It's been a long time since I've written (sorry) and the reason for this is that despite everything that you're watching on TV and reading in the newspapers, things in Jerusalem have actually been very quiet and normal. Students still gather in a throng to push each other impatiently as they climb onto the buses, nonplussed about the violence nearby and the implications that this kind of violence has had on the past for the safety of bus-riders. Still there are people on the streets, going about their business, honking their car horns, eating outside next to these strange outdoor-heater contraptions on the chilly Jerusalem nights, joking, laughing, and many of them wearing funny hats. (My friend Anka just purchased a VERY funny hat - it looks like an old fashioned sleeping cap, only it is made out of fleece and she wears it outside and not to bed. Terrific.)
Today at the preschool a student had just come back from being sick for a few days, and the teachers asked the rest of the children to thank G-d together for their friend's recovery. I thought this was sweet and sort of exciting, that the kids could pray such ancient words and understand them (I assumed) as they were in their mother tongue. Later, some kids were playing in the sand and "baking" bread for me to taste, and one did the motzei before trying to shove the sand between my lips. I noticed that he stumbled over and mispronounced the words, "hakotshi lechem m' ha'aretz" just like any old American kid might have done. So maybe these very old prayers which don't sound that much like contemporary speech are just as foreign and strange to the two year olds as the "Pledge of Allegience" was to me when I was a kid "And to the mapudik for which it hands, one nation, under G-d, inderisable..."
In any case, it does seem that "G-d talk" is more a part of secular Israeli culture than it is of secular American culture. "Thank G-d" is not an uncommon answer to "How are you?" even for a secular Israeli. I think G-d is a more accessible concept for Jerusalemites than for, say, New Yorkers, and phrasing things in terms of G-d comes more easily here. I'm not sure if I believe in G-d, but I kind of like the idea of being able to say G-d without sounding very religious. It seems like it would be easier to become comfortable with the concept if I didn't feel so, well, Christian when saying it.
In other news, I've been reading about social constructionism in my Multiculturalism class, and I think it is terrific. I don't want to bore you with it or go on about it, but I just want to say that I get such an emotional high when I read a theory that I completely buy, and that addresses and explains thoughts that I've had before. It is very exciting for me, and I think I'll be considering and reconsidering what I read for a very long time. Also, it's been a very productive few days for me, if a very lonely few days, as I've been pushing myself to get work done while Daniel is away. I've been working on a Hebrew project, a Holocaust paper, and more. I've also started working toward my personal goal of reading my very first whole book in Hebrew. I think that will take a while, but I'm already 20 pages into it, so we'll see. Wish me luck!
Showing posts with label busses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label busses. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Sunday, November 30, 2008
No Cause to Be Alarmed.
A class on multiculturalism, and I feel open to others in new ways - porous and hungry for give and take, conscious of my limits and struggling to breach them.
Moments before the bus arrives: a phone call - just to say that there is a warning for all of Israel, so let's not go out for dinner tonight. Should I still take the bus? I don't think there's anything to worry about. OK, I'll see you later, have a good class. I hang up without saying I love you, but then wonder, laughing at myself for the thought, if this was the last goodbye.
And should I take a taxi? Should I pay? I finger my 3-month bus pass and decide to board the Number 19, regretting even as I board, and shrugging off the regret. Nothing will happen, everything seems normal.
And on the bus I pour poetry into my ears through ipod headphones, but it pools into my auditory canal without travelling further into my body. My mind rejects the sounds, and focuses my eyes.
And on the bus I stare out of the window, watching at each bus stop to see who climbs on board and asking, does he want to die? Does she want me to die? My multiculturalism articles sit on my lap and I ask myself, does he look like an Arab? Does she? And then I feel sick at myself.
And on the bus I sit in the back repeating to myself Hebrew vocab words: Explosion, Violence, Pain, and consider that if someone were to explode himself, he would probably do it at the front of the bus, and I could survive, and then hating myself for wanting to survive even if others do not.
And on the bus I make myself small, lifting my knees close to my chest, rounding my back, hugging my backpack. The young man next to me has darker skin than mine, and a big gym bag, and who knows what is inside. He takes out his cell phone and I imagine it is connected to a metal, wired contraption inside the innocent blue bag. He presses a button and I shudder. He pulls out a book in Hebrew and starts to read. I feel better.
A window bangs closed. I jump.
And at my stop, I descend quickly onto the street, and walk home as fast as I can. Are the coffee shops more empty than usual? I imagine they are, and I know they are not. And what do I do now that I am home, and safe? Am I safe at home?
Tonight is just like any other night. The bus ride was the same, the same people getting on and off, students, mostly, and the streets were the same with the discount pajama store with the nightie that I've been eyeing still in the window as I walked past. There was nothing different about tonight. No cause to be alarmed.
Moments before the bus arrives: a phone call - just to say that there is a warning for all of Israel, so let's not go out for dinner tonight. Should I still take the bus? I don't think there's anything to worry about. OK, I'll see you later, have a good class. I hang up without saying I love you, but then wonder, laughing at myself for the thought, if this was the last goodbye.
And should I take a taxi? Should I pay? I finger my 3-month bus pass and decide to board the Number 19, regretting even as I board, and shrugging off the regret. Nothing will happen, everything seems normal.
And on the bus I pour poetry into my ears through ipod headphones, but it pools into my auditory canal without travelling further into my body. My mind rejects the sounds, and focuses my eyes.
And on the bus I stare out of the window, watching at each bus stop to see who climbs on board and asking, does he want to die? Does she want me to die? My multiculturalism articles sit on my lap and I ask myself, does he look like an Arab? Does she? And then I feel sick at myself.
And on the bus I sit in the back repeating to myself Hebrew vocab words: Explosion, Violence, Pain, and consider that if someone were to explode himself, he would probably do it at the front of the bus, and I could survive, and then hating myself for wanting to survive even if others do not.
And on the bus I make myself small, lifting my knees close to my chest, rounding my back, hugging my backpack. The young man next to me has darker skin than mine, and a big gym bag, and who knows what is inside. He takes out his cell phone and I imagine it is connected to a metal, wired contraption inside the innocent blue bag. He presses a button and I shudder. He pulls out a book in Hebrew and starts to read. I feel better.
A window bangs closed. I jump.
And at my stop, I descend quickly onto the street, and walk home as fast as I can. Are the coffee shops more empty than usual? I imagine they are, and I know they are not. And what do I do now that I am home, and safe? Am I safe at home?
Tonight is just like any other night. The bus ride was the same, the same people getting on and off, students, mostly, and the streets were the same with the discount pajama store with the nightie that I've been eyeing still in the window as I walked past. There was nothing different about tonight. No cause to be alarmed.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Busses and Babies, Art and Adamah
On the bus this afternoon I sat accross from a stern-faced older woman who muttered glumly about the traffic under her breath. Her bags looked heavy, and her lips were folded downward, firmly pressed into a frown.
Soon after we sat down opposite each other and stared out the window to avoid making eye contact, a young woman ascended onto the bus, baby carraige in tow. She lifted the baby out of the pushcart and sat down with him behind me.
First, I heard the cooing, and the mother whispering to her baby in English, "See? See the busses? See the babies and the mommies?" as they looked out the window. Then, I saw the face of the woman accross from me - her almond-shaped eyes sugared over like candy, and the wrinkles near her eyes shooting upwards like arrows pointing at her headscarf as she smiled a toothy grin. Soon, she was snapping, knocking on the window, and speaking what I can only assume was Hebrew baby-talk.
Others joined in. The whole front of the bus was watching the baby as it pretended to answer a cell phone and made loud noises to imitate car horns. We were stuck in traffic. We weren't moving at all. And rather than the tired, annoyed, silent bodies with sagging shoulders who can usually be found on the bus at this time, we were laughing, talking to each other, making funny faces, and smiling broadly.
------------------------------
Today in ulpan we heard a lecture about the symbolism of land/earth/dirt in Israeli art. Here's a bit of a summary. While land is an important universal topic in art, in Israel it holds particular social, political, and religious meaning. In the beginnings of art (ie. cave paintings) land wasn't itself a subject, but instead was a medium for the production of art - artists used blood and dirt in order to create representations of the world around them. In recent years, the French artist Jean Debuffet created paintings that were similar to cave paintings in order to highlite the connection between people and the earth. The lecturer noted the deep conection in the Hebrew language itself - Adam, meaning man (also the name of the first man in the Bible), and Adama, meaning dirt/earth/land. In the Bible, Adam is created out of the earth, and as Children of Adam, when we breath our last breath, we return to the earth once more. Many of Debuffet's paintings illustrate this concept, as they depict humans the color of earth, often using dirt as a material out of which to produce the work. In one painting in particular that the lecturer showed us, the human bodies are hidden amidst all the colors of the soil, and are so integrated into the material of the land that it is hard to see them - they are part and parcel of the soil itself. The lecturer said, and this seemed to be her main point throughout, that this art was about a universal concept, but that Israeli art tended to take these universal concepts and address them in Israel-specific ways.
In 1906, the Bezalel Acadamy of Art and Design, Israel's national school of art, was opened. Israeli art basically began at its opening, as the teachers created a new school of art, the Bezalel school, that combined European and Middle Eastern aesthetics and techniques.
From it's beginnings, Israeli art was preoccupied with the idea of land. Paintings represented Biblical Jews participating in festivals connected to agriculture, and pioneers working the land. Unline in many other times in Jewish (particularly European Jewish) history, when Jews were forbidden from owning and working land, in Israel Jews had the opportunity to reap and to sow, to plant and to eat what they had grown. It was strongly emphasized that the way to build the country was to work with the land.
To emphasize her point about the way that art represented connectedness to the land, our lecturer showed us a self portrait by Reuven Rubin, a famous Israeli artist from Romania, who painted himself with darker skin than he acutally had because it was the color of the ground and the color of people when they work in the sun in Isreal. In the painting he is also wearing slippers to demonstrate that he is a
t home in the land, which dominates the painting. In others of Reuven's paintings, the horizen line is abnormally high at the top of the painting, so that the sky takes up just the tiniest uppermost space of the canvas (see the picture to the left of this text). The land, then, takes up almost the whole painting, and the paintings all contain the fruits of the land - bananas, oranges, and other warm-weather produce. We also saw a painting by Nachum Gutman of an orchard - a symbol of fruitfulness and prosperity. The lecturer showed several slides of popular images such as publicity posters and children's books that emphasized working the land. The images are full of warm colors and demonstrate the joys of agriculture.
The lecturer then went on to talk about other forms of art that were universal in other places and became Israel-specific when produced by Israeli artists. She described the earth works movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's in the US which used the earth itself as the canvas for art. She described the work of Robert Smithson, who is most well known for his earth work "Spiral Jetty." This was a giant, 450 meters in diameter, spiral on the beach fo Utah's Salt Lake. He created a work of art in place that could not be kept in a gallery or museum. The ideas of his art were what the lecturer described as "cosmopolitical" and universal. The lecturere also described the work of Michael Heiser, whose work "Double Negative," also an earth work in place, consists of two trenches accross a large gap. The trenches together measure 1,500 feet long, 50 feet deep, and 30 feet wide. 240,000 tons of rock was displaced in the construction of the trenches. The trenches demonstrate the ideas of positive and negative space - of having and lacking.
In Israel, artists adapted the ideas of the land art movement and used them to create art that addressed the specific issues and significance of land in Israel. Avital Geva, a commander wounded in the 1967, created a land art project in which he gathered a group of Arabs and Israelis from a kibbutz and a nearby Arab village and together with them dug two holes - one in the kibbutz and one in the villaige. They moved the dirt from one hole to the other, symbolically saying tha the land belongs to both people, and can be shared cooperatively, rather than being fought over.
We also learned about some Palestinan art, but unfortunately I didn't catch the name of the artist about which our lecturer spoke. She showed us two works that were sculpted out of dirt and sand. The first, "Hagar" was of a face of a beautiful woman. The land was cracked and dry, but she was nevertheless created and formed out of it - the mother earth of the Palestinian people. The second, "I am Ishmael" was of a man's body constructed out of dry, cracked, sand and dirt, surrounded by rocks.
The lecturer then sped through a number of artists whpose work indicates that unlike in the more idealistic mood of the past, the land is no longer just a symbol of fruitfulness and of arriving home. The land has also become a symbol of war and death, as disputes over land are the cause for much strife and pain in Israel. In particular, we looked at the work of Moshe Gershuni, who paints the land red, covered with blood.
We saw a slide of a sculpture of chocolate soldiers - who appeared brave and strong. We were dold that the artist invited people to eat the chocolate and after a while the sculpture which had once seemed brave and beautiful appeared deeply sad, as though the soldiers had been victims of a bombing - heads detached from limbs, flakes of bodies strewn about. And soon it all disappeared.
We saw a work
by Menashe Kadishman called "Falling Leaves" which is on display in the Jewish Museum of Berlin. Piles and piles of metal circular faces with open mouths cover the floor between two walls. The artist encourages people to walk on the metal and hear the noise they make - those open mouths crying put from the ground. It is meant to symbolize those who perished and were buried in unmarked graves - that the ground we walk on contains so much pain.
We also saw a slide of a work that is meant to look both like a backgammon board - to which there are two sides but they participate together in cooperation - and like the mouth of a sharp-toothed monster. The work, our lecturer told us, was strongly influenced by the work of Yoko Ono, who has created a number of pieces that are chess boards with both sets of peices white - so that it is impossible for them to make war.
The last artist we discussed was Erez Israeli. His work, a lawn with red poppies, constructed out of tiny beads, sits on the floor of the Givon Art Gallery in Tel Aviv. The po
ppies are beautiful, but have mythological significance as the flowers that are said to grow in the places where heroes have fallen. Thus, in this represenation, the land is both beautiful and a place of death.
The lecturer, whose speech was interesting if somewhat repetitive, concluded by saying that the land was a very powerful symbol in Israeli art. It has meanings of ownership and belonging, of being home, of work, of fruitfulness, of strength, but also of death, conflict, war, and pain.
In any case it was definatley an interesting lecture, particularly as before today I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about Israeli art.
Soon after we sat down opposite each other and stared out the window to avoid making eye contact, a young woman ascended onto the bus, baby carraige in tow. She lifted the baby out of the pushcart and sat down with him behind me.
First, I heard the cooing, and the mother whispering to her baby in English, "See? See the busses? See the babies and the mommies?" as they looked out the window. Then, I saw the face of the woman accross from me - her almond-shaped eyes sugared over like candy, and the wrinkles near her eyes shooting upwards like arrows pointing at her headscarf as she smiled a toothy grin. Soon, she was snapping, knocking on the window, and speaking what I can only assume was Hebrew baby-talk.
Others joined in. The whole front of the bus was watching the baby as it pretended to answer a cell phone and made loud noises to imitate car horns. We were stuck in traffic. We weren't moving at all. And rather than the tired, annoyed, silent bodies with sagging shoulders who can usually be found on the bus at this time, we were laughing, talking to each other, making funny faces, and smiling broadly.
------------------------------
Today in ulpan we heard a lecture about the symbolism of land/earth/dirt in Israeli art. Here's a bit of a summary. While land is an important universal topic in art, in Israel it holds particular social, political, and religious meaning. In the beginnings of art (ie. cave paintings) land wasn't itself a subject, but instead was a medium for the production of art - artists used blood and dirt in order to create representations of the world around them. In recent years, the French artist Jean Debuffet created paintings that were similar to cave paintings in order to highlite the connection between people and the earth. The lecturer noted the deep conection in the Hebrew language itself - Adam, meaning man (also the name of the first man in the Bible), and Adama, meaning dirt/earth/land. In the Bible, Adam is created out of the earth, and as Children of Adam, when we breath our last breath, we return to the earth once more. Many of Debuffet's paintings illustrate this concept, as they depict humans the color of earth, often using dirt as a material out of which to produce the work. In one painting in particular that the lecturer showed us, the human bodies are hidden amidst all the colors of the soil, and are so integrated into the material of the land that it is hard to see them - they are part and parcel of the soil itself. The lecturer said, and this seemed to be her main point throughout, that this art was about a universal concept, but that Israeli art tended to take these universal concepts and address them in Israel-specific ways.
In 1906, the Bezalel Acadamy of Art and Design, Israel's national school of art, was opened. Israeli art basically began at its opening, as the teachers created a new school of art, the Bezalel school, that combined European and Middle Eastern aesthetics and techniques.
From it's beginnings, Israeli art was preoccupied with the idea of land. Paintings represented Biblical Jews participating in festivals connected to agriculture, and pioneers working the land. Unline in many other times in Jewish (particularly European Jewish) history, when Jews were forbidden from owning and working land, in Israel Jews had the opportunity to reap and to sow, to plant and to eat what they had grown. It was strongly emphasized that the way to build the country was to work with the land.
To emphasize her point about the way that art represented connectedness to the land, our lecturer showed us a self portrait by Reuven Rubin, a famous Israeli artist from Romania, who painted himself with darker skin than he acutally had because it was the color of the ground and the color of people when they work in the sun in Isreal. In the painting he is also wearing slippers to demonstrate that he is a
t home in the land, which dominates the painting. In others of Reuven's paintings, the horizen line is abnormally high at the top of the painting, so that the sky takes up just the tiniest uppermost space of the canvas (see the picture to the left of this text). The land, then, takes up almost the whole painting, and the paintings all contain the fruits of the land - bananas, oranges, and other warm-weather produce. We also saw a painting by Nachum Gutman of an orchard - a symbol of fruitfulness and prosperity. The lecturer showed several slides of popular images such as publicity posters and children's books that emphasized working the land. The images are full of warm colors and demonstrate the joys of agriculture.The lecturer then went on to talk about other forms of art that were universal in other places and became Israel-specific when produced by Israeli artists. She described the earth works movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's in the US which used the earth itself as the canvas for art. She described the work of Robert Smithson, who is most well known for his earth work "Spiral Jetty." This was a giant, 450 meters in diameter, spiral on the beach fo Utah's Salt Lake. He created a work of art in place that could not be kept in a gallery or museum. The ideas of his art were what the lecturer described as "cosmopolitical" and universal. The lecturere also described the work of Michael Heiser, whose work "Double Negative," also an earth work in place, consists of two trenches accross a large gap. The trenches together measure 1,500 feet long, 50 feet deep, and 30 feet wide. 240,000 tons of rock was displaced in the construction of the trenches. The trenches demonstrate the ideas of positive and negative space - of having and lacking.
In Israel, artists adapted the ideas of the land art movement and used them to create art that addressed the specific issues and significance of land in Israel. Avital Geva, a commander wounded in the 1967, created a land art project in which he gathered a group of Arabs and Israelis from a kibbutz and a nearby Arab village and together with them dug two holes - one in the kibbutz and one in the villaige. They moved the dirt from one hole to the other, symbolically saying tha the land belongs to both people, and can be shared cooperatively, rather than being fought over.
We also learned about some Palestinan art, but unfortunately I didn't catch the name of the artist about which our lecturer spoke. She showed us two works that were sculpted out of dirt and sand. The first, "Hagar" was of a face of a beautiful woman. The land was cracked and dry, but she was nevertheless created and formed out of it - the mother earth of the Palestinian people. The second, "I am Ishmael" was of a man's body constructed out of dry, cracked, sand and dirt, surrounded by rocks.
The lecturer then sped through a number of artists whpose work indicates that unlike in the more idealistic mood of the past, the land is no longer just a symbol of fruitfulness and of arriving home. The land has also become a symbol of war and death, as disputes over land are the cause for much strife and pain in Israel. In particular, we looked at the work of Moshe Gershuni, who paints the land red, covered with blood.
We saw a slide of a sculpture of chocolate soldiers - who appeared brave and strong. We were dold that the artist invited people to eat the chocolate and after a while the sculpture which had once seemed brave and beautiful appeared deeply sad, as though the soldiers had been victims of a bombing - heads detached from limbs, flakes of bodies strewn about. And soon it all disappeared.
We saw a work
by Menashe Kadishman called "Falling Leaves" which is on display in the Jewish Museum of Berlin. Piles and piles of metal circular faces with open mouths cover the floor between two walls. The artist encourages people to walk on the metal and hear the noise they make - those open mouths crying put from the ground. It is meant to symbolize those who perished and were buried in unmarked graves - that the ground we walk on contains so much pain.We also saw a slide of a work that is meant to look both like a backgammon board - to which there are two sides but they participate together in cooperation - and like the mouth of a sharp-toothed monster. The work, our lecturer told us, was strongly influenced by the work of Yoko Ono, who has created a number of pieces that are chess boards with both sets of peices white - so that it is impossible for them to make war.
The last artist we discussed was Erez Israeli. His work, a lawn with red poppies, constructed out of tiny beads, sits on the floor of the Givon Art Gallery in Tel Aviv. The po
ppies are beautiful, but have mythological significance as the flowers that are said to grow in the places where heroes have fallen. Thus, in this represenation, the land is both beautiful and a place of death.The lecturer, whose speech was interesting if somewhat repetitive, concluded by saying that the land was a very powerful symbol in Israeli art. It has meanings of ownership and belonging, of being home, of work, of fruitfulness, of strength, but also of death, conflict, war, and pain.
In any case it was definatley an interesting lecture, particularly as before today I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about Israeli art.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Vistas, Visas, and Vocabulary
Today I stopped in the grocery store on the way home from school. I was wearing a black skirt that didn't quite cover my knees and a black and white pinstriped sleeveless top - not a very Israeli outfit. The security guard who checked my bags at the entrance to the store (side note: all the big stores and restaurants have metal detectors and security guards) said "how are you?" to me in Hebrew, and before I had a chance to answer he changed his mind and said, "We can speak English. English, yes? Or Francais? How are you?" And I responded in English "Very well thank you, and you" and went about my way. As I was in the store, one of the people who was shelving food said "How are you" in Hebrew to me, and I responded in Hebrew, and then he said, "Comment ca va?" (French for how are you) So I responded with a smile, "Ca va bien, merci" and went about my way. As I left, I heard him saying to a co-worker, in Hebrew, something to the effect of "I can always spot the French ones." I thought that was pretty funny - and relevant to an earlier post where I noted how much clothing defines people here - because I'm dressed a little nicer than usual I don't fit the stereotype of the jeans-and-tshirt American, and therefore must be French. (Another side note - there are a lot of francophones in Jerusalem!)
Tonight I have my birthday party and I'm really looking forward to welcoming guests into our home, and to spending time with people and getting to know them socially. It seems like there will be a small group of rabbinical students (about 8?) coming, as well as one of my friends from ulpan, and a friend that I met several years ago when I was on birthright. I already had a little birthday party last night when Daniel took me to the fabulous restaurant accross the street - it was seriously really really good - and gave me more presents than I know what to do with! Daniel sure knows how to do birthdays...
As you can tell from the title of the post, there are three topics that I was hoping to have time to tell you about before I start cooking for the potluck tonight (roasted potatoes and home-made baked beans, if you must know): Vista, Visa, and Vocabulary. I'll go in that order and I apologise that each of these topics has very little to do with the other.
VISTA:
Yesterday our class went on a tour of Hebrew University, Mount Scopus campus (the campus where I am studying). It was really exciting to be able to learn so much information, all in Hebrew! It was also great to see how are class is starting to feel comfortable together – we could casually enter conversations with each other while walking about, make side comments and jokes – it all seems to be getting much more comfortable.
But outside those aspects of the tiyul, it was also thrilling to learn about Hebrew University and to have an opportunity to explore a bit without feeling that I was in danger of getting lost! I learned so much – I’ll share with you a little bit – though don’t take my word for it as all of this is my translation of the Hebrew I may or may not have understood:
In 1903?, the Zionist Congress purchased the land on Mt. Scopus from Sir John Gray Hill, who had a villa there and was willing to sell it as he supported the Zionists who wanted to build the university. At the time, universities throughout Europe had quotas as to how many Jews could study there, so the idea was to build the first ever university taught in Hebrew and to thereby provide education and opportunities to many Jews who otherwise would not have these opportunities. However, at the time Israel was still under the Ottoman Empire, which did not give its permission for the building of the University. In 1918 the first cornerstone of the university was laid, and in 1925 the university opened its doors (Israel was at the time under British rule). The founder of the university, Chaim Weizmann, later became the first president of Israel, and there were all sorts of important people involved in the university’s founding including Hayyim Nachman Bialik, Albert Einstein, Sigmound Freud, and Martin Buber.
At the botanical gardens of Hebrew University, which only has plants that are native to Israel, we learned that during the construction of the garden, workers found a cave. Archaeologists were called in and they found bones, as well as an inscription indicating that this was the grave of “Nicanor from Alexandria.” Nicanor from Alexandria is described in the Gemara. I found the following information online as it was interesting and I didn’t remember all of it: “As the Gemara (Yoma 38a) describes, Nicanor traveled from Alexandria to bring gates for the Second Temple. He loaded two bronze gates on a ship, but a large wave threatened the vessel. Nicanor cast one gate overboard into the sea but the sea continued to rage. Then, he declared that he should be thrown into the sea with the second gate. Suddenly, the sea became calm. By nothing less than a miracle, the first gate appeared when the ship arrived in Akko. Some said that a sea monster spit it out. Others claim that the bronze gate became attached to the underside of the ship. In any event, the Gates of Nicanor were installed on the western side of the Women's Section in the Second Temple. By the accounts of Josephus, the gates were truly impressive. Estimates are that they stood 40 cubits wide and 50 cubits high.” The sarcophagus is no longer in the cave – it is currently in London. However, currently buried in the cave are Michael Usishkin, one of the leaders of the Russian Zionists, and Leon Pinsker, the founder of the Lovers of Zion (Hovevei Zion) movement. Usishkin wanted Pinsker buried there because he envisioned a national pantheon of the graves of the great Zionists on Mt. Scopus – which is why he himself is also buried there. However it was decided that Mt. Scopus was to be a university and not a graveyard, and most of these Zionist leaders are buried now at Mt. Herzl instead.
We walked to the Frank Sinatra building – the area for international students. On May 14, 2001, a bomb exploded in a cafeteria in the international student area, killing/injuring several students (I don’t remember the number). The teacher showed us the memorial to those students – a very subtle monument. It is a tree that was damaged by the explosion, but continued to live. It grows out of a crooked area in the ground and is supported by a lot of wires, etc. to keep it up as it is tilted at about a 45 degree angle to the ground, but it is still living and thriving. This is to show that while life at the university was shaken by the event, the university still thrives.
The teacher talked quite a bit about the architecture of the buildings. At Mt. Scopus there are two kinds of buildings – those that were built in the 1920’s at the establishment of the university, and those built in the 1970’s and thereafter. After the War of Independence in 1948, East Jerusalem became a part of Jordan, and while Mt. Scopus remained under Israeli control, it was an island that was cut off from Israel proper, making it impossible for studies to continue there. Instead, a second campus was built near to where Daniel and I live, called Givat Ram – also a second campus of Hadassah hospital was built for the same reasons. After the Six Day War (1967) East Jerusalem became part of Israel, and construction started on Mt. Scopus so that it could be re-opened in 1980. The older buildings have rougher stone, ivy, arched windows, and domes (kipot!) on top. The newer buildings are smother with straighter lines.
The last place we went to on our tour was the Hecht Synagoge, in the Humanities building where we have class. It is the reason why this section is labled Vistas – Har HaTzofim (Mount Scopus) literally means Mountain of the Views – because the view is magnificent! The Hecht Synagogue faces this view, and is constructed in a minimalistic fashion (no pictures on the wall) to emphasize the beauty of the view itself. The window is cut into three parts to look like an open Torah scroll, the bimah is lowered so that instead of seeing the hazzan the congregation sees the view. The pews are constructed to look like a menorah. From the window you can see all of Jerusalem. The teacher pointed out different areas and buildings to us – which was pretty great.
VISA
Yesterday afternoon I set out to the Ministry of the Interior to get a student visa. Long story as to why I don’t have one already, but suffice it to say that I need to get one. So I didn’t know a lot about how to get one – I looked it up on the internet but otherwise didn’t have much guidance. I found the address for the Ministry of the Interior online and Daniel helped me figure out which bus to take to get there. I had to switch buses and really circumnavigate the city to get to the area where the government buildings are. After inquiring at several buildings I finally found the ministry of the interior. But when I got there, the guard told me that to get a student visa I need to go to the other ministry of the interior building, which happens to be about a ten minute walk from our apartment. So, I waited about a half hour for a bus – and spoke to a very nice woman who helped me figure out where to get off the bus and gave me directions – and I went to the other ministry of the interior building. When I got there the person at the visa desk told me that it was closed for the day and I should come back at 8am the next morning. I didn’t want to miss ulpan but didn’t have much of a choice so I e-mailed my teachers that I would be coming late and I went this morning. When I approached the visa desk, the woman asked me if I had an appointment. I said no and she gave me a form to fill out and told me to go through some doors. There were no other directions posted and when I asked someone how to get a visa, she asked if I had an appointment. When I said no, she said I needed an appointment and I needed to call to make one. I had tried to do that on numerous occasions but no one ever answers the phone. Eventually she directed me to a room, and I knocked on the door only to have the person in the office say that the office was closed and would I shut the door. I waited some more and finally went into the office and stood there until the woman was done talking on the phone, at which point she asked me what I needed and I said I wanted to get a student visa but had no appointment. She made me an appointment for Sept. 9, in the morning – so I’ll have to miss more ulpan, but I hope I’ll actually get the visa!
VOCABULARY
I particularly didn’t want to miss ulpan today because we had a pretty serious test today – as well as a lot to do in my literature class. I’m sorry I missed so much of literature today because there were some poems we were supposed to read that I didn’t entirely understand. But it is really cool to be reading literature in Hebrew, and for sure my vocabluarly is rapidly improving. We had 81 vocab words to learn for this week’s test, and we’ve only been in ulpan for a week! It’s going to be a really intense, hard course. For homework this weekend I have to do an exercise, read a newspaper article and write about it, write an essay, and read the first page of a novel, all in Hebrew! Wish me luck…
Tonight I have my birthday party and I'm really looking forward to welcoming guests into our home, and to spending time with people and getting to know them socially. It seems like there will be a small group of rabbinical students (about 8?) coming, as well as one of my friends from ulpan, and a friend that I met several years ago when I was on birthright. I already had a little birthday party last night when Daniel took me to the fabulous restaurant accross the street - it was seriously really really good - and gave me more presents than I know what to do with! Daniel sure knows how to do birthdays...
As you can tell from the title of the post, there are three topics that I was hoping to have time to tell you about before I start cooking for the potluck tonight (roasted potatoes and home-made baked beans, if you must know): Vista, Visa, and Vocabulary. I'll go in that order and I apologise that each of these topics has very little to do with the other.
VISTA:
Yesterday our class went on a tour of Hebrew University, Mount Scopus campus (the campus where I am studying). It was really exciting to be able to learn so much information, all in Hebrew! It was also great to see how are class is starting to feel comfortable together – we could casually enter conversations with each other while walking about, make side comments and jokes – it all seems to be getting much more comfortable.
But outside those aspects of the tiyul, it was also thrilling to learn about Hebrew University and to have an opportunity to explore a bit without feeling that I was in danger of getting lost! I learned so much – I’ll share with you a little bit – though don’t take my word for it as all of this is my translation of the Hebrew I may or may not have understood:
In 1903?, the Zionist Congress purchased the land on Mt. Scopus from Sir John Gray Hill, who had a villa there and was willing to sell it as he supported the Zionists who wanted to build the university. At the time, universities throughout Europe had quotas as to how many Jews could study there, so the idea was to build the first ever university taught in Hebrew and to thereby provide education and opportunities to many Jews who otherwise would not have these opportunities. However, at the time Israel was still under the Ottoman Empire, which did not give its permission for the building of the University. In 1918 the first cornerstone of the university was laid, and in 1925 the university opened its doors (Israel was at the time under British rule). The founder of the university, Chaim Weizmann, later became the first president of Israel, and there were all sorts of important people involved in the university’s founding including Hayyim Nachman Bialik, Albert Einstein, Sigmound Freud, and Martin Buber.
At the botanical gardens of Hebrew University, which only has plants that are native to Israel, we learned that during the construction of the garden, workers found a cave. Archaeologists were called in and they found bones, as well as an inscription indicating that this was the grave of “Nicanor from Alexandria.” Nicanor from Alexandria is described in the Gemara. I found the following information online as it was interesting and I didn’t remember all of it: “As the Gemara (Yoma 38a) describes, Nicanor traveled from Alexandria to bring gates for the Second Temple. He loaded two bronze gates on a ship, but a large wave threatened the vessel. Nicanor cast one gate overboard into the sea but the sea continued to rage. Then, he declared that he should be thrown into the sea with the second gate. Suddenly, the sea became calm. By nothing less than a miracle, the first gate appeared when the ship arrived in Akko. Some said that a sea monster spit it out. Others claim that the bronze gate became attached to the underside of the ship. In any event, the Gates of Nicanor were installed on the western side of the Women's Section in the Second Temple. By the accounts of Josephus, the gates were truly impressive. Estimates are that they stood 40 cubits wide and 50 cubits high.” The sarcophagus is no longer in the cave – it is currently in London. However, currently buried in the cave are Michael Usishkin, one of the leaders of the Russian Zionists, and Leon Pinsker, the founder of the Lovers of Zion (Hovevei Zion) movement. Usishkin wanted Pinsker buried there because he envisioned a national pantheon of the graves of the great Zionists on Mt. Scopus – which is why he himself is also buried there. However it was decided that Mt. Scopus was to be a university and not a graveyard, and most of these Zionist leaders are buried now at Mt. Herzl instead.
We walked to the Frank Sinatra building – the area for international students. On May 14, 2001, a bomb exploded in a cafeteria in the international student area, killing/injuring several students (I don’t remember the number). The teacher showed us the memorial to those students – a very subtle monument. It is a tree that was damaged by the explosion, but continued to live. It grows out of a crooked area in the ground and is supported by a lot of wires, etc. to keep it up as it is tilted at about a 45 degree angle to the ground, but it is still living and thriving. This is to show that while life at the university was shaken by the event, the university still thrives.
The teacher talked quite a bit about the architecture of the buildings. At Mt. Scopus there are two kinds of buildings – those that were built in the 1920’s at the establishment of the university, and those built in the 1970’s and thereafter. After the War of Independence in 1948, East Jerusalem became a part of Jordan, and while Mt. Scopus remained under Israeli control, it was an island that was cut off from Israel proper, making it impossible for studies to continue there. Instead, a second campus was built near to where Daniel and I live, called Givat Ram – also a second campus of Hadassah hospital was built for the same reasons. After the Six Day War (1967) East Jerusalem became part of Israel, and construction started on Mt. Scopus so that it could be re-opened in 1980. The older buildings have rougher stone, ivy, arched windows, and domes (kipot!) on top. The newer buildings are smother with straighter lines.
The last place we went to on our tour was the Hecht Synagoge, in the Humanities building where we have class. It is the reason why this section is labled Vistas – Har HaTzofim (Mount Scopus) literally means Mountain of the Views – because the view is magnificent! The Hecht Synagogue faces this view, and is constructed in a minimalistic fashion (no pictures on the wall) to emphasize the beauty of the view itself. The window is cut into three parts to look like an open Torah scroll, the bimah is lowered so that instead of seeing the hazzan the congregation sees the view. The pews are constructed to look like a menorah. From the window you can see all of Jerusalem. The teacher pointed out different areas and buildings to us – which was pretty great.
VISA
Yesterday afternoon I set out to the Ministry of the Interior to get a student visa. Long story as to why I don’t have one already, but suffice it to say that I need to get one. So I didn’t know a lot about how to get one – I looked it up on the internet but otherwise didn’t have much guidance. I found the address for the Ministry of the Interior online and Daniel helped me figure out which bus to take to get there. I had to switch buses and really circumnavigate the city to get to the area where the government buildings are. After inquiring at several buildings I finally found the ministry of the interior. But when I got there, the guard told me that to get a student visa I need to go to the other ministry of the interior building, which happens to be about a ten minute walk from our apartment. So, I waited about a half hour for a bus – and spoke to a very nice woman who helped me figure out where to get off the bus and gave me directions – and I went to the other ministry of the interior building. When I got there the person at the visa desk told me that it was closed for the day and I should come back at 8am the next morning. I didn’t want to miss ulpan but didn’t have much of a choice so I e-mailed my teachers that I would be coming late and I went this morning. When I approached the visa desk, the woman asked me if I had an appointment. I said no and she gave me a form to fill out and told me to go through some doors. There were no other directions posted and when I asked someone how to get a visa, she asked if I had an appointment. When I said no, she said I needed an appointment and I needed to call to make one. I had tried to do that on numerous occasions but no one ever answers the phone. Eventually she directed me to a room, and I knocked on the door only to have the person in the office say that the office was closed and would I shut the door. I waited some more and finally went into the office and stood there until the woman was done talking on the phone, at which point she asked me what I needed and I said I wanted to get a student visa but had no appointment. She made me an appointment for Sept. 9, in the morning – so I’ll have to miss more ulpan, but I hope I’ll actually get the visa!
VOCABULARY
I particularly didn’t want to miss ulpan today because we had a pretty serious test today – as well as a lot to do in my literature class. I’m sorry I missed so much of literature today because there were some poems we were supposed to read that I didn’t entirely understand. But it is really cool to be reading literature in Hebrew, and for sure my vocabluarly is rapidly improving. We had 81 vocab words to learn for this week’s test, and we’ve only been in ulpan for a week! It’s going to be a really intense, hard course. For homework this weekend I have to do an exercise, read a newspaper article and write about it, write an essay, and read the first page of a novel, all in Hebrew! Wish me luck…
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Electives, classes, and other scheduling topics.
Today was the first day of electives in ulpan. Electives will meet for one hour, three times a week. They are with other students in our level, but not necessarily from our class (I think I'm one of only two people from my class in my elective). The elective I chose is about Hebrew literature, and we will be reading excerpts from novels, poetry, and plays. I am very excited about this - excited to be reading "real" writing, and to be learning from it, excited to be learning about creative expression in Hebrew, an aspect of language that is in some ways entirely different from day to day speech and from factual articles, and excited to have some variety added to the ulpan schedule, to work with a new teacher, and to meet new students. The German girl I made friends with on the first day is in my literature class - her name is Eva and she seems really nice, so I hope I'll get to know her better. She and her friend Tobias (also German, also studying theology) are here all year, and they both live near me, so I hope I'll take the initiative to ask them to do something outside of class.
I'm finding that I am very shy at ulpan. I've spoken to a few people, but it is hard for me to do. Most people live in Kfar HaStudentim (the student village) and have roommates and friends they spend time with outsideof class. I don;t hav this and because of that I feel a little left out. But I have been seeing the same people on the bus every day, so I suppose after a time I might get to know them. Also, once I am in graduate seminars it may get easier.
Yesterday I attended a graduate student orientation. I received the course offering directory and learned a bit about the graduate school - there are something like 270 graduate students at Rothberg International School, half of whom are MA students and half of whom are visiting students (like me!) Visiting students don't have any requirements and can basically take whatever they want. We can take classes from the course offerings, or we can take classes offered through Hebrew University itself - each department publishes a list of classes in that department that are taught in English, and I can take those if I wish, or any class in Hebrew if I am so brave. I plan on taking Hebrew, Intermediate Yiddish, a course about Israeli history or society (I have quite a few to choose from!) and, depending on whether or not it is taught this semester, probably I will also take Yiddish literature in English translation. In the spring there is a translation studies class that I think would be pretty awesome - but I have a long time to decide about the spring! (In fact, I have a whole month still to decide about the fall...)
At the orientation I met a girl in the MA program who is from China. She was a religious studies major in China and she is here to get an MA in communal leadership studies. Afterwards she wants to move to Toronto, where her boyfriend is working. She seems really nice, but her Hebrew is at the beginnners level and her English isn't that great, so it was hard to communicate with her. Maybe I'll see her again as well, during graduate student events. I hope so!
Soon enough I'll also be starting my out of school activities. I've been in contact with the heads of Yung YiDDiSH and the Interfaith Encounter Association, respectively, and have arranged to meet each of them in the relatively near future (YY next week and IEA in early September). I hope to volunteer for YY about twice a week and to go to many of their programs, and I hope to volunteer for IEA once a week, and to join the Hebrew University encounter group. I am very excited about all of these opportunities!
I am settling into a routine here and basic things like taking the bus to class, stopping at the store on the way home to pick up a few things, etc. don't seem as scary anymore. The less intimidating all of this is, the more I think I'm going to like it here.
I'm finding that I am very shy at ulpan. I've spoken to a few people, but it is hard for me to do. Most people live in Kfar HaStudentim (the student village) and have roommates and friends they spend time with outsideof class. I don;t hav this and because of that I feel a little left out. But I have been seeing the same people on the bus every day, so I suppose after a time I might get to know them. Also, once I am in graduate seminars it may get easier.
Yesterday I attended a graduate student orientation. I received the course offering directory and learned a bit about the graduate school - there are something like 270 graduate students at Rothberg International School, half of whom are MA students and half of whom are visiting students (like me!) Visiting students don't have any requirements and can basically take whatever they want. We can take classes from the course offerings, or we can take classes offered through Hebrew University itself - each department publishes a list of classes in that department that are taught in English, and I can take those if I wish, or any class in Hebrew if I am so brave. I plan on taking Hebrew, Intermediate Yiddish, a course about Israeli history or society (I have quite a few to choose from!) and, depending on whether or not it is taught this semester, probably I will also take Yiddish literature in English translation. In the spring there is a translation studies class that I think would be pretty awesome - but I have a long time to decide about the spring! (In fact, I have a whole month still to decide about the fall...)
At the orientation I met a girl in the MA program who is from China. She was a religious studies major in China and she is here to get an MA in communal leadership studies. Afterwards she wants to move to Toronto, where her boyfriend is working. She seems really nice, but her Hebrew is at the beginnners level and her English isn't that great, so it was hard to communicate with her. Maybe I'll see her again as well, during graduate student events. I hope so!
Soon enough I'll also be starting my out of school activities. I've been in contact with the heads of Yung YiDDiSH and the Interfaith Encounter Association, respectively, and have arranged to meet each of them in the relatively near future (YY next week and IEA in early September). I hope to volunteer for YY about twice a week and to go to many of their programs, and I hope to volunteer for IEA once a week, and to join the Hebrew University encounter group. I am very excited about all of these opportunities!
I am settling into a routine here and basic things like taking the bus to class, stopping at the store on the way home to pick up a few things, etc. don't seem as scary anymore. The less intimidating all of this is, the more I think I'm going to like it here.
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