back over the atlantic they go.

i am sad that my mom and pops are now heading to the airport for home, but I am excited to get back to my friends and my studies. i went to a nice party this evening and celebrated 2007 with some of my closest friends here in J-town.

The adventures on our trip were many, and i think my parents had a great time gettin down in the holy land. more to come of our mischief in a few days. here are a few pictures to start.

happy new year to all...this time of year for me, for many years, has represented a reminder of how precious the ones we love are and how serendipitous and beautiful it is that we are lucky enough to find them in our lives at all. may this be a year full of blessings...i hope life blows your hair back...or at least messes it around a bit. but as an Israeli friend wished me this year (if you feel it is more of what you need), may your year be very VERY boring.

hugs, kisses, etc.

my parents are flying.

thats right. my mom and pops are in the air right now heading to Israel. I can't wait...haven't been able to stop smiling all day. I have been playing travel agent for months now and I can't wait until they are finally here! i won't be posting much over the next few weeks because they will be keeping me busy. I did go away for shabbat last week to a town called Hoshaya where I was hosted by a family. It was a very interesting and enjoyable experience and I will try to post on it during that time, but if not I will for sure do it after they leave. I hope that all is well with those of you on the other side of the Atlantic. i hug you all. big.

a state of harmony and discord.

I have made some major changes to my schedule after realizing that I didn’t want to go to several of my classes most of the time and that I didn’t have time to devote enough of myself to where I felt I needed to. I went from the third level to the second – I like the teaching methods of the teachers better and I can actually take time to chew on the bigger questions they pose rather than spending the whole time translating. One of my previous teachers wasn’t willing to try to bring the class to a common ground – to meet in the middle so to speak – so I decided to take my own steps to get it into a middle ground – I took myself out of it. I was for sure on the lower end of the spectrum of experience with text. I am happy for it. I was passed out in bed yesterday at about 7:45 and was fully set on staying in bed and getting to school late…I am getting more and more exhausted as the year progresses….but then I remembered what we had talked about last class and I knew we were continuing. I felt like I was left sitting on the edge of my chair last time and the thought of missing Torah roused me quickly and energetically out of bed! My days here are long, as I might have said, but they are getting better by the day. I also stopped taking one of my one-hour pre-lunch classes so I can work on my Hebrew ulpan homework. I read a passage by Amos Oz in Hebrew this week…he is a very famous Israeli author who has many books, and many (all?) translated into English. I could hardly believe that I could do it…

So, things have gotten a lot better in my spirit and my classes these days….here are some things I learned recently that you might find interesting…just to give you a taste of the breadth of my lessons during the day…

A chasidic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasidic_Judaism) niggun traditionally has three parts.

Most sources in Jewish law (a rich literature, called halacha, in and of its own right that includes sources that have responded to the needs of the Jewish people and its questions about any issue that you can imagine…it includes everything from the Bible, Oral Torah, and on down through history) conclude that women are obligated in prayer. The significance of that discussion is that if they are of equal obligation to men (which many, if not most, sources of traditional Jewish law hold they are) then they can lead prayer. The question is then why traditional forms of Judaism don’t have this as their normative practice.

In Torah there is a strong connection/parallel between the garden of eden and the Mishkan/Tabernacle where the priests made sacrifices to God. In Genesis 3 the first man and women are kicked out of the garden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Angels/cherubim are placed on the outside of the garden (east of eden…sound familiar to anyone?:) to guard it because humans can no longer be trusted and they are no longer allowed to eat of the tree of life. Radak (one of the commentators that I often am assigned to read) says that they are placed there to bring the humans to do teshuva (repentance). He says it works…and that they are then sometimes allowed back in the garden and sometimes they are not. I was not so convinced or happy with this idea. I think of teshuva as something which brings you to a new place…not something which brings you back to who you were. The process of erring and then doing teshuva, literally “returning” to a good way, does not mean you go back to being the same person…but someone who has changed for the better…is made improved through this difficult process. But another idea that was brought by my teacher made it a much more feasible explanation: in a later book, Ezekiel, there is imagery that compares the tabernacle to the garden of eden. I won’t get into all the details now, but just one example: in the center of the garden is the tree of life…there is increasing holiness: the earth, the garden, the tree of life. And so it is in the tabernacle – in the center of the mishkan is the holy of holys which houses the ark in which sits the ten commandments and the earthly heaven of God….big ideas yes…but the main point I want to show is that the temple, and the mishkan before it and I would say even by extension modern shuls today, are human ways of recreating the ideal which was lost…by creating these spaces we try to get back to the ideal, back to eden. It is the idea of human ability to create holiness, to find holiness, to dwell in holiness – by our own actions and intent – that I find moving. I haven’t thought about it very very deeply yet, but it seems like another motif, another theme that runs the course of Jewish experience; I think it as strong a motif as redemption, freedom, struggle, wandering, justice, mercy, returning…the list could extend on I know.

Just a few thoughts from one of my days. I have found it hard to write because so much happens every day…and I don’t mean I am running from place to place, but that my mind is. A friend of mine this week gave a 5 minute speech about his Jewish hero and one thing he said I also feel very strongly…that while he can’t say he has one in particular…there are Jewish heroes made in front of my eyes every day when I study…a day doesn’t pass when I am not amazed at the insights of my peers, when my teachers don’t weave a lesson that leaves my mind humming until the next chord is struck…all humming along in beautiful unison and harmony and sometimes even discord...until they fades with my consciousness as I fall of to sleep. And to sleep, dear beloved ones, is where I head now. The talmud says that sleep is 1/60 of death...funny, eh?

WARNING: I AM TOO TIRED TO EDIT, SO I HOPE THIS WAS NOT TO RANDOM:)!

Gettin around down south...

I don’t know how to begin, partly because I feel badly that I haven’t been diligent about writing, but mostly because I have so much to say because I haven’t been writing!

I will post a few times over the next day – it is my number one priority until I catch you all up. I will start with a tiyul I went on a few weeks ago with Pardes.

First of all, I need to explain something about life here, for me at least, in the Holy Land. It is so important to get out of Jerusalem with regularity. It is believed by many to be the key to maintaining your sanity. Maybe it is because the country in general is so small or maybe it is that pardes is a small anglo community within a small anglo community in Jerusalem – and it is hard to break out of it. I mean, Israelis don’t want their friends leaving every few years or so…but as my Hebrew gets better I am enjoying more and more opening up to other communities. I must stress though, just so that there are no illusions, that I do not live an Israeli life. I am not a citizen, I do not work, I do not belong to the national labor union, I do not receive national health care, I did not serve in the army, I have not made aliyah, I do not serve in miluim (army reserve – although I don’t know if I would cause I am a women…hmmm…more proof that I am living as an American in Canada). I don’t feel like I am at home. I feel like I could if I wanted to. If I chose to make aliyah, I think I would be able to become part of Israeli society. But as I am now, there is no way. I bring this up because people all the time ask if you have and if you will make aliyah. I say with (strong but not complete) certainty that no, I will not. I don’t need to get into details, but for now all I will say is that I never felt like as much of a foreigner in Canada even though I lived in a place where I spoke the language infinitely less than I speak the language here. This is another world. This world is at once shocking, beautiful and shameful. I love it, but it is not home. For why I tell you all this, see what I say later…


We left at 5 in the morning and headed right out to the south of Israel – desert! There are three deserts in the south of Israel – the Aravah, the Judean Desert and the Negev. Often the entire region is referred to as the Negev. I was there for three days and two nights. About 75 people went on the tiyul. We took three major hikes ranging from 3-8 hours. It was a lot of fun jumping from here to there on boulders the size of houses, through wadis (dry river-beds), through what was left of the latest rain storm that had seeped down from Jerusalem and the Judean hills, up mountains, singing songs, learning about Israel’s geography, more, more, more.

On the first day I chose to do the more strenuous hike, but it was totally pleasant because it was a hazy, cool day – I remember it being a lot more intense when I was there last and when I hiked there as a teenager. Of course, I was there in July. Two of the three days were cool and chill weather. The third day was a different story – and that was the eight hour hike. So on that first day we hiked an area called the machtesh hagadol – the big crater. It was formed by mountains slowly pulling away from each other and collapsing to form a giant crater in the middle of the desert. What is funny is that it isn’t actually the biggest crater – it is the second biggest… We hiked up a part called the snapir – the fin – it is a thin shelf that resembles…a fin:). There are amazing views on both sides and the air is easy to breath because you are so low in altitude. As I said, it was cool and there was a dry desert breeze all day. When we reached the top we looked out over the Aravah and the Negev. Then we got a lesson as to how the the machtesh was formed…the picture of me and three other cute ladies sprawled out on the desert floor was us being human props (in this case, sandstone that played a part in the eventual collapse of the mountains to form the crater, like I described above). To one side the sand was colored yellow, red and other colors…it was really beautiful. Apparently there are Bedouins who come and bottle the sand and sell it to tourists who make “Negev sand” bottles as a keep-sake…there is also extensive mining in the area…the sands are signs of minerals below the surface. It is one of many environmental battles being fought in Israel. See:

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Communiques/1997/ERETZ+HAMAKHTESHIM-+NATURE+CONSERVATION+AND+DESERT.htm?DisplayMode=print

It was a very nice hike and I have always enjoyed learning about geology, in a light way at least and that is just what it was. I was happy as a little Jewish nature lover in Israel could be!

That night we toured the first desert outpost in the Negev and learned about Ben Gurion and his dream for the desert. We went to Sde Boker, where David Ben Gurion (the first prime minister of Israel) is buried…the view is breathtaking and what is amazing is that from that area you can see Jordan (not the amazing part) and you can see that Israel has shared its technology with Jordan to “make the desert bloom”. That is a key piece of Zionist propaganda…so learn it well, folks. It is true, the desert is blooming. And I am not sure how I feel about it. I have friends who are against it – what right does a country in one of the most water thirsty places on earth have to make a desert bloom? But I did learn some interesting things: the water they use is saline water and they have discovered that certain things like this seemingly inhospitable water-supply such as olive trees. I also learned (propaganda? I am not sure…) that when the delegation came from the UN to see what should happen to British Mandate Palestine, they decided to give the Negev over to the Jews because their minds were completely blown away by what in just a few years the Jews had done (under the auspices of being “research outposts” – which they were but in large part because they wanted to settle the area and get a foothold there for what they imagined were coming hostilities from increasingly hostile neighbors) in what seemed a desert wasteland. This is no simple story I am thinking. And yet there is truth to environmental criticisms of Israel’s development of the area and its use of the resources found there. Another example is the Dead Sea Works. It apparently used to be a state owned industry, but is now owned by a single Israeli family. Its actions are causing increasing environmental damage to the area…of course this ensuing damage isn’t helped by large scale diversion and damning of water sources further upstream on the Jordan River. For the time being, until convinced otherwise at least, I won’t be bringing all of you home presents from the Dead Sea Works (they sell lots of lotions and other beauty/cosmetic products. For information about the ecological damage being caused, here is something to read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/18/AR2005051802400_pf.html

So…we finished our hike and our tour of a museum of early settlements in the area and the history lesson that accompanied them. Right or wrong, the early settlers were entirely courageous and devoted to their cause. Deep passion is always an amazing thing to see. I feel empowered to follow a path equally as impassioning to me.

We stayed at a kibbutz with Bedouin-like accommodations. We slept outside under the tents. It was quite and cold. You could see more stars than you ever thought you could. There was also a jacuzzi…jeez….a jacuzzi in a Bedouin tent…funny world.

The next day we started with a Bedouin tracker (Bedouins are Arab tribes that live nomadic lives and travel between many countries of the Middle East) out in the middle of the desert. He taught us how to read some basic tracks and how to see the age of tracks left behind. I learned that many Bedouins who serve in the Israeli military do so as trackers – they are experts at it because they have grown up in pastoral communities and are used to tracking their animals all over the deserts from Egypt, Jordan, Israel, etc. We spoke to him for a few minutes and learned his story and then we sent some of our classmates out into the desert to be tracked! It was really cool to see where they had intentionally walked on the river bed to avoid being seen, when they had had an accidental footprint in the sand and ground that let us stay on their trail. (Side note, we also learned that these people, who are an immense asset to Israel as it monitors its borders from its enemies, were also used by the US military to train its own forces to detect such things in its war here in the Middle East…not something I am proud of really to begin with, but it is an interesting fact…) We did find everyone and the one picture of me down below with the desert spreading out to either side of me was taken there.

We then had a hike on an area called Maale Perez – a hike through the Negev desert, which ended up leading to a place where the three deserts meet…the Negev, the Judean and the Aravah. It was a beautiful crisp cool day and I had fun on this hike, which was way up high, looking down into a wadi that has been formed over thousands of years by flash floods through the area. I learned that the markers in Israel, in the south at least as I have figured out so far, make it easy to see if you are in a flash flood pathway or not. Very important not to be, cause it is immensely dangerous…these areas are off limits for a few days after it rains in Jerusalem or in the desert (which, obviously, it being a desert and all, happens only a few times a year). The photo that looks like a picture of the gravel at my feet is actually our shadows on the distant wall on the other side of the deep crevice formed by the flash floods – about a football field away or so…and when the sun was in just the right place we could make waving shadows on the other side. I also am putting a picture where you can see the three deserts meeting. I think it is so so beautiful and interesting – you can actually see how the deserts look different. Wow…

The second day we took a short night walk/drive to a lookout point in the Aravah. There were no cars around. There were no lights. The ridges of the small hills that dot the area peaked up at us and I walked through it…easily seeing the way as we were drenched in blue moonlight and being dazzled by the stars as they came out to play with the moon. Our host told us that this is why he lives in the desert. There is no one around – a car every now and then at night…it is absolutely still and quiet and utterly peaceful. I have told you all before, it is also my favorite part of Israel.

The third, and last :(, day we hiked our longest and hardest hike yet and it was MUCH hotter that last day. We hiked along another wadi, and were supposed to do a u-turn and go back through a deep crevice with a combination of treading through murky, muddy water and repelling down a ways down into the depths of the formation caused by the flash floods before coming back out and walking eastward towards the Jordanian border and the Dead Sea…but due to technical difficulties we had to back-track through waist-high (on me:) water to get back out of the deep formation and hike back through the wadi (we had looked at the water from above on a mountain on our way in…so it was still a u-turn kind of thing, but not the repelling business). There were boulders that were the size of houses…pieces of the walls that had been broken off, and some that had been brought by the powerful waters from far away. I really enjoyed our hike back to the start of the hike as we hopped from rock to rock making lemming noises. I was entirely goofy and silly and happy…and I just LOVE when I get to be that way! As the hike was ending I was having a conversation with my friend Shayna. She was telling me that last year she felt such a strong urge to make aliyah, to move to Israel, but that over the summer she had so many problems being here (from the political to the fact that for her and most Jews from North America their family lives there and not in Israel, and more I am sure). She no longer wanted to make aliyah after how she was feeling this past summer. But now, she said, as she was walking through the majestic beauty of Israel and connecting to the land in a real and physical way, she felt a stronger connection than she had for many months. I told her something then that I have painfully come to realize and struggled to accept over the years since I first came in 1999. Israel is not hikes in the Negev – that is not the life she or most people will lead. Even for those who do we have to also be a part of an imperfect polity that suffers from all of the pitfalls of all the modern nation-states in the world. Israel can commit crimes, its leaders can sexual predators, it can leave its poor and needy begging for help, it can mistreat its foreign workers, it can invent technology to improve the world, it can be an example for co-existence, it can set a good example in any way it chooses to….and the people living here must deal with the consequences when Israel lives up to its potential and it also must deal with the consequences when it does not. Israel is not a hike in the Negev, no matter how much we would like it to be as ideal as that.

It was hard for me to accept that Israel is not ONLY, although it absolutely is in part, the place that I fell in love with when I was a teenager beginning to explore the world and explore my passions. I still love Israel; it is just more complicated now. Here are some pictures of thee days that for myself actually were just a hike in the desert – and were entirely welcomed and enjoyed.

We got back to Jerusalem that evening. I was exhausted but happy to have spent the previous three days almost entirely outside, walking this beautiful country, thinking about showing it my parents. I know they will think it is beautiful too.