalem, and it doesn’t really bother me, but perhaps it imbues the religious stalwarts of Jerusalem with an added level of intensity.
11.01.2009
Halloween in Jerusalem: On Taking Candy from Strangers
Haloween is still my favorite Holiday, but without kids you don't really get invited to the dress up parties. No matter, Max and I made our own Halloween fun almost completely inadvertently.
Friday is Field Trip day and we almost let this one slip by without even leaving our apartment! At 3:00 we strapped on our walking shoes and took off down the hill towards the old city. Our initial plan was to check out Mount Zion and the Room of the Last Supper, but because Shabbat was fast arising it donned on us that everything would already be closed. So we decided to visit the Garden tomb and some of the sites in the Christian/Armenian Quarter that we hadn't seen yet. I'll write more about the Garden tomb later (which is really a fine site), but for now I'll skip to the spooky.
After staying at the Garden Tomb for an hour or so and sharing a cheese, onion, and tomoto Pizza at Basti Pizza on the Via Dolorosa, we trudged backwards up the Via Dolorosa to try and find Saint Anne's Church. By this time in the day the sun was almost completely gone, or at least hidden behind heavy rain clouds. We got our first day long cold front here in Jerusalem! I couldn't have been happier. It rained and drizzled all day and was absolutely dreary. Perfect.
So we started winding around through the dark and rainy streets of the Muslim Quarter with very little luck. In hindsight I'm pretty sure the sight was closed, but it provided an awesome spook ally for Max and me. The alleys are really narrow and really tall with trees and garbage and all manner of scary things poking out. Not to mention the exploding feral cat population skittering about beneath our feet and popping out from cracks in the houses. I literally screamed out loud several times in fear of squashing a rotten cat...who probably deserved it. We came across several distant gatherings of people which added significantly to the horror. In the dark we couldn't tell if they were young Arab shabab waiting to capture lost tourists, Israeli Military planning some sort of coup, or just generic hooligans. It's one thing to be afraid of the dark, or of getting lost, but to add the fear of getting caught in sling shot crossfire (or worse) is something else entirely.
So we gave up on Saint Anne's. But we were still lost. Not really lost, we just didn't know where we were on the map and only generally the area that we needed to go. It's not normally a problem, but there are some places here that you don't really want to wander into, much less at night. But as we were walking towards what we thought to be the Damascus gate a Muslim couple with a baby in stroller pulled up beside us.
"Hello. Where are you from? Would you like to come in for tea?"
It was either straight from every horror story you've ever read or the Bible. Who knew they had similarities! Turns out it was the Bible. We explained to them that we didn't drink coffee, but that water would be fine. So the five of us, two unnamed Arab parents and their little girl, Max and Myself shared a glass of water out on the porch, under the rain drizzles. How great is that!? It's absolutely an Arab thing. At first I thought "I don't know if I'll tell my Mom", but when we didn't die I thought it would be safe to tell. People just like the share here. It's like trick or treat every day!
Friday is Field Trip day and we almost let this one slip by without even leaving our apartment! At 3:00 we strapped on our walking shoes and took off down the hill towards the old city. Our initial plan was to check out Mount Zion and the Room of the Last Supper, but because Shabbat was fast arising it donned on us that everything would already be closed. So we decided to visit the Garden tomb and some of the sites in the Christian/Armenian Quarter that we hadn't seen yet. I'll write more about the Garden tomb later (which is really a fine site), but for now I'll skip to the spooky.
After staying at the Garden Tomb for an hour or so and sharing a cheese, onion, and tomoto Pizza at Basti Pizza on the Via Dolorosa, we trudged backwards up the Via Dolorosa to try and find Saint Anne's Church. By this time in the day the sun was almost completely gone, or at least hidden behind heavy rain clouds. We got our first day long cold front here in Jerusalem! I couldn't have been happier. It rained and drizzled all day and was absolutely dreary. Perfect.
So we started winding around through the dark and rainy streets of the Muslim Quarter with very little luck. In hindsight I'm pretty sure the sight was closed, but it provided an awesome spook ally for Max and me. The alleys are really narrow and really tall with trees and garbage and all manner of scary things poking out. Not to mention the exploding feral cat population skittering about beneath our feet and popping out from cracks in the houses. I literally screamed out loud several times in fear of squashing a rotten cat...who probably deserved it. We came across several distant gatherings of people which added significantly to the horror. In the dark we couldn't tell if they were young Arab shabab waiting to capture lost tourists, Israeli Military planning some sort of coup, or just generic hooligans. It's one thing to be afraid of the dark, or of getting lost, but to add the fear of getting caught in sling shot crossfire (or worse) is something else entirely.
So we gave up on Saint Anne's. But we were still lost. Not really lost, we just didn't know where we were on the map and only generally the area that we needed to go. It's not normally a problem, but there are some places here that you don't really want to wander into, much less at night. But as we were walking towards what we thought to be the Damascus gate a Muslim couple with a baby in stroller pulled up beside us.
"Hello. Where are you from? Would you like to come in for tea?"
It was either straight from every horror story you've ever read or the Bible. Who knew they had similarities! Turns out it was the Bible. We explained to them that we didn't drink coffee, but that water would be fine. So the five of us, two unnamed Arab parents and their little girl, Max and Myself shared a glass of water out on the porch, under the rain drizzles. How great is that!? It's absolutely an Arab thing. At first I thought "I don't know if I'll tell my Mom", but when we didn't die I thought it would be safe to tell. People just like the share here. It's like trick or treat every day!
10.25.2009
"For Experienced Hikers and Swimmers Only": Day Four
After picking up our sporty Kia “Rio” from the Tiberias “Eldan” branch we felt like we had graduated to our big boy/girl pants. As Max said several times “we have a car!...well, a Kia…” Having a car is really an exhilarating feeling. All of a sudden the map was open to us instead of the handful of things I’d planned when I thought we were confined to the bus routes.
Before Max and I came to Isreal we had this idea that while here we were going to take advantage of the outdoors-ness there is to be found in Israel. We often said “We are going to be different people. We are going to hike.” On our trip up north we started to make that a reality.
I had read about the Yehudia Reserve on Israel’s national parks website and in my trusty lonely planet and we decided that we wanted to try and hike one of the trails while we were up north. The Reserve is around the north tip of the Sea of Galilee and just into the Golan Heights. After further reading we decided to hike the trail that included a 30 foot descent on a ladder attached to the rock and into a pool that you had to swim across to continue on the trail. Awesome. We almost chickened out when we got the trail head after reading the “instructions” from the pamphlet. I’ll share some of them with you:
-Attention! Only general and approximate areas of the army-firing zones are marked in the pamphlet. Their exact borders are unmarked.
-Do not deviate from marked trails
-Please keep the reserve clean: take your garbage out with you (remember this one)
-Swimming in the pools is at your own risk. Jumping into the pools is strictly forbidden (Bear in mind what I’ve just told you about how you have to continue the trail…)
-and the degree of challenge for our hike that said “For Experienced Hikers and Swimmers Only” (To be fair we are fairly experienced swimmers and we have hiked before…a handful of times…)
We knew we’d be sad if we chickened out so we bought the overpriced water and went for it. The first part of the path winds through a defunct Syrian village with the remains remarkably intact. It was something. We then descended a very steep set of stairs into a canyon. At the base of the stairs was a beautiful waterfall that we spent some time at. At the waterfall’s edge I noticed white pieces of cloth hung over the tree bows. It occurred to me that they were prayer shawls. There was a large group of Yeshiva students before and after us and they had all stripped to their shorts to jump from the cliffs above the waterfall, leaving their prayer shawls swinging in the breeze. It was quite poetic. “Yeshiva” is an institute for learning sacred texts in Judaism. This particular group must have been some sort of summer Yeshiva youth program for kids from the United States – think EFY but more excited because it’s traveling EFY in Jerusalem (and if you smell where this is going, you are right).
Tiberias Hot Springs
I can't believe I totally skipped over this part of our trip up north! On day three, after the disappointing fish, we walked a little bit further into town, away from the sea and into the crowded parts of the city. We packed our swimming suits in our backpack just in case we came across a swimming opportunity (I'm part fish, what can I say) and swimming opportunity we did indeed come upon.
We took a little shared taxi/bus to the Tiberias Hot Springs and spent an evening of therapeutic swimming with the seniors of Tiberias. When we first got there I said to Max "let's go in a check around to see if we really want to stay here and swim or not". When I went into the room with the inside pool my mouth dropped a little. I went back to Max and said "huh. I don't know about this." And so he went to check it out. He came back with a grin on his face and said "It's too goofy to pass up!"
The goofiness that Max referred to was this:
A giant pool of green water. There is an indoor pool and an outdoor pool on the other side of the wall, as well as a large fresh water outdoor pool. I actually had to close my eyes the first time I got into the water. It gave me the major ooks. Bu the water was warm, only slightly iron tasting, and evidently full of minerals that will cure anything that ails our bodies. We spent a few hours here an it was actually very enjoyable.
We took a little shared taxi/bus to the Tiberias Hot Springs and spent an evening of therapeutic swimming with the seniors of Tiberias. When we first got there I said to Max "let's go in a check around to see if we really want to stay here and swim or not". When I went into the room with the inside pool my mouth dropped a little. I went back to Max and said "huh. I don't know about this." And so he went to check it out. He came back with a grin on his face and said "It's too goofy to pass up!"
The goofiness that Max referred to was this:
A giant pool of green water. There is an indoor pool and an outdoor pool on the other side of the wall, as well as a large fresh water outdoor pool. I actually had to close my eyes the first time I got into the water. It gave me the major ooks. Bu the water was warm, only slightly iron tasting, and evidently full of minerals that will cure anything that ails our bodies. We spent a few hours here an it was actually very enjoyable.
10.21.2009
Still Kickin'... er, Still Typing, at least
Hello all, I am still alive though obviously not pulling my weight blog-wise. I am very well, we are returned from a triumphant tour of the Galilee region as you can see from Brookie's exquisite photographs and now I have begun my classes. Here's where we stand:
I got an A in my Hebrew Ulpan during the summer, which puts me in the Gimel category of Hebrew learners (that's the third level out of six and I have to pass the fourth level, Dalet, by the end of my MA program). I have two teachers and they both seem great. What's more, I can actually understand them when they talk. That's a huge plus.
These first few days on campus have been interesting. I am seeing formerly deserted halls packed with students returning from the summer and there are lots of people from various companies and organizations who are thrusting free materials into my face every time I walk by. They accompany this with incoherent speech that I assume is Hebrew in origin but, combined with a speedy delivery and a touch of desperation, incomprehensible. I scurry away in fear.
The Boyar Building, the hub of the Rothberg International School and all international programs, houses all of my classes. They are as follows:
Israeli Politics in the Comparative Perspective: this class looks to be very fun, because the professor has already insulted the six or so history majors and there is going to be a brawl in every class. The professor is a lot of fun and his idea is that you can indeed achieve comparability between many different nations and states if you follow the methodology of comparative politics and keep your examples to a minimum.
Introduction to Israeli Society and Politics: this course is the opener for people like me who are hoping to get their MAs in Israeli Politics and Society. It is taught by the academic advisor for the program, Gideon Rahat, who has some extensive writings on the Israeli political system and I think that this class will provide enough background that I can find some sort of emphasis or focus for my program.
Israeli Society between Colonization, Globalization and Americanization: yes, there are perhaps too many -izations in that title, but suffice to say that these are important factors to consider in the history and development of Israeli society. You can argue that Israel grew under the imperialist and colonizing auspices of the British Empire, is both benefitting from and radically evolving under globalization and, according to some, suffers from the onslaught of American media and culture in its everyday life. Should be very interesting.
Historical Geography of Jerusalem: this class is just going to be fun. The professor is quite gifted and gave his entire 3-hour lecture today without notes or slides. He just found a marker and started drawing maps, dates, factoids and everything purely from memory. He will lead at least 5 expeditions into Jerusalem's Old City, the Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives.
I got an A in my Hebrew Ulpan during the summer, which puts me in the Gimel category of Hebrew learners (that's the third level out of six and I have to pass the fourth level, Dalet, by the end of my MA program). I have two teachers and they both seem great. What's more, I can actually understand them when they talk. That's a huge plus.
These first few days on campus have been interesting. I am seeing formerly deserted halls packed with students returning from the summer and there are lots of people from various companies and organizations who are thrusting free materials into my face every time I walk by. They accompany this with incoherent speech that I assume is Hebrew in origin but, combined with a speedy delivery and a touch of desperation, incomprehensible. I scurry away in fear.
The Boyar Building, the hub of the Rothberg International School and all international programs, houses all of my classes. They are as follows:
Israeli Politics in the Comparative Perspective: this class looks to be very fun, because the professor has already insulted the six or so history majors and there is going to be a brawl in every class. The professor is a lot of fun and his idea is that you can indeed achieve comparability between many different nations and states if you follow the methodology of comparative politics and keep your examples to a minimum.
Introduction to Israeli Society and Politics: this course is the opener for people like me who are hoping to get their MAs in Israeli Politics and Society. It is taught by the academic advisor for the program, Gideon Rahat, who has some extensive writings on the Israeli political system and I think that this class will provide enough background that I can find some sort of emphasis or focus for my program.
Israeli Society between Colonization, Globalization and Americanization: yes, there are perhaps too many -izations in that title, but suffice to say that these are important factors to consider in the history and development of Israeli society. You can argue that Israel grew under the imperialist and colonizing auspices of the British Empire, is both benefitting from and radically evolving under globalization and, according to some, suffers from the onslaught of American media and culture in its everyday life. Should be very interesting.
Historical Geography of Jerusalem: this class is just going to be fun. The professor is quite gifted and gave his entire 3-hour lecture today without notes or slides. He just found a marker and started drawing maps, dates, factoids and everything purely from memory. He will lead at least 5 expeditions into Jerusalem's Old City, the Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives.
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