Last week was my cousin Ben's wedding to his new wife, Dana. It was a huge wedding--over 450 people!--in a gorgeous wedding garden on a kibbutz. I love Israeli weddings. They're much more informal than American weddings, and people show up dressed in all kinds of things: jeans, sandals, outfits of pure white. Ben wore all white, and Dana had on a beautiful white dress. It was really special to be there, because five years ago, the last time I was in Israel, my mom and I went to his brother Shai's wedding. Shai now has two kids, and the oldest brother, Nir, also has two kids. The ceremony was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the dancing was awesome (even though I mostly danced with my dad...)
From Even Yehuda where my cousins live, my dad and I traveled to Jerusalem on an EXTREMELY slow bus that took almost three hours. We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel, a haven for black-hat religious Jews. The place was teeming with men with long, curly payis (sidecurls), women pushing strollers and dragging along six or seven (or more!) kids besides. My aunt Harriet was there as well, and my cousin Barry (who is VERY religious) and his family joined us for shabbat.
My dad and I walked around Ben Yehuda Street, a popular and trendy street in Jerusalem, and also made our way to the German Colony, which is where my friend Scott from the Ulpan is now living. He has a tiny studio apartment that's in a great location.
On shabbat, my dad and I walked from our hotel to the Kotel, and around the old city a bit. It was really far--we probably walked about 8 miles!
He flew home Saturday night, and now I'm back at the University preparing for my Hebrew midterm and spending lots of hours at the Battered Women's Shelter where I'm doing my internship. It's lonely now that he's gone, but I'm looking forward to my whole family coming for Passover, and I'm slowly getting adjusted to being on my own again.
Pictures to come...
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Abba Ba!
My dad is here!!!
He got in on Tuesday, so I've been spending time with him in Haifa, Hadera, and this past weekend we went to Tiberias. I've been eating out with him, passing out in his bed at the guesthouse, walking back to the University from Horev (a far and uphill walk!) after dinner, etc.
We attempted to go to a concert (Ha Yehudim--The Jews) but it didn't work out so well because I forgot my ID at home and they didn't believe I was over 18! Even though my dad vouched for me (which was a little embarrassing). The venue was at Yagur though, so I got to show him around the kibbutz.
Tiberias was really interesting. It's one of the four holy cities in Israel (along with Hebron, Tzfat, and of course Jerusalem) and so there are LOTS of SUPER religious people all around, and synagogues on every corner! The city is on the banks of the Yam HaKineret, or Sea of Galilee. On Shabbat we wanted to go to synagogue, but everybody around us was so frum with their black hats and sidecurls, and we wanted something a bit less intense. Finally, we saw a man walking toward us dressed in white pants and a white shirt, with a simple white yarmulke on his head and no sidecurls. My dad asked him where HE went to synagogue, and he told us how to get to the Kabbalah Center.
So we went to services at the Kabbalah Center. It was, if nothing else, a really interesting experience. There was a lot of loud singing, banging on the tables, clapping, noise, and joy! That was the good part. There was also lots of hugging, which I enjoyed but made my dad uncomfortable. And there was a lot of mysticism, and people telling you about kabbalah and trying to reel you in. A lot of people are really into this, and it's done great things for them. There were families there, and young children (there were childrens books there on kabbalah, written by Madonna and translated from English into Hebrew and Russian).
Anyway, it was a fascinating experience, and I'm glad I went and tried it out. And also, the synagogue had a GORGEOUS view of the Kineret and the mountains on the other side!
He got in on Tuesday, so I've been spending time with him in Haifa, Hadera, and this past weekend we went to Tiberias. I've been eating out with him, passing out in his bed at the guesthouse, walking back to the University from Horev (a far and uphill walk!) after dinner, etc.
We attempted to go to a concert (Ha Yehudim--The Jews) but it didn't work out so well because I forgot my ID at home and they didn't believe I was over 18! Even though my dad vouched for me (which was a little embarrassing). The venue was at Yagur though, so I got to show him around the kibbutz.
Tiberias was really interesting. It's one of the four holy cities in Israel (along with Hebron, Tzfat, and of course Jerusalem) and so there are LOTS of SUPER religious people all around, and synagogues on every corner! The city is on the banks of the Yam HaKineret, or Sea of Galilee. On Shabbat we wanted to go to synagogue, but everybody around us was so frum with their black hats and sidecurls, and we wanted something a bit less intense. Finally, we saw a man walking toward us dressed in white pants and a white shirt, with a simple white yarmulke on his head and no sidecurls. My dad asked him where HE went to synagogue, and he told us how to get to the Kabbalah Center.
So we went to services at the Kabbalah Center. It was, if nothing else, a really interesting experience. There was a lot of loud singing, banging on the tables, clapping, noise, and joy! That was the good part. There was also lots of hugging, which I enjoyed but made my dad uncomfortable. And there was a lot of mysticism, and people telling you about kabbalah and trying to reel you in. A lot of people are really into this, and it's done great things for them. There were families there, and young children (there were childrens books there on kabbalah, written by Madonna and translated from English into Hebrew and Russian).
Anyway, it was a fascinating experience, and I'm glad I went and tried it out. And also, the synagogue had a GORGEOUS view of the Kineret and the mountains on the other side!
Monday, November 5, 2007
Israeli Hospitality, or: Why Israel is the Best Country Ever
We do Shabbat dinner at home, and it's nice. We'll have my grandparents over, and maybe some family friends, and all of us sit down to a big, relaxing meal and enjoy being with one another. I did Shabbat dinner at Vassar, and it was also nice. Golan and I would cook all day and listen to obnoxious pop music, we'd have a wonderful service, and treat ourselves to my challah and Golan's pad thai. Something like that.
But let me tell you something. Every shabbat dinner I've ever been to has paled in comparison to the one I had last shabbat. There's a program here that one of our madrichim ("social activities coordinator"), Levi, runs. If you let him know by Tuesday of the same week that you'd like to be put with a family for shabbat, he arranges it. That's how it happened that Levi, Jim, Dave, Caroline, Mike and I all hopped on the last bus out of the university before shabbat (at 3:50 PM) and rode down to the Gurshone home.
So not only is this family willing to have six guests from the university over their house (with very little notice--Jim and I both signed up completely last minute), but they also have five children (four older boys and an adorable 8-year-old girl named Adi), three guests who have made aliyah after graduating from MIT, one set of said students' parents, and several other guests. We arrived at their home, talked for a bit, and walked to beit kinesset, which was about three minutes away. It was an Orthodox service where the women sat way up in the balcony, but Caroline and I managed to enjoy the beautiful kabbalat shabbat service anyway.
But let me tell you something. Every shabbat dinner I've ever been to has paled in comparison to the one I had last shabbat. There's a program here that one of our madrichim ("social activities coordinator"), Levi, runs. If you let him know by Tuesday of the same week that you'd like to be put with a family for shabbat, he arranges it. That's how it happened that Levi, Jim, Dave, Caroline, Mike and I all hopped on the last bus out of the university before shabbat (at 3:50 PM) and rode down to the Gurshone home.
So not only is this family willing to have six guests from the university over their house (with very little notice--Jim and I both signed up completely last minute), but they also have five children (four older boys and an adorable 8-year-old girl named Adi), three guests who have made aliyah after graduating from MIT, one set of said students' parents, and several other guests. We arrived at their home, talked for a bit, and walked to beit kinesset, which was about three minutes away. It was an Orthodox service where the women sat way up in the balcony, but Caroline and I managed to enjoy the beautiful kabbalat shabbat service anyway.
When we got back, all 20 of us were seated in their dining room and served:
- two types of soup
- cooked vegetables
- cous cous
- rice
- two types of challah
- wine
- beer
- scotch
- chicken
- turkey
- beef
- pad thai (sorry Golan...it's true!)
- meatballs
- a delicious pepper dish
- personal apple pies
- sherbert
- cake
- two kinds of brownies
Aside from all the delicious food at this humongous feast, the other major reason I so thoroughly enjoyed myself was because Adi, the 8-year-old daughter, sat on my lap or Michael's lap the entire time and quizzed us on Hebrew. If we got a word right, we not only got "nekudot" (points), but kisses on the cheek, too. How's that for motivation to learn a new language?!
The Gurshons were one of the nicest, most hospitable family I've ever met. Every other shabbat they open their home like this to complete strangers, and serve them enough food and love to last way beyond the next shabbat. None of us could stop grinning on the 45-minute walk home (no buses run that route on shabbat). We were all tugging at our suddenly-too-tight pants, too.
*
Today I started my volunteer position at the community center. Although most of us are tutoring Ethiopian children in English, my student isn't Ethiopian, because I believe the center and its services are open to anyone in the area. She's 13, very sweet, but very insecure about her English. We spent an hour just talking--about what she likes to do, her favorite foods, her classes at school (which don't exist so much right now, because the high school teachers are still on strike). It was difficult, because a lot of the time she got frustrated when she didn't have the exact words in English for the answer she wanted to give, and she'd just give up and answer "Nothing" or "Everything" to my questions; and a lot of my questions turned out to be yes-or-no questions in the end, even if I didn't intend them to be. It's also difficult because she didn't have a book, or homework, or any assignments, since the high schools have been on strike for so long. Next week I'll have to bring her a book, or some kind of game. Mom, the ESL teacher, do you have any ideas?
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