Howardisrael

BUSTED

2009-06-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

No it's not what you think, but its close. The other day I got an unsolicited email from a co-worker at my new job, saying that he had recently read my blog. I had no idea who this guy was and of course I immediately worried that I had said something offensive. I have religiously avoided making political, sexual or personal comments that could get me into trouble, specifically to avoid this very situation. As it was, the new reader made some constructive comments on the level of observing that the term "B.C." (Before Christ) was not used in Israel because it tends to acknowledge the deity of Jesus. (Does this mean that Jews are Christ-deniers and isn't that the kind of thing that would really piss off a Christian)

Anyway, it got me to thinking that it was time to put this whole blog thing on hold. Now that I am working 24/7 (well, actually not on Shabbat, for "God" sake). I'm not supposed to comment on my job as it involves a product not yet released and I have virtually no insights into the "Palestinian" question which is the only thing my American friends ask about. "What was the reaction to Obama's speech?" Do you really want to know what was on the front page of the Jerusalem Post during the Obama speech, a huge group of ultra-orthodoxes have been protesting the opening of a free parking lot in Jerusalem on Shabbat. They throw stones, which is specifically identified as one of the 39 things a good Jew can not do on Shabbat. The thinking goes like this, if there is no place to park downtown, then nobody will drive on Shabbat and if nobody drives than the purity and integrity of the Sabbath will be maintained. That's what they are thinking in Jerusalem, while in Tel Aviv 20,000 people participated in the Gay Day parade culminating in the "religious" marriage of 5 same sex couples. Oh and as always finding parking was a problem.

So the bottom line is I am going to take a blogging break, should the messiah come or some other significant evidence of the Apocalypse show up, I promise that I will immediately resume blogging. In the meantime, here are a few photos that were left over and I never got to use.

One of my very favorites. This is an amusement ride in Tiberias where ulta-orthodox families go to vacation. A very religious looking father has strapped his young son to a bungee cord contraption, the kid is then pulled downward and flung high into the air. The way the ride is set up, there is the image of a Christ-like child with arms extended, scared shitless, hurdling high up and down into the air while his parents laugh and shout encouragement from the side lines.

Food, food, food everywhere. This has got to be the worst place on earth to go on a diet. Every ethnic group brings its own favorites, cooking and eating are an integral part of every social interaction. Even a picky eater like me, can noshe himself to death.

Caffeine is of course a basic staple of the type-A Jewish personality. Here an espresso comes with a personalized message written in Hebrew script, which unfortunately I have no idea what it says.

This is a picture from dockside at the Sea of Galilee. In the not too distant past, the water was up to the level of the white railings at the top of the dock. You can see where the old tires were used as bumpers to stop the boats from hitting the pillars. According to a recent (disputed) study, Israelis use about 4 times as much water as Palestinians and this is where a lot of it comes from or used to come from.
And finally one of my most cherished possessions. I am addicted to Matzo with butter and this is a great country to be so addicted. Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages of this addiction is matzo crumbs all over the house, which upsets Vardit no end. So the solution was a special paper plate in exactly the shape of a matzo and conveniently disguised as an American football. These paper plates were on sale at the surplus store which specializes in products that Americans no longer chose to buy. So from now on, the unbreakable rule of the house is that all matzo must be eating on the appropriate "football" plate.

Ok that's it for awhile. These are heady times for Israel politically and everyone is waiting to see how this U.S. v Israel v. Settlers v. Iran thing finally sorts out. It should be interesting and a great time for the Messiah to show up.

9 to 5: Got to Earn a Living

2009-05-31T22:28:00.001-07:00

I got a job! ugh! Just when I was getting into the"Jerusalem syndrome" of having Vardit working day and night while I studied the Torah, along came a job offer I couldn't refuse. Here I was within inches of resolving the age old question of whether there are 8 or 9 angels on the head of a pin and now I have to go to work and will never know the answer.

I took the 5 a.m. train up to Haifa this morning to get my work permit which was languishing in the Jerusalem visa office. Suddenly about 20 religious men barged into my rail car, put on their prayer garbs and began chanting and dovening (rocking back and forth) all the while facing the rising sun. I kind of recognized what was going on, this is the early morning minion I had heard about. In order to be a good sport, I also started chanting (actually humming along) and rocking (and rolling) with everyone else. When I got to Haifa, my permit was issued in about 5 minutes, even though I was told it would take 2 months in Jerusalem. Go figure, God works in strange ways.

National Library: I am sitting in a big fluffy chair facing the enormous window mosaics at the Israeli National Library. The mural is called "eternal peace." Actually, everything in this city has some kind of "peace" angle which is especially depressing since Jerusalem is one of those cities that has never been at peace. You know the mural is about peace because on the blue panel there are "plowshares" (or as we Midwesterners call them "shovels") which the swords have been beaten into. Get it?

Anyway, in my left hand I am reading the book, Looking for a Hero: Joe Ronnie Hooper written by my 1962 college roomate Pete Maslowski, a great Viet Nam era biography which captures everything that was wrong with that war. In my right hand, I pick up the International Herald Tribune and read the first line of Tom Friendman's column, "Stan Greenberg, one of America's most experienced pollsters..." Stan was another good college buddy who introduced me to the woman I lost my virginity to in one of those early 1960's Washington, DC summers. All around me were "weird" Jews in long beards arguing loudly in Hebrew (maybe Yiddish) about esoteric questions of Biblical law. Part of me is in Oxford, Ohio, circa 1960 and part of me is in Jerusalem, circa now. It is truly a time warp moment.

Beitar Update: When we last left my soccer team they were going crazy on the field following their Israeli Cup victory. Their owner had disappeared into Russia while hiding out from an arms deal to Angola that soured. Now it seems that one of its stars, Amit Ben Shushan, was video taped at the celebration singing, "I hate you Arabs." He explained that he had gotten drunk and was singing along with everyone else, not understanding the words he was saying. This is exactly the same excuse (except for the drunk part) that I used to explain my lapse in judgment while cheering at games. But I REALLY don't know what the words mean, just as when I prayed with the men on the train. It's easy to get into trouble when you don't know the language!

Birthday Gift: I turned 65 this week and had my birthday in Jerusalem, which is kind of cool. Everyone wined and dined me; really I drank wine, can AA be far behind? The best part is that I now qualify for HUGE senior discounts, everything is half price, bus/movies/shows, even the front seats on the buses are reserved for "seniors only."

I have been obsessed with a song I heard on the bus last month; the bus drivers get to listen to the radio as they drive, usually loudly. When we went to Krakow, the classical version of it was played at one of the concerts. Vardit went on a mission to various record stores and hummed the ten notes that kept running through my mind. After many, what must have been very embarrassing encounters, she found the song and gave it to me for my birthday. Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHb_H8P7wDA

BOOK REVIEW

2009-05-29T01:38:00.000-07:00

I was walking down the street when I heard loud noises as if a thousand students were engaged in a heated argument about how many angels were on the head of a pin. I looked up and saw this building, "The Rabbi KOOK Universal Yeshiva." What more can I say!

Ultra-orthodox Women: When an Ultra woman gets married she puts on a head covering, either a wig or a scarf. I have just learned to my dismay that I (actually, no man) is allowed to touch this woman (except her husband). That includes no handshakes, however a Heimlich maneuver would come under the "life or death" exception. Some women extend this prohibition to hugging their own sons. Before marriage an Ultra can grow and groom her hair presumably so she can attract a husband. I asked my female, secular haircutter the reason for the rule and she got really embarrassed and said, "you don't want to know." Which, of course, made me want to know more. Then she said, "the hair on a woman's head is the same as the hair (and then she pointed to below her waist)" She turned beet red, I hesitated, not quite getting it, and then we both broke out into laughter. As she explained a bit further, if a man sees the hair on a woman's head, it is the same as if he had seen her naked. I guess this is why one needs a Rabbi Kook to have all of this explained.

Great Book: I just finished reading The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes by Avraham Burg who is a prominent Israeli politician and former head of the Labor Party. It was a fantastically insightful book and here is a short review of the highlights.

1. The expulsion of the Jews from Arab countries (after 1948) was a very significant and traumatic experience, where many of those families had roots and traditions going back hundreds of years, more than most Israelis. This experience is trivialized by the European Jews who claim it was insignificant compared to their REAL and only Shoah.

2. Arab Jews who came to Israel missed a great opportunity to bond with the Arab Palestinians who they shared a language and at some points a common culture. They could have been the bridge between the European Jews and the Palestinians.

3. When Burg travels abroad he adopts a cooperative style of discourse; he negotiates in good-faith and looks for win/win outcomes to negotiations. When in Israel, he is much more competitive, he fights for win/lose outcomes. He realized that he felt more comfortable with his “abroad” personality than his Israeli one.

4. Before the Holocaust Israelis had a positive, can do attitude. They believed in themselves and the ideals of a nation. After the Holocaust, the country became filled with Holocaust survivors who were “damaged” in many ways. There was a feeling of “victimhood” and every political crisis became a matter of life or death containing the claim of another Holocaust, i.e. the Iranian crisis is a good example.

5. The Israelis forgave the Germans too fast. Within a short period of time, (by 1950) the Germans expressed regret; there were reparations and soon normalized trade relations. Underneath, however there was still much Survivor hatred and that was directed in exaggerated force against the Arabs whose crimes (if any) were hardly as significant as the Nazis.

6. The Eichmann trial could have been a universal message to the world that Jews oppose genocide and totalitarianism everywhere for everyone. Instead, the Israelis turned the Eichmann trial into something that was just personal to Jews; condemned exclusively was the Nazis' actions against European Jews, not the inhumanity of people to people

7. This process not only raised the European Holocaust in importance above all other genocides, but other similar crimes against humanity in Armenia, Africa, Cambodia and Serbia were either trivialized, ignored or even found Israelis on the side of the perpetrators

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A ZEALOT

2009-05-27T02:36:00.000-07:00

Religion: A friend suggested the theory that God answers the prayers of non-believers first because they are most in need of convincing. Since the believers are already hooked, they have the patience to wait their turns. Today I decided to go up to the Old City and test this idea. As I walked down into the caverns, I passed a group of about 30 Indian tourists (from India) dressed in colorful native garb. As I listened to their guide pontificating in Hindi, I wondered what God could they possibility be visiting here? Anyway, I quickly arrived at the hand print of Jesus on the stone wall of the 5th station, placed my hand over it and thought, "God(s) and/or Goddess(es) may thy will be done." I thought that was a safe prayer, who am I to tell God what to do, other than to just "do" what you want.
I then walled the several hundred yards to the Western Wailing Wall and as I put my hand to the stone was grabbed from behind by the "Morals Police" who gave me a stern look and handed me a kippa (which I had forgotten) for my head. I repeated my prayer. Note: at Passover all of last year's notes were cleaned out, but it appears that new ones have taken their place.

I looked at my watch and realized that the noon Muslim prayers were over so went the couple hundred yards to the court yard of the Dome of the Rock. As I prepared to enter I saw people taking off their shoes and I immediately thought, "is some Arab worshipper going to steal my expensive orthopaedic insert from my shoes." But I was stopped in mid-deshoeing by another "Morals Policeman" who asked if I was Muslim. (Do I look Muslim?) When I said "no" he indicated no entrance to the Mosque for me. So I put my hand on the nearest pillar and prayed, but I'm not sure I was as close to the "source" as I could have been.

I should note at this point, that it seems to me that the governing of the Old City, at least as far as the logistics for tourists goes, is handled pretty smoothly under the Israelis. It was terrible under the Jordanians, (1948-1967) barely tolerable under the Ottomans (1600-1900), disastrous under the Christians (1200) and well, you know how the Romans did (100BC-200AD) killing Christ and sacking the Jewish Temple and all. I still think Disney would do the best job, cute Bible characters mingling with the crowd and those efficient zig-zag lines which move people quickly through the rides.

Culture: Next stop was to go with Vardit and a friend to opening night of the Jerusalem Festival which is about 3 weeks of non-stop cultural events all over the city. Tonight we went to the Mayumana Dance Troupe which was an incredibly high energy, creative, "Stomp-like" production before about 500 older, whiteish, patrons. It was fantastic and Vardit said she heard the lady behind her say, "This reminds me of Clockwork Orange." :-) Check out this Youtube clip to get an idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6mLD3sIbyk&feature=related

Sports: Then it was off to a sports bar to watch the HUGE soccer game between Beitar Jerusalem (My Team) and Macabi Haifi (the heavy favorite) for the Israeli Cup. Beitar won! And the town (or should I say the non-religious, non-cultured part) went wild. All roads led to Teddy Stadium which was great since I live (much to Vardit's dismay) right next to the stadium. At midnight almost 12,000, including me, poured into the stadium to celebrate. People (mostly young men who, as Vardit would claim, have no life) were going nuts. Multiple yellow (our colors) smoke bombs were being thrown into the crowd, the PA system was cranked up all the way and a great time was had by all (except those old farts in the neighborhood who did have a life which began early the next morning. What a day and what a moment to suddenly realize that God could be a Beitar fan and his/her WILL might actually have been "done." In the morning the owner of Beitar issued a message of congratulations from an "undisclosed location in Russia." I figured that was a bad sign, but he is on the run for selling guns to Angola and pocketing the money (or some such thing) Anyway, WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!

Check out this great video:

Karkow, And Now the Rest of the Story

2009-05-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

What would a trip to Poland be without a walk down the worst memory lane, EVER! Rather than add more words to an already indescribable experience, I will offer my brief impressions associated with the following pictures.

Let me start off with the mother of all images. I am standing with a group of tourist on the railroad track that dead ends into Birkenau. For those of you who are not familiar with Holocaust logistics, Auchwitz was actually a "camp" with minimal "killing" facilities. Next door was Birkenau with 4 crematoriums and one of the Nazi's official extermination centers. Our guide has just made the following statement. "This train track was formally completed on May 30, 1944 and for the first time brought the victims right to the door of the crematoriums. Within one hour of their arrival, they were dead!" I stood there stunned, that was the day I was born. Enough said! As the group moved on, I stood on the platform contemplating how different the day must have been in Aurora, Illinois from what it had been here at Birkenau

Vardit and I walked into one of the many antique stores in the old Jewish section of Krakow. The store is packed with family heirlooms, kiddish cups, old books and piles and piles of dishes and silverware. I think, who owned all this stuff? We read the cute inscriptions in the books from parent to child, from lover to lover. And suddenly it hit me, the owners died in the Holocaust. These are all looted treasures, the thousands of empty apartments, doors left open, valuables sitting in the cabinets and the owners all gone. What an incredible transfer of riches from Jews to whoever came along and claimed the booty. I see the above picture which is made out of silk and recognize it as the poster that my daughter always kept in her room in Berkeley. This tapestry was last displayed in the apartment of a comfortable Jewish family circa Poland, 1940 and now sits on sale for $30 in a Jewish memorabilia store in a tourist strip in Old Krakow.The Kashimer section of Krakow housed the Jewish population and with the Polish economy in shambles, there is a successful tourist business in both Holocaust and Jewish cultural tours. The area has been completely renovated with museums and great Jewish restaurants surrounding the old town square. As I sat eating pirogi, matzoh ball soup and potato pancakes, I looked up and saw one of the few buildings that had not been refurbished. As with every other experience in Poland, one part of me imagined the vibrancy of this neighborhood, the food, smells, intellectual discourse and then I stared up at the empty window and imagined the families being suddenly dragged out onto the street and marched off to their deaths. This contrast between a rich cultural life that I feel part of (at least through my grandparents) and the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust dominated my feelings throughout the entire trip.

This image caught my attention at Birkenau, and reminded me of the escape scene in the movie The Great Escape. There is the boundary fence, the guard tower and the limitless surrounding forest. If you recall, in the movie the tunnel does not come out in the forest, it comes out in the clearing just beyond the fence. We see the dirt move, a shovel and then a head pokes out and the prisoner looks up to see they are completely exposed to the guards in the tower.

The one thing that struck me coming from Israel to Poland is that this is a Catholic country with almost no Jews. (There are about 4,000 in a population of 38 million) I was walking in the woods looking for the site of the Plaszow Concentration Camp and stumbled across this weird memorial cross; Jesus with a crown of barbed wire thorns, what's with that.

Here is the actual memorial for Plaszow, a camp to which most of the Krakow Jews where march and killed.

The gates of Schindler's Factory. This actually wasn't much of a tourist trap, I walked down a fairly obscure and quiet neighborhood and there was the gate from the movie and a small plaque; the movie was actually filmed on location here.

There isn't much to see of the old Jewish Ghettos of Warsaw and Krakow except in the exhibits of the many fine museums. I specifically made it a point to take the train up to Warsaw and walk through the ghetto. As a 10 year old boy in Aurora, I read The Wall by John Hersey which was the story of the Warsaw Ghetto and also a book called, (I think) the Theory and Practice of Hell which was about Dr. Mengela's experiments. Why my parents let me read that stuff, I'll never know. But I have been obsessed with Holocaust minutia ever since.

I was walking through a fairly sterile neighborhood of Socialist apartment architecture which my map said was the heart of the Warsaw Ghetto. Suddenly I saw a mound of dirt and this sculpture in the middle. This was all that marked the heart of the Ghetto. I kept walking with my head down trying to feel the vibrations of the neighborhood and suddenly stepped on the granite strip that wound its way around the streets. I'm guessing this marked the barrier of the Ghetto. What distinguished the Warsaw Ghetto of course is that there was a rebellion of about 7000 remaining fighters and after the uprising the Nazi's completely leveled and burned the place down to the ground. There is no "there" to refurbish, it is history.

Finally, all that remains of the Krakow Ghetto wall is a small section that was preserved for us tourist. The Krakow Ghetto was noteworthy because it was self-regulated for several years, had a health system, soup kitchens, industrial activity and despite the fact that it was the repository of tens of thousands of inhabitants of destroyed stetels around Poland, it held itself together amazingly well. That all came to an end when the remaining populations was march down the road to Plaszow for extermination.

I don't know if it was necessary for me to make this trip. I was not overwhelmed by "tsuris" (Yiddish for grief), but neither was I underwhelmed. I just couldn't stop thinking (as all Jews do) of that knock on the door and the sudden transformation of a pleasant, middle class life into a total, incomprehensible living hell. As we used to say, "I groked it." ( To grok (pronounced GRAHK) something is to understand something so well that it is fully absorbed into oneself: from Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein)

TRIP TO KRAKOW: First the Good Side

2009-05-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Krakow! This huge soccer shoe greets the many tourists at the Krakow International Airport. (This isn't my specialty, but I didn't think soccer players kick the ball on the tip of their shoes, isn't that how old white guys like George Blanda used to kick field goals?)

Initially, I went to visit the camps and the Jewish ghetto, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that long before Krakow became covered in blood, it actually was (and is) a delightfully cultured city. One is initially struck by the fact that Easy Jet flies a ~$100 round-trip weekend flight from London to Krakow which fills the city with British tourists who are only interested in the cheap food and unlimited beer. This is not a Holocaust tour group, but a "get out of Britain, cheap" crowd.

The town is just packed with fun things to do and it is hard to believe that not too many years ago this was a dreary Soviet satellite. The Poles must have really hated it and the city is filled with timeless Gothic architecture intermixed with Soviet style lifeless block housing. There is a new mall Galareia Krackowia which is the largest I have ever seen (except Mall of America) it is three floors of just modern stores and a food court with part MacDonalds and part authentic Polish food. I ate Polish sausages non-stop and when I did stop I ate Pirogis (12 for $4)

I know this is racist (sorry) but I saw the most incredible Polish bookstores. (oxymoron?) This picture was of a coffee shop with probably every Holocaust book, new and used ever written. I was told the Poles read more books than any other Eastern European country. BTW: The Polish language is impossible except for Scrabble enthusiasts and actually a Yiddish speaking Polish Jew invented Esperanto here which lost most of its followers in the Holocaust. In addition Krakow is a university town and the home where Copernicus began his studies in the 1500's.

One of the more chilling scenes was of the old Jewish cemetery at the edge of the city. There were thousands of unkempt graves going back to the 1800's, a gap during the war and then hundreds of new tombstones erected recently by children of Holocaust survivors in memory of their parents. Overlooking this wooded and very spooky cemetery was an imposing and equally unkempt Soviet-style apartment complex with very old people hanging out of the windows watching us take pictures. Everyone of these onlookers was the type of person you wanted to ask, "what did you do during the war?" You could feel the clash of vibrations between the war survivors in the tenement and the souls of the departed in the graveyard.

Every night there is some kind of classical music concert at each of the about 10 local churches as well as folk and klezmer bands. The recital we saw at The Church of Peter and Paul not only featured the haunting song I had heard the harmonica players perform at Yad Vashem (theme from Gallipoli) but they also played another song which I couldn't get out of my head and we finally identified as the theme from The Scent of a Woman.

PILLARS OF ZION: PART 3

2009-04-29T21:54:00.003-07:00

Just when it seems like one is memorialized-out, the mood changes radically and we are into the 3rd foundation of the county-INDEPENDENCE DAY. As the last night of Memorial Day arrives I start to see teenage boys with shopping carts filled with wood for bonfires. At 8:00p.m. sharp the radio starts playing rock-n-roll, the candles disappear on TV and are replaced with comedy shows.

We go up to Mt Herzel, the Arlington Cemetery of Israel, to watch the fireworks which are pretty spectacular, although no Washington DC Mall on the 4th. After the big show, all around the city there are mini-shows. I think, "this must be what Gaza was like only from the top down and not the bottom up." (or is it the other way around) Next day, everything is closed (again) and the entire country is taken over by barbeque's. I ask if this requirement is found in the Bible, but Independence Day isn't a religious holiday (probably the only one) and its the seculars' day to celebrate. There is so much smoke in the area that warnings are given to people with lung problems.

Ah, and now the seamy underbelly of the holiday. Amidst all the jubilant Israelis celebrating their independence are the Arab Israelis who celebrate (on the next day) the Nakba or "catastrophe" Maybe this is like our Thanksgiving on an Indian Reservation. But the "good news" is that because all the Israeli car washes are closed, everyone goes the to Arab car washes so they can arrive at their barbeque's in style. Like going to an Indian Casino on Thanksgiving.Couldn't resist this image. An Israeli guy pulls up in a new Chrysler SUV with Independence Day flags. He opens the door, and quickly changes the diaper of his kid in the back seat and then throws the diaper on the street (behind the front wheel) He see me taking this picture and pauses, then reluctantly bends down, picks up the dirty diaper and takes it over the the trash. I feel like the morality police and the consciousness of my people.

BEITAR JERUSALEM: WE'RE NUMBER THREE

This is a big deal, I have FINALLY figured out what is so exciting about soccer; I won't bore you, but it has something to do with knowing the places on the field where goals are scored and then letting your mind wander until the ball gets to that point and then screaming hysterically. My team is Beitar Jerusalem which plays its games about 200 meters from my house in the 20,000 seat Teddy Stadium. I go all the time and come home smelling like cigarette smoke and hoarse from yell. I often cheer, "We're Number One" and Vardit corrects me and points out that Beitar is really number three, so I still shout "We're Number One" but hold up three fingers because everyone knows that Beitar fans can't count.

I have learned, however, that BEITAR (may God bless and keep them) are the bad boys of the soccer league; kind of the Oakland Raiders of Israel only worse. I have also discovered that the cheers "we" sing, are along the lines of "Kill the Arabs." Honestly, I didn't know this. So yesterday, the team was penalized 1 point for its fans yelling "Mohammad is Dead" (which is technically and legally correct) AND worse of all, they have to play their next home game WITHOUT fans. How mean is that. The game of course will be on TV but not only is it unsatisfying to yell at a TV, I'm sure Vardit has a NO Beitar TV rule in the house.
Just before I learned of the Beitar punishment I went out and bought myself a Beitar Wastebasket for my room. I actually bought it for the living room, but (as above) there is also a NO Beitar Memorabilia rule for the living room.

PILLARS OF ZION: PART 2

2009-04-29T21:54:00.001-07:00

The second foundation of the country is Memorial Day which follows almost immediately after Holocaust Remembrance Day. These are the two days that the country memorializes the 23,000+ people who have died "for" Israel since 1860 when the first Jewish settlers came to Palestine. It includes everyone from soldiers, police officers, civilians on buses, accidental death from friendly fire, even the poor schmuk who falls off his tank and is run over. And of course they keep track of everyone's name and the circumstances of their death.

This video was shot in the middle of the busy Jerusalem open market at the moment the 11a.m. siren went off. It's 2 minutes long so if you can wait, at least look at the frames from about 26-30. You will see in the background 2 figures, dressed kind of like Ultra-orthodox, walking among the frozen crowds. Here is the deal: everyone in Israel stands motionless for 2 minutes on Memorial day except (me who is moving my camera, ugly American!) and a certain group of ultra-orthodox Jews. They are protesting the fact that Israel is so secular (think Sodom and Gomorrah) and has strayed too far from God. As a protest, they continue to walk around doing the siren, which as you can imagine REALLY pisses people off. Oh, did I mention that the Ultras get large subsidies from the government so they can study in the Yeshivas and not work or go into the army.

At night there are huge gatherings of people in parks all over the country with heavy memorial services. At a park near my house they put up a big screen and showed pictures of people who had died. Here is a picture of a girl who was killed on the #18 bus several years ago. All the media is given over to the memorial, the movie channels on TV just show pictures of burning candles, the radio just plays sad, sad Hebrew songs, the Malls close early (so you know this is a big deal.) The newspapers which just yesterday had wall-to-wall Holocaust stories now have wall-to-wall memorial/war stories.

In the morning of the second Memorial Day I went up to Ammunition Hill which was a critical battle for Jerusalem in June 1967. The speaker, one of the paratroopers, pointed out that armies throughout history have spent years, actually hundreds of years trying to capture Jerusalem (i.e. Crusades) and his group captured it in about 3 days. This is an enormous source of pride. I watched a fascinating, swoopy-duppy multi-media show of the battle with film, and a great interactive map, (the red is Jordanian forces, the blue Israeli forces) It was so cool!

SWINE FLU UPDATE

The big deal here is not that 2 people back from Mexico have swine flu, but the name of the flu itself. The question was raised, "What if an orthodox Rabbi, gets SWINE flu?" This would be a huge blasphemy and there were many cartoons in the paper on this matter of great urgency. So immediately the name of the disease was changed to something like D1D and the sanctity of the Kosher rules was preserved

PILLARS OF ZION: PART 1

2009-04-29T21:51:00.000-07:00

This was a complicated week (actually month) for holidays. The double whammy of Passover and Easter had barely finished when we launched right into the three pillars of the Israeli's national psyche. Pillar One is the Holocaust Memorial Day

I am standing on a scenic promenade facing the Jerusalem city and valley. At 11:00 sirens go off all over the country for a 2 minute silent memorial. On my left is the end of the impressive Yad Vashem Museum which after a long tunnel of exhibits opens majestically on to a view of the city. Everywhere in the country people/cars stop and contemplate, its very heavy.

This is a huge metal tree sculpture at the museum, as best as I can interpret, it depicts people in free fall. I arrived at Yad Vashem at about 9 a.m. and inexplicably found myself completely alone on the grounds. All the dignitaries were up in the open auditorium and as I walked around there was nobody, not even soldiers. It was very eerie, I mean here I was in the middle of the biggest Holocaust Museum, on the biggest memorial day in Jerusalem, admidst empty freight cars and granite markers and I was completely alone.
I find this to be one of the more interesting exhibits: the Hall of Names. In these volumes are the names and Pages of Testimony of people killed in the Holocaust. Millions of people's lives have been documented and the 360 degree circular atrium of the Hall's bookcases contains thousands of binders all of which are now computerized. Keeping track of these names and their stories is one of the highest priorities of the state, soon in about 10-20 years there will be nobody lucid enough to remember what actually happened.

The huge conical ceiling is covered with photographs and each person/victim is catalogued on a Page of Testimony with family pictures and witness statements which must be verified before inclusion in the official record.

As I left there was a children's harmonica coral group. They were playing a haunting song which I am sure is the theme of a famous Holocaust movie, but I can not for the life of me identify which one. As you can see in the background there is an inspiring view of Jerusalem.

A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE

2009-04-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

This is probably the most bizarre image I have seen so far (I think I've said that before), but this time I mean it. I was standing on the Via Dolorosa in the Old City at the V Station of the Cross (or maybe it was VI) and saw a crowd of people touching and kissing this "brown spot" on the wall. I asked a nearby Monk for an identification and he said, "that is the hand print of our Lord Jesus Christ." Whoa! So Jesus is being marched down the Via to his Crucifixion and at station 5 or 6 he stumbles against the wall and leaves this hand print, which over the last 2,009 years has been touched by millions and millions of pilgrims.

This intersection of Via Delorosa and El Wad is one of the most interesting, probably in the world. Coming from one direction are Arab worshippers on their way back from prayers at the El Aqsa Mosque (they're the group with head dressings.) Going in the other direction are the Christian pilgrims who are retracing Jesus' actual steps and as mentioned kissing/touching the hand print. A third group is made up of Jewish tourists on their way to the Wailing Wall which is just down the road a piece.

This video starts with the Christian hand print touchers and moves to the Arabs returning from prayer. Note the sound of the trinket peddlers in the background.

This video starts with a group of Jewish Wall Wailers and continues as the Arab worshippers passes along side of them. I can't tell you how incredible this mixing of different religious followers appears in person. At this one intersection there is just a mob of people who all believe that their God is the one true God, they are speaking English/Hebrew/Arabic and not acknowledging anyone else's existence except their own people.
Of course everything is overseen by hundreds of Israeli soldiers with machine guns and many check points.
The T-shirts are quite novel. This one was being sold in both Israeli and Arab stores and depending and which one it is either funny or revolutionary. Below is a collection including a Free Palestine combined with a Detroit Piston's NBA Jersey, the whole gamut of the political spectrum.

No tour would be complete without a stop at the Virgin Mary's Birth Place and Tomb. As you can imagine, these two places were heavy duty, (ie NO TALKING OR JOKING) There was a solemn procession of very serious minded women, kneeling and crossing themselves, I felt very awkward when the sound of my camera kept going "click-click."

And finally lots and lots of stores selling christian "stuff." BTW: Most of the stores seemed to be owned by either Jews or Arabs, so what else is new.

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

2009-04-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

Just as I put Passover behind me, up comes Easter and once again this town is alive with religious fervor. Actually, I missed the “real” Easter, the one with the Pope and the Michelangelo Last Supper painting; that was last Sunday. I didn’t see any mention of it in the papers and with all the Passover hoopla, there never was a ground swelling of Easter Fever. But alas, I was saved by a quirk of religious calendaring, as it seems the Greek Orthodox Church, that's the one with the cool icons, celebrated Easter a week AFTER the Roman Catholic Church. Just an aside, but these two churches share custody of the crucifixion/resurrection site and have been fighting over such important things as the number of fingers one uses to cross themselves for thousands of years. I heard the priests of the two sects can't be in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at the same time because they are prone to fighting.

In any case, I got up to the Old City early Saturday morning and there were several thousand people already waiting in line. It was a mad house with little old Greek ladies in black, (right out of Zorba the Greek) facing row upon row of Israeli soldiers desperately trying to hold them back.

Here a group of Israeli soldiers take a break on the steps of the church while mobs of pilgrims tried to break down the metal barriers.

I thought I would get stuck in the crowd waiting for hours and suddenly saw this gaggle of monks walking down street so I tagged along and they suddenly became my NBFs. (New Best Friends) We were all joking and chatting in Greek or was it Russian, whatever. In any case it got me past the initial barricade of soldiers.

I next found myself in a huge courtyard, filled with more alternately weeping and screaming Greek and Russian ladies when out of nowhere there appeared a Scottish Highlander band with bagpipes blaring. I was later told these were Jordanians, but why they had bagpipes I'll never know.

I followed the band further into the bowels of the Old City where we came to the plaza in front of the Church where Jesus was either crucified, buried and/or resurrected, it's unclear what exactly happened here. But at some point a major procession of potentates appeared and disappeared into the church with me continuing to follow. The little old ladies had dropped away and now everyone (except me) had VIP badges

The scene inside the Church was controlled bedlam, there were about 500 people squeezed into a room about the size of Jesus' tomb, if you can imagine that. The air was thick with incense (and myrrh, whatever that is) there were TV cameras, lots of kneeling, crossing of one's self and sporadic sounds of grief. Except for the hundreds of Israeli soldiers guarding this fort, I might have been the only Jew there (except of course for Jesus, his family and the disciples.)

The center of the Church is dominated by this tomb like structure which supposedly houses the earthly burial spot of Jesus. I'm not sure I have the complete story exactly straight because at some point the wife of Constantine was digging around this area and found wood splinters which she identified as pieces of the original cross. Many battles were fought over this and many lives lost, but if you want to know more, check out Wikipedia.

Finally, I extracted myself from the group of mourners/revelers and made my way outside where I discovered that I was on the inside of the barricades looking out at about a thousand people who wanted to get in. I had no idea how this happened and I think the soldier I was standing next to was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I politely asked if I could be let out, he hesitated sensing that I was an intruder, but after an awkward pause he opened the gate and I jumped through it.

HERE COMES THE SUN

2009-04-19T04:30:00.000-07:00

OK, so I didn't take this picture with my cell phone camera, it comes courtesy of Vardit's real camera. The sun has just risen above the horizon and is hitting the Old City. Needless to say, "the crowd went wild" at this moment of truth. (BTW: this picture makes a great screen saver)

Finally a holiday has come along that combines the unreality of the Ultra-Orthodox Jew with the unscientific creationism of the Evangelical Christian, its called Birkat Hachama. According to one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Rabbi Bleich (a man by the way who does not use a computer and has a rotary phone) every 28 years the Sun returns to exactly the same spot it was at on the 4th day of creation, which is always on a Wednesday. This year the event is super symbolic because it occurred on the first day of Passover and (if you do the math correctly) it also occurred on the first Passover in Egypt and of course on the 4th day of creation about 6000 years ago. There was talk that such a coincidence could only mean one thing: the arrival of the Messiah.

So to make a long story short, about 50,000 Jews around the world from New Zealand to New York and of course passing through Jerusalem gathered at 6:28a.m. to say a prayer welcoming the Sun and I was one of those Jews. Arriving at Haas Promenade at about 5a.m. to get a good parking spot about 1000 of us sang and shivered as we wait for the Sun to crack the plane of the horizon. It was a little irritating to realize that the West Bank Arabs in Jericho got to see the sunrise about a minute before us Jews, since they would not have understood the significance of the event. There was some criticism about the fact that this whole celebration looked a lot like Sun worship, which if you recall your Bible is the kind of thing that really pissed off Moses in the desert.

I ended up in the middle of the more ecstatic, musical and dancing crowd and the Rabbi asked us all to think about where we were 28 years ago (1981 and recently arrived in Berkeley) and where we will be in 28 years (2037 and probably God-willing not around any more). We then all waited a respectful period of time (about 10 minutes) and when the Messiah didn't show up, we headed off to a cute French restaurant for a nice Israeli breakfast.

This is the view from the Haas Promenade, donated by the famous Haas Family of San Francisco (inventor of Levi jeans), a UC Berkeley graduate, namesake to Haas Pavilion, home of the Golden Bears. A makeshift prayer site was set up with about 500 people, note the improvised curtain which separates the men worshippers from the women worshippers.

This was actually a very spiritual moment, intense singing and praying as the Sun came up and bathed the Old City in an orange glow. It was a teary moment, not sure about the "time-of-creation" thing, but definitely emotional.

Here is Stephen Colbert doing a very funny spoof on Birkat Hachama which shows how flippantly the American public can treat a goofy religious phenomena:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/224061/april-08-2009/birkat-hachama---stephen-frees-his-jews

Also a brilliant article in Haaretz by Gideon Levy on the fact that Israel is a religious country in many ways not much different from Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan, OUCH!! There were lots of letters to the editor criticising this article, but I thought it was right on.

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077908.html

Here is a picture you don't see very often. I'm sitting in the stands at the local soccer game at about 5:30pm on a SATURDAY afternoon and the guy in front of me is wearing a kippa, which means he is an Orthodox Jew (he shouldn't be at the game on Shabbat) and he is eating a matzoh sandwich and of course sitting amongst fans that are yelling things like, "your mother is a whore" and worse. What's a nice Jewish boy doing in crowd like this on Shabbat?"

This is a picture of the check out counter at the local hardware store and the aisle at the supermarket. The plastic coverings are concealing "snacks" that can not be eaten by the Orthodox on Passover. There is an unenforced law in Jerusalem, the Chametz Law, which forbids the public display of non-Passover approved foods, thus the coverings. Near the end of Passover, the less religious public starts ripping away some of the plastic to sneak out the sacrilegious food.

PASSOVER MANIA: The Photos

2009-04-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

It's not possible to put in words the range and depth of the Passover Mania that is sweeping Jerusalem so I'll try to capture the mood in photos. Keep in mind the comment made in the paper today that "modern archaeologists can not find any evidence of the exodus from Egypt as describe in the Bible." You would think that would put a damper on things, but it hasn't.

Probably one of the best photos I've ever taken. The guy in the picture is one of many who has set himself up on a corner with a boiling pot of water to sterilize the hametzy (non-passover) dishes that people bring him. What makes this guy so unusual is the CAL Berkeley hat he is wearing. When I told him what it represented, he had no idea and said his sister gave it to him. I assume he also didn't know about the lack of evidence of the exodus.

There are long lines of people everywhere sterilizing their dishes. What I find curious is that the process of sterilizing is designed to kill germs, but the religious doctrine of "hametz" is designed to cleanse the spirit. According to the boiling water theory, it is the people who should be dunked in the pot, not the dishes. I didn't share this with the Cal guy, just gave him a thumbs up and a GO BEARS!!

I got my hair cut today and I picked a pretty busy day to do so. This man is both de-hametzing and cutting/styling an orthodox wig. Ultra married women must wear wigs (more on that another time) and obviously you can't wear a hametzy wig on Passover, (dah) so they have to be cleaned and dolled up for the Seder.

Many people do a massive cleaning of their houses, but rather than live in them during the Passover and get them dirty, they check into hotels for the holidays. Unfortunately, the hotels are staffed by less religious people (both Jews and Arabs) who must be fed, but they don't want to eat matzohs all day so the hotel caters sandwiches on real pita bread. But (are you still following me) the workers can't eat bread in the anti-hametzy hotels so the staff eats their meals in the underground garage. When they saw me taking the picture, they offered me a sandwich, but, not wanting to anger God, I declined.

Cars have to be de-hametzied too. So there are long lines at all the car washes. BTW: dog and cat food must be kosher for Passover so all old hametzy pet food must be pitched and replaced with special for Passover pet diets.

In the Ultra neighborhoods there are rows and rows of signs which lay out the latest rules of religious conduct. There are obvious ones like, "women must dress modestly in this neighborhood", but sometimes they get very complex. Vardit says these signs refer to the problem of the "smeta" year. For those of you who aren't up on that problem, every 7 years the fields must be left farrow (unplanted) That was last year, this is now year 8. But, (still following) some seeds that ended up in the ground in year 7, are germinating in year 8 and you guess it, that is a huge problem. These signs warn people about buying food from vendors who might be including 7 year seeds in 8 year products. Let this be sufficient warning to all of you!!

While the average religious person boils their dishes clean, the real Orthodox throw their old dishes away and buy new ones. Thus the stores are packed with people buying full sets of dishes, also sheets, table clothes, even kitchen appliances.

The seamy underbelly of the holidays! Piles and piles of hametzy "garbage" are everywhere, garbage pickup has been doubled, scavengers are out and about. I'm told there are some real bargains in these piles, but haven't seem many.

Finally, keep in mind that not much of what you've seen and read above is found in the Bible. If you recall the story, the Jews where told to get the hell out of "Dodge" and they left so quickly they barely had time to bake matzoh, which is for me one of the really nice parts of the holiday. I'm not sure where all these other traditions came from, but one of the most recent additions is that Passover is a gift giving holiday. Even the newspaper didn't know where that came from, but observed that gift giving on Passover is almost as big as Hanuka, so once again the malls are packed with people buying their friends gifts and of course, lots and lots of presents for the children. Thus, a holiday whose message used to be, "travel light with just the shirt on your back because you never know when Pharaoh will change his mind," has morphed in the modern Israeli slogan to "shop till you drop."

JERUSAELM STONE

2009-03-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

This is the bathroom underneath the museum containing the Dead Sea Scrolls; see the female toilet symbol in the doorway? What a classy entrance. Note the nicely fitted cut stones which can be found everywhere in the city.

This wall separates a residential neighborhood from the highway and goes on like this for what seems to be miles.

Jerusalem Stone: In 1918 or so, the city plan for Jerusalem required that the fronts of all buildings be made out of stone. This gives the City an amazing and distinctive look. Compared to California, the buildings seem to me to be cold. I mean there is a LOT of stone everywhere and I find myself wanting to see a few nice cottages covered in cedar shingles. At the same time, the quality of the stone work is just breathtaking. Even if you could find someone in the States who could do this kind of work, I think it would be very expensive.

I have recently learned that there is a down side to all this stone work. First of all, there is no wood for building. I recently hung a light fixture and was looking to attach it to the wooden support beam and was told that the Israeli's don't use wood in their construction. If you want a redwood deck, you have to import the wood from overseas. (BTW: there is no shortage of cement) Second and more importantly, the stone comes from the West Bank so in legal terms, there is a steady flow of natural resources from an "occupied territory" to the land of the occupying country, which is a violation of the Geneva Convention (Germany used to do this with Romanian oil.) That is a big deal to the Palestinians, but it is also a source of about half a billion dollars of revenue. (See this article for an in-depth analysis: http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0104/p6s1.html ) Finally, the best stone cutters are Arabs who are no longer allowed into Israel and to make matters worse, cutting stone is a huge occupational hazard because of all the dust particles.

Passover Fever: I think this is the most bizarre story so far on Passover, but Vardit has assured me it gets worse. Do you remember the concept of "hametz," that is an impure, non-Passover approved particle and during Passover there can be no hametz in Israel, PERIOD! See if you can follow this, cows eat hay, some grains end up in hay, some grains ferment in cow's stomachs, fermenting grain is HAMETZ, hametzy grain ends up in cow’s milk and you can't sell that milk at Passover. Solution: a week before Passover the eating habits of the cows are changed to a special non-grain diet, chickpeas are especially popular. Also extensive cleaning of the stalls and filtering of the milk is performed. Even the cows get into the religious swing of things!

Hametz Police: I'm just now learning about this group. They are responsible for making sure that people don't eat hametzy food (i.e. bread) on Passover. They have asked all "kosher" grocery stores to block all the bar codes on hametz food so if a customer takes a loaf of bread and goes to the checkout counter, the price will not scan and the product cannot be sold. This group also goes around with cameras to photograph politicians who might be caught eating bread on Passover and then their pictures will be published in the paper for the whole world to see.

Messiah Watch: (This section of my blog is new, but I hope to make it a regular feature for those of you who are anxiously waiting for the second coming.) Vardit had a conversation with an Ultra the other day who said he was not going to see his mother in New York for Passover because on Wednesday night, the first night of Passover, there will be an eclipse of the moon and there is anticipation that the Messiah might appear and he doesn't want to miss it by being out of the country. Wish I had thought of that excuse when I had to visit my mother at the nursing home.

Politics Update: We now have a government made up of 30 ministers of departments and 8 ministers without departments (without portfolios) Two are women, the Ministry of Women Affairs (dah!) and the Ministry of Culture and Sport. The only department that was not given a minister was the Department of Health, go figure! The table for the ministers at the Knesset can only seat 18 ministers (the last government's number) so you can imagine the huge problem that creates. Every minister gets a staff of about 10 people, an office and a nice operating budget. The word "bloated" is being used a lot to describe the new government. The new Finance Minister has no economic experience, but is a close friend of Sara Netanyahu, wife of the Prime Minister. The new Foreign Minister, Lieberman ("if you want peace, prepare for war" is close to indictment for money laundering and a loyal follower of his is in charge of the police department doing the investigation. Oh yes, 54% of the Israeli public does not currently support the new government and that is only 2 weeks after the election.

BITS AND PIECES: March 30, 2009

2009-03-27T00:49:00.000-07:00

California Dreaming: This huge slice of a Sequoia tree can be found in the middle of the Hebrew University campus, it is the gift of someone who paid to schlep it all the way from California, hundreds of rings and all. I'm not sure what it symbolizes, longevity, a belief in nature? It didn't quite make me homesick, (I'm not really a tree hugger), but it was nice to contemplate a piece of home. What struck closer to home was the story of the poor schmuck who spent a year sitting up in an Oak tree in Berkeley protesting the University's decision to cut down an old grove forest for a new athletic complex and then he came to Israel to a West Bank protest and was promptly hit in the head by a teargas canister fired by an IDF soldier and might die. Talk about a life on the cutting edge of political dissent.

Matzoh Madness: Its starting, the Passover Fever time of the year. And isn't it fortunate that I just finished reading a book by a revisionist historian (actually he is called a Biblical Minimalist) which says there is absolutely no evidence of a mass Jewish exodus from Egypt. The 60,000 liberated "slaves" have left no trace of their journey through the Sinai Desert and believe me the Israeli archaeologist have been looking diligently. The book also found very little evidence of King David and Solomon and the evidence he did find indicated that they probably weren't that great. Predictably this guy has been vilified by the archaeological community.

You think you have a bad job, how would you like to clean up all of last year's requests from the Wailing Wall. I'm surprised some Israeli techie person hasn't come up with a paperless Wailing Wall.

Wailing Wall Mystery Solved: I am often asked, "What happens to all the messages put in the cracks of the Wailing Wall?" You would think that after 2500 years there would be too many messages and two few cracks. Well, today I read that in anticipation of Passover, the Wailing Wall is cleansed of its messages by a guy(s) with a specially purified stick dipped in "mikveh" (ritual bath water) The spring cleaning will get rid of the message for peace written by Barack Obama when he passed through Jerusalem, as well as the tags of my late dog Lily that I inserted in May, 2008, and a request that UCLA win the NCAA basketball championships that I inserted last month. The messages are buried in a grave after a proper burial.

Armageddon: I had my first encounter with a "profit (sic) of doom" yesterday. While waiting for the bus, a crazy guy came up to me and in perfect English started pointing at the gaudy apartment complex that towers precariously over the house I'm living in. (see early picture in this blog series) He said that when the apartment building was completed, presumably in the Fall, the earth would shake and the hillside would give way and all the buildings would come tumbling down. I asked him how he knew this and he said, an "angel" told him that this was the event that was predicted in Revelations for the ending of the world. (I actually felt a little home sick while sharing a Telegraph Avenue moment with this guy.) Afterwards, I told Vardit, who hates these buildings more than life itself, and she was thrilled that their demise was expected in the near future even if it meant the end of civilization as we know it.

BITS AND PIECES PART 2

2009-03-26T02:30:00.001-07:00

I loved this sign at the Hebrew University, its a great metaphor for something, certainly not the Israeli political system. This dichotomy between the intellectual elite represented by the fabulous university system, brilliant opinion pieces in the paper and shelves and shelves of books and journals on the one hand and the complete bankruptcy, corruption, and overall misjudgments of the politicians is really something else. The latest news is that the Labor Party which used to be the backbone of the socialist Kibbutz system and one of the world's premier Social Democratic parties has decided to join the Netanayhu right wing government which also includes a racist, super secular party and an ultra-orthodox religious party. The middle of the road, peace party of Tzipi Livni has been left out of the equation. To pull this off, the cabinet has been expanded to 28 members from 17, Labor will get positions that supposedly help the working class like agriculture, the religious party will get departments to protect (expand) settlements and pay huge subsidies for extra children and Yeshiva education, Lieberman (anti-Arab/Russian) party will get foreign affairs and that leaves almost nothing for the ruling Likud party except maybe the Finance Ministry. This would be like McCain getting fewer votes than Obama, and then forming a government in which Sarah Palin's people would get 40% of the cabinet positions, Joe Lieberman's people would get 35%, Ron Paul would get 15%, Dennis Kucinich would get 10%, McCain would get 5% and Obama would get nothing. So there is a strong private industry/capitalistic fiscal policy, a no-two-state/no negotiations Palestinian policy, a welfare system for the Ultra-orthodox supporters and maybe civil marriages and easy religious conversions for Russian immigrants.
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Boys Day Out: The city is awash in young, studious and horny Yeshiva students. Its like Yentl on crack. Recently a group of 100 IDF soldiers walked out of a talent show because a female solder started to sing a patriotic song. Here's the deal: there is a special program for especially gung-ho Yeshiva students where 50% of the time they study Torah and 50% of the time they get to go and fight Arabs. This is experimental because all Yeshiva students are exempt from military service as are Israel Arabs, but obviously for different reasons. So it is forbidden for an ultra-orthodox male to listen to a female singing. Its a kind of Greek Siren thing where if they hear a woman's singing voice they can't concentrate on God's word or in this case, military instructions. Vardit tells me that when she goes to an ultra's house to test the hearing of a special needs kid, she has to ask permission if she can sing a song and if it is granted the father may have to leave the room. Weird (have I used that word before?)

Marathon Day: Today was the great Jerusalem 1/2 Marathon Race which wound its way through all the traditional holy sites. The route passed right under my bedroom window so I had a great view. The first guy through was a normal looking white guy (not a good sign), the second guy through was wearing a Jewish kippa on his head (really not a good sign) and the third person was a cute, Jewish, Sabra looking woman. My first thought was, "where are the Ethiopians and Kenyans?" What if they sponsored a Marathon race and no Ethiopians or Kenyans participated, can that still be called a "marathon?" Actually, there were a couple of good distance runers who came over in the celebrated Operation Solomon in which 14,500 Ethiopian Jews were rescued and brought to Israel. Just as the American Olympic track team is predominantly black, so too some day the Israeli team might comprise Ethiopian long-distance runners and Russian weight lifters all courtesy of the immigration policy.

POST GAZA ANALYSIS

2009-03-23T01:47:00.000-07:00

Kipa Man is a store with thousands of what Americans call yamakas or those cute little hats that Jewish men wear to cover their head before God, assuming of course that God is above us and looking down on our heads. If you believe God is below you, then you must always wear socks, but that is probably a different religion. Anyway, note in the lower left side of the picture is the UC Berkeley, CAL athletics logo, I thought that was pretty cool.

Before I get started on my first Gaza blog, check out this great YouTube video by the guy who just made Waltz with Beshir.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aJZGl15awE

When I last left Israel (September, 2008) the glow had worn off the 2nd Lebanese War and the general consensus was that mistakes had been made, planning was poor and the goal of weakening Hezbolla had not been accomplished. When I came back to Israel (January, 2009) the glow on the just concluded Gaza War was STILL bright. The mistake of too many Israelis killed had been corrected (only 13, half of which were by friendly fire or mistake), planning had been going on for over a year and the goal of stopping the rocket attacks, seemed within reach.

What struck me most was the unanimity of support for the Gaza War. Friends who I would have thought were otherwise 'peaceniks" would say things like, "they lob rockets into our towns, what do you expect us to do, nothing!" Reports coming out from the IDF were clear, "Lessons had been learned from Lebanon." It was estimated that 90+% of Israelis supported the war.

Recently it feels like the worm has turned. First of all, rockets still come out of Gaza, but not as many and it seems that the popularity of Hamas is still high in Gaza and higher than ever in the West Bank. So to many Israelis (I saw a 50% figure) that means the war was ended too soon and "they should have stayed in to finish the job." This, of course, is the same group that wants to preemptively bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities and is similar to the 27% of Americans who still think Bush is doing a good job.

But a new objection has recently emerged coming from war stories of returning soldiers. They range from a clear cut example of an old woman being shot and killed for no reason, to the bizarre practice of writing "Kill All Arabs" in excrement on the walls of the living rooms of occupied homes. (I am told that this is a common cheer at soccer games) Put in simple terms, it seems that many of the disturbing images I heard about or saw while in the U.S. (and not seen by Israelis) actually happened. Suffice it to say, this has totally shocked the Israeli public. I am reminded of how shocked Americans were to see the photos coming out of Abu Grab.

I must admit that the newspapers have been all over this story writing in depth about the soldier's experiences. There was a leaked memo telling soldiers to shoot at rescuers, quotes from officers that its "cool" in Gaza because you can treat everyone as though they were a terrorist target and a pamphlet from the IDF head Rabbi calling for a holy war against the Arabs.

The best article I saw was from Gideon Levy and confirmed a comment that I think Alan Dershowitz once made that more criticism of Israeli policies appear in the Israeli press than anywhere else in the world. If interested check out:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072821.html

I have seen so many English books on the shelves from not only Israeli revisionist historians (one guy I'm reading denies the Passover story and says Jews were not slaves in Egypt and there was no exodus) to many Palestinian intellectuals with excellent and biting analysis of the Israeli occupation. I don't mean to sound naive, but within limits, Israel does not appear to practice intellectual censorship. Maybe they don't have to because there is such a huge consensus of opinion which never seems to waiver.

The current mantra put out by the Defense Minister Barak is that the IDF is the "most moral Army in the world," which is a curious oxymoron. (I wonder how the Vatican's Army feels about that) One is reminded of the line in A Man for All Season when the King threatens to behead Thomas More who responds, "this isn't Spain you know." So apparently it gives Israelis a good feeling to know that, "we aren't the Congolese Liberation Army, you know."

I want to conclude this analysis by making it clear that I will not be joining Hamas in the near future. One should not lose sight of the fact that nobody likes Hamas, and that includes Egypt which closed their border, Fatah which supported assassinations of Hamas leaders and even Syria/Hezbollah which never opened up a second northern front in support. The real irony of the situation was Hillary Clinton's offer of $900 million to rebuild the infrastructure that Israel had destroyed with the $2 billion of U.S. military aide (isn't that what we did in Iraq.) One guy is paid to dig the hole and then another guy is paid to fill it back up, but after all isn't that the lesson of war.

BITS AND PIECES

2009-03-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

This guy is tail-gating out in front of Teddy Stadium before the big soccer game between Hapoel Tel Aviv and Beitar Jeruslaem (my team). His hoka pipe was giving off the smell of strong tobacco and I think some apple flavor. I doubt if this traditional middle-eastern custom will be catching on soon at an American football game.

The most exciting part of the game was a blown call by the referee when it looked like the goalie for Tel Aviv grabbed the feet of a Jerusalem player right in front of the goal. The ref initially threw the goalie out of the game, then changed his mind and the crowd went wild. It was amazing to see 19,000 nice jewish boys all screaming in Hebrew, "the referee is the son of a whore." What would their mother's think?

Purim Update: There was a post-Purim article in the paper which criticized the story of Esther as sending young girls the wrong message. According to this revisionist theory, Esther basically exchanged sexual favors for political gain at the request of her old Uncle. She repeated refused to sleep with the King when commanded to do so by Mordaci, but he concocted this story about saving the Jewish people so she gave up her body for the "tribe." While in the end the Jewish people were saved, it is unclear if they were really in any danger, Uncle Mordaci demanded to be made a big shot in the King's government and all Esther got out of the deal was a book named after her in the Bible. BTW: Of the 22 books in the Bible only Esther and Ruth are named after women.

Gaza Fallout: As you can imagine the Gaza War is turning into a real mess, or should I say the Israelis are just now realizing what everyone else in the world already knew. Tomorrow the report of the IDF comes out and it looks like there was a lot of "Israeli's Behaving Badly." It is supposed to be a bombshell of a story, (excuse the pun). The story that sticks in my mind is of an IDF platoon that took over a house with 10 women and children and a couple of old, incapacitated men. The family was kept captive for many days, without privacy, no bathroom privileges, lack of food and after trashing the house, the soldiers wrote racist slogans on the wall in excrement. But here is the kicker, in the kitchen the Israeli soldiers labeled the cupboards "milk" and "meat" with a magic marker. Apparently in the midst of what probably was a blatant war crime, the soldiers made sure that their rations were kept kosher and that there were no violations of dietary laws. Is that bizarre or what

Circumcision Watch: I met a guy who was interested in having me do volunteer fund-raising work on a special project. It seems that in Africa uncircumcised men have a significantly higher rate of HIV-AIDS which they then give to their female partners. So the idea was why not circumcise African men to cure the HIV-AIDA epidemic and (if you are still following me here) what doctors in the world have the most experience in performing 60,000 circumcision per year. You guessed it. So a team of Israeli surgeons has gone down to various parts of Africa as part of Operation Abraham and in their first test of 3274 men ages 15 to 49 (ugh!), there were 20 HIV infections in the circumcised group and 49 in the uncircumcised group. Bill Gates has signed on to the program and now they need someone to raise money from the American Jewish community. I was a little stunned by the whole idea, Israeli's running all over Africa circumcising 40 year old men, what an image that would be in the "wrong" hands. (sorry for another bad pun)

Pre-Passover Warning: I have been told to get ready for Passover, because it doesn't get any crazier than that. The basic theme of this crazyness is that everyone's house must be so clean that there can be nothing "chametz" inside or put in laymen's terms, no bread crumbs! We have the same tradition, but we call it Spring Cleaning. Watch this space for an update, but already the huge trash bins around the city are starting to fill up with mounds and mounds of thrown away chametzy garbage which are starting to bring out scavengers who take some of the really good garbage and sell it to poor people who don't have this chametzy thing. Garbage pick up is usually every 3 days, now it is down to 2 days and I'm told that just before Passover it will be down to twice a day.

I feel a little creepy showing this picture, but an Arab looking guy got on the bus today wearing a traditional Fatah scarf, he sat directly across from two of the most Ultra-orthodox guys you can imagine. The bus was packed and the Ultra's were totally freaked out as were a number of other people around the Arab guy. I'm pretty sure this was nothing more than just an East Jerusalem guy showing his colors in hostile surroundings, kind of like a Stanford red shirt in a sea of Cal blue and gold (only nobody was shouting "take off that Fatah scarf"). In any case, this is the first time that I really felt the tension in the City, generally everyone just goes about their business.

CHAG SAMEACH: Part Three-the Videos

2009-03-12T05:33:00.000-07:00

Some images just require a video, so here they are.

This truck blarring the music is part of the Biblical requirement on Purim to collect money for religious purposes. As a result everyone is fundraising like crazy, actually, everyone is begging, pushing cups in your face and demanding that you give money. One Ultra had a handful of dollars and Vardit said he was part of the sect which believes that Israeli shekels are bogus and that it is sacreligious to touch them. It's complicated, I will try to explain at another time.

The street scenes all felt like something out of Fiddler on the Roof or Yentl. Here the two Ulta's on the left and right are holding up a "Rabbi" who was too drunk to walk by himself. When the old man saw me with the video he got upset and shoulded something in Hebrew but the joy of the holiday must have washed over him, because his anger didn't last very long.

These guys were so excited to see me they started shouting, "You Tube" and wanted to know where on the Web they could watch the video. They were especially excited to know I was from Berkeley and told me they knew the words to God Bless America, but unfortunately I didn't have enough time to see their complete performance.

This last video is pretty werid. A cute blonde girl, kind of a hippy Queen Esther showed up with a guy in a tie-dye shirt with a peace symbol who said he was from Boston. Behind them in the courtyard was a really anger dude who was drunk and just kept banging on the table over and over shouting something in Hebrew.

CHAG SAMEACH: Part Two

2009-03-12T04:58:00.000-07:00

So many sights and sounds of Purim, so little space. These Jews really know how to have a good time!

Purim in Israel has morphed into a great candy holiday in the tradition of Halloween and the stores are filled with prepackaged treats. These are given as gifts and it doesn't seem like the kids go trick or treating as we do. I told Vardit on Halloween in Berkeley parents make celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins which are called "ants on a log" and give them as a healthy snack alternative to candy, but she thought I must be kidding. I guess you have to be there to really appreciate the gesture.

I did spend an hour up on a hill overlooking the City with a really cool orthodox guy and his 5 or 6 kids lighting firecrackers and throwing them over the side into the secular neighborhood. Firecrackers are illegal since the banging noise freaks everyone out, but you can't keep these orthodox guys from having a good time, especially if the Bible requires it.

This Ultra has a costumed baby in the stroller, his outfit is not a costume, but his best dress-up clothes, the hat is very expensive and comes from a dead bear in Russia.

This girl was one of the few really authentic Purim characters. She has a group of Haymen's hanging from the stick on her shoulders and I think they all have names in Hebrew on her sign.

How cute is this? The boy on the left is dressed up as a police officer and the boy on the right is an IDF solider. This, of course, is every Ultra mother's dream, oh, except the Ultra orthodox kids don't have to go into the army because they are spending all their time studying God's word, but they can play "war" on the holidays.

Sorry this is a bad picture, but I was scared to death that it was a sin to take it. I went inside an Ultra-synagogue and it was just packed with drunken worshippers. In the front is a Torah and you can see off to the left is a kid dressed up as Yasser Arafat. Everyone was chanting and bouncing back and forth; oh yes did I mention that everyone, even the kids were drunk.

This is one of my favorite costumes. The devil's pitch fork and the skeleton of the grim reaper. Not much Purim symbolism here, but oh sooo Jerusalem.

Sorry, couldn't resist this picture. These two young women were dressed up kind of like Queen Esther if she had been a hooker. Lots of make-up, sexy outfits and they were parading up and down the plaza at Hebrew University. They started laughing as I started picture taking.

CHAG SAMEACH: HAPPY PURIM - Part One

2009-03-12T03:25:00.000-07:00

I was walking down a busy street one night and a truck pulled onto the median divider with a totally smashed up car hanging from a crane on the back. Four guys jumped out and set up a sign which I'm told said, "A drunk driver killed two people with this car." As they were setting up, a huge traffic jam developed with screeching brakes and honking horns. In the morning I came out to get a better picture and the whole display was gone. Weird!

Today was Purim, actually Purim was yesterday in Tel Aviv and today in Jerusalem because of the biblical rule that holidays in walled cities happen a day later, Don't ask why, nobody knows, but it does mean two days off of work for many people regardless if you live in a walled city or not.

Another rule which is not really written down is that Purim in a farm town in the Midwestern U.S. among a handful of Diaspora Jews is celebrated differently than in Jerusalem. I have vivid memories of a fantastic Purim in Aurora, Illinois around 1952 when I dressed up as King Ahasuerus and my beautiful bride, Judy Pollack, the only Jewish girl my age within about 40 miles, dressed up as the lovely Queen Esther; someone, I forget who, came as the evil Hamen who wanted to kill all the Jews and we hung him up to die. The rest as they say in The Wild Things is that we spent the day, "making mischief of one kind and another."

In Jerusalem the holiday is spent in one of three ways, the seculars go shopping, which seems to be the case for any holiday except maybe Holocaust Memorial Day. The kind-of-religious/kind-of-secular people treat the holiday much as we do Halloween with lots of candy and costumes with non-religious themes, (see photos in Part 2) and the ultra-orthodox, well they get really, really drunk. According to the Bible, Purim is the one day of the year when a Jew is allowed to get so drunk that he can't remember his name. In America this concept is better known as "boys gone wild" or as we say on Sport's Center, "let's go to the video!"

The highlight of the day was when Vardit took me to the Ultra's "hood" called Me'a She'arim. The men were dressed in their finery, with expensive Bear fur hats from Russia. (Yes they kill bears for a showy religious outfit) the kids dressed up in costume, some very creative, some just like their dad's only smaller, and of course very few women on the street. I'm told the women also can get drunk to the point of not knowing their names, but they have to stay hidden in such a state, for OBVIOUS reasons.

Here was a really interesting twist on the story. Several years ago I told one of my Iranian friends about Purim and King Ahasuerus and he said, "oh, you mean King Artaxerxes" and I said, "NO I mean King Ahasuerus." It seems the Persians have a similar story, actually they have the REAL story. Artaxerxes did in fact foil a plot to kill Jews and freed them from the Babylonian Captivity. There doesn't seem to be a beautiful Queen Esther in the story, since a Persian King would probably not have married a lowly Jewess (perhaps a one-night stand), but more importantly Artaxerxes had 350 wives (if one is to believe Wikipedia) and if there was an Esther she would have found it difficult to compete for the number one slot on the King's busy schedule.

This got me to thinking that instead of getting so drunk you can't remember your name, wouldn't this be a nice time to call Iran and thank them for freeing us Jews from the Babylonian Captivity. Instead, (if the newspapers are to be believed) the drunken crowds are all calling for the preemptive bombing of Iran's nuclear weapons labs. I'm sure such hawkish talk is making the Iran's wish that Hamen had never been hanged or at least that their King had never come under the spell of an IJP (Iranian Jewish Princess).

The market was packed with trays of Homentashen the traditional poppy seed pastry for Purim. In Jerusalem they just use the poppy seeds, perhaps in the Persian tradition, they also smoke the discarded parts of the opium plants. :-)

In any case, in Part 2, I included a photo essay of the day's adventures.

PETTY RIP-OFFS

2009-03-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

This is a very curious banner on a pro-Zionist building, that I'm not sure how to interpret. There is a picture of an American Indian with the statement: "Ask me about Land for Peace." with a map of Israel and an arrow shot through the location of Jerusalem. I THINK, the Indian sympolizes the Israelis, and the Palestinians (Americans?) are promising him if he (the Indian) gives up his land, then they (Palestinians/Americans) will give him Peace in return. And, of course, the conclusion is, "how did that work out for you (Indians/Israelis)!!" I don't know where to even begin analyzing this mixed metaphor.

My father once said, possibly as an old Yiddish expression, that if you lied to trick a person out of money that was theft, but if you used a "fountain pen" (presumably as part of a contract) to extract the money, that was fair and square. I'm not sure in Israel the average shop owner recognizes that distinction.

Here's an experience that happened on my first week. I went to change $100 and on one side of the street was a licensed Money Changer with a rate posted in the window. On the other side of the street was a grocery store with a sign in English that said something like, "Dollars R Good Hear." So you know which store I picked. The owner greeted me like a long lost relative and when I said I was from California, he went on and on about all his relatives who lived there. I felt so comfortable with this guy. I gave him the $100 bill and he gave me back what he said was 320 shekels. I looked down at the 3 one-hundred shekel notes and the 2 ten argots (1/10 of a shekel) I said, "What are those?" and he said "They're shekels."

Well to make a long story short it took me a day or so to figure out that an argot is not a shekel and when I went back to him he initially didn't recognize me, denied he knew anyone in California and finally acknowledged that the exchange rate was 300.2 shekels. Note: across the street in the "real" money changer's store the rate was 350 shekels. Needless to say, I was shocked and disappointed.

When I saw a policeman on the street I stopped him and recounted the story. He asked, "why didn't you go to the licensed dealer or at least count your money when it was changed." I responded, "I thought, I'm a Jew, the grocery store owner is a Jew, why would one Jew rip off another Jew for 20 shekels?" The policeman couldn't stop laughing. When he asked where I was from, I was afraid to tell him Berkeley, California.

Variations of this experience happen everyday. I went to the Post Office to change money and the receipt I got said 2050 shekels, but the clerk gave me only 2000 shekels. I stood there frozen, she looked at me and I looked at her. Then I said, "the receipt says 2050 shekels" and she said, "SOOO." Then I said, "where is the 50 extra shekels?" and she just kept looking blankly at me. Finally, she blinked, reached into her drawer, handed me the 50 shekel note and without skipping a beat went on to the next customer.

Another time I went to the cafe at the Israel museum with my kids and ordered 3 drinks. When we got the bill, my daughter noticed there were 4 items. I called the waitress over and before I could say anything she grabbed the check from my hands and said, "there's a mistake" and quickly returned with a 3 item bill.

I don't know what to make of all this, since I have so many similar stories. This is not outright theft worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, although at the national level it seems that almost every politician in Israel is being indicted for just such a financial crime. It is such pettiness, usually at the level of a few dollars and there never seems to be any remorse. It is always considered a simple mistake, certainly not the kind of thing that would break up a beautiful friendship between vendor and customer. My initial reaction was that this was a "Jewish" thing, but I am increasingly being told that it is Middle-eastern. I'm not sure, but in any case, I've started to pay much better attention and as expected I am starting to catch many more such "mistakes."

ISRAELI POLITICS FOR DUMMIES

2009-03-07T03:26:00.000-08:00

I see people reading small "prayer" books ALL the time, especially on the bus. They always move their lips when they read and even though they have read these prayers a thousand times, they still have to read and say them word by word. Note: Psalm 51, verse 17, says: "May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable to You, O God, my Rock and my Redeemer." I think that's why they have to move their lips, get it!! I also see Ultra-conservative men running quickly down the street, I'm told this is because they are going from one religious training session to another and if they walk slowly, this will be time wasted and taken away from their studies. This gives new meaning to the expression "Time is Money" actually it should be, "Time is Study."

So far I have avoided political comments, not because I didn't want to offend people, but because I never know what side of the argument I am on. It's easy to be opposed to Israeli military activity, but its hard to support the actions of a crazy guy on a bulldozer driving down the street in front of one's house. In any case, here is a brief discussion of the recent Israeli election results.

Israel prides itself on being the only democracy in the Middle-East which says less about Israel and a lot about the autocracies of the surrounding kingdoms and military governments. But it is this very claim of democracy that causes so much concern because once you make a commitment to democracy, you also make a commitment to majority rule and before you commit to majority rule you better make sure your side has the majority of people. It's unclear who is in the majority because if you believe in the one state solution, there could be more Arabs than Jews and if you believe in two states, then than could be more Ultra-religious people than secular one.

Added to this problem is the fact that secular people LIKE ME don't make kids as fast as the Ultras and the Arabs (Palestinians), so even if there are currently enough secular voters to provide some sanity to the process, in the future that will not be true. As a result, the question always becomes, "what if the majority of voters are crazy and vote for destructive policies?" As the Bush years have shown, Israelis are not the only ones who wrestle with this dilemma.

The essence of the Israel election disfunctionalism resides in its mathematics. There are 120 Knesset seats and it takes 61 votes to keep the government in power. If any issue fails to get 61 votes, the government falls which happens about every 2 years. In theory this isn't such a bad idea, but here is the problem; no one party in recent times has ever gotten more than about 30 votes and that means whoever can put together a coalition of 61 votes gets to run the government.

Now, there were 33 parties running in the last election and they range from a party called, Holocaust Survivors in Support of Legalized Marijuana (really!) to an ultra-religious party that believes God gave the entire Middle-east to the Jews from the Mediterranean to Iran. A party needs about 2% of the total vote to get a seat and only 12 parties crossed that threshold. The Labor Party (Barack) which used to run the country got 13 votes, their poor showing signaled the end of the Labor/Kibbutz orientation of the past. The Kadima Party center-left-2 state solution-pro-peace process, philosophy got 28 votes headed by a woman, Tzipi Livni. Likud, (Netanyahu) right-wing, one state solution, anti-peace process, platform got 27 votes . But the real shocker is the Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman who got 15 votes and they represent the new Russian immigrants who are very secular, many may not even be Jewish and are militantly anti-Arab. There are a few peace oriented parties which have about 10 votes and a few religious parties (like Shas) that have about 20 votes.

Here's where the math gets really interesting. Tzipi (the winner) can automatically count on Labor and Peace parties for about 51 votes and Likud can MAYBE count on the Religious and Yisrael Beiteinu Parties for 63 votes. But not so fast Likud! Y.B wants civil marriages and new easy conversion to Judisim rules for the Russians, which the religious parties violently oppose. Also Likud stands for less government social programs and the religious parties want huge government payments for religious schools and child payments for large families. Generally everyone of the leaders hates or distrusts the others, Lieberman/Netanyahu are bitter rivals, Tzipi can't stand Netanyahu's corruption and immorality, Labor will never be part of Lieberman's racist attitude towards Israeli Arabs.

As a result of all of this, there is a lot of horse-trading and the currency for this is government ministries. Likud has promised Shas that they can head the Housing and Education Departments thus building cheap settlement homes in the West Bank and setting up free religious schools for the orthodox, while Lieberman has been promised Foreign Affairs, Finance and Justice Departments. (Lieberman is under investigation for bribery/money laundering and wants to prevent anticipated indictments). Tzipi who probably could work with Lieberman because they are both secular, has demanded that Netanyahu support the peace process and the 2 state solution, something he has absolutely refused to do.

Finally, just to complicate the matter, there is no way that a right-wing Likud government can ever work with the Obama administration and Hillary who are pushing for an independent Palestinian state and a halt in settlement construction. On a cheerier note, EVERYONE wants to bomb the crap out of Iran, sooner rather than later and certainly before Obama opens up a dialogue with both the Syrians and the Iranians a process that has already gotten started and will be difficult to stop.

Sorry this was such a long explanation and at the time of this writing there is no clear government in sight although Netanyahu first offered a unity government with Kadima, which was flatly refused by Tzipi and he has now approached Lieberman which is freaking out Shas who sees these Russian Goys becoming instant Israelis. Stay tuned, there is many more miles before this journey ends.

A CLOSE ENCOUNTER

2009-03-05T05:56:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I decided to go to the Jerusalem Mall while our cleaner, Vitale, tried to return the house to its pre-Howard condition. One of the agreements I signed on to when I came was that the house would be cleaned from top to bottom once a week whether it needed it or NOT. I feel that I am in a constant state of cleaning up after myself, but apparently I am missing some spots, like the kitchen and bathroom. In the "old country" where I'm from, we called this making the house (or car) "mommy friendly", if you need more insight into this issue consult the Men are from Mars/Women are from Venus books.

In any case, I was enjoying myself while reading in a soft chair at one of the mall bookstores. I was reading political articles by David Grossman who is a peace activist and whose son tragically died in the Second Lebanon War. He is a powerful and eloquent advocate whose thesis seems to be that Israel has lost its way as a beacon of moral authority and has descended into thuggery. In the background, the music on the store speaker played The Best of Bob Dylan album and I got lost in "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Mr. Tambourine Man." I finished off the experience with a large middle-eastern plate of lamb sausage and rice and beans.

This is a fast food plate at the Mall for $10, its fresh and tasty. It is
located right next to a Kosher MacDonalds which is packed with teenagers while
this vendor was almost empty. What a pity.

Unexpectedly my phone went off and Vardit nervously asked if I was OK. I asked "Why" and was told that a Palestinian had just driven a bulldozer into a bus right in front of the Mall about a hour earlier. I rushed out just in time to see the bulldozer being taken away and all that was left was the media frenzy. The debris from the attack must have been cleaned up almost immediately.

See: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1236246868064&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Photo shortly after the attack with just the media milling around, the
bus/police car/bulldozer where whisked away almost immediately.

Everyone is quite concerned because next week is the big holiday of Purim with lots of outdoor festivals and people are concerned about the anticipated reaction to the Gaza War. The irony of the situation is that for Palestinians, the "bulldozer" is the ultimate symbol of the occupation and immediately after the attack, the Jerusalem Mayor called for the destruction of the home(s) of the attacker and his family by, of course, a bulldozer. Amazingly, Israelis don't seem to see the dual symbolism of the bulldozer and are simply appalled that it would be used for destruction and not as the intended construction equipment.

For those of you who pay attention to stuff like this, the left-wing Haaretz newspaper article said the bus was empty and there were not other injuries while the right-wing Jerusalem Post article said the bus was filled with teenage girls and several people were treated for shock.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068909.html

THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND

2009-02-27T10:19:00.000-08:00

This was the sign announcing the bathrooms in a local restaurant, kind of creepy don't you think?

I ride buses all the time in Jerusalem. I don’t want to borrow my friend Vardit’s car and even if I did, I think I would be scared. I practiced driving last Saturday when nobody was on the road except Christians who I hoped had a more pleasant driving style than the Jewish/Arab Israelis. In any case, the buses are a trip from the drivers and passengers to the routes and fares. Here are some brief comments.

Maps: There are about 60 bus routes and one Hebrew map on the web which identifies the routes of 5 of the most popular lines. There are no other maps of any kind, nothing is posted at the stop, except the number of the bus, if you want to know where a bus goes, you have to ask, and everyone asks all the time. I met a guy at a bus stop and he asked me “what bus goes to the Central Bus Station” and I responded very confidently, “Only Bus #6.” (which was true). He then proceeded to approach everyone of the other 10 people at the bus stop and asked the same question, all with the same answer and then as each new bus arrived (#’s 9, 19, 32 and 18) he asked the same question of each bus driver. Finally, a #6 came; he asked and then got on board. Every person at every bus stop seems to go through the exact same process.

Note: asking directions in Israel seems to be a social custom much like when people chat about the weather or sports in the U.S. Even when you pretty much know where you are going, you still ask people who look clueless for directions. Another variation of this insight is that people often give wrong directions, it is very unusual for someone to say, "I don't know where that is." Instead, people seem to prefer giving bad information rather than admit that they simply don't know, even I have gotten into the habit of just pointing in any direction and confidently saying, "its right over there."

Drivers: Bus drivers are clearly made of different stuff than the rest of us mortals. They often are on their cell phones, some even read the newspaper while driving and they are constantly talking to other drivers eventhough nobody can hear them except the passengers. To start with, bus drivers have to handle all the fare payments. A standard fare is 5 shekels and 9 argots which means anyone paying their fare in cash will have to get change (this would not be true if the fare was an even number like 5 or 6 shekels) Then everyone’s fare is different, seniors, students, children, and soldiers and there are different paper passes like all day, two day and one month, and 10 pass, 50 pass, all of which have to be hole punched by the driver.

Now here is the fun part. The driver is always in a hurry so the bus races up to the stop, quickly opens the doors and then while people are piling in, the doors close and the bus takes off. There are loud screams of protest of passengers who didn't make it on or off. Then while the bus is leaving the stop and merging into traffic, the driver start punching tickets, making change and processing all the different fares and tickets. It’s really an amazing operation. Of course since the bus goes so fast, it is constantly accelerating or suddenly stopping, which throws all the old people who are standing INCLUDING MYSELF, all over the inside of the bus.

Passengers: It is trite to say that bus passengers are aggressive and impolite, that goes without saying. What is fascinating is the diversity of the people with these characteristics and the many styles they display. To start with, nobody lines up, EVER. When the doors open a group of people get off at exactly the same time and in the same place as the people who are getting on. There are certain rituals, such as the asking for directions (see above) and depending on the mood it seems that some bus drivers always say “no” the bus doesn’t go there or “yes” the bus does go there, but I don’t think the answer is ever correct. There are continual arguments, most of which I don’t understand because they are in Hebrew. Fares are always disputed, as are seat arrangements and of course people are just normally having arguments about politics and life in general.

Cell phones are everywhere and are constantly going off, people answer and talk loudly without much objection from nearby passengers. Ultra-orthodox men will not sit next to women for fear that they will touch them so there is a lot of moving around. There are special orthodox buses run by the city in which women MUST sit in the back and men sit in the front. Everyone brings bags of stuff, mostly groceries and it is not uncommon for a person to sit in one seat and put their bags on the adjacent seat, even though the bus is packed with people. This of course results in more arguments. In all fairness, I must point out that most young people do give their seats to old people, LIKE ME. The first time it happened I was really shocked and thankful, now I always expect it and am upset when it doesn’t happen.

Every morning I take the #18 bus to my Hebrew class and one day I noticed this plaque at the bus stop. Five years ago on February 22nd a #18 bus was blown up by a suicide bomber and 8 people were killed. One of them was the owner of Vardit's first dog. It was a chilling feeling seeing the memorial and thinking about what it meant and what had happened on exactly this same spot.

Obviously, the scariest part is the possibility of a terrorist attack. People are always watching and racial profiling. I saw a driver refuse to open the door for a weird looking Arab guy with a big package. Of course every bus has a couple of 18 year old soldiers with machine guns and amazingly that gives one a feeling of security.

Traffic: The buses seem to always be playing a game of chicken with taxis and old people. Generally, the rule is that a taxi will always back down, but that old people never back down. I was on a bus that nail a taxi, then the taxi chased the bus for several blocks and cut the bus off and then the two drivers really went at it. On the other hand, old people walk right in front of a moving bus and simply dare it to hit them. So far the bus has always backed down, but there have been many close calls. Since many of the old streets are very narrow and cars tend to park on both sides usually half-way up on the sidewalk, the distance between two passing buses can be only a few inches. Surprisingly, I seem to be the only person on the bus who thinks this is a close call and I am constantly covering my eyes and expecting the worst, but apparently the few inches is more than enough space because nobody ever gets hit.

SOCCER FEVER: CATCH IT

2009-02-21T13:59:00.000-08:00

Two prominent signs in the U.S. Cultural Center Library which announce the new WiFi system of free on-line computers. Actually, the library is great with a huge DVD selection, current American magazines and lots of English language books on Middle-Eastern affairs.

It was a dark and stormy night...; really it was.

For the whole last week I have been planning to attend the big soccer game between Beitar Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The 21,000 seat Teddy Stadium, which is an eyesore to my friend Vardit, dominates the view outside my bedroom window so the joy and novelty of walking to the stadium was a big turn-on for me. At 3 in the afternoon I laid down for a nap and at 7:30, was awakened by a brilliant lightning strike and huge thunder clap which shook the house. I should point out that my first thought as I was startled awake was that the “end of days” had finally come to Jerusalem, but alas that was not the case.

I jumped out of bed, threw on my clothes, and rushed out the door. I heard Vardit say, “don’t worry you are only a half hour late.” This is the same person who recently asked me if football is the game that uses the ball shaped like an egg, so that pretty well captures her level of sports comprehension.

As I approached the stadium, the rain was coming down and there were no people milling around outside; curious I thought. I went up to the darkened ticket window and tapped on the glass. A face peered out and when I asked for a ticket, it responded, “we’re closed.” I said, “I want to go to the game.” The face answered, “sorry it’s too late” and disappeared. I couldn’t believe it and at that instant an old Arab man approached me holding a wrinkled ticket and imploring me to buy it in some language I didn’t understand. The image was so weird; here I was on a deserted parking lot, alone with an Israeli scalper and cheers of fans wafting up from the stadium. I said, “how much” and I thought he said in broken English, “whatever you want.” The smallest bill I had was 50 shekels ($12.50) and he seem ecstatic, grabbed the money, delivered the ticket and disappeared into the darkness. An Angel of Mercy, so Jerusalem I thought. I have since learned that the ticket was a free complementary one for no charge; what an American Sucker, the angel must have thought.

An empty stadium, a steady downpour of rain and a kosher hotdog, it doesn't get much better that this.

As I entered the stadium it appeared about 75% empty, but the 25% of the fans in attendance were predictably going nuts. To make a long and very wet story short, the match went on and on to a 0-0 tie at the 90 minute mark. The monotony was broken up by intermittent rain, a surprisingly good, kosher hotdog, and the spectacle of hysterical soccer fans cheering numerous missed shots on goal. It will always be a mystery to me why soccer fans get so excited about missed shots. Anyway, the game went into the injury time. (for those unfamiliar with the rules, after 90 minutes the game can continue for a short time to make up for minutes lost as players rolled around on the ground in pain from being injured) The phenomena is especially interesting because the main scoreboard clock is stopped at “90” and nobody, except the referee knows how long the injury time will last, the only sure thing is that the time will not be long. While keeping one eye on the field, everyone was dejectedly heading towards the exits, resigned to a uneventful tie game.

Magically and unpredictably as this always seems to happen in soccer, there suddenly were a lot of players directly in front of the opponents goal, the ball was rolling around exposed on the ground, everyone assumed that time must surely have run out by now and then BANG, BANG there was a shot, a goal and the game ending whistle. It was the most amazing and cathartic ending I’ve ever witnessed. The crowd was stunned; frozen in time and then exploded with excitement. What a dumb, stupid, exhilarating sport is this game of soccer. It is truly unfathomable to my American sports mind.

RETURNING TO THE ANSWER, THE REST OF YOU CAN REMAIN WITH THE QUESTION.

2009-02-16T01:44:00.000-08:00

My traveling companions to Jerusalem. The dog on the left is "Splat" from
Eli's racquetball days and the dog on the right was recently re-named "Bama" and whose origin we think is a prize won at the Marin Summer Faire, circa 2001.

I have returned to Jerusalem, hence the reference to “returning to the answer”; when recently asked, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten what the question was, damn, getting old sucks. Then, a friend asked if I was still going to keep blogging since her aging mother enjoyed reading it, so that is what it has come to, my targeted demographics; women over 80. Anyway, I’ll give a try and see how far I can go and remain interesting and insightful.

I want to use this first installment to review what it takes to leave a comfortable middle-class life in the states. After having disengaging myself from all the ties I had in Berkeley in May, 2008, I returned for a 4 month stay from October, 2008 to January, 2009. It’s amazing how quickly one can load up on “things” and thus have to start the disengagement process all over again. The U.S. cell phone gets reinstated and then gets returned, the Kaiser health plan gets reestablished and then gets cancelled, items that got thrown away never to be need again, like an alarm clock, have to be repurchased. The one thing I didn’t sign up for, an internet connection, was sorely missed and as a result I spent all my time wandering around my apartment and the neighborhood looking for unprotected WiFi. I eventually found “Tinkerbell” some poor unsuspecting internet user who I continually stole bandwidth from. I felt terribly guilty, especially when I must have slowed down her/his connection and then it suddenly came alive when I logged off. Is it illegal to steal bandwidth; if I go to prison for this is it a crime I can be proud of or will my cell mate “Bubba” think less of me.
One last thing, whenever I leave, everyone feels a need to take me for a good-bye dinner. There are lots of pledges of support, cries of missing you, hugs, etc. The first time I left, I even got cute little hand-written messages and gifts. The second time, there were no messages, fewer hugs, but still free dinner. I’m not sure how deep is this well of good-byes and how often one can go to it. I suspect we are getting close to the end. As always, because I was going to Jerusalem, I promised everyone that I would pray for them, but after awhile, even that gets old. I mean, face it, God (or if you prefer the goddess) does not really listen to me, as was obvious when UCLA, the team I prayed for, lost the national championship.

For Harry Potter fans, this is the exciting view at the King's Cross Station where one can board the Hogwart's Express. I took this picture on my layover in London and apparently some kids have thrown themselves at this wall trying to get on the train.

Two views of the huge apartment complex facing my friend Vardit's house in Jerusalem. On the top is the view when I left Jerusalem in the fall, on the bottom the view today. I present this picture to refute the believe that Jerusalem is a timeless city in which nothing changes.

Going Back to California

2008-09-24T19:38:00.001-07:00

I have packed up my bags and am ready to return home to “civilization.” I am especially proud of the fact that everything I have fits into one large carry on bag. I also have a shoulder bag, which in pop culture is referred to as a “murse” and that is my only new addition to my traveling ensemble. My goal on this trip was to keep my “foot print” small, of course one has the luxury of doing this when other people’s foot print is large. Thus, I don’t need to own a TV, because the apartment I rented had a huge HD TV already installed. I admit that is cheating and I get to look and act like St. Francis of Assisi while I get to enjoy all the benefits of the penthouse suite at the Vatican. (to mix some metaphors.)

Ben Gurion Airport. There is nothing in the world like this airport. All day long people are coming in from all over the world some in rags escaping something, some coming to Israel for a new life, others visiting love ones who have previously made the trip, lots of young kids on their Birthright trip, and of course there are always the pilgrims, some coming to see where Jesus walked, other to see the Wailing Wall. There are even people who think they are the new mesiah and this group is afflicted with what is commonly called Jerusalem Syndrome. Everytime I go to the airport, tears come to my eyes, there is just so much human emotion being expressed by the crowds.

The huge temple like columns dominate the arrival hall and the digital schedule board gives a nice glimpse of the international character of the flights coming and going.

Two things happened to me as I was leaving Israel. First, I walked to the main street with my bags, stood 10 feet from the corner and waited patiently to hail a cab to the airport. A cute Israeli woman in a mini-skirt, go-go boots, cigarette and talking on a cell phone walked up to a spot 5 feet from the corner and immediately hailed the first passing cab. She never looked at me and never gave any thought to the fact that there was a cab-hailing protocol which generally favors a first-come, first-serve. Second, when I got on the plane, the stewardess made the announcement that the flight would take 12 hours and 15 minutes from Israel to Toronto. Immediately, the call light above the seat in front of me went on and (excuse the stereo-type) but a large, heavy-set Israeli man, with a kipa on his head, summoned the stewardess. What followed was a very heated and loud (on his part) discussion, actually argument, that the distance to Toronto could not be 12.25 hours, but had to be 11.5 hours. The man claimed he had made this trip a hundred times and it had never taken 12.25 hours. The stewardess (Air Canadian) said there were many variables like wind and weather, but the Israeli man would not let go of it. I have watched a discussion/argument like this a hundred times in Israel, almost always in Hebrew and never understand what the fight was about. Now that I heard it in English, I still didn’t understand what the fight was about.

When the first leg of my return journey landed in Toronto, I stood patiently in the passport inspection line and saw a woman struggling with her small child. I told her she could go ahead of me and she turned to me and said, “thank you very much.” Shortly thereafter, a man bumped his cart into my leg and apologized profusely. Even when I arrived in LA, while rushing to get to the shuttle bus, I got to the door at the exact same time as another rider and heard him say, “after you.” I was stunned. The idea that Americans, no less, could teach other people (ie Israelis) about politeness was a staggering insight.

But I don’t want this to sound so harsh. Clearly, Israelis operate on two levels. There is the street level in which it appears that everyone is in their own world, I almost never made eye contact with anyone and when I did, it was almost always with a foreigner. People function on the street in a personal bubble, which means they get on a bus as soon as the doors open, they talk on a cell phone loudly in a crowded elevator, wherever it rings and they can smoke a cigarette an inch from your face and never think twice about it. On the other hand, (as Tavio in Fiddler on the Roof would say) once a connection is made, Israelis will give you everything they have. This is especially true with the older women I met. I was fed and toured to death by Israelis who had almost instantly accepted me as their friend. Once a connection was made, I was taken into homes and into confidences effortlessly. I was constantly overwhelmed by the commonality of Jew to Jew, even though I am hardly a Jew in the traditional sense. I would have to say that that for me, a Jew from the Midwest, (there is a movie called Yiddle in the Middle on this very subject) I found the instant rapport of Jew-to-Jew to be almost magical and amazingly satisfying. I think in the end that feeling was larger and more profound than the constant irritation of what seemed like the incredibly disrespectful and boorish Israeli street personality.

Here is a picture of my last sunset on the Mediterranean while sitting on a Tel Aviv beach and shortly thereafter I took a picture from my Berkeley window of the sun setting over the Pacific.

One of the most bizarre images from the streets of Jerusalem. A team of about 20 Israeli soldiers, I think they were officer trainees, were running around crazy with a list of what looked like items on a scavenger hunt. As they found different items, they would check them off of their list and rush off to find the next item. It seemed like great fun, except the Uzi machine guns always give me pause.

Jerusalem Part One

2008-09-24T19:35:00.000-07:00

Where to start? I’ve spent 30 years in Berkeley, CA so I don’t make this comment lightly, but Jerusalem is CRAZY! And it didn’t just get crazy in the 60’s as part of the free speech movement, it has been crazy for thousands and thousands of years. It was crazy for the Romans, the Christians, the Moslems, and now the Jews. Thank the “goddess” that I have the good fortune of staying with a wonderfully sane and secular woman who lives within walking distance of the huge Jerusalem Mall, which is built next to a 4000 year old cemetery, as well as Israel’s largest, 20,000 seat Teddy Kollek Soccer Stadium.

These towering apartment complexes dominate the view out of my bedroom window, admittedly they are very gaudy and completely out of context of the
neighborhood, but they do look impressive.

Chagall Windows: I took the bus up to the Hadassah Medical Center which is billed as the largest medical facility in the Middle East. I have no way of knowing if that is true, but it is certainly enormous. If I can be permitted a prideful comment, (and as I have said often in this blog) I get an especially proud feeling whenever I see the money of so many world-wide Jews of the diaspora being used to build a hospital of this magnitude instead of an artificial golf course in the middle of the Arabian Sea. But I digress. Chagall completed his 12 stained glass windows in 1962 and each tells the story of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. During the 1967 war, Jordanian shells struck near the windows breaking 4 of them and when Chagall was told, he responded, “you take care of the war; I’ll take care of the windows”, which he subsequently repaired. As with almost every monument in Jerusalem there are spectacular views of the City and hills.

The Chagall Windows are brightly colorful, especially when the sun hits them, as a reminder of the dangers facing Israel, the goat's head in the bottom window retains the broken frame from the Jordanian rocket attack.

Har Hamenuhot Cemetery: I took another bus off in a different direction to this sprawling cemetery on the western outskirts of the city. Being buried in Jerusalem is a big business and it is even the specialty of a local kibbutz. For as far as the eye can see, there are grave stones, some plain, some with impressive marble coverings, many with candles burning in a little compartment and of course the traditional stones placed on top of the caskets. I was struck by how small the plots were and according to my measurement they were all a standard length of about 5’ 10” long. I wonder what they do with the Jews over 6 feet tall.

Rows and rows of grave stones are siloutted by the Jerusalem hills in the
background.

The Wall: It took me a couple of days before I got to see the full effect of the new “security” wall. Normally, I took the bus to Tel Aviv which does not have to go through any occupied territories, but yesterday we took a short cut to a new town called Modi-in and to get there we had to basically bisect Palestinian territory. For a distance of about 5 miles the road goes through a kind of “tunnel” with the Wall on either side of the highway. It was a weird feeling and of course there are all the issues of the various properties that got cut in half and the difficulty of getting from one side of the road to the other. I was told that before the fence, traveling on this road was usually dangerous and cars were regularly stoned.

Different images of the Wall, in the first video it is only a single continuous
wall, in the second, there are two walls on either side of the highway forming a
tunnel through the occupied territories.

Jerusalem Politics: As I said above, I don’t even know where to start. There is a big mayoral election coming up next month. The current mayor is orthodox, but apparently not terribly nutzy, although he frequently sides with the “ultras” in their numerous, on-going disputes. One of the candidates is a sensible secular guy who might not win. Another candidate who is extremely orthodox recently got out of prison for bribery and corruption, is very popular, but under current law needs a waiver in order to run because his crime involved moral turpitude. Of course, the current prime minister has also been accused of misusing some kind of travel money related to the Holocaust Museum and may also be on his way to jail. A third candidate is a billionaire Russian businessman who has sided with the ultras, but is quickly falling out of favor and there is a fourth candidate who is old, with a long white beard and represents the most right-wing religious sects. I recently heard of a sign that said: “Wake Up Seculars; Jerusalem is the Next Iran.” Clearly there is a feeling among the seculars that the battle for Jerusalem has been lost and it will soon be completely under the control of the ultra-conservative wing of the religious right. “Sarah Palin, we’re not in Tel Aviv any more!”

Jerusalem Part Two

2008-09-24T19:33:00.001-07:00

Market Day: The person I’m staying with in Jerusalem gets up at 4am on Friday to do Shabbats shopping at the huge Mahaneh Yehuda Market. We arrive at 5 a.m. and already the place is buzzing with activity. A large group of “Ultras” walks past us on their way home from early morning prayers. It seems that a month before the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) there is a sects that conducts services throughout the City at this ungodly hour. Twice I tried and failed to get up in time to participate in the service. I can only assume that God is a morning person.

Just a few of the many trucks lined up at 5 a.m. to set-up the busy Mahaneh Yehuda Market. Most of the vendors have already been to the wholesale markets at 3 a.m. to make the best and freshest purchases.

I’m sure every “farmers” market sets up like the one in Jerusalem, but the combination of its huge size and the impending insanely chaotic Friday shopping day, makes this an especially unique experience. At this hour, everyone is especially friendly and my guide seems to know everyone by first name. Of course, no two products are bought at the same stall. One vendor with unique seedless grapes, can not be used to purchase, special cherries. Cheeses, (I affectionately call them the “Baby Cheeses” in honor of the fact that the son of God may actually have shopped at this market) are in a separate wing and fresh breads are purchases down the street at the bakery. Within an hour, twenty individual bags have been accumulated, a meaningful one-on-one conversation/negotiations has been exchanged with each seller and then all the early morning regulars sit down for a nice breakfast. As you can imagine with this many Jews, the conversations are animated, sometimes contentious and usually insightful.

This totally unexplainable and even gaudy sculpture sits atop one of the premier art buildings on the grounds of the huge Israel Museum.

Here is a better example of the other sculptures on the grounds of the museum, The towering letters spell "love" in Hebrew and there is yet another breathtaking view of Jerusalem in the background.

Dead Sea Scrolls: On the one hand it is easy to dismiss the Scrolls as much ado about nothing. After all, these are the writings of a group of people, living in the middle of nowhere, with barely a pot to piss in, (actually the only pot they may have had was used to hide the Scrolls), writing in an archaic language, which not only is in fragments, but eroded over time and difficult to translate. One the other hand, the Israelis really know how to package their archeological discoveries. The building housing the Scrolls as well as all the surrounding decorations, make for an incredibly impressive presentation. I don’t know much about the Scrolls but two things jumped out at me from the various segments on display. First, the Esseneians (or whoever wrote them) were dedicated ascetics as in fervently anti-materialists. This is in breathtaking contrast to the modern Israelis whose pursuit of seems to know no bounds. Second, the “creator” who apparently either dictated or inspired the words written down in the Scrolls, seemed unnecessarily obsessed with how he/she/it was to be worshipped, with pages and pages of detailed rules as to what can and mostly can not be done on the Sabbath, and similar instructions many of which the Ultras not only follow today, but expect everyone else to follow. I just don’t get it. If there is a god and he/she/it has the power, time and inclination to talk to us mere mortals, then why spend so much time explaining what kind of goat should be sacrificed on what kind of holiday in order to get a measly smile on the face of the supreme being. In any case, despite all their efforts to follow these rules, the Esseenians never seemed to have made it out of their desert caves.

This is a photo of the "jar" shaped white building that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was built to look like the containers in which the scrolls were found, it is white to symbolize goodness, and there are showers of water continually being spayed on the building. (forgot what that symbolizes) In the foreground is a huge, black marble rectangle which I think symbolizes "evil." Not sure what that has to do the scrolls, but the image of the two icons is very powerful.

Knesset: As I have commented so often before, the Knesset building and the associated trappings of power present an awe-inspiring sight. One is endlessly reminded that Israel is the “only democracy in the Middle East” and up to a certain point that is true and worth something. It does give one pause to sit in a large parliamentary hall and contemplate the kinds of debates that have raged in that chamber. Many brilliant decisions were made there, as well as some bone-head ones. Of course, the ultimate issue of “peace with its neighbors” has not only eluded the government, it has also eluded the Jewish people for 3,000 years. That is not the fault of democracy, but I am not quite convinced that a democracy has the intelligence and will to bring about peace in our time.

This is a portion of the large iron fence surrounding the Knesset. This is a common motif in Israel and I believe it is usually trying to represent barbed wire and memorialize the Holocaust.

What I find really fascinating about Israeli politics is the absolute brilliant strategy of the Ulta-conservative religious parties. For many reasons, some logical and other irrational, the Israeli electorate is generally equally split between liberals and conservatives and this split pertains mostly to issues of war and peace and economic welfare policies. The Ulta’s, however, represent “god’s” issues, which mainly comes down to getting extra money for having their children, making sure their kids don’t have to go into the Army, and no negotiations on the status of Jerusalem. With these issues clearly articulated and with their 10-20% voting bloc, they can form a coalition government with either the liberals or conservatives depending on who is more willing to meet their demands. It’s a brilliant strategy, which uses the Israeli democratic institutions to ultimately reach an undemocratic conclusion.

This is a distant photo of the Knesset building as picture taking was forbidden inside which is unfortunate because there were huge Chagill tapestries and the chamber was very impressive.

Side Trip to Kibbutz

2008-09-24T10:08:00.001-07:00

My son, daughter and I went to Kibbutz Yotvata in the Negav Desert, here is Eli's report.

The Kibbutz

We started our five-day journey on Friday morning from Tel Aviv. We took a train and a bus to make our way south through the country. It is not long before the lush trees and dense civilization make way for the sprawling desert. As far as the eye can see it is nothing but orange rock and sand. Soon we would grasp that this geographic style is a common theme in this part of the world. After deboarding the bus on the side of this desert highway, miles from the nearest CafeCafe (like a Starbucks) or theater showing of the ubiquitous Don't Mess with the Zohan, we entered the gate of Kibbutz Yotvata.

The Kibbutzim began to sprout up in this region decades before Israel's War of Independence in 1948. Generally started by adventurous European Jews, the Kibbutzim used the socialist theories of community living and applied them to the agricultural development needed for the large unpopulated areas of the country.

Growing up in Berkeley, the idea of picking up and moving away from your stuffy job in the States and going to work on a Kibbutz was kind of like how some people think of moving to Los Angeles to become an actor or writing the great American novel. For us socialist dreamers, the Kibbutz is the utopia that represents all that we wish we could do with our lives: work for our own food without relying on corporations to package and provide it for us, live exempt from the evils of our greenback slave drivers, and get to wear overalls. The knowledge that somewhere out there in the faraway desert there exists a community that works together and supports each other, gives us lefties a glimmer of hope that not all socialism ends up like Animal Farm.

Well, I suppose utopia is a bit strong, but after two days as guests in the community we were pretty impressed with the way things are in Yotvata. Once inside its borders, it is easy to forget the harshness of the terrain outside. 400 people live within its pleasant confines, enjoying a swimming pool, plenty of green lawns, a spacious dining hall and coffee parlor, and even a disco/gymnasium. Lucky for us, our first night coincided with an outdoor concert put on by members of the community with men, women, and children of all ages performed songs and poems under a full desert moon. I had been expecting to stay in a bunk, maybe next to a chicken coop or something along those lines, but our guest apartment had 2 bedrooms, a TV, a kitchen, and a refrigerator fully stocked with delicious chocolate milk. This was starting to not feel like the kind of socialism I had heard about. In fact, after hooking up with a big company that distributes its product, Yotvata has become the largest dairy in the entire country and is doing quite well.

There are some aspects of the system that I kind of thought were "cheating" as far as the original kibbutz model goes, but I suppose my ideals aren't exactly realistic in today's world. Everything seems to be a fair balance between practicality and some aspect of this great community concept. Almost all of the food we ate was brought in from outside (except the milk, of course), but it is all prepared and served by a Kibbutz member, a regular guy or gal who could very well be your neighbor. They hire outside help for big projects like construction, but someone from within does most every other job or helps out in some way or another with the production or just the general upkeep of the town: teachers, farmers, and even artists. Which brings me to the most radical piece of the organization: everyone gets paid the same amount. There are no salaries, except for a regular allowance that each Kibbutz member receives. This means that no money changes hands within the community.

The entire length of our stay, a consistent topic of conversation amongst our clan was The Fallacy, The Catch. What hidden attribute would prove the reason that everyone didn't live in a Kibbutz? If it was as pleasant and successful as this one seemed to be why was this not a more widespread form of living? I think the end result is that people generally don't want to have their lives governed by someone else. People like to make their own decisions about their money and their property and it is this reason that many Kibbutzim in Israel have already privatized, meaning that there are differential salaries and less community organization. Although it seemed like the people at Yotvata, and I agree, believe that privatization defeats the whole purpose of the community experiment. My dad was wise to note that, unlike the American communes of the sixties (of which he may or may not have lived in, depending on how much memory is resurrected), this commune is not driven by sex, drugs, or God. Going clean and secular, the goal of the community is solely the success and happiness of its participants and nothing else.

As we all left feeling both mentally and physically healthy, it appears this strategy is working well.

Kibbutz/Desert Pictures

Welcome to the Negev. Last stop for water: 1 hour ago.

Looming from across the Jordanian border, might as well be the San Gabriel Mountains.

Howard contemplates emigration.

Inside the lush confines of Kibbutz Yotvata

Side Trip to Petra

2008-09-24T10:06:00.001-07:00

My son, daughter and I went to Petra, here is Eli's report.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

After our departure from the Kibbutz, we took a bus down to the port city of Eilat. This city, at the very southernmost tip of Israel, owns a small portion of coastline on the Red Sea. The borders of Egypt and Jordan are only a few miles on either side and Saudi Arabia is only 40 miles down the road.

My sister, the only one brave enough for the Red Sea.

We were only in Eilat long enough for two lemonades and a quick evaluation of our currency situation, but we spent it down at the beach watching big oil tankers come in to dock and bikini-clad Israelis smoking their cigarettes go out to sea. With its towering hotels framed by desert mountains and billboards galore, it reminded us all of Las Vegas. And on that note we flagged a taxi to take us to the Jordanian border.

The border crossing was quiet. Supposedly it is packed at 8am as people commute to work, but by 11 the station was isolated. At the passport window, a radio in the back played Phantom Planet's song "California." We pondered whether they play homeland anthems for everyone.

The history of the relationship between Israel and Jordan has been a tumultuous one, but since the signing of a peace treaty in 1994, it has been relatively stable. Because of Israel's geography, its language, and other more quirky characteristics of the country and its people, it has given me a taste of the foreign. Its culture is strange to me, but it is still a very Western place and after only a short period of time (especially in Tel Aviv), you can forget that you are in the distant Middle East. Entering the Arab nation of Jordan, it hit me that I might be leaving my comfort zone.

We are one of those families that despises the classification of the word tourist. If it's possible we desperately avoid going to "touristy places" and eating at "touristy restaurants." Several times on this trip, I have wondered the streets of a foreign city for much longer than necessary because I would be mortified to pull out and unfold a large map in public, thus exposing myself as just another lost American. However, on our trip through Jordan, we decided to bite the bullet and hire a travel agency to book transportation and beds for us. We didn't really have to worry about standing out as foreigners though. The brightness of our white skin and the bulge of our fanny packs could have stood out to even a blind local.

Our first stop was the ancient city of Petra. First settled by the Nabataeans in the 7th century B.C., this region was the center of the global spice trade for centuries. The walking tour of the site starts with a stroll at the bottom of a dry gorge. The walls, tall as skyscrapers, still have carvings from the ancient civilizations that called this their holy city.

Now, the most famous feature of the "rose-red city" is "The Treasury." If you have ever seen the third Indiana Jones with Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, then, one, congratulations on having great movie taste, and, two, you will for sure recognize this amazing structure built straight from the rock face.

Future Album Cover

Camels, just chilling.

We stayed a night in a hotel in the town just outside the archaeological site. The next day, we drove to Amman, the capital and biggest city of Jordan. 80% of the country is desert, so that is what we saw on this drive, until we reached the outskirts of Amman. The city is very busy with lots of cars, which all use their horns as if they were turning signals. Although the parts of the city that we saw were far from third-world status, there appeared to be many positive signs of development. Immediately outside our hotel window, they were building what will be the tallest building on Amman's skyline.

Watch out King Abdallah, there's another monarch in town.

Side Trip to Golan Heights

2008-09-24T10:04:00.000-07:00

My son and I went to the Golan Heights, here is his report.

The Golan

My dad and I just got back from a two-day trip to the Golan, a region in the northeastern corner of Israel. This area was captured by the Jews only four decades ago in the Six Day War and its ownership has been a matter of conflict with neighboring Syria ever since (Its Wikipedia page is even disputed). We had booked a tour in a small bus that carried us around to a handful of different cities and sights, from our home in Tel Aviv to a Kibbutz at the most northern reaches of Israel where would spend the night. Then, today we hit another set of points on the way back.

Our first stop was in the city of Nazareth (yes, of "Jesus of Nazareth" fame). This was also our first stop that had made an important appearance in the New Testament. It would not be our last, as it seems JC had booked the same tour with Israeli World Tour Group just two millennia ago, hitting all the same locations. For every place where the Bible says anyone committed any deed, there is a church built on top of that place, and in some places there are two or three churches that all claim to be built on top of that place. Not only that, but every church is not the original church, because every few centuries it gets knocked down in a war, so they pool money from Christians all over the world to build a new church on the ruins of the old.

Here in Nazareth, there is a well at which Mary was getting some water when she was told by the angel Gabe that she was pregnant with God's kid. So, inside this giant church there is a hole cut in the ground and there is the well. Christians from the Argentina to Zimbabwe are snapping pictures, praying, and buying postcards.

Next door is another church. This is where Joseph had his carpentry workshop. I think it was underground in a cave because we kept looking down this hole in the ground. I'm not sure really why he would have built furniture underground, but our tour guide just kept saying, "In the Christian tradition, Joseph worked in this cave...," like he was not going to admit its truth, but he wanted to explain why billions of people still thought it was true, even though it might look completely ridiculous to the heathens in the group. This church was called St. Joseph's. My dad and I wondered what Joseph had done to become a saint. We agreed that any guy who believes his virgin wife when she comes home and says she is going to have a baby, but it's okay because it's God's, was probably a saint.

We then stopped at a series of churches at places where Jesus had committed miracles, like the church of the stone where he stood to make bread and fishes for an entire community and the church outside the old synagogue where he brought back to life the daughter of a Roman soldier. It wasn't even lunchtime before I was getting warn out by the deadly combination of piety and humidity. I would say, however, one very interesting aspect of all these sites is that they never just represent one group, but really each site is an amalgamation of at least three. Some places will have a mosque built on top of a church built on top of a Roman palace built on top of a synagogue. (And to think it's heavy that the Bay St. shopping mall is built on top of an Ohlone Shellmound!) Also, this means that at every gift shop you can see menorahs and crucifixes sitting next to each other on the shelf. If only, religious harmony could exist as well in people as it does in trinkets.

It is hot as hell (bite your tongue!) and I'm wondering why so much blood has been shed for this land while California sits miles away at a cool 70 degrees 365 days a year. But as we head further north, the golden brown of the desert that has been the theme color for every inch of this country starts to turn green. In the winter, they say it snows here. Tell that to my dehydrated camel. We drove through the Hula Valley, which looks a lot like Napa with big orchards stretching to the hills.

The word peaceful might have floated in my head just as we drove up to the town where we would spend the night, but it was only fleeting. We stopped at a memorial for some of the first Jewish soldiers to die fighting the Arabs for this land in the 1920's. Only steps away was a smaller, more makeshift memorial for Israeli paratroopers who had been hit by a rocket on this spot just two years ago in the Second Lebanese War. There were a group of soldiers that had stopped by in there trucks to look. This was a very real example of how constant and immediate the fighting still is in this country.

We were just a few kilometers from the border of Lebanon. Since going to Eilat a week and a half ago, I had now successfully traveled the entire length of Israel.

We spent the night at a hotel run by a Kibbutz called Kfar Gil'adi. This was one of those privatized kibbutzim, for sure. No commies here. Indoor pool, TV in every room, and an amazing buffet shown here:
On our trip back we surveyed the area known specifically as the Golan Heights. Until 1967, Syrian troops used to shoot down at Jews in the valley from its strategically significant higher ground. Once it became part of Israel, Jews began to quickly settle and cultivate the region. There are rumors that the Israelis might give this region back to Syria in exchange for a peaceful border (similar to the one in Jordan), which would provide tourism for both countries through easy passage, as well as other considerations. However, there are cities like Katzrin, which was constructed completely within that short time period and already has about 8,000 people and very well could be Lafayette. The Israelis can build civilization like no other. My dad tells me that the Chinese have even hired them to start building cities from scratch in China. You could have a plot of barren land, but give it to the Israelis and it will have a shopping mall and a post office in no time. The reason for building like this is obvious. They are trying to settle the land to show that is Jewish. In some respects it is very good. I like visiting clean, well-organized cities, and their efficient use of the land's resources is incredible. However, this makes it very hard, when say, you might have to give the land back to another country in order to sign a peace agreement. This is true all over this country. Everywhere I go, I am surprised, yet very comforted by the Jewish cities. It is all very Western. But I can't help thinking that there is a back end to this. Is someone losing out, where the Israelis keep winning?

Side Trip to Jericho

2008-09-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

My son, Eli, and I took a side trip to the West Bank, here was his report.

Through the Walls of Jericho

There are no walls around Jericho anymore. I probably would have known that if I had read The Bible. In fact, it seems quite isolated. From a distance it might seem to be just a tight community whose only predators are the rocks of the desert.

To get there, we hopped on a small bus at the bus station just outside the walls of Jerusalem's famous Old City. The signs inside this bus show the swooping script of Arabic words, not Hebrew's blocky characters, but that change doesn't really mean anything if you can't read either language. Only 15 minutes after leaving the city center, we had reached a Palestinian village that might be called a suburb. The streets are more clearly lined with trash here. On the side of the road, a dumpster's contents slowly burn. We are only here to transfer, but the driver of our service taxi is waiting to fill up with a few more passengers. Meanwhile, we sat in the car without air conditioning, while outside several men chain smoke their cigarettes in the shade, draped over plastic chairs. It is probably getting close to 100 degrees.

The city of Jericho is completely controlled by the Palestinian Authority. There is an Israeli military post about a mile outside the city's border, monitoring the road in and out. Other than that, however, the city's security and well-being are lead from within. Only a small percentage of the West Bank has this set-up, a step towards autonomy.
Supposedly, Jericho is the oldest continuously-inhabited city on Earth, with records dating back 11,000 years. Today it has 20,000 residents.

When you are in a new and strange place, your eyes may strain to focus on anything that can spark a feeling of familiarity. Pulling into Jericho's main square, my eyes almost fell out of their sockets. A Palestinian kid riding a bicycle towards us was wearing a navy blue shirt with the gold, script lettering of CAL on the front. In a second he was gone, like maybe I hadn't even seen it.

We circled the entire town center and appeared to be the only tourists. It was a pretty regular market day it seemed. Parts of pigs hanging from butcher shop windows, boxes of plastic toys lining curbs, falafel boiling in large pans of oil. We stopped to eat at what looked like the nicest restaurant in town, which meant slight air-conditioning and tables off the street. Our waiter was a young guy about my age who spoke a sprinkling of key English words and smiled a lot. Our food was plentiful and very cheap and we made sure to leave a good tip. When we were leaving, our new friend shook my hand and asked where we were from and then if I maybe knew 50 Cent Rapper. I told him yes and that next time I would see him in California. He laughed and smiled at us as we left and then returned to work.

My dad and I discussed what it takes for a guy like that to get to America. I suppose the best case scenario is he has a relative who has already made it and maybe can send money or a job opportunity back home, but you'd probably have to be one in a million to get hooked up like that. I think maybe if he worked hard enough at the biggest business in town or a hotel, maybe he could afford to travel, if he could get through the roadblocks, much less all the red tape. Learning English is a must.

After another half-hour game of see how long the Americans sit in the taxi before they realize its much hotter inside than out, we were heading to the city limits. An Israeli guard took our passports and peeked inside the car and we were off, speeding at 140 kilometers per hour back towards Jerusalem.

I think what I learned from my brief foray into the West Bank was not that the Palestinians were living in hovels or prisons, or that they were being forced by Israeli soldiers to walk in straight lines and speak only when spoken to, but rather that their oppression takes more abstract forms. When you see the upscale malls and bustling intersections of any big Israeli city it is hard to imagine anyone utilizing the land any better. However, the Palestinian land issue is not a matter of who would use the area more efficiently or who would keep it cleaner, it is a matter of basic freedom. When the Palestinians are forced to live behind a wall or a fence, its more visible impact is the destruction of economic opportunities for individuals and the community, but its less obvious result lies only within the minds of its people. By telling someone to move away from their home and live in a confined space, you are refusing them the ability even to imagine a life beyond borders. After spending the last 4 weeks traveling halfway across the world, seeing a larger array of cultures than I ever have in my life, I realized how much I take this for granted. It pains me to think that this waiter, no matter how hard he may work, will be tied to the ground by some faceless exterior force. I have enjoyed my stay in Israel immensely and by meeting people and seeing the country top to bottom, many of my political preconceptions have changed for the better, but as long as Israel remains an occupying nation, I have no choice but to see it as an oppressor, a barrier to some kid's simple dreams.

Leaving Tel Aviv

2008-09-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

It’s been some time since I last blogged, my kids have been visiting and I discovered an interesting phenomenon; when you are traveling with another person, you spend much less time thinking about blogging. When I was by myself and saw something interesting, I thought, “that would make a great blog entry.” But when I’m with my kids, I immediately share the insight with them and they were quick to say, “Dad that’s a really stupid idea.” Now that they are gone, I am left with only my blog to share all this dumb thoughts.

I am off to live in Jerusalem for September with a really wonderful person who has promised to show me the city, both its spiritual core as well as its seamy underbelly. Before I leave, here is a quick update on a few Tel Aviv highlights.

Posters announcing the triathlon decorate the Roman ruins.

Triathlon in Caesarea: A friend took me up to the city of Caesarea to watch her 13 year old nephew run in a triathlon event. Caesarea, as its name implies, is a Roman ruins which around 10 BC was one of the great port cities of antiquity; it was also the place of the first Roman Centurion’s conversion to Christianity, a momentous event which led to the revised rule that in order to be a Christian one did not have to be either circumcised or keep kosher (See Acts 10.) It is also the place where presumably the Holy Grail was discovered by the Crusaders in 1101 after which the city was repeatedly occupied and sacked by invading armies.

First leg of the race is swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.

The triathlon hosted about 1200 participants from all over Israel and it was truly an exhilarating experience. First of all, the course began with a swim out into the Mediterranean, then a bike ride up and down the coast, followed by a run through the ancient Roman ruins. Every piece of the course was dripping in beautiful scenery and archaeological wonders. Second, I couldn’t get over the fact, as I have said ad nauseum, that everyone was Jewish! There were plenty of beautiful Israeli bodies from 10 to about 70 years old. Finally, there were the over-involved parents fully equipped with cameras, water bottles and non-stop shouting of words of encouragement in Hebrew. Of course as a Dad who has spent many, many hours at such events, especially crew and racquetball, this was almost the most exciting experience I have had in Israel. Oh, by the way, the boy I came to see, Itamar Alster, was 8^th in his age group which even added to the excitement.

White Night: Every summer Tel Aviv turns night into day with a festival called White Night. Activities are planned all night everywhere in the City and probably a hundred thousand people hit the streets for dancing, eating and entertaining. I walked from about 1a.m. to 4a.m. from my apartment to up and down the beach. It was packed with revelers. I think the first thing that hit me was “camaraderie”, the feeling that this city has a distinctive personality and that everyone who lived in it not only shared in the vision of that personality, but contributed a little of themselves to forming that personality. The events were not gaudy, corny, trite, or staged. Secondly, there was the diversity, music of course was central, but there were so many events like puppet shows for kids, rock concerts for teens and classical music productions for adults. The atmosphere was safe, life-affirming and of course all of this was taking place in the middle of the night.

Dancing performances took place all along the beach

Opera in the Park: On Thursday night, the start of the Israeli weekend, about 15,000 people gathered on the lawn of the huge HaYarkon Park to hear the Israel Opera sing La Traviata. It was breathtaking. There was a long half hour walk to the field where everyone was picnicking, wine-drinking and stretching out on blankets. I went with a high-school friend who was visiting and unfortunately didn’t prepare any opera accessories, including the failure to bring my camera or something comfortable to sit on. The opera, of course, was in Italian, the libretto in Hebrew and the lead woman who was spectacular spent the whole time wailing and throwing herself from one side of the huge stage to the other. She was either dying from a mysterious illness or from being love sick, I couldn’t remember the story line, but in any case the sound system more than made up for my inability to follow the plot. As with the White Night event, and every other event in Tel Aviv, the esprit de corps was overwhelming. Thousands and thousands of opera lovers, many on their cell phones, (but speaking softly,), the moon and Jupiter high in the sky, the towering Tel Aviv skyline, it was an indescribable cultural event. And when it was over, people were courteous and picked up their litter. What a country! The evening was only marred by the lack of public transportation home and after waiting almost an hour for a bus, the crowd got pretty surly and people were throwing themselves into the path of the few moving taxis. I was generally being my mellow California self, but my friend who was from New Jersey, took the initiative to chase down a bus, while knocking over a few elderly Opera goers.

Opera solos were part of the White Night events.

Ultra Conservative Watch: I’ve started collecting kooky stories about the Ultra Conservatives in Israel, especially Jerusalem. One article complains about the secular Jews who are going around cutting down the “wires” that define where an “Ultras” can travel on Saturday. For the uninformed, the orthodox Rabbis install a continuous wire around their neighborhood and a devotee is allowed to travel and “carry” their bags within the confines of the “wire” without technically doing any forbidden “work.” If the wire is broken, then supposedly, the Ultras cannot leave the house. As you may have guessed, a common prank has emerged where some of the “seculars” are going around cutting the wires, just so the Ultras can’t leave their houses. This is a huge issue and commentators have raised the possibility of “civil war” if the police don’t get involved.

Another story claims that the Ultra manager of a large building complex was not allowed to shake women’s hands because they might be unclean. Can you guess why this might be so? Since a woman is considered “unclean” before/during/after her period, there is a remote possibility, even in post-menopausal women, that menstrual blood is on her hands and thus, one can never be too careful about shaking a strange woman’s hands. This prohibition applies to Ultras even in professional business situations.

FOOD TRIPS

2008-08-08T05:06:00.001-07:00

Sorry to have spaced out on my blog. My foot is sore from walking so much and that means I’ve kind of settled into a routine of just going to favorite places, not much insight there. Also I have been J-dating with, as my daughter insists, women my own age. I haven’t quite figured out how to present that in a blog. Suffice it to say, if a women in Israel is my age, born sometime in the 1940’s, then there is definitely going to be a complex story to tell and there have been many. Also, I am starting to form my ideas about this place and its politics; also trying to figure out how to write about that. See the Commentary below for my first efforts.

Today, I’d like to talk a little about food. For those of you who know me, I’m not a “food person”, but I can play one when traveling. I read once that there are 4 great food cuisines in the world: French/Italian/Chinese/Moroccan (sic?) I think that last one was a place holder for “Middle Eastern.” (Kind of simplistic, huh) I imagined Israel as being the one place in the world where you could get a great pastrami sandwich on rye on every street corner. That doesn’t seem to be the case. I have found only two Eastern European restaurants where I can get a good matzo ball soup. Btw: Matzo (and its food derivatives) is kind of like eggnog in America, it is usually saved for one time of the year, Passover. People are a little offended when I tell them that in the States I eat matzo all year round. But if you are looking for Middle Eastern food, you are in the right place.

A popular juice bar, at about 2 am on a Thursday night.

Tel Aviv supposedly has the most sidewalk cafes of any major city in the world, I don’t know if that is true, but clearly they are everywhere. And they are generally filled 24 hours a day, from the beach to the “slums.” Israelis eat on the street, unlike Americans. Pita pockets are carried in one hand, cell phones in another, a cigarette in a another, a water bottle in still another. There are juice bars and ice cream parlors everywhere and because it is so hot, people hydrate constantly. Food seems to cost about the same as the States, only the income is about 40% less, so Israelis think food is expensive and I think it is just about right. I can walk a block to a great all night food kiosk and get a cheese omelet, orange juice, couple slices of bread and 5 little dishes of different salads, egg, tuna, tabuli, feta, and a chopped salad for 28 shekels ($8.75). Then I can sit on a park bench, with wireless internet connection, and at midnight watch a steady stream of beautiful young people stroll by, many walking their dogs. What a country!

Arab/Israeli Restaurant: My first landlady in Israel, who is just a gem of a person, took me and an old friend to an Arab/Israeli restaurant sitting on the beach in Jaffa. The Arab/Israelis are an interesting anomaly here and were generally left over from the 1948 wars, when others left, they stayed. Clearly, they are second class citizens, I don’t think they have to go into the military; they speak Arabic, sometimes wear traditional Moslem attire, can vote, have a couple of representatives in the Knesset, and are thought to have dual loyalties to both Israel and Palestinians. There was a poll that asked if given the choice would they want to stay in Israel or go live in a Palestinian State on the West Bank and supposedly they voted 80+% to stay in Israel. Another poll found that a majority of Jewish Israelis think they are stupid and dirty and they are regularly denied jobs and access to bars and restaurants. Alas, one more miserable, unresolvable issue to have to deal with.

In any case, the restaurant was great! Initially the waiter brought out about 20 little bowls of all kinds of appetizers. I don’t remember all the names, but they were colorful, tasty, and filling. Everytime one of the little dishes was emptied, a replacement was immediately provided. There was fresh, hot Arab bread. Then I had about 15 shrimp in garlic sauce. We were too full to even have desert but the table behind us did and it was covered with all kinds of sweets and a big hookah for smoking some kind of mint herbal mixture. Oh, did I mention that the sun was setting over the Mediterranean as we finished eating.

The appetizers to the meal covered the entire table top.

Dizengoff Food Court: Yet another food extravaganza is held every Thursday and Friday on the first floor of the huge Dizengoff Mall in the center of the city. About 30 vendors set up food concessions which attract thousands of shoppers. About half the food is eaten right there and the rest taken home probably for a Shabbos dinner. There are simply “miles” of rice, lamb, baked potato, falafel, pasta, fresh pita bread, chicken, soups, and bean dishes. There is so much food and so many people, even the pictures don’t do justice to the scene. Every week I go and pretty much buy the same thing, sorry, I’m not a food experimenter. I get 3 lamb kabobs, 4 minced chicken balls in a chicken broth, 3 pieces of baklava, a baked potato with cheese and beans, a container of candied cashews and a pint of spiced rice. The cost is about 100 shekels ($30) and lasts me the entire weekend. When I die, I would like some of my ashes to be sprinkled over this food market and the rest over the semi-nude beach next to the Hilton Hotel.

A view from the balcony looking down and a close up of the many different booths and kinds of food.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

I have hesitated to give any commentary, because all the issues are so complex that it is almost impossible to pick a place to start and make an argument in isolation from all the other factors. What complicates this process even more is that one day I read a book or meet a person who convinces me of a position and the next day I read a different book or meet a different person and suddenly I’m on the other side of the argument from the previous day. In any case here are two articles which I found very helpful and for which I think I have a general sympathy. The author, Tony Judt, is Jewish, teaches at NYU, and his field is European History. He has been a critic of Israel and both of these articles, as well as Judt himself, have been viciously attacked by the Israel lobby. The intensity of the attacks on him is to me a good sign that he is getting closer to the truth of the matter at hand.

There are a lot of sculptures of old men thinking deep thoughts, given the complexity of the issues facing Israel that seems like a good metaphor.

1. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16671
This article was written in 2003 and it expresses my feeling that Israel is really a very racist state. Of course it seems like a tolerable kind of racism because its comes from Jews, a race that is usually on the wrong end of the racist sword. Jewish racism in Israel is very complicated, because it is not generally directed against Jews from Africa (Ethiopia) or from Arab countries (Yemen/Morocco/Iraq) or even Afro-American (consider the very popular basketball stars.) It, of course, is virulently anti Moslem.

2. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/711997.html
This article was written in 2007 and traces the change in Israel from a moral and popular David fighting Goliath into the present role as occupier and repressor of the Palestinians. It predicts that with the failure of the Iraq War, the US will eventually reevaluate its role towards Israel and that will have a significant effect on the future of Israel. The outlook is generally bleak as Judt anticipates that Americas love affair with Israel will end just as the Palestinian problem reaches crisis proportions.

Yad Vashem (Holocaust) Memorial

2008-07-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

I spent a day at the Yad Vashem (Holocaust) Memorial in Jerusalem and I wouldn’t ever presume to suggest any insights that are more profound than the thousands, (millions) that have been made by people much more perceptive than I am.

The first thought that came to my mind was if one is going to perpetuate a genocide, it would be wise not to pick one of the most literate groups in Europe. I know all the arguments about the “holocaust industry” and I think it was Spike Lee who once said if you are going to make an Oscar winning movie, don’t release it at the same time as a Holocaust movie. I’m not much of an authority on other genocides, but there can’t be anything as deeply documented as the Holocaust which leads to both its uniqueness as well as criticism from survivors of other genocide. Another thought that came to me was that if you really want to piss off Israel and the Jewish people, just try making a few comments (ala Ahmadinejad) that maybe the Holocaust was overrated. This is automatic grounds for starting WWIII. The furor over the cartoon of Mohammed is nothing compared to this blasphemy. Wasn’t there a US Senator who said that Bush’s reaction to 9/11 should have been to bomb the Ka'bah in Mecca? Finally, it is obvious that this Memorial is not a tourist trap, there are no trinkets as at the Bethlehem manger scene or hawking of wares near the Wailing Wall, this is serious business, with not a piece of litter or a commercial sign anywhere to be seen.

A haunting sculpture called something like "Trail to the Gas Chambers."

The most impressive exhibit for me was the Valley of the Communities. Located on the far end of the Memorial, about a 30 minute walk, was a 2.5 acre expanse of 107 huge bedrock cubes with the names of 5,000 Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. It went on forever and I even gave up about 80% of the way, I was too tired to continue. I was also the only person in the exhibit and felt dwarfed by the stones and frequently got both lost and overwhelmed.

Valley of Communities: Miles of cut rock squares arranges in a maze with the names of lost communities including my grandfather's home of Vilna.

The Cattle Car Memorial was hidden from view and suddenly jumped out at me. It is an authentic car retrieved from Poland and is suspended over a valley on a train track that ends hanging in space. There is a personal inscription on the wall that describes the experience inside the car. The solitary quality of the car combined with its sudden appearance in the forest was overwhelming.

Cattle Car Memorial: a powerful image hanging over a ledge

The Hall of Names contains the archives of the names of every Jew who perished as best as can be determined. The walls are covered from ceiling to floor with thousands of binders containing certified “Pages of Testimony.” A computerized database has been set up to record every single person who is known to have died and one is reminded that millions of names are still missing. What is most breathtaking is just the sheer size of the effort that has been made to keep track.

Even though I visited the Children’s Memorial first, I was really too numb to feel its effect. It is estimated that 1.5 children were killed and their names are continuously being read as one walks through the darkened memorial. The central column has several burning candles which strike many mirrors and then reverberate all around the chamber. It is too heavy to even contemplate.

Children Memorial: This is the view which surrounds one in the darken chamber of the memorial.

The Monument to the Jewish Soldiers and Partisans was very interesting and I didn’t realize it formed a Jewish star until I loaded it on my computer. The claim is that 1.5 million Jews fought the Nazis as Allied soldiers, partisans in the resistant movements and in the ghettos. It is a lesser known story, since the common belief is that the Jewish offered little resistance, so I found this memorial especially interesting.

Monument to Soldiers/Partisans: a very interesting and subtle design

Finally, the Hall of Remembrance is simply overwhelming. It is laid out chronologically and every square inch of it from top to bottom was covered with items of historical and personal importance. At the end of the very long “tunnel” of exhibits is a spectacular view of Jerusalem.

The view of Jerusalem at the end of the tunnel coming out of the Hall of Remembrance.

It’s unnecessary for me to comment more on the importance of the Holocaust to the Israeli psyche, even to my psyche. My first memory of going to Temple in Aurora, Illinois (circa 1948, age 4) was putting a quarter into a blue box and being told that a tree would be planted in my name in Israel, one for each person killed in the Holocaust. I don’t know who came up with that image or mantra, I don’t know what ever happened to my quarter, I would be shocked to learn that no tree was planted; it would probably be more shocking than coming to the conclusion as a teenager that there was no God.

Just to complete the intense images of my visit, afterwards I went with my friend, actually my Aurora West High School debate partner, to the Jerusalem Mall near the train station. This is an ultra-modern, high end Israeli mall that was busy with shoppers. To travel from the depths of the Holocaust Memorial to the heights of the Jerusalem Mall, while I might add passing through the scene of the recent bulldozer attack, was a most bizarre experience to say the least.

Current Events:

Iran v Israel: I was having breakfast with a woman who causally said to me, “Did you hear that Israel bombed Iran?” I said, “Oh, my God, when did that happen?” and she said “Yesterday.” I said, “I’m a news junky and check the internet every 15 minutes, but didn’t see any report.” See say, “I think it was a secret!” As you can imagine the papers are filled with Iran talk 24/7. When I tell people that I have Iranian friends they are absolutely shocked. I have to say, that while all the opinions about Iran are negative, there doesn’t seem to be any one voice speaking. One government minister says, Iran should be bombed, but by the US and not Israel, another says, there is less than a one-month window to bomb, another says the bombing plans have already been written up and practiced to perfection. My Iranian friends, if I still have any, tell me everyone is bluffing and specifically the Iranians do not want any trouble. I, of course, am at the bottom of the information food chain, but it seems to me that the Israelis are really up for this fight. If they are bluffing, they are very good at it and it feels like they would be honored to be chosen by the U.S. to pull the trigger. There was an interesting analysis on the French news channel that said the Israelis are trying to bring the Arabs together in an anti-Persian coalition, based on the belief that Arabs hate Iranians more than they hate Israel. Thus a settlement with Syria, some agreement with Abbas on the West Bank, plus stoking anti-Shite/Persian feelings in Jordan/Egypt/Saudi Arabia would tip the balance against Iran. I thought that was interesting strategy.

Local dispute: One of the prisoner exchanges is for the “remains” of Dalal Mughrabi, a famous Palestinian female martyr who blew up 36 people in 1978. She is a huge heroine to the Palestinians; everyone knows the story and schools are named after her. The Israelis are giving the remains to Hezbollah on the sole condition that she be buried in Lebanon so there cannot be cause for celebration in the West Bank. This has pitted Fatah against Hezbollah. Should this be off great interest to you, I’ll keep you posted on how the conflict is resolved.

There is a new pro-Republican political button in Israel: McKen: LoBama (“ken” means “yes” and “lo” means “no” in Hebrew) I think you have to be here to get the full effect.

The Charm of the Petite Bourgeoisie

2008-07-02T02:10:00.000-07:00

Breaking News: I just saw on TV that a bulldozer driver ran into a bus in Jerusalem. This happened right in front of a store where I bought the best "pigs in a blanket" croissants. I'm not sure it is really "pigs" but they do taste great and now I think I might look for them at another bakery.

Whenever I took walks in a new place with my Dad, he always had one timeless, unanswerable question. “How do these people make money?” While he never left the U.S. as best as I know, we did often go to Chicago when I was little and then later New York. We would walk in the Lower Eastside past miles and miles of little tiny storefronts, poorly lit, with some momma/poppa characters sitting at a counter; shelves of stuff (in Yiddish we call it “hazeri”) and never any customers and if there was a customer, they weren’t buying anything and if they were buying something it was only an insignificant thing. My Dad would stop, look inside and say to me, “How do these people make money.” I assume every dad has some kind of repetitious question they keep asking in front of the kids and when their kids get older that question rattles around in their heads. As my kids can tell you, my less profound question has always been, “Why do women wear those uncomfortable shoes.”

So, while my Dad’s question is not mine, as I’ve traveled around it usually does occur to me that there are lots and lots of little shops and I can’t help wondering how they survive. This phenomena is of course world-wide, Mexico City immediately comes to mind, but there is no place that raises petite bourgeois store ownership to as high a cultural and ethnic level as Tel Aviv and I assume also Jerusalem. The historic Jewish tendency to small-time peddling is expressed in so many ways and has so many levels of quality on the streets here. There is of course schlock (junk), rows and rows of clothing places filled with Chinese garments, but then there are also the specialty stores with just books or spices, and even high level fashion stores with designer clothes. Of course, at the very top of this food chain are the malls, which are just huge and fully equipment as in any modern Western city. For lack of a better expression, the bourgeois materialism is just overwhelming, so much for the Zionist socialist ideal of the early 1900's.

Two different books stores, crammed to the ceiling with used books, there is no obvious organization and only the owners seemed to know where anything was and the prices were negotiated on the spot from scratch.

Still, the question persists. How do you equip these places, big and small with all this expensive inventory and yet I almost never see anyone in these stores and when I do they are just looking and very seldom buying something. I just don’t get it and apparently neither did my Dad. Note: In later years I was told that many of the shops in New York were owned by the mafia and used as a front to launder money, I don't know if that is true, but it does answer my Dad's question nicely.

On the top is an enormous modern mall which was largely empty on the day I was there and on the bottom is the very fashionable Hamedina Square which has about 50 exclusive shops. I saw very few customers but the saleswomen were gorgeous and they were ALWAYS outside on the street smoking their cigarettes and looking incredibly bored in their designer clothes.

In the News

I just read an article in the paper about a small town Kiryat Gat in which the city government has produced a video called, “Sleeping with the Enemy” and a representative of it’s Anti-Assimilation Department goes to the schools and tells girls that they must not date Israeli Bedouin men (who are legally Israeli citizens) because ALL those men want to do is get the girls pregnant and then abandon them. The city representative claims this is a “phenomena that is happening everywhere” and is caused by “exploitative Arab men.” Now you know why the radical Christian right in the U.S. feels so comfortable with the radical Jewish right in Israel. But in defense of moderates in Israel, there were over 147 comments AGAINST the article and only a handful for it. The “against” letters were excellent and expressed shock and outrage, one says, “holy smokes, who are these people” and points out that a program like this directed to teens is so “clueless” it will undoubted increase the dating of Bedouins. Others said this was how the Nazi’s talked. One interesting response pointed out that under Islamic law, if a Moslem man dated/married an Israeli women and converted he could be put to death. The bizarre article and the overwhelming negative response just shows how much polarization there is in this society.

I don't know what this sign means, but it was huge and caught my attention

The Eretz Israel Museum

2008-06-25T01:00:00.001-07:00

Recently I took a tour of the Eretz Israel Museum which has a spectacular location on the hill overlooking Tel Aviv. To start off with, nobody does nation building like the Israelis. You can take the Kurds, the Checians, the Tamalians, the Armenians, whatever nationalistic group you support, but the Israelis really have their shit together on this one. If someone finds a butt hair from King David, the Israelis will first bulldoze all the houses within a 100 yards of the site, then the Biblical legend of the “hair” will be discovered, then a monument with a plaque (donated by an American Jew) will be built, and then a national holiday will be established, celebrated and culminating in a food festival. The Eretz Museum epitomizes this obsession for a national identity.

Generally an anthropology museum of this kind would not be that interesting, but I was mesmerized, the layout was so logical, so easy to follow, I spent 3 hours wandering through that expansive grounds. Here goes:

The Israeli archaeologists are considered some of the best in the world and everytime anything of ancient origin is found it is cataloged, here is a vase that has been painstakingly put together, its part of an exhibit with hundreds of such ceramic pieces, what kind of people spend their whole lives putting together the pieces of vases that were broken 3ooo years ago, jigsaw puzzle enthusiasts, Israel calls you!

First, a really cute café, as always filled with young IDF soldiers who get to do all this museum stuff for free, I had toast, three kinds of cheese, 3 kinds of jelly and a view of the city. Numimatic Pavillion: there was one of every ancient coin ever minted that had been found in Israel, displayed by time period each with a full description of the who/what/why of each stupid coin. There was a whole mini-room just for the coins of the period of Persian King Cyrus who freed the Jews in 500 BCE and about 30 different coins of the period. Man and His Work Center: there was an old reconstructed market setting with a completely equipped scene (circa BCE) of a shop for metal work, weaving, glass blowing, leather work, and about 10 other crafts. Copper Pavillion, fascinating history of the cooper production from Southern Israel, especially the techniques of mining cooper before modern devices. Postal Museum: In May, 1948 the British left Israel and they took with them the postal service; within 2 days, new Israeli stamps were issued and a fully functioning postal system was operational. Rothschild Center: an incredibly detailed history of the Rothschild’s involvement with Israel which started out as a wine growing venture and then just kept going for several generations. It isn’t often that one family, actually one person, can provide the money to fund the creation of an entire country. The genius of this contribution is not that the money was given to develop and then exploit the country as might have been the case with King Leopold in the Congo, this is money given by Baron Rothchild because he believe there should be a Jewish homeland, although it should be said he did not initially believe this and came to the conclusion later in his life.

Here is an example from the Postal Museum of the kinds of letters sent to whomever will read them.

Finally, there was a huge archaeological dig called Tel Qasile which is supposed to be one of the first such projects in Israel and is dated at around 12^th century BCE (in Israel that is known as Before the Common Era, they don’t say Before Christ, dah)

I'm standing of a pile of rubble from 3500 years ago, photographing the Tel Aviv modern landscape, really far out imagery when you think of it.

It’s hard to know what goes on in the mind of an archeologist. To the casual tourist you look down on a pile of rubble which is undistinguished from any other pile of rubble that you would see along the side of the road; then you see a plaque which says “3500 years ago this was a thriving metropolis which had a city square, homes, sophisticated water system, temple and many more things.” Damn, it sure looks like rubble to me. But the point of this analysis is that someone has decided that it is more important to fence off about one square mile of absolutely prime real estate property for a pile of 3500 year old rubble rather than turn it into high income producing property. You have to admire that, it’s an integral part of the Israeli experience.

There are many, many people who honestly give a shit about this stuff. What is so interesting and tragic from a political perspective is that the Israelis would level a Palestinian town in a heartbeat, wiping out any trace of Palestinian presence or history and yet if they found a coin from the Old Temple, they would go nuts and preserve that site forever. It’s a subtle, actually not so subtle form, of racism which goes to the heart of Israeli nation building.

Here is a really cool telecom tower, that top is a metal palm tree branch and from a distance this almost looks like a palm tree.

IN THE NEWS: I’ve started reading the headlines in the English version of the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz and will add a brief commentary in my blog when there is something of interest.

Gilad Shalit is a household name in Israel, he is the IDF soldier who was kidnapped in Gaza and seems to be driving so much of the Gaza policy. (There’s a similar situation on the Lebanese border but in that case the two soldiers, Goldwasser and Regev, are thought to be dead and yet there is intense demand for the return of their bodies.) To me this is more like William 'Old Shoe" Schumann from Wag the Dog. Olmert, the Israeli prime minister met with Mubarak the Egyptian prime minister today in the Sinai and what did they discuss, Egypt’s efforts to get free Shalit. That’s it! The current math is 450 Hamas prisoners for one Israeli soldier, but the talks broke down because 30 of the Hamasians are really heavy duty killers. Generally when I have an argument with an Israeli over policy, it always comes down to, “but you didn’t have someone who died in an Israeli war.” Part of the engine that drives policy here is the fact that in a small country everyone knows someone who has died in a war, unlike in Berkeley, where nobody knows anyone who is even in the Army, let along killed. In some ways this makes a mother like Cindy Sheehan so much more heroic, because she took the experience of the loss and chose to ask for the end of the war. I’m sure there are Sheehan mothers in Israel and if I see such an article I’ll mention it, but until then this image of one soldier justifying so much time and effort in favor of war is disturbing to me.

The Israeli government will give almost $1 million to any Israeli (there are 38) athlete who gets a gold medal at the Olympics. Only one Israeli has ever gotten a gold medal at the Olympics and that was in Sailing in 2004.

Scraps 1

2008-06-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

Beach: The beach in Tel Aviv is of course a big deal; I guess it’s a big deal everywhere except maybe Gaza. Someone joked to me about how much the Israelis could do with Gaza’s beachfront property. There is nothing that bugs real estate people more than underutilized property. It’s amazing how brown all the young people are; half from genetics and have from sunbathing. You would think that was a skin cancer concern, but it doesn’t seem to deter people. The first thing that strikes you is the lack of litter, I’ve seem beaches with tens of thousands of people and almost no litter. Another observation is cigarette smoking sunbathers. A beautiful woman in a skimpy bikini rushes into the ocean, comes out refreshed, sprawls out on her blanket in the blazing sun and lights up a cigarette. Incredible. Still, always lurking in my mind is that these beaches are only for Jews, within miles of the sea are millions of people who can smell the sea (well probably not) and yet swelter without access.

Sunset on the beach, an hour earlier there were thousands of people sunbathing and notice that now the beach is absolutely clean, I think that shows a high level of social responsibility.

Teenagers using showers to wash off the sand, if there are water shortages here (it hasn't rains since I've arrived), these kids didn’t seem to be affected.

Weddings: Here is an area where the religious meets and defeats the secular; it is yet another area that is incomprehensible to me. For reasons which people I’ve talked to don’t know, or if they did know, they no longer remember, Lag Bahomer is a time when there can be no marriages under Jewish biblical law. Recently that waiting period has ended and I see women in wedding dresses everywhere, just walking down the street. Along the Old Port section which at midnight turns into a dance frenzy, there are $40,000 weddings with lavish receptions. The cost of the wedding is supposedly financed by the gifts given by the guests. I was told every guest is expected to give a present equal to or larger than their share of the food/entertainment they received at the reception. This ability to quantify everything, feels Jewish to me. But the really interesting part is that if you don’ want to get married in a Jewish ceremony, ie both parties aren’t Jewish, or aren’t religious, the only alternative is to leave the country! Fortunately, a whole industry has developed on Cyprus to address exactly this problem. Thus, when the Rabbis make unconventional marriage extremely difficult (and don’t even think about same-sex marriage), there are numerous and expensive ways around the prohibition, as long as they don’t happen on Israeli soil.

A bridal party at the Bahia Gardens, I assume these are Bahians and wonder if non-Jews come under Rabbinical Law, this is so complicated I don’t know how people keep up.

Film Festival: I went to what was call the largest international student film festival in the world with 50 countries and over 200 films and thousands of participants. I bought all day tickets and just sat and watch student films from noon to late at night; it was glorious. Conspicuous by their absence were Iranian and Palestinian movies both of which have an excellent reputation; I don’t know if they refused to participate or were barred by the Israeli government. The themes were much less political and much more about human and young people angst and all the screenings ended with lively discussions. These kinds of events raise a really interesting question, can a country which supposedly is on a permanent war footing and pursuing extremely controversial policies against Palestinians still have freedom of expression. You would think the answer is no, and cite to some place like China/Tibet, but Israel seems to feel comfortable with freedom of expression and doing terrible things at the same time. One would have to believe at some point these two activities would clash and only one of them survive.

Tables and tables of current and classic DVD’s with Hebrew packaging and subtitles on sale at the festival. .

Book Faire: I stumbled across the most incredible book faire the other day. Rabin Square which is in the center of town and about a quarter of a mile square was for 10 days turned into a colossal book faire. There must have been at least 100 booths and thousands of people going late into the night. There were no or very few English books, but every imaginable book in Hebrew. Most of the titles I couldn’t recognize, but I certainly saw all the popular sci fi, mystery, non-fiction and best sellers from the United States. Who translates all this stuff? I saw books that had just come out in the states which already had a Hebrew edition. Hebrew might be easy to learn to speak, but it is a bear to read and write, yet there must be rooms full of translators who are cranking out English to Hebrew books by the thousands. Equally impressive was that people were definitely buying books in large quantities, unlike at the Barnes and Nobles where I worked where there are many more lookers than buyers.

A night-time view of the Book Faire packed with lookers and buyers.

Along these lines it is interesting to see that on many public TV broadcasts there is a small box in the corner of the screen where a person is doing sign language for deaf listeners of the program. So what you have is a very boring political speech which people who can hear don’t even listen to and then you have a person who converts Hebrew, a fast-spoken language that relies heavily on intonation and hand gestures, into sign language. Does that mean that every major language in the world has an equivalent sign language for the deaf? Incredible!!

Haifa and Acre (Akko)

2008-06-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

I had heard a lot about the charm of Haifa, its diversity, its beauty and in fact my initial plan was to live there and get myself acclimated to Israel. One day I spontaneously decided to take the train up the coast and check it out. Unfortunately, I have lost my Lonely Planet book and was using the Fodors to guide me. The one hour trip was uneventful and as I had observed previously, there are a lot of open spaces in Israel. This continues to bug me, because I’ve been convinced that Israel is packed tight with people and the only way to expand is into the occupied territories, but honestly I just don’t get that feeling riding through the empty distances between the major towns.

Initially, all my reactions to Haifa were generally negative, I feel badly about that and am determined to do another trip with a more positive result. First of all, if I complained about the lack of signs, maps and English directions in Tel Aviv, the situation is infinitely worse in Haifa. I literally walked back and forth in front of what is called the “only subway in Israel” ten times and finally asked a security officer, “where’s the subway” and he pointed 5 feet in front of me where there was an unadorned door which served as the subway entrance. I took the 5-stop ride to the top of the hill which must have been at a 45 degree angle and when I emerged there was a truly spectacular view of the city. I wandered around desperately looking for the bus to Haifa University and when nothing appears for about a half an hour I jumped on the first bus I saw and it promptly went straight back down the hill and deposited me at exactly the point where I had started.

The Haifa City Hall a huge modern building which dwarfs an old Muslim mosque.

Eventually, I wandered around and stumbled across the Bahia Gardens which dominates the city. As you can see from the pictures, the grounds were beautiful and serene; if one can judge a religion by its gardens, the Bahia’s have done a nice job of depicting their philosophy, as opposed to the craziness that characterizes the Old City in Jerusalem.

A view of the Bahia gardens from below and a couple of Bahians doing garden work.

The gardens appeared to be deserted, but the guard at the gate said, there was a 3 day waiting list to get on a free tour, I felt kind of foolish because the place was really empty and he made it seem like they just couldn’t fit one more person in the place before it would become a mad house. Again I thought of the Wailing Wall and its surrounding chaos, but who am I to pick a fight with a Bahian, I’m not sure they even fight, I think that’s the point of the religion.

A panoramic view of Haifa from the top of Mt. Carmel with the Bahia gardens in the foreground and the harbor and in the distance Acre.

Anyway to make the story of a long trip shorter, I waited and waited for a bus, walked the hills up and down searching for a bathroom which I fortunately found in an expensive hotel where I ate a great American-style hamburger. I eventually returned discouraged to the train station which was packed with IDF soldiers all heading North towards the Lebanese border. That always gives me pause, do these kids know something I don’t know about the start of WWIII? But, not to worry, it was just the normal weekend furlough to home. Instead of returning to Tel Avi, however, I decided to continue going north to Akko which turned out to be a smart decision.

One of the disturbing Israeli characteristics is to take the original name of a place, in this case, the famous city of Acre, and rename it Akko. This is a classic strategy of “invading” peoples designed to wipe out the preceding culture and the hebrewization of names is found everywhere in Israel. For the historian, Acre is a gold mine, Alexander the Great built a mint there, the Roman governor Pontius Pilot got his start in Acre, the Crusaders occupied it as the tour book says, “only temporarily for several centuries” and finally Napoleon suffered a major defeat at its shores. I'M SO EMBARRASSED I JUST LEARNED THAT AKKO WAS THE ORIGINAL NAME AND THE CRUSADERS CHANGED TO ACRE AND THEN IT WAS CHANGED BACK. I still think the Israelis do employ this "classic strategy of invading peoples", but not with Akko.

I think this is the most interesting picture I've taken so far, the walls were built in 1180 by the Crusaders, the basketball courts are Israeli circa 1990's.

Unfortunately, my Fodors didn’t have a map from the train station to the Old City but I decided if I pretended I was an invader attacking from the sea, I could just follow the coast line and run into the fortress. This plan didn’t seem to work very well as I got lost once again in a modern, but small Israeli shopping center. I wandered for about an hour with my MP3 player cranked up listening to the Simon and Garfunkel Central Park album and just as I was about ready to give up and I swear at exactly the moment Simon sang the worlds, “and walked off to look for America…” I turned the corner and ran right into the wall of the Crusaders’ battlements.

The Crusaders' Fortress occupied by both Saladin and King Richard the Lion Heart.

From then on the trip was a breathtaking journey through a truly historical site. I don’t say this often, but the place was dripping with history. I took a wrong turn and found myself hopelessly lost in the warrens of clearly an all Arab (Israeli) neighborhood. The alleys were about 4 feet wide and I kept trying to go left/left/left/left which should have exactly retraced me steps back to my starting place, but of course it only got me deeper into the tenements. The signs, the smells, the music all become Arab, it was getting dark, I was getting very hungry and even though I wasn’t scared I was apprehensive. All along the way signs identified the names of a British officer killed fighting the French in 1820, or a Church that some Crusader Commander had slept at in 1200. Suddenly an Arab boy appeared, gave me a cold look and started walking away. On the back of his jersey was the name “Ronaldo” (the star soccer player for Manchester United), I was so relieved. I thought of the book “How Soccer Unites the World” and tried to search my mind for every bit of Ronaldo trivia I could think of in case I was challenged.

Roman-styled arena located in the middle of an Arab-Israeli neighborhood.

Shortly I emerged into a huge Roman styled arena and on the other side was a wonderful Arab market where I found a sweets shop, ate a dinner made up exclusively of different kinds of baklava. I felt so sick, but every time I said I was full the owner gave me another piece of baklava to try, it would have been impolite to refuse. I finally got away, found the train station and headed by to Tel Aviv, totally exhausted.

I saw this photographer and his model wandering farther and farther out to sea to capture the wind in her face and the surf on her gown, it was a weird image.

One Month Anniversary

2008-06-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

It’s been exactly one month since I came to Israel and I need to shift gears from tourist to resident. I think that means it’s a good time to put my blog on something other than a daily basis and as you probably have noticed my insights, if any, have started to wind down. The following are a couple of thoughts I need to think about and develop more fully over time.

All Jews…All the Time: I asked a person who had been in Israel for many years if he had any non-Jewish friends and he was actually bewildered by the question. Not only is the answer “no”, but he acted like it was a non-issue. His response, if he had had one, might have been something like this: there are Asian Jews, Spanish Jews, Persian Jews, even African-American Jews, since Jews come in all nationalities why would one ever have to go outside of the Jewish race to meet different peoples. That's a fairly harsh response to accept for a Californian like myself who has many diverse friends.

Tel Avivians vs Zealots: I like Tel Aviv and the people who live here, I’m not sure I feel that comfortable with the beliefs of the Ultra-Religious groups. But in Israel it doesn’t seem like you get to pick and chose who you defend, because an attack on any one group is perceived as an attack on the right of Israel to exist. So the Tel Avivians have kind of hooked their wagon to the fate of the Settlers' star. Put another way, I think a Tel Avivian might have more in common with an educated, upper-middle class Palestinian than they have with a religious, ultra-conservative fanatic, but, of course, it's not possible for moderate Jews and Palestinians to hang out together in Tel Aviv.

A False Premise Results in a Comfortable Society: I am inclined to believe that the underlying premise of Israel generally and Zionism specifically may be false. I don’t believe Jews are the Chosen People, I certainly don’t believe they are better than other peoples, and I’m not even sure there is such a thing as a “Jew.” I mean, how can a small town Midwestern boy like me be more Jewish than my Puerto Rican ex-wife who grew up in the Bronx, went to a Jewish-styled high school and looks more Israeli than I ever will. Despite this underlying false premise however, I feel really comfortable in Tel Aviv. I like the Jewish way people look, the Jewish way people think and the Jewish way people live here. But I also liked the way people looked, thought and lived in Berkeley and that was not an especially Jewish town.

Missing My Dad: Finally, I realized for one of the first times in many years that I missed my Dad who died in 1971 and would have had an absolute ball in Israel. When you've done fathering as I have for 35+ years, there isn't much need or time to reflect on one's own father. But as I walk around the streets of Tel Aviv, I often fiind myself engaged in a mental dialog with my Dad about so many things that he would have enjoyed seeing and talking about. I suppose that is one of the special qualities of this place that it spans generations and taps historical connections that Americans, especially those like me who have moved around a lot don't really get to develop and despite what I've said above, that's a good thing.

Ok, enough amateur sociology and psychology for now. Below are a few pictures I couldn’t fit into the previous blogs, but I thought were pretty interesting.

This toilet has two buttons on the top, a little one for flushing a little and a big one for flushing a lot, you can draw your own conclusions as to its purpose.

This peddler drives by my window every couple of days and picks up old junk from people. He yells out something in Hebrew, I think its "Junk Man."

Neat cafe with hundreds of old hard cover books from ceiling to floor on all the walls.

Anti-war poster on a wall

24 Hours in the Tel Aviv Bubble

2008-06-05T01:04:00.000-07:00

I had a busy 24 hours in what I now like to call Tel Aviv: The Disneyland for Jews. Thought you might like to go through a day with me.

8:00 pm: Turned on the TV and they were playing The Al Jolson Story. For those who don’t know him, Jolson was an incredibly popular Jewish singer of the 20’s and 30’s, (He made the first taking movie The Jazz Singer.) I’m sure my mother listened to him while I was in utero, it was probably the first 78 record I ever had and I have all his songs on my MP3 player. I haven’t seen this movie in years and it brought tears to my eyes.

9:00 pm: Got a call from my NBF (new best friend) that she was having friends over for coffee and invited me. I put on my headphones, cranked up my Al Jolson songs and ran out the door singing and whistling all my favorites. When I got to the apartment I eagerly tell my experience of the movie and of course everyone had heard of Jolson and we all shared our memories. I’m sure that wouldn’t have happened in Aurora, Illinois or even Berkeley, CA, so that was a nice Israel experience, an instantly shared memory.

10:00 pm: Got into my first real Israeli/Palestinian discussion which then turned into an argument with an American born, now Israeli attorney. He was from Morton Grove, IL and kept saying, “in YOUR America.” He didn’t want to make a defense of settlers and my sense is that the Tel Avivians and the settlers live in different world. But the symbolism of a Tel Aviv café/bus being blown up by a suicide bomber was a recurring theme. The real argument centered on the fate of Jerusalem and even though he said, “Jerusalem was a nice city to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” it was the kind of place/symbol whose control by the Israelis was not negotiable.

12:00 am: Returned home, just in time to watch Blood Diamonds on TV, movies on Israeli cable are wall to wall American Blockbusters and Classics.

8:00 am: I spend my first hours in the morning checking email (while I’m sleeping, America is emailing) as well as getting up to speed on the campaign news, South Dakota was still counting votes. Thank god for the BBC and Sky News otherwise I would have to listen to Fox all day.

9:00 am: Write my blog, plan my day, and think thoughts great and small, mostly small.

10:00 am: Take a nap, planning one’s day is hard work.

11:00 am: I am awaken by the sounds of the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack. I think I’m dreaming, but go to the window and sure enough someone in my building is playing the music full blast. Cool! I go up the stairs and put my ear to each door until I find the source. A woman answers my knock and I compliment her on her good taste. She admits she has never seen Rocky Horror at a movie theater. That makes me feel old. Then I tell her stories about dressing up in black lipstick and taking my kids to RH at the Berkeley UC Theater when they were 5 years old, lighting candles, throwing toilet paper rolls and yelling out the lines. She admits that would have been fun to do.

12:00 pm: Go to the bank to change some money. Have insight that “banks suck”, but realize that I didn’t have to come all the way to Israel to discover that. Although it must be said that my customer service person is really, really nice. Here is the secret, when they ask how you like Israel, say you are thinking about moving here. That drives people wild; doing “Aliya”, or moving permanently to Israel is considered the greatest “mitzvah” of all time. Israeli’s consider it a validation of their vision. This contrasts to how Americans think of Guatemalans who walk a thousand miles to sneak into America so their kids can have a better life.

1:00 pm: Hop on the bus to find a Jewish restaurant that serves matzo ball soup. I just bought my first monthly bus pass, unlimited travel for 200 shekels, or $60, it was a big step from touristing to residencing. When I get to the address listed in the Fodor’s Travel Guide, I find the restaurant which is identified as a Tel Aviv landmark has become a Thai Restaurant, so much for tradition.

2:00 pm: Jump on another bus (I love this unlimited ticket) and end up at Tal Bagels where I order a huge egg salad sandwich on a fresh onion bagel. I set up at an outside table, reading my Portnoy’s Complaint (the greatest novel ever written about a dysfunctional Jewish boy), people [girl]-watching and generally chilling. Across the street is the huge Cinematique and it is filling up with young people for what I discover is the International Student Film Festival, the largest in the world.

At the film festival there were many tables of film books in Hebrew/English and lots of classic film DVDs converted for the Hebrew market. A film lovers dream.

3:00 pm: Buy a ticket for a series of student films and watch for several hours. They were really great! A selection from China/Cuba/Germany/Peru/Spain. I decide to get an all-day ticket tomorrow and just spend the entire day watching student movies. Lots of really interesting kids hanging out talking about their crafts.

I can not tell you how cool these buildings are. There is a circle/triangle/rectangle, they are packed with workers/shoppers and lit up at night.

5:00 pm: Walked over to the Azrieli Center which are those interesting buildings I have previously photograph. On the first floor is the largest Mall I have ever seen except of course The Great Mall of America in Minneapolis. I’ll spare you yet another Mall photo, but this one was 3 levels, lots of food courts and it was absolutely packed with what else, YOUNG PEOPLE. So much shopping so little time.

Right in the middle of the roof is a kids amusement park with spiderman (very appropriate image for the tall buildings and dinosaurs (?)

6:00 pm: Went up to a roof top plateau, but not to the top of the buildings (that’s 40 stories and 30 shekels). On this level which was about 2 city blocks square there were lots of sculptures.

The ubiquitous old Jew guy hanging out as a bronze statute.

Not many people and of course breath-taking views of Tel Aviv PLUS a great sunset. I’ll let my photos do the talking.

I know this is hard to see, but this is the first time I saw two soldiers (boy/girl) necking and I couldn't resist, I'd love to read an article on how the Army controls the interaction of the sexes.

7:00 pm: Finally a security guard comes up to me (Ethiopian) and asks me what I am doing, (jump or bombing??) I give him the dumb, old American Jew who’s come to Israel to die look and as always that melts his heart. By this time the sun has almost gone done and there isn’t much reason to stay, so the guard and I share a moment, I look at the setting sun, tap my heart like Sammy Sosa does when he hits a homerun and we smile at each other.

Here's a 360 degree look at Tel Aviv from the roof top with another great sunset.

8:00 pm: Stop at the grocery store, get one apple, one peach, one can of pineapples, one banana, bunch of grapes, a bag of raisins and almond, container of yogurt and go home.

9:00 pm: Turn on TV and there is Lawrence of Arabia, so sit back with my home-made fruit salad and enjoy the movie. All and all a good day’s work!

As I write this an ice cream truck playing Hatikva drives buy, go figure.

DAY TRIPPING

2008-06-03T01:06:00.000-07:00

This morning I decided to venture outside the Tel Aviv “bubble” and explore some other venues. I hopped on a train to Askelon which is about an hour directly south and the scene of a recent rocket attack from Gaza. (Interesting, the rocket firing was identified as an “attack” and the IDF action is called a “response.”) The train is great, it seems to always be on time, clean and unlike the bus there is leg room. The seating on the bus is set up for people 5’9” and under, if you are taller, it is very uncomfortable; I think that is called heightism.

The first really significant insight of the trip which confirms a feeling I had when I went to Jerusalem is that there is a lot of empty space in Israel, miles and miles of it. Why is that important, because as I understand the argument for settlements in the West Bank, there wasn’t enough room in Israel for the new immigrants. But I feel I just spent a day riding through so much empty space and I’m not talking desolate Montana or mountainous Sierras space, I mean large, flat, buildable space.

Arrived in Askelon and immediately was hit by my second major insight: the Israelis have figured out a formula for creating cities out of almost nothing. As mentioned earlier it seems like the person when invented Sim City was an adviser to the Israeli government. Here’s how I see it working. Start by finding a generally suitable place, probably some town that is 5,000 years old and probably inhabited by Palestinians. Then move about 100 yards to the side of that “Old Town” and start building your “Sim City.” There is always a major, paved highway in and out which then connects to the national highway grid, add excellent bus coverage, if possible a train stop is a nice touch and of course complete internet, cell phone and TV cable coverage. Then lots of standardized housing and most important of all a couple of really nice hotels for the tourists. As I walk the streets of these towns I find myself clicking on a mouse going, “hotel over there” click, “one bank, one gas station, one post office, one school” click, and them “houses, houses, houses” click, click, click. The hub of the city becomes a very modern, fully furnished shopping mall, surrounded by hundreds of little hanger-on shops for the residual Jewish petite bourgeois store owners, lots of bakeries, cheap clothing outlets and peddler stores. The final piece of the puzzle is hordes of Jewish immigrants “urning to be free” of which there seems to be no shortage. My sense is that some of this has a nice socialist component, ie lots of hospitals, schools, old people services, immigrant services and some kind of safety net while at the same time there is a solid capitalist component, ie banks, tourism, technology sector. It feels like the Israelis can knock this “insta-city” thing out almost anywhere and anytime they want (even if someone else already lives there.) Everywhere one goes there is the feeling that things are either about 20 years old OR 5,000 years old depending on what side of the road you are looking at.

One of many, many building/housing projects which you see everywhere, I have yet to be in a city that does not have major construction going on.

I think I found the targeted shopping mall, but if so the debris was cleaned up pretty quickly and the shoppers didn’t appear to be looking over their shoulders in worry, or at least not more than usual, timeless Jewish worry about the Cossacks coming. I can tell you that the thought of a random rocket hitting a shopping center is a really efficient use of limited military resources, it is the maximum “bang for the buck.” One last point about the coastal towns, it’s really nice having a beach! I saw a movie once that had a bus load of Muslim women covered from head to foot drive up to an Israel beach, walk to the sea, slosh around with their feet in the surf, go back to the bus and drive away, much to the shock of the hundreds of semi-naked Israeli sunbathers. The commentary said this was the first time that the Palestinians had seen the ocean/beach in person. It was a very powerful and sad comment/image.

But, moving on, I jumped on a bus to Sederot, about 5 miles from Gaza, which is more regularly shelled and I could have written the exact same commentary as above, except no beach. Then on to another bus to Be’er Sheva. To give you an idea of time/distance, I left Tel Aviv exactly at 10a.m. and arrived in Be’er Sheva at 2p.m. despite having walked around the towns along the way. Be’er Sheva is a really fascinating study. To get there you drive through miles of solid agricultural land, I felt like I was on I-5 going to Fresno. Miles and miles of sunflowers, fruit and nut trees (nuts grow on trees, right?), corn, wheat and lots of weird experimental thingies with nets, tents and such.

This video from the bus window seems boring, but it is miles of wheat and fruit trees, it made me realize that Israeli's roots are agricultural.

What was missing and very conspicuous by its absence was WATER. Unlike the Central Valley, I didn’t see any aqueducts, irrigation canals, sprinklers, absolutely nothing, not even clouds in the sky. I simply couldn’t figure out how they water this place.

The bus station is run down as usually seems to be the case and as you come out your are hit by the dichotomy of a modern, thriving city to the left and a teeming, vibrant “Old City” to the right. Initially I went left and walked into one of the largest, most modern Malls I’ve seen in Israel. I’ll spare you another Mall photo, but we are talking hundreds of high end stores, lots and lots of food courts, air conditioning, of course and lots of people shopping and hanging out. For the first time I saw a large number of Moslem women in full garb, covered from head to foot mixed in with the Israelis.

Moslem women getting ready to take money out of the ATM about 10% of the University seem Moslem.

Having gotten my fill of yet another modern Israeli city (did I mention unlimited food concessions) I walk across the street to the “Bedouin Market” and will once again spare you another photo of rows and rows of an old time Middle Eastern market. I think I was the only tourist, or at least I was the only person with an REI fanny pack and clicking pictures with my cell phone. (I can run, but I can’t hide) And once again, I sound like a broken record, there was fruit, vegetables, meat and clothing stalls for as far as the eye could see. Question: What happens to all that produce that doesn’t get sold? There is no way that these vendors could ever sell all the fruits/vegetables on display and in the heat of the day, there must be incredible spoilage. Here also were lots of Moslem dressed women. I don’t really know what/who they were. The guide book said they were Bedouin, whatever that is in 2008, I think they are all Israeli citizens, because we were too far away from a Palestinian town.

So, here is the topic for the day: Whatever “message” the young Israel girls in the modern mall were trying to send with their skimpy outfits, long curly hair and naked legs, the young Arab girls in the bazaar with their covered outfits and deeply penetrating, heavily made-up eyes were more than capable of sending that exact same “message” with equal effectiveness. Sorry, about that being a complicated question, but you get my drift. I got a brief (and I mean brief) look from one of the Arab girls that was like a hot metal spear into the cold butter of my soul. (ok, I’m a lawyer, not an English major) Anyway, discuss this topic among yourselves, while I move on to other matters.

Main building of BGN seen upon entering the campus.

Finally, I hiked up to the Ben Gurion University of the Negev which was really awesome. I am convinced that every person in this country between the ages of 18 and 25 is either in the army or the university. As usual, the campus was awash in kids hanging out, talking the talk, and so many food courts and areas to just lie around and be a student.

Yet another view of students hanging out and thinking deep thoughts, kind of.

I’ll let my pictures describe the place, but this is the heart of how Israel intends to tame the Negev Desert, it kind of reminded me of UC Davis with its orientation towards agriculture and husbandry.

This was such a very cool sculpture it is a tiny ribbon of water that flows through the entire BG campus, it is only about 2 feet wide, but I think it is a metaphor for making the desert bloom or some such thing, you can walk along it for a very long distance.

I think I have one more University to visit in Haifa and then I’m done, but each one of these visits has been very emotional and inspiring.

Every square inch of every wall at the University was covered with donors names. As I have mentioned before, I'm conflicted on how I feel about this, but it is really incredible how many people from all over the world have given money to build these schools and hospitals.

By this time it was almost 5 p.m. and I found a train station and bought a ticket to of all places Dimona, which is the town with the Israeli atomic bombs and about a half an hour into the dessert, I was so excited to make the trip. Unfortunately, as I waited on the platform a guy told me that there was some kind of union strike and that Dimona was closed. I asked three people for an explanation and each said that it was too complicated to explain to me in English, curious! Suddenly, a train to Tel Aviv appeared and I jumped on board and was home by 5:30. Bottom line, I did get out of Tel Aviv, the bad news is that I still have not “seen” a Palestinian, but the good news is that somewhere in the middle of the Negev Desert there is a Bedouin woman who is my life-long soul mate and wants to have my child (I didn’t have time to tell her about my vasectomy, but I’m sure she will understand, we have that kind of non-verbal relationship.)

SOCCER FEVER, UGH!

2008-06-01T03:53:00.000-07:00

Every Saturday there are two opposing forces at work in Tel Aviv. On the one hand there are major soccer events attracting tens of thousands of fans in outlying stadiums and at the same time there is no public bus service because of the Sabbath. Israelis don’t seem to think this is a contradiction or even an absurdity, which of course I do. Anyway, I bought a ticket to a big match at the Bloomfield Stadium on the south edge of the city where the game will start at 7:00p.m. (before sunset) but will end at 10p.m. (after sunset) I figured if I got an early start I could walk the 5 miles and take the bus home.

It does not take a great Marxian theoretician to figure out that if one area of the City has lots of great sidewalk cafes filled with beautiful people eating their hearts out all day, there is probably a section of the City which is piss poor. The best way to test this analysis is to take the proposed walk from my apartment to the soccer field. After about an hour walking through the cutesy sections of town, I suddenly found myself in a drab tenement section with mostly Asian looking women and African men on the streets. I would have to honestly say, it didn’t feel like a slum, it was definitely run down, but not dirty and the buildings looked in disrepair, but were clearly habitable. I stood out as different, but felt safe.

A weird store in the run-down neighborhood, I think it sold manikins.

This section of town seemed to extend endlessly and the treeless streets magnified the hot summer sun. I don’t understand why it doesn’t rain here, one can see the ocean in the distance and you would think with the heat the water evaporation would be significant, so where does that water get dumped? Anyway, I was told there probably wouldn’t be any rain until the fall, which gives the City a permanent dusty quality.

One of many drab tenement buildings, this was better than most, but there were rows and rows of them.

When I arrived at Bloomfield I was disappointed. It holds only about 15,000 fans and hardly compares to the 100K soccer stadiums in other major international cities. But no matter, it was the roar of the crowd and the excitement of the game which held my attention. Today was Youth Soccer Appreciation Day and I sat in a section with about 2,500 boys between the ages of about 8-14, a group I generally feel comfortable around. Unfortunately, I had two grown male idiots on either side of me who worst of all smoked cigarettes. I should note at this point, that my clothes are starting to smell like smoke which is the first time in about 20 years that I have had to think about that problem. I feel like I am in a scene from Back to the Future, because I know what is going to happen to this arrogant group of cigarette smokers, at some point they will be turned on by the non-smokers and stoned to death. I’m not exactly sure when that will happen, but I am absolutely convinced it will happen. I want to tell the smokers that “the times they are a changing and the first ones now will later be last” but they are so self-assured that I’m sure they wouldn’t hear a word I have to say or if they heard me, they wouldn’t care and certainly wouldn’t quit. So I just need to be patient and let the historical forces claim their victims.

The game was exactly as I expected and this is after I have worked really, really hard to understand what it is that makes this sport so appealing. Let me jump right to the heart of the matter, in the 83 minute, out of the middle of nowhere, the underdog team scored a goal on a header and as they say, “the crowd went wild.” So to make a very long story short, that was 1 goal in a total of about 93 minutes. I will spare you the endless runnings up and back, the dirty tackles and arguments with the refs, and the repetitious singing of the teams’ fight songs accompanied by non-stop drumming. Every time a shot was attempted and missed, which even as a non-math person you can figure out happened all the time, EXCEPT ONCE, the two guys next to me lit up a cigarette. (But they didn’t light up after the goal, interesting!) This was followed by a heated sports analysis in Hebrew. I simply couldn't understand how there could be so much analysis to a stupid missed shot, but these two guys could go at it for hours if they hadn't been interrupted by another missed shot.

What was most telling to me was how quickly the kids got bored with the game and started horsing around. Here was a group of boys who definitely loved soccer because they were all picked from teams that had won championships, but they were bored watching the game. They didn’t show any great appreciation for all the special nuances that I have been told make the sport so interesting to watch. But in all fairness, I have to admit that everyone (except me) had a great old time. A missed shot was just as exciting as a goal and even when a shot went astray, if the play leading up to the miss was good, the crowd showed their appreciation by cheering (and of course lighting up a cigarette)

My one Bend it Like Beckham moment on a penalty kick.

Here are my few suggestions for making soccer more interesting: The obvious thing is to make the goal higher and wider, I could even deal with a goal the whole length of the field even if it means scores similar to the ones in basketball. On a more serious note, get rid of the off-side rule, (it’s too hard to explain to my non-soccer readers, but my sport friends know what I am talking about.) There are a lot of players (I was one of them) who don’t like to run up and down the field, so they should be allowed to just hang around the goal for the whole game and wait for what we call in basketball “garbage shots.” The opposite of this rule is that the goalie should be required to run around like an idiot like all the other players and maybe not be allowed to use his hands, then we will see what Mr. Stand in One Place all Game is really made of. As a finally observation which kind of captures my whole feeling about the sport, why would you encourage a player to use his head to hit a ball but penalize him for using his hands? That makes no sense! You would think that after about a million generations of soccer players they would evolve into a species with huge neck muscles, enormous thighs and calves and little tiny arms that were only good for scratching their crotches. Who wants athletes who look and act like that?

SPIRITUAL JOURNEY TAKES A DETOUR

2008-05-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

I need to write this paragraph now while it is fresh in my mind. Initially when I decided to come to Israel I was told by a friend, unless you want to see just another European city avoid Tel Aviv. Which made sense and so my goal was to live in Jerusalem. But finding housing there was a bit more complicated, especially considering that there are many distinctive neighborhoods from very religious to very dangerous and I became confused. That’s when I turned to the Yiddish word, “Beshert” which kind of is a combination of “destiny” and “good luck”; it might even be a variation of the Arabic word “enshalla.” I decided to let God decide where I should live or in this case his/her agent Craig’s List where upon I found an apartment listing in Tel Aviv for May 6^th the exact day I was to arrive. Last week I found a listing in Tel Aviv beginning on June 10^th, the exact day the first apartment expires. So I took it. For those of you following my blog, Tel Aviv is a spiritual place more in the model of Sodom and Gomorrah than Mt. Sinai.

There is an interesting Hebrew expression for people who are traveling to Jerusalem, they are said to be “going to the ANSWER” and for those who are leaving Jerusalem they are said to be “going to the QUESTION.” I’m not sure I know where that leaves me except I find myself constantly having to “go to the BATHROOM” an issue that I wrestle with a lot here in Israel. I mean, how can you have a fresh juice bar every twenty feet on the street and yet no visible signs of a public bathroom. If this is the question God has posed for me then it seems to me that I can search for an answer here in Tel Aviv just as easily as anywhere else. I am reminded of a sermon I once heard at the First Presbyterian church in Berkeley. There was a Pastor who said he was laboring away on his ministry in Calcutta and not feeling like he was “making a difference” so he asked God to show him the place where he could better use his talents and you know what God said in his/her infinite wisdom, “Go to Berkeley.” Cool advice, don’t you think? Makes you pity the poor schmuck who asks God the same question and unfortunately gets the cyclone ravaged area in Burma as the answer. Anyway, so I am here for awhile in Tel Aviv and as the saying goes, when you are given Jaffa Oranges, make smoothies.

Today was a slow “shopping day.” Because tomorrow is the Sabbath, everyone around noon must do last minute shopping because the stores close at about 3:30. Even though technically one is only shopping for one storeless day, people act like Hurricane Katrina (or when in Israel we prefer to say “Armageddon”) is coming at sundown. There is the most incredible shopping frenzy at the markets. I found myself buying a packet of new sox, a new shirt sleeve shirt, a book and a bunch of pastries eaten on the spot, all because the stores were closed tomorrow, but none of which I had any urgent need for (except the pastries). Curious!

I’ll let some of my pictures and their captions tell my story today, but I want to describe an image I saw while waiting for the bus, I couldn’t get my cell phone out fast enough to take the picture. There were a lot of cars on the street and a cute young woman was riding her bicycle in and out of traffic. One hand was on the handle bars steering, one hand was trying (unsuccessfully) to keep her dress from blowing up over her face, wedged in her neck between her head and her shoulder was a cell phone on which she was talking furiously and as she passed me all I heard her say was, “but I think he really likes me” (what's not to like, I thought) and then she was gone weaving deftly in and out of traffic. She should have been in a Sprint commercial.

Real Jews teaching less real Jews how to put on traditional garb and pray, these guys are everywhere. Generally speaking Jews are not evangelical and in fact Rabbis are supposed to try and talk potential converts out of being Jewish, but I think it’s OK for a Jew who believes a lot to teach a Jew who believes a little, thankless of a job in Tel Aviv as that might be.

A bronze statue on the street of a guy hanging out with (live) old man sitting beside him also hanging out.

Table filled with old tools at the antique market, there were rows and rows of these tables.

This woman suddenly appeared out of a fashionable store in her formal gown and then spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how she was going to get all of that puffy stuff inside the tiny little car her date had driven up in. It was funny to watch and about 10 people immediately started taking cellphone pictures of her; she was really embarrassed.

A scene from in front of the huge, packed Carmel Market filled with musicians and thousands of Birthright travelers who are pouring into the City for their 10 day free tour of Israel. The guitar player on the right looks like an Israeli with his hair in dreadlocks, then there is a young girl who was zoned out, then an American hippie on drums and finally an African man doing some kind of percussion with his mouth.

Basketball Fever - Catch It!

2008-05-29T23:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry about another basketball review, but this was the championship game and I had a ticket as part of the package I bought yesterday. This was too huge an event to miss. Except for an upset in 1993, Maccabbi T.A. had won every tournament in the last 14 years, Holon was set to dethrone them. I called ahead and was told the game started at 6 p.m., but when I arrived at the Arena, nobody was there.

World's best job, there are these guys who just walk their bomb sniffing dogs around and around smelling all the parked motorcycles, some even get pee'd on, but I wasn't fast enough to take that picture.

Really, nobody. (except the cops/army). I entered at game time and I swear there were no more than 200 people in a stadium that holds 12,000. I couldn’t believe I had screwed up the timing. Then it hit me, this was the consolation game for third place. Now I’m really at a loss to explain this; admittedly the two teams were from out of town (about an hour away), but were the fans so disappoint at not being in the finals that they didn’t even show up. Perhaps this is what happens when you don’t have an underlying college base. It was very curious, even die hard basketball fans interested in the championship game didn't attend.

Only a handful of die hard fans clumped together showed up for the consolation game, their cheers echoed around the empty area.

By 8:00, however, the stands were packed for the final game. Whatever women were there for the semis, they decided to stay home, because honestly I did not see more than 100 women in the entire stands. This was the most intensely male event I’ve ever been to except maybe the huge communal urinal at the Oakland Coliseum. The game began with the singing of Hatikva, the national anthem. I’ve included the complete video and hope that you can down load it. If not, it was incredibly emotional; I’m sure I’m romanticizing the experience and to the average Israeli this is nothing more than a perfunctory pre-game irritant, but to me it was simply overwhelming. By the end of the song, tears were running down my cheeks and I was shaking. I don’t know how to explain it, it felt like for a brief moment everyone put the basketball game on a back burner and focused all their attention on the importance of the survival of the country. It was such an intense, collective experience and then suddenly it was over and the game was on.

Here is the Hatkiva video, I hope you can download it; I wonder if there are Americans (other than ex-POWs) who get emotional at hearing the Star Spangled Banner.

The game did not disappoint. Cheering started about a half hour in advance and continued until a half hour afterwards. I have never been in a stadium as loud as this, it was like Sears Point during an car race. The video doesn’t even do justice to the noise level and enthusiasm. The teams were never more than 4 points apart and with 2 seconds to go Malik (not his slave name) Dixon an American from Arkansas State made an incredible layout to win. And as they say, “the crowd went wild.” I made a couple of instant friends who explained to me that there is a “2 Jew” rule, namely there must be 2 Israelis per team on the floor at all times. I observed that one of the teams was all black and was told that many American players come over, get married have kids and become Israeli citizens and then they are counted as Israeli for the rule. At half-time Rick Barry and Dr. J (Erving) were introduced for some charity they have that teaches basketball to Israelis and Palestinians and the crowd really ate that up.

I took this video just as the final buzzer sounded, but honestly the noise level didn't really increase, it was out of control for almost 3 hours.

Special Note: It's really refreshing to see that none of the athletes thank Jesus for their win, although some of the managers do wear yarmulkes. Also, there was a sprinkling of LA Laker jerseys, but nobody else.

After the game I walked home through kind of a shanty town around midnight. More on this later, but I felt safe and I kept thinking that most, actually all of the people here have for different reasons actively chosen to be here. Either they were running away (Russians), were thrown out (Ethiopians) or were hired to work (Pilipinos). As has been often observed that’s kind of the American model, except for African-Americans who did not choose to come voluntarily. I really don’t know how big a difference it makes, but if you make a conscious decision to come to Israel, I think you tend to have a vested interest in fitting into the society as opposed to being anti-social, all other things being equal. Anyway, I know I’m probably being naïve, but (getting back to the Hatikva observation) there is clearly a social fabric here and if you are Jewish (I know that’s a big IF) then you are automatically part of it, which translates for me into feeling safe. Ok, no more basketball (except I’m going down to Holon tomorrow (Friday) and see if I can catch the parade, since there can be no parades on the Sabbath, but you already knew that, right?!

And don't forget, there's no 'HAM" in "HABURGER"

Basketball Jones

2008-05-28T04:13:00.000-07:00

Finally I found a sporting event I could enjoy without sitting for 90 or 120 minutes waiting for one stupid goal. If you read my blogs for their deep penetrating political and social analysis, you might want to skip today’s entry, because I just came back from a basketball game extravaganza. Once again my journey was the result of a mistake in translation. I went to the local ticket agency to buy a ticket to the big soccer championship game on Saturday and the agent kept thinking I was asking for basketball tickets. I guess she couldn't understand my English because the louder I shouted SOCCER, the more persistently she answered BASKETBALL. So finally I gave up and said, “Yes, I want a basketball ticket.” And she said, “We are all sold out!” But she had the good sense to advise me to go to the Arena directly and try and get a ticket at the box office. So I immediate jumped on a bus and headed to Noika Arena.

Once again I bonded with the bus driver, who was a huge basketball fan. He filled me in as follows: Israel has just gone over to a Final 4 championship format to end their basketball season. They used to have a tournament like the NBA where you play 3 out of 5 games, but this is the first time they have gone to a one game and out format. Fans are a little freaked by this. The home team Macabbi T.A. has enjoyed some international success and at times Israel is thought of as a basketball powerhouse, but not often. I asked if the players were professionals and he said they were and that one American was being paid $2M. I asked if they have college basketball and he said they didn't, certainly not like in the U.S. This, of course, is a HUGE, issue. In general, I think the US is the only place in the world where colleges are responsible for producing the professional athletes, but that might be changing. Finally, I asked the driver if he had heard of Amit Tamir who was the Israeli center for the Cal Bears basketball team in Berkeley and he smiled in acknowledgment. The claim is that Amit was the only Israeli to ever play in the NBA, but then I looked it up and he never really played, just worked out with the Miami Heat.

Here is the best money scam ever. In front of the stadium two "Rabbi's" show up with a Torah looking thing and a cup. If you put money in the cup, you can kiss the Torah and presumably pray for your team to win. I assume for an extra shekel you can also pray for peace. In the background is Zebra a fancy women's clothing store located just under the Area, you can even enter the Area from the store. Just before I took this picture I saw 2 women go in and I swear they kissed the Mezzusa (a little prayer thingy on the doors of Jewish homes) So bizzarre.

When I got to the stadium I was told the tickets were sold out and I would have to buy one on the black market; nobody understood the word “scalper.” I said to a guy, “In the US, black guys sell those tickets” and he said in Israel everyone does it. I said, “Jews selling tickets to Jews, cool. Is that better or worse than black guys?” He laughed and said “Worse, blacks are at least honest!” I thought that was a pretty cute reversal of stereotypes. So I spent about an hour walking around with my one finger in the air looking like a Grateful Dead fan trying to score a miracle ticket, but couldn’t find anyone until I saw the ticket booth open, and just like that I bought a real ticket.

I was in the absolute top row, far away, but the view was great.

The inside of the area was everything I thought it would be. Really noisy, lots of intensity. It was kind of a combination of the excitement of a college crowd, but with the organization of a pro-event. Here are some things I noticed, they aren’t especially profound, but they really jumped out at me. The most jarring image was whenever there was a stoppage of play and the ball was laid down on the floor or rolled to a ref or (non-US) player, the person did not pick up the ball with their hands, but did a soccer-thing with their feet to make the ball bounce up to their hands. I know for you non-sports readers that doesn’t seem to be a big deal, but to an American like me that is inconceivable. I was speechless when I saw it happen. There are lots of black players, at one point there were 8 out of 10 on the floor. This is another huge issue, there just aren’t that many 7 foot Israeli Jewish boys; but that said there were two great white point guards who stereotypically could hit a 3-point shot. Neither team had cheerleaders, but there was a fantastic dance group that I think worked for the Arena and they were so good it made me think that they might even have been paid a living wage. Oh, one more thing similar to the “picking up the ball with your feet” observation, occasionally when a player got decked, an opposing player, usually the “decker” would reach down and help pull up the “deckee.” I don’t see that much in the NBA.

This is the loudest area I have ever been in, although I'm told the Warriors in Oakland can compete with anyone. The noise goes on for the entire game even when its a blow-out, especially when its a blow-out.

Best of all, the fans were really knowledgeable, they booed unfair calls, mercilessly jeered missed free throws, and rewarded brilliant plays. At some point it hit me that I was sitting in the middle of about 12,000 Jewish male basketball fans, how cool is that. Of course at the exact same time there were 12,000 beautiful Jewish women attending the Food Faire on the other side of town. As I previously observed at the Food Faire about a third of the fans were always on their cell phone, presumably talking to their women at the Faire, (not!) I did notice that there seemed to be about 5% women, unlike a game in the States, which I think could have as many as 30% women. I don’t fully understand the implications of not having a college sports program, but for most of these fans, their pro-team is the only team they will ever know and cheer for. That’s kind of weird. Maybe that’s why the University’s don’t have sweatshirts with their names on it or a dedicated following of die-hard alumni. I really can’t imagine a world in which there are no college teams with which to associate; it would feel like something important was missing on a Saturday afternoon, oh, right that’s the Sabbath and things are supposed to be missing. In conclusion Maccabi’s won by 2 points, the crowd went wild and even though I didn’t have a “dog in that fight” I had a great time.

The cheerleaders performed about 20 separate very professional routines at each intermission, the music for this one was the Village People singing. YMCA. (enjoy)