Tel Aviv and the Beginnings of Jerusalem

Tel Aviv

Em and I have been traveling alone in Israel for the last week and it's been great. We said good byes to our friends from the Brithright trip and left them at the airport in order to continue on our adventures.

After deciding that saving a few shekels at the price of waiting two hours at the airport for a train only to get to into Tel Aviv at midnight and then have to pay for a taxi anyways to get from the train station to the place we were staying at, we decided to take the taxi from the start and get to our destination 2 hours earlier. It was worth it I think. Our home for the next five days was the Amy and Tzafi flat, which boast very nice accommodations consisting of a blow up mattress on the floor and a 6 month old puppy with the bladder to fit that loved to tear apart his doggy bone by my head at 3 in the morning and then look at me with the eyes that said, "Aren't I a good puppy?" (Courtney...if you're reading this you know exactly what I'm talking about and are probably agreeing with the puppy, who is named PoPo by the way). Actually, it was not a bad deal. Amy and Tzafi were extremely nice to let us stay for the price of walking the puppy, which turned out to be the laziest puppy we'd ever met...he wouldn't walk unless there was another dog or interesting person that he wanted to chase. Other than that he had a fascination with cars and would stop and stare forever. The longer we were there, the more active he got, which in some ways was nice and in other ways reminds me why I don't have a dog.

So other than the puppy, Em and I explored the entire city. The first day that in Tel Aviv we decided to met up with some of the other Birthrighters that had stayed behind and were also in Tel Aviv. We left the house with the intention of walking to met them, but bad instructions from a denizen and heat induced lethargy lead us a mile in the wrong direction from the get go and we hailed a cap that took us to our destination. We ended up hailing a cap home in the evening too cause we wandered everywhere through the market area that we'd visited with Birthright and past there to the point where we were lost and therefore it was easier to just shell out the shekels and get back to the air-conditioned flat.

Day two was better cause Amy didn't have to work till three pm so she was nice enough to escort us to Yafo (Jaffa, if you use the American pronunciation) and taught us a bus line that pretty much got us everywhere that we needed to go for the rest of the time that we spent in Tel Aviv.

Yafo is a very interesting city in that it was conquered by so many different groups of people, all of whom pretty much destroyed it in their urge to claim it as their own. The Jews, the Romans, the Christians, the Muslims, and the Greeks all claimed the town at only point and it was always considered to be a Holy Place. The outlying parts of the city were in many ways dirty and decrepit and I felt bad for the people that lived there. But Amy told me that even though the outside looks as if it's going to cave in at any moment, the inside could be magnificent. I still wonder why the citizens (not just there, but in all of Israel, don't care enough to clean up the streets, even just a little bit).

The city center has been renovated and looks entirely different than the outlying portions. In order to increase tourism, the city and a contract company got together and gave the city center a make-over. Now it's a mini-metropolis of artist studios, history, religious centers, restaurants, and galleries. Em and I visited the Visitors' Center that was built around an archaeological site that encompassed three different occupation periods. It was pretty neat to see.

Day three was random wandering and window shopping and I don't remember much else about it. Basically a lot of walking and drinking of the Israeli version of a Frappaccino (called an Ice Coffee).

Day four was the Tel Aviv art museum which had some amazing work and some more of that Modern/Contemporary stuff that I looked at and question the sanity of the curators in including it in the exhibition. There was one exhibit that I really enjoyed that actually turned out to be a modern work of art. It involved taking video of people walking or moving in normal fashions and then having the feed shrunk and then played in a continuous loop across a variety of mediums so that they appeared from far away to be lines of text on a page or stationary lines on a rock. But when you looked closer you could see that they were moving and they were silhouettes of people. It was really fascinating.

Day five and the last real day that we spent in Tel Aviv, started out with what should have been a nice 2 mile walk to the Eratz Israel Museum, but turned into a 3 1/2 mile walk and a lot of confusion. Heat delirium and our mother's bad sense of direction making a rare appearance, led us to miss the street that we wanted and then walk the wrong direction and subsequently miss the next few streets as well and the go the wrong direction on the streets that we actually did in counter. It was like that movie (I can't remember the name of it) where the guy wants to make it too his home, but there's a hex on him and he can't find it even though he knows exactly where it is. So exhausted and annoyed at ourselves, we finally made it to our original destination. This museum is a combination inside-outside museum that contains ten distinct sections from Archaeology (the first archaeological dig in Israel that started in 1949 and took about 15 or 20 years to complete) to the History of the Postal Service to Coinage to Wine Making and so forth.

Jerusalem

Day six, we said goodbye to Amy and Tzafi and hitched a bus to Jerusalem to visit with Cousins that we have never met before. We had lunch, did the whole get to know you game and said ov-vous for the time being (it was Shabbot and they had to prepare for dinner and we needed to find our Hostel). We're going to meet up with them again later in the week.

We are currently staying at the Heritage House, which is a free Hostel run by the Aish ah Torah which is a group that believes in teaching Jewish youth about the religion, but without pressure. It's nice because you can take what you want and ignore everything else and they don't care. The people here though are amazing for the most part. They are all supper nice and full of stories and helpful hints and arguments on Torah if you're so inclined.

We arrived on Friday night at the Heritage House, which was the beginning of Shabbot, which is the day of rest in the Jewish religion. For the more orthodox, this is a time when no work is done and the family spends the next 24 hours praying, eating, spending quality time together. To introduce boarders to this experience, the Heritage House places those that want to in different families for both the Friday evening and Saturday morning meals. The ironic thing was that we ended up running into one of the Rabbis that we'd met that first week on Birthright during the "Shabbot Experience" and through a series of wired conquences we ended up at his home on Friday night. They are a great family and they had amazing food.

Saturday we ended up at an Israeli home and it was a different experience, but also a nice one.

Its unbelievable to think that random citizens are willing to take complete strangers into their homes, feed them, answer asinine questions, and all around be good sports. On Friday after the meal it was about 12:45 in the morning and we were walking back to the hostel (with two Yeshiva students that were at dinner and were kind enough to escort us back seeing as we were a mile or so from the hostel and had no idea where to go) through this really Hassidic area. And everywhere there are families with kids of all ages walking around silently or talking in lowered voices or playing. There were also little kids walking around unaccompanied everywhere. Five years olds caring for three years olds. Apparently this is normal, especially considering that most families have children in the double digits. This was so at odds with American life, at least the American life that I'm used too, but endearing in a way. These people feel completely content to let their children roam free and Shabbot is a day to spend with the family and form close bonds, so it's normal to be out all night.

Sunday, we and two other people took a trip to Neve, which is a school for Jewish women that wish to explore more about the Religion. We attended three different classes and talked to the Head Rabbi. I was attending because Rabbi K that I met two weeks ago set me up there for the month of September and I wanted to check it out to see if it's really a place that I want to spend three or four weeks. I think that it's a great experience for those that are open to learning and wish to know more about their Heritage. They don't pressure anyone and they are open to arguments, which I gave throughout the weekend. I just don't know whether that's really what I want to do. I don't know if I'm quite at the point in my life where I want to contemplate on God and religion, I don't know whether I'll ever be there, but I have a few weeks to think about it and a few other options that I'm going to check out.

So I think that this edition of the apparent book that I'm writing is at an end. Em is kicking me oh the computer and I'm sure I lost half of my readers two pages ago. I hope all is well and till the next addition...