With all due respect to my Israel trip, I did initially plan to come here on Holocaust Memorial Day and not Independence Day. Those two events sit as the bookends of the Israeli experience and I feel a little guilty about having just sat through a 3 hour Independence Day concert without contemplating a full day of Holocaust remembrance. But so be it, when God gives you lemons, enjoy the lemonade. (little Biblical reference there. )
I knew something was going on today because the City was awash in soldiers; then I realized that this was a big holiday weekend and “the kids” were all coming home for the holidays. It’s like our equivalent of spring break, everyone excited to see their families and friends. It was also this exact situation when the Yom Kipper war broke out. I know that war is hell and there are no rules, but attacking on Yom Kipper must have really pissed off the Israelis. As we say in the law, if you are going to assassinate the King you better kill him, because if you fail, your life will not be worth much. Meaning of course if an enemy is going to attack on a day when the entire country is fasting and going to temple, it better succeed, because if it fails, that memory will never be forgot, and of course it hasn’t been.
But I digress; here is the most bizarre experience of the day. I'm at the supermarket which is filled with really noisy and pushy old Jews and there is an announcement in Hebrew over the loud speaker and a beeping noise, suddenly everyone just freezes where they are (everyone but me of course) But its not like everyone turned and faced Mecca, they literally froze in exactly the spot they were at the beep. If they were bending down they stayed there. I of course ran my cart right into someone and even proudly said, "Slichha." (excuse me) But he didn't even respond or move, so I kind of pushed his cart away and started tooling down the aisle and then suddenly notice everyone was frozen. My first thought was that I was dreaming and maybe this whole trip was a dream. It was a scene right out of a B sci-fi movie, or one of those movies where I could freeze time, I even briefly thought, "I wonder if I can go around taking women's tops off." And then I figured it out, this must be one of those nation-wide moments of silence, so I also froze although I was too confused to do much contemplating. Then the voice came back on and said something in Hebrew and everyone kept doing what they were doing, (all tops still in place) Very, very weird.
Afterwards, I wandered the neighborhood and found the local café hangouts and read the newspaper over mint ice tea. Two interesting stories, on Independence Day there are two really big contests, a national Bible-off where 5 superkids are tested on their knowledge of the Bible and the IDF (army) gets to pick the top 60 songs in Israeli history. Sounds pretty boring right? So, the head Rabbi just learned that one of the 16 year old girls in the bible contest, who has been certified as Jewish, actually belongs to a sect that thinks Jesus is the messiah and he’s coming back. So guess what the Rabbi did, he canceled the contest! There’s a huge uproar over it. (I am reminded of a story my Hebrew teacher told about an American Christian evangelical group offer to send 5 million free bibles to every Israeli resident. When they arrived to the horror of the head Rabbi, they included the New Testament, so he had them all cut in half and then only gave out the Old Testament portion. God knows what happened to the New Testament half.) The second story involves the objection filed by the ultra Orthodox party against the IDF song contest organizers. It seems that all week the radio stations have been playing songs for the Army to vote on and some songs were played on the Sabbath. Since the orthodox soldiers (not the Yeshiva students who are exempt from the Army) can’t turn on and listen to the radio on the Sabbath, they could not in good conscience vote for those songs, many of which had a religious theme. So the top songs that won tended to have sex/drugs/rock and roll as their themes and the orthodox Rabbis wanted the contest to be ruled invalid. How crazy is that.
I then took a long walk and found a hole-in-the-wall electronics store where I bought an esoteric cable for my MP3 player which I had left at home. I was so happy, it was like wandering along Canal Street in New York. The store was run by an old-world jewish peddler man only his wares were obsolete computer parts. If I were in Berkeley, I would have gone to a big, antiseptic Box Store, but this was so much more fun and real.
Finally came home to nap and was awaken at about 10pm by the sound of explosions. The City was alight with fireworks. Fortunately, Jews don’t fire their Uzi’s straight up in the air when they celebrate like some ethnic groups do, (if you’re listening Palestinians and Latinos in San Jose, sorry for the stereotype) So I threw on my clothes and headed to the park where another 5-10,000 mostly kids were watching a rock concert and fireworks show. I left about 1a.m. and things were just getting started. A group had just come on stage and was doing rap songs in Hebrew, it sounded just like Eponics only with more phlegm. The only thing that stuck in my mind, so to speak, was there was a lot of cleavage! I came to this very profound observation, “Jewish women use their cleavages the way Persian woman use their eyes.” I haven’t quite thought this through so don’t hold me to it, but I’m pretty sure it is both true AND profound. The other insight I had was that most of these young people who were really going crazy were probably the soldiers I had seen earlier in the day. I’m not sure that these cute women get to both have an Uzi and a cleavage, I kind of think you only get one weapon in the sex wars, but I will have to let my son and daughter fight that war, I’m much too old for it.
One last observation, generally I think all the guards believe I am too old to be a terrorist, so I don’t seem to get searched as often as the 25 year old Arab looking men . I did however get the full treatment when I went to a big shopping center with my fanny pack around my waist, my MP3 player inside it and a wire leading up to the back of my head and into my earpiece. The guard took one look at this get-up and freaked out. I’m afraid the fanny pack is going to have to go, it looks like I’m packing a bomb and wired to go off at any minute. I thought the REI label on the front would have protected me better, but it didn’t.
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