Greetings!!
As usual, it's been quite a week since I last updated!
Sunday-Wednesday weren't such exciting days. Because Ulpan (intensive Hebrew workshop that I have been in since I got to Israel--a 5-week program) was coming to a close, everyone found that
they had to catch up on their Hebrew studying before their finals. On Wednesday, though, I finally got back to my favorite cafe called Timul Shilshom--an ADORABLE bookstore/cafe near Ben Yehuda (big pedestrian mall in Center City Jerusalem). I brought my Ulpan books and notes and studied there for a number of hours during the afternoon. It as really refreshing and nice to have some alone time. In the past couple of years, I've found that alone time is absolutely necessary for me to thrive in a new setting. I love being around people and doing things in groups, but I also need a good amount of alone time to think and just to be by myself. (Not so important--but later that night, the laundry machine in the student village, where I live, ate 20 shekels of mine as I attemped to do laundry--the equivalent of 5 dollars!! ON LAUNDRY!!)
On Thursday of this past week, a couple of friends and I decided to go the Knesset (Israel's Parliamentary building, where laws are made and passed, and where lots of famous dignitaries and important people speak to the government of Israel). On our way, we went to a rose garden that, while it is not so blooming now, should be gorgeous in a couple months! We took about an hour tour of the Knesset building, which included seeing one of the most moving and beautiful works of art I have ever seen. The work itself was made up of three separate tapestries, which took Chagall 4 years in total to complete. They show the history of the Jews--from the Exodus, to 'modern times', and also the future of the Jewish people. If you have ever seen Chagall's work before, his tapestry work is no less beautiful, but in my opinion more impressive, because although it looks painted, it's WOVEN!! (My favorite of three tapestries: here.) I could have stared at that tapestry for hours, but our tour gave us only about 15 or 20 minutes to marvel at it. From the Knesset, my friends and I walked through an adorable neighborhood called Nachlaot, and to the shuk (open-air market). After that, oen friend and I walked from the shuk to the Old City to pray at the Kotel (Western Wall)--a family member of a very close friend of mine has been sick, so I wanted to say a M'sheberach at the Kotel for him. That is the most amazing thing about living in Jerusalem--everything is fairly close by, and it is possible to get everywhere in a fairly short amount of time (and a fair amount of the time, by foot!). It still boggles my mind to think that I am living in such a historically holy city. Even though I'm not always positive how I feel about God and religion (being here doesn't help me... in fact, it makes it much more confusing, if that's believable!) it is incredible to me that for SUCH a long time, so many people of many different faiths have so piously prayed to their respective Gods in the city that I am currently lucky enough to study and live in. I have to keep reminding myself not to take it for granted, as it's so easy to do!
On Shabbat, 5 friends and I traveled to a village right outside Modi'in--which is about halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (to the northwest of Jerusalem and southeast of Tel Aviv)--to the village where Shlomo Carlebach lived near the end of his life, in a moshav (village) called Mevo Me'or Modi'im--a place his students founded and a place where many of his students and their families still live. It was quite a trek to get there, and we were fairly unprepared for what the weekend would be like. I had been in touch with a rabbi there named Rabbi Avraham Trugman, who does lots of shabbatot of home hospitality for students and others in his home in Mevo Modi'im, who told us that shabbat was free of cost, aside from bringing a sleeping bag and two baked goods to share with the rest of the guests over the weekend. This information was pretty much all we were given about the weekend. We had no idea what to expect of the itinerary or classes of the weekend, but just the reputation of Carlebach's wonderful tunes and services and spirit, and that the people of the moshav are fairly hippie/tree-hugging/spiritual/flower children kind of people. Rabbi Trugman also gave us directions of how to get to the Moshav, that turned out not to be so correct. He gave us the wrong bus times for the buses leaving the Central Bus Station of Jerusalem, but luckily gave us alternate bus routes if we missed the Central Bus Station bus. So luckily we got on the 'alternate' bus around 2:15 and were off to Modi'in. From Modi'in, we had a short walk to another bus stop where we had to find a cab or another bus to Mevo Modi'im. Since Shabbat was nearing, cabs were becoming less and less frequent, and buses almost altogether nonexistent. We finally managed to get in a cab around 4 PM to take us to the Moshav. We learned right away that home hospitality meant exactly that. There were about 21 people (including our group of 6 people) total at the Trugman's house for Shabbat, and we all stayed in the Trugman's house. Rabbi Avraham and his wife Rachel's house was absolutely exquisite-their view overlooked in the far distance Tel Aviv, but their yard was filled with a grove of trees and beautiful flowers and fountains, and was precisely where I would expect that a spiritual leader might live--extremely peaceful and set in such beautiful scenery. The weekend was filled with lots of beautiful tunes, amazing food and LONG meals, lots of stories, dancing, and interesting people. Most of the guests were students around Israel (mostly in Jerusalem, and mostly in much more religious settings than us Hebrew U kids), and all had interesting stories to tell. A highlight of the weekend for me, though, was being in the synagogue on the Moshav. Although there was a mechitza (partition between the men an women's sections, used in very religious Jewish settings) that was front-back (as opposed to down the center), which I don't usually like, the women's section at the back of the synagogue was incredibly beautiful and special. The women's section was a beautiful tent, a gift from a South African guest of the moshav who runs in South Africa an organization called '5-star safaris'. It was a very heavy-duty tent, with incredible works of woven art around the top and sides of the tent, with all the matriarchs and important Jewish womens' names around the tent. It reminded me so much of the book The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (my all-time favorite book), where the descriptions of the women's ritual tent are so magical and wisdom-filled. Although I don't love the idea of mechitza in general, it felt special to be surrounded by the women of the moshav, whose life experiences most likely outnumber mine--both in uniqueness and in number. There was so much passion in the prayer of the people of the moshav--so much emotion in their singing and dancing during services--a passion that I have yet to really find in prayer (and one that hopefully one day I will be able to find). All in all, it was a very unique shabbat--one I am very glad I experienced, and would definitely recommend to anyone spending a substantial amount of time in Israel.
And today is my first day of classes! I am taking 'intensive Hebrew' (which is just one more hour and credit per week than regular Hebrew), Readings in the Zohar (a class about mysticism and Kabbalah), Jewish/non-Jewish relations and rescue during the Holocaust (presumably exactly what it sounds like, though I haven't had it yet), and a class about Jewish Education in North America (a component of which I'll spend working in an English-speaking nursery school/Kindergarten once/week, which was SO fun!!!). I think it will be a fairly light load of classes compared to what I take at Pitt, though it will be counted for 16 credits, which is really nice!
That's pretty much it! I'll write more later. Thanks for reading, if you got this far!! I am currently writing this from school, between classes--once I get home, I will try to upload some pictures of my weekend to this entry!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
To my thousands of adoring blog-readers (joke!),
Sorry it's been so long since I've written! So much has been going on, I might need two posts, but I will do my best to make it a manageable-y long post to read and also do justice to the amount of fun adventures I've been having the past couple of weeks!
The Tuesday night before the last weekend in January, my group of friends went out for a night on the town at this hole-in-the-wall karaoke bar called Capricorn (how cliche!! bahaha so funny) that we had heard about from some of our friends. We were absolutely the only people in the place, but it was thus far my favorite night in Jerusalem. It was so fun to dance and sing and act like fools in the company only of friends in what felt like our own private party!! On Wednesday night of that week, there was a school-sponsored bar crawl that turned out being all American students (obviously) that was such a fun night also. We have been going mostly to the very American places, but we got acquainted with some bars that aren't quite so American (they were that night, but aren't usually)--ones that feel more authentically 'Israeli', whatever that means...
Thursday after class of that same, action-packed week, 7 friends and I packed up our stuff and got on a shared taxi (called a Sherut, something that's unique and not available in so many countries. They are van-like cabs that run to and from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to the other one for a very small price--a great way to travel, especially in a large group!). We got to Tel Aviv by 3:30 PM that day and spent the afternoon/evening walking around Tel Aviv. Our first stop, of course, was the beach! It was a mildly cold weekend, which was kind of a bummer, but that didn't keep us away from the gorgeous Tel Aviv beach! We walked on the beach for awhile and got to see some fun parasurfers having a tournament right by where we were walking. We ate a delicious dairy dinner and went back to our room to hang out for a little while. We went out later that night for a little bar to a hilariously Tel-Avivi/a little bit Eurotrashy/Israeli bar called 'Alcohome' which is as small and silly as it sounds (, a recommendation from the receptionist at our hostel. We should have known!) It was nice to just sit and relax and not have anywhere to be. Friday morning, we woke up on the early side and took a cab to the Old City of Jaffa, about a 20-minute cab ride from our adorable hostel (if you're ever in Tel Aviv and need to stay somewhere nice enough for cheap, stay at the Gordon Inn, on the corner of Ben Yehuda and Gordon Street!!). We walked around the beautiful city of Old Yaffo (Jaffa in Hebrew) and made our way back to our hostel via three or four stops on the way back to our hostel. We walked through a flea market/shuk (open-air market) in Yaffo and after a bit of a hike made it to Nachalat Binyamin (the name of a street, and also an artisan fair that takes place on Tuesdays and Fridays in Tel Aviv). We wandered around Nachalat Binyamin for a couple of hours and ate lunch there. Afterwards, we stopped at one more shuk and some little stores to buy some food for during shabbat, and eventually made it back to the hostel. We got ready fairly quickly for dinner and Shabbat services. Our hostel provided us a 55-shekel (about $14) meal voucher for a restaurant on the boardwalk for each of us for each night we stayed at the hostel, and we decided to have an early dinner at this restaurant (which turned out to be pretty nice, and beachfront!) and to make it our Friday night Shabbat dinner so that we wouldn't have to cook anything (as we didn't have kitchen/cooking capabilities in our 20 dollars/night hostel). After we finished our dinner, a couple of us decided to go to a Conservative synagogue for Friday night services near our hostel. The services were nice, though very small, and it was nice to have somewhere to go for Shabbos services. Obviously we ran into someone that a member of the group knew from home (the story of being an American Jew in Israel!) who was an adorable 60-something-year-old lady named Rosalie. We made our way back to the hostel after services and hung out for awhile in our rooms. After that, we took a blanket, a couple towels, and a couple sheets from the hostel to the beach to sit and relax, snack, and drink, and just hang out. Everyone bought some snacks, challah, and wine for this purpose and we pooled all our goodies together for a wonderful night of the beach. Saturday we spent just walking around and bumming around the beach (though it was pretty cold and windy!). We used our Saturday vouchers for Shabbos lunch at La Mer (our beachfront voucher restaurant) and had a very leisurely and delicious meal. As the end of shabbos approached, we prepared to leave Tel Aviv, but not before eating a not-so-Mexican meal at a Mexican restaurant. There was much too much eggplant in each dish for it to be authentic Mexican cuisine, but not bad for Israel! Our sherut driver was very late picking us up, so we must have been quite a scene sitting on the bench outside our hostel, all of us, with our bags from the weekend. We looked like street performers, so we decided to act like street performers. One girl I was traveling with had her iPod and speakers with her, so we put on music and danced and sang and had an impromptu dance party on the street, in the rain, waiting for our Sherut driver to come pick us up. All in all, it was an incredible weekend that we were very proud of ourselves for figuring out all the logistics for. Besides the sherut being about two hours late, everything we planned went flawlessly. It was that weekend for me that I felt like I actually was living in Israel.
During the week after Tel Aviv, I did a couple things of interest in Jerusalem. Some friends and I traveled to the artist's colony in the Old City of Jerusalem, a row of galleries and beautiful artwork done by Israeli artists. The colony serves doubly as the galleries and the studios of these artists, and it's a neat look into their artwork and their craftsmanship.
Some friends and I also traveled to a beautiful promenade in a neighborhood called Talpiyot that overlooks the entire city of Jerusalem and provided an incredible view. It was a beautiful day that day, luckily--warm enough even for ice cream! (Israeli ice cream is the BEST! Fun fact: Eva Longoria is now the spokeswoman for the Israeli brand Magnum Ice Cream, which is pretty hilarious). On the way back to the dorm, I saw one of my campers from camp this summer who lives in Israel, which was such a fun coincidence! Yet another example of strange coincidences/Jewish geography in Israel!
Last weekend, I traveled to a neighborhood called Bayit Va Gan for a shabbaton that was all about Ramah (the camp I go to). It wasn't only my Ramah camp, but all the Ramah camps from the country that came together to have a nice shabbaton. It was kind of a strange weekend for me, as I was the only American besides my camp director from my Ramah at the weekend (amidst all Israelis), but it was still nice to be surrounded by the Ramah feeling. It was very bittersweet for me, as this will be the first summer in 10 that I haven't been at camp for the summer. It was hard to be there for shabbat, and it made me nostalgic for the amazing times I had at camp and sad that I am finished with camp, at least for the time being.
On Sunday, my fourth roommate came back to Israel after being on break for 6 weeks. Hailing from new Jersey, her name is Casey, and she's a full-year student at Rothberg (the international division of Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and so far I really like her!! Last night, we had a party in our apartment for Casey to meet our (mine and Aliza's) friends and for us to meet her friends. It was really such an eventful night, though cleaning our floor from everyone's muddy shoes was NOT so fun this afternoon!
I think that's about it for my adventures as of now, but I will try to be better about posting more frequently so that each post isn't 183528934 pages long! If you've made it to this point of the post, I commend you. If I were you, I probably wouldn't have made it so far! I'm going to attach some pictures to this post so that you can see some of the things I'm talking about! Hope you've enjoyed hearing about my most recent adventures. Hopefully there will be many more adventures to come!!
Helene, the birthday girl, inside the empty karaoke bar Capricorn. We still had a great time!!
Our Sherut on the way to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, driven by our toothless Israeli driver named Ofer who blasted Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' and made our sherut into somewhat of a party bus. Hilarious.
Typical American touristy picture of me in front of the beautiful view form Old Yaffo.
On the beach in Tel Aviv at sunset with the parasurfers behind us.
Being idiots on the beach, in 50-degree weather!
The beloved Gordon Inn in Tel Aviv--the hostel where we stayed.
A bizarre look into the Old Yaffo shuk... a strange assortment of things!
The beautiful view of Jerusalem from the Promenade in Talpiyot.
The Old City's Artist's Colony.
A piece of home from the shuk (open-air market) in Jerusalem! 10 shekels is about equal to $2.50. Probably should have bought it just for the novelty!
Sorry it's been so long since I've written! So much has been going on, I might need two posts, but I will do my best to make it a manageable-y long post to read and also do justice to the amount of fun adventures I've been having the past couple of weeks!
The Tuesday night before the last weekend in January, my group of friends went out for a night on the town at this hole-in-the-wall karaoke bar called Capricorn (how cliche!! bahaha so funny) that we had heard about from some of our friends. We were absolutely the only people in the place, but it was thus far my favorite night in Jerusalem. It was so fun to dance and sing and act like fools in the company only of friends in what felt like our own private party!! On Wednesday night of that week, there was a school-sponsored bar crawl that turned out being all American students (obviously) that was such a fun night also. We have been going mostly to the very American places, but we got acquainted with some bars that aren't quite so American (they were that night, but aren't usually)--ones that feel more authentically 'Israeli', whatever that means...
Thursday after class of that same, action-packed week, 7 friends and I packed up our stuff and got on a shared taxi (called a Sherut, something that's unique and not available in so many countries. They are van-like cabs that run to and from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to the other one for a very small price--a great way to travel, especially in a large group!). We got to Tel Aviv by 3:30 PM that day and spent the afternoon/evening walking around Tel Aviv. Our first stop, of course, was the beach! It was a mildly cold weekend, which was kind of a bummer, but that didn't keep us away from the gorgeous Tel Aviv beach! We walked on the beach for awhile and got to see some fun parasurfers having a tournament right by where we were walking. We ate a delicious dairy dinner and went back to our room to hang out for a little while. We went out later that night for a little bar to a hilariously Tel-Avivi/a little bit Eurotrashy/Israeli bar called 'Alcohome' which is as small and silly as it sounds (, a recommendation from the receptionist at our hostel. We should have known!) It was nice to just sit and relax and not have anywhere to be. Friday morning, we woke up on the early side and took a cab to the Old City of Jaffa, about a 20-minute cab ride from our adorable hostel (if you're ever in Tel Aviv and need to stay somewhere nice enough for cheap, stay at the Gordon Inn, on the corner of Ben Yehuda and Gordon Street!!). We walked around the beautiful city of Old Yaffo (Jaffa in Hebrew) and made our way back to our hostel via three or four stops on the way back to our hostel. We walked through a flea market/shuk (open-air market) in Yaffo and after a bit of a hike made it to Nachalat Binyamin (the name of a street, and also an artisan fair that takes place on Tuesdays and Fridays in Tel Aviv). We wandered around Nachalat Binyamin for a couple of hours and ate lunch there. Afterwards, we stopped at one more shuk and some little stores to buy some food for during shabbat, and eventually made it back to the hostel. We got ready fairly quickly for dinner and Shabbat services. Our hostel provided us a 55-shekel (about $14) meal voucher for a restaurant on the boardwalk for each of us for each night we stayed at the hostel, and we decided to have an early dinner at this restaurant (which turned out to be pretty nice, and beachfront!) and to make it our Friday night Shabbat dinner so that we wouldn't have to cook anything (as we didn't have kitchen/cooking capabilities in our 20 dollars/night hostel). After we finished our dinner, a couple of us decided to go to a Conservative synagogue for Friday night services near our hostel. The services were nice, though very small, and it was nice to have somewhere to go for Shabbos services. Obviously we ran into someone that a member of the group knew from home (the story of being an American Jew in Israel!) who was an adorable 60-something-year-old lady named Rosalie. We made our way back to the hostel after services and hung out for awhile in our rooms. After that, we took a blanket, a couple towels, and a couple sheets from the hostel to the beach to sit and relax, snack, and drink, and just hang out. Everyone bought some snacks, challah, and wine for this purpose and we pooled all our goodies together for a wonderful night of the beach. Saturday we spent just walking around and bumming around the beach (though it was pretty cold and windy!). We used our Saturday vouchers for Shabbos lunch at La Mer (our beachfront voucher restaurant) and had a very leisurely and delicious meal. As the end of shabbos approached, we prepared to leave Tel Aviv, but not before eating a not-so-Mexican meal at a Mexican restaurant. There was much too much eggplant in each dish for it to be authentic Mexican cuisine, but not bad for Israel! Our sherut driver was very late picking us up, so we must have been quite a scene sitting on the bench outside our hostel, all of us, with our bags from the weekend. We looked like street performers, so we decided to act like street performers. One girl I was traveling with had her iPod and speakers with her, so we put on music and danced and sang and had an impromptu dance party on the street, in the rain, waiting for our Sherut driver to come pick us up. All in all, it was an incredible weekend that we were very proud of ourselves for figuring out all the logistics for. Besides the sherut being about two hours late, everything we planned went flawlessly. It was that weekend for me that I felt like I actually was living in Israel.
During the week after Tel Aviv, I did a couple things of interest in Jerusalem. Some friends and I traveled to the artist's colony in the Old City of Jerusalem, a row of galleries and beautiful artwork done by Israeli artists. The colony serves doubly as the galleries and the studios of these artists, and it's a neat look into their artwork and their craftsmanship.
Some friends and I also traveled to a beautiful promenade in a neighborhood called Talpiyot that overlooks the entire city of Jerusalem and provided an incredible view. It was a beautiful day that day, luckily--warm enough even for ice cream! (Israeli ice cream is the BEST! Fun fact: Eva Longoria is now the spokeswoman for the Israeli brand Magnum Ice Cream, which is pretty hilarious). On the way back to the dorm, I saw one of my campers from camp this summer who lives in Israel, which was such a fun coincidence! Yet another example of strange coincidences/Jewish geography in Israel!
Last weekend, I traveled to a neighborhood called Bayit Va Gan for a shabbaton that was all about Ramah (the camp I go to). It wasn't only my Ramah camp, but all the Ramah camps from the country that came together to have a nice shabbaton. It was kind of a strange weekend for me, as I was the only American besides my camp director from my Ramah at the weekend (amidst all Israelis), but it was still nice to be surrounded by the Ramah feeling. It was very bittersweet for me, as this will be the first summer in 10 that I haven't been at camp for the summer. It was hard to be there for shabbat, and it made me nostalgic for the amazing times I had at camp and sad that I am finished with camp, at least for the time being.
On Sunday, my fourth roommate came back to Israel after being on break for 6 weeks. Hailing from new Jersey, her name is Casey, and she's a full-year student at Rothberg (the international division of Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and so far I really like her!! Last night, we had a party in our apartment for Casey to meet our (mine and Aliza's) friends and for us to meet her friends. It was really such an eventful night, though cleaning our floor from everyone's muddy shoes was NOT so fun this afternoon!
I think that's about it for my adventures as of now, but I will try to be better about posting more frequently so that each post isn't 183528934 pages long! If you've made it to this point of the post, I commend you. If I were you, I probably wouldn't have made it so far! I'm going to attach some pictures to this post so that you can see some of the things I'm talking about! Hope you've enjoyed hearing about my most recent adventures. Hopefully there will be many more adventures to come!!
Helene, the birthday girl, inside the empty karaoke bar Capricorn. We still had a great time!!
Our Sherut on the way to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, driven by our toothless Israeli driver named Ofer who blasted Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' and made our sherut into somewhat of a party bus. Hilarious.
Typical American touristy picture of me in front of the beautiful view form Old Yaffo.
On the beach in Tel Aviv at sunset with the parasurfers behind us.
Being idiots on the beach, in 50-degree weather!
The beloved Gordon Inn in Tel Aviv--the hostel where we stayed.
A bizarre look into the Old Yaffo shuk... a strange assortment of things!
The beautiful view of Jerusalem from the Promenade in Talpiyot.
The Old City's Artist's Colony.
A piece of home from the shuk (open-air market) in Jerusalem! 10 shekels is about equal to $2.50. Probably should have bought it just for the novelty!
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