A Movie, A Book, A Play

This morning I attended a terrific literature class in which we watched a film by Amir Goren called "66 Was a Good Year for Tourism" and discussed snippets from a novel by Yitzchak Goren that tells a counternarrative to Israeli European-ness by portraying the lives of a family of Sephardic Jews one summer in Alexandria as remembered by a man who now lives in Israel. Our conversation centered around building identity in multiple places, the meaning of nostalgia, and as per the theme of the course itself, on masculinity as defined by these texts. Anyway, I very much enjoyed the Goren texts and encourage you to check them out if you have a chance.
I skipped the rest of my classes because my friend Nicole and her amiable husband Joe were in town and wanted to meet me for lunch. Together with Nicole and Joe I enjoyed the pleasant if a bit overwhelming summer sun as we strolled to the shuk to buy bread, hummus, vegetables, and halva, and then went back to my apartment to eat our plentiful lunch. It was such a pleasure to see both of them, and I am very much looking forward to spending time with them in New York. It's very exciting to feel that good friendships can be picked up again after so long - the conversation came easily and comfortably, and I think we all had a lovely time.
After an afternoon of Hebrew homework (most of it should have been completed long ago, but I keep putting it off), and reading a book I'm very much enjoying, I went to see a performance of the drama club at Har El synagogue. As I suspected, the performance reminded me a bit of the plays that my grandfather used to participate in with his retirement community, only this was in a less comfortable performance space, was ostensibly a more serious play, and was of course in a language that I don't know very well...
The play was called Dreyfus, by Jean-Claude Grumber. I think it was originally written in French and then translted into Hebrew, but as the characters are in 1930's Vilna I suppose they are meant to be speaking in Hebrew (and the non-Jews in Polish?) so language was a bit confusing.
The premise of the show is that a group of amateur actors in Vilna stage a play about Dreyfus, and the actors don't find the theme relevant to their own situation. It is a comedy, in part, as they perform poorly and a frustrated director corrects their follies, but it is also a tragedy as the actors do not heed the warning inherrent in the Dreyfus story, claiming that nothing of the sort could happen in Poland. They stress the differences between Eastern and Western Jews, don't relate to the notion of Zionism, etc. In the end, two anti-Semitic non-Jews enter the playhouse and start harassing an actor, threatening to cut of his beard, etc. The actors gather their courage and, brandishing fake swords from their costumes, they get rid of the agressors. Ultimately, though, they don dark coats, carry suitcases, the lights grow dim, and serious faced they stand together while the sound of a train echoes in the performance space.
I don't know what I think of this play. It was replete with silly and hysterical women, and with notions of Polish Jews being naive and comic. At one point an actor suggests that the Dreyfus play would be better with some catchy music, and she starts humming "If I Were a Rich Man" a gross anachronism and a symbol for the way that Jews today resort to pop culture to invoke a sense of history... But on the other hand, it was a play that mixed the seriousness of the history (if mitigated by the anti-Semites speaking Hebrew and not acting very violently) with the humanity and humor of everyday life in what is perhaps a more genuine representation of the past than one that looks at the whole long history of East European Jewry as inevitably and bleakly leading to destruction, a sad and downtrodden people without resilience of spirit or the will to creat and enjoy beauty and life.
I slipped out of the synagogue as fast as could be possible when most people in the sanctuary were walking very slowly with canes and we were all heading to the same exit. When I got to my apartment I knocked on the neighbors' door to invite them to have dinner with me Tuesday night - I keep meaning to do something with them before I leave but forgetting, so I'm very proud of myself for setting a date. They made me promise I wouldn't go to too much trouble to cook for them, so I'll have to think about what to make. Suggestions?

Lag B'Omer

Tonight is the beginning of Lag B'omer, a holiday I've never celebrated before and I hardly ever noticed was a part of the Jewish calendar. But it is apparently a pretty big deal here. I asked a lot of Israelis at school today what they do for Lag B'omer, and the answers all were the same: set things on fire. Yes, Lag B'omer is the holiday for bonfires, for wrapping potatoes and onions into the fire and then eating them cooked and whole. It used to be the holiday for singing Israeli songs, but now it is more often the holiday for marshmallows (a concept brought over from the US) and barbecues. I suppose it might also be thought of as the start of summer.
Daniel and I stopped by the Har El bonfire to eat an onion, visit with some preschoolers, and see what it was all about. It was really fun - some singing, some eating, some chatting, some Israeli dancing. On the way home from school today I saw a giant fire in an Israeli neighborhood and it looked pretty dangerous to me, but the Har El one seemed relatively reasonable.
Since I'm talking about Lag B'omer, let me give you a little information abou the holiday, as my guess is that you also don't know too much about it:
In Leviticus 23:15-16 we are told to count seven complete weeks from the day after Passover and ending with the festival of Shavuot on the 50th day of the "counting of the Omer" The counting of the omer is to keep track of the time between the wheat and barley harvests in Israel, and also the time between the Exodus from Egypt and receiving the Torah. Lag B'Omer is the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer. According to Talmudic tradition, during the days of Rabbi Akiva 24,000 students of his died during a plague, which supposedly ended on the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer - so one explanation for Lag B'Omer is that it celebrates the cessation of the plague. Lag B'omer is also supposedly the yartzheit, or anniversary of the death, of Rabbi Yonatan Bar Yochai, a student of Rabbi Akiva's who survived the plague. According to tradition, Bar Yochai revealed the secrets of the Kabalah on the day of his death, and so Lag B'omer is a celebration of the Kabalah. (thanks, wikipedia!)
During the counting of the Omer, many life-affirming activities such as shaving, getting married, and having sex, are forbidden, but on Lag B'omer they are permitted, so it is a big celebratory holiday. It is also a custom for many Jews to make a pilgramage to Mt. Meron to the tomb of Rabbi Yonatan Bar Zochai. Also, many Orthodox Jews perform the first hair cut of their 3-year-old boys on Lag B'Omer. You can read here about celebrations at Mt. Meron. Thousands of Orthodox Jews head to Mt. Moriah, and thousands of secular Jews light their own bonfires all over the country. You can read here about environmentalists who are upset about all the fumes.

You can check out some pictures of our Lag B'Omer experience here.

Trip to the Negev, etc.

First of all, the big news of the week is that I have decided to attend Columbia's Yiddish Studies PhD program next year - and I am very excited about it! I don't want to write much about it because the purpose if this post is to write about the tiyyul but please feel free to ask me questions about it as I'd love to describe the program to you if you are interested.

OK, so we arrived home on Saturday night from a terrific tiyyul and it's been a very busy week as we're scrambling to finish homework between social engagements and preparation for our trip to Moscow. Today I was at the preschool, where we talked about Passover, made charoset, tasted some matzah, and danced to "avadim hayyinu". Yesterday in Hebrew class we had a long and heated discussion about Pat Oliphant's political cartoon about Gaza that appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday- we discussed whether it was anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, or both (and if it's possible to be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic), what the symbols used in the cartoon could mean, whether American Jews should have denounced it, if it should have been published at all, and we eventually got into a debate over whether American Jews should feel connected to Israel's political decisions and how they should express that connection. The conversation was particularly interesting because I was the only American Jew who took part in it - it was Europeans, some Jewish and some non-Jewish, an Israeli, several American Christians, two Koreans, etc. Some people were very certain that the cartoon was not anti-Semitic and some felt even more strongly than I do that it presented dangerously anti-Semitic images. My feeling is that I have no problem with the message of discomfort with Israel's actions in Gaza nor do I believe that a newspaper should not be allowed to publish such a thing, as I believe in freedom of the press, but I do think that the images in the cartoon were inappropriate, dangerous, and, yes, anti-Semitic. I think by equating Israel with Nazis, the cartoonist ignores the historical specificity of both the Holocaust and Israel's actions in Gaza and does both a disservice, and that by turning the Star of David into a symbol of destruction he suggsts more than that the state misused its powerful military presence, but that Judaism itself is a violent force in the world. By drawing the soldier without a head, Oliphant reverses traditional anti-Semitic cartoons of the Jew who controls the world through the power of his intellect, but that the Janus-faced opposite view of Israel as pure unthinking brute force is equally scary. And I also think that representing Gaza as a little old lady and a baby exaggeratedly unfair, even for a political cartoon. But I'm interested in hearing what you have to say. A political cartoon, after all, is supposed to be an exxagerated version of reality... Yesterday I also went to my two Yiddish classes - in one class we read a story about Jews in Eastern Europe moving to America, and in the other we discussed Tevye the Dairyman. On Sunday I had an interesting anthropology class in which we discussed the Religious Zionist singles scene and the pressures and forces that create the scene, the impact of the scene on the people within it, etc. In my literature class we discussed a story by Brenner titled "Nerves" which was not my favorite that we've read thus far but had some interesting points.



That brings me to Saturday, and to the tiyyul. Rather than going backwards in time in a disorganized fashion, I'll take it from the top, from Thursday morning when we loaded ourselves into the bus and left from HUC. We drove for several hours until we arrived at Ben Gurion's tomb, where we discussed Ben Gurion's leadership and vision, and the centrality of the dessert to an understanding of Israel. The Negev desert is 66% of Israel's area - over 6,700 square miles, and has an arid and semi-arid climate, defined according to average rainfall (2 - 6 inches), type of soil and natural vegetation.

After our initial discussion, we hopped on the bus and went to the Ben Gurion National Solar Energy Center, a research center to explore methods of collecting solar energy efficiently. A small soft-spoken man dressed in a thick sweater led us in the desert sun as he proudly described his facility. The testing center was established in 1985 to compare various alternative solar teachnologies, including one that uses solar energy to heat oil, which then creates electricity, a system of large parabolic mirror troughs used to heat water into steam, photovoltaic sysetems. In 1991 the center became a research facility that investigates new materials, the impact of solar energy usages on the enviroment, etc. The research facility also docuuments solar radiation in the negev in order to identify promising locations for new solar power stations. The speaker provided us with a lot of statistics that I have since forgotten with regard to how much energy different devices produce in comparison to the average energy used per household, etc. The Ben Gurion research facility also has the world's largest solar tracking dish, which is 400 sq.m. in area and capable of concentrating the sun's rays up to 10,000 times.

After a lunch break, we drove to Makhtesh Ramon for a hike. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Negev desert was covered by an ocean. At the bottom was sand, followed by a layer of limestone formed from the bones of sea creatures. Slowly, the sea started receding, leaving behind a hill which was slowly flattened by water and wind. Approximately five million years ago, during the earthquake known as the Syrian-African rift, rivers changed their courses and began carving out the inside of the crater known as mackhtesh ramon. Once the layer of limestone eroded, the sandstone, which was softer, fell away at a much faster rate than the surrounding limestone walls, which gradually grew taller. At the bottom of the crater, more ancient rock was exposed - the oldest exposed rock in the crater is 200 million years old. Our guide showed us fossils of ammonites, an extinct group of marine animals that once lived in the makhtesh. The hike we went on was short but quite challenging, and the view was terrific.

After the hike, we drove to the Bedouin tent where we spent the night. We listened as a performer played Bedouin instruments and told us stories, had a filling dinner of salads, rice, and potatoes, and sang songs and played games around a campfire. We slept in sleeping bags on the tent floor and rose early to go on another hike.

One group went to Har Shlomo for a more difficult hike, but we decided to go to the easier hike at Timna Valley Park. We watched a high-tech video chronicling the history of the national park, which is located about 30 km north of Eilat. The park includes what are believed to be the oldest copper mines in the world. Archaologists once belived that they were mined by King Solomon, but they are now knoen to have been worked by Egyptians and Mideans, as well as Romans, Nabateans, and Ummayids. The park is also noted for its natural sandstone formations, including "mushrooms" - protruding rocks in which the bottom area has been worn away by particles lifted by the wind, to create a mushroom-like appearance (hence the name). We were amused by large signs pointing to "mushroom and a half" and other silly names. The hike was relatively easy, the weather was mild, and we had a great time walking, chatting, and enjoying lunch by a man-made lake.


Our next stop was Kibbutz Yahel, a Reform Kibbutz in the Aravah Valley, where we stayed for the next several nights. The kibbutz was founded in 1976 by young people from the US, Israel and around the world who identified with progressive Judaism. They make decisions based on religious knowledge and communal ideals. In the harsh desert climate they have created profitable agricultural operations - they grow their own dates, pomelos, peppers, and other produce, and they also have a flourishing dairy farm. We drove to the pamelo fields where we heard stories about cooperation and friendships that the kibbutz has formed accross the Jordan-Israel border (which the pomelo field is directly next to) over the years. We picked our own pomelos and returned to the visitors area of the kibbutz (they have a desert tourism branch were we stayed in very pleasant suites separated by grassy fields).

The next day we took a tour of Kibbutz Lotan, a Reform Kibbutz that was founded in 1983 by 20 Israeli and 20 American youths. It espouses values of sustainable living and creative ecology, and sees itself as an educator and leader in areas such as permaculture, sustainable architecture, and recycling. We went on a tour of the facilities and made seed balls that we are meant to take with us and throw (Johnny-appleseed fashion) in places that we think could use a little more plant life. We also listened to a talk about Israel's need for progressive Jews to make aliyah - the talk provided heated discussion on the bus ride that followed.

At the Coral Reef in Eilat several people went snorkeling, though the water was a bit too cold for me and we sat on the beach, read, and chatted with friends. The Eilat coral reef is the northern part of the Red Sea's 4500 km of coral reefs, and the most northern one in the world.

We returned to Kibbutz Yahel in time for Shabbat, and after we heard a short talk about the role of the Israeli rabbinical student who serves Kibbutz Yahel, several HUC students led a beautiful, music-filled service. After dinner, one of the HUC teachers led a small group in singing zmirot (songs) with gusto. One song after the other, we went through most of our shared repetoire until the head of the dining hall told us that we had to leave the building and we milled around the picnic tables as we continued to sing. We ended the evening playing board games with friends.

On Shabbat morning we walked to a nachal (Hebrew)/wadi (Arabic) - a dry riverbed that contains rain once or twice a year during heavy rains. We held services under a tree in the middle of the desert, and during the time when there might usually be a sermon we were given time to wander off on our own and explore the surroundings. Following the service, some of us chose to go the long way home, climbing up into the hills before spotting the kibbutz and making our way back down.

In the afternoon, we took a tour of the kibbutz's dairy farm. Although Israel is known as the land of milk and honey, those terms originally referred to goat milk and date honey. Nevertheless, Israel is a leader in the modern dairy industry. They produce milk from a cow that is a cross between the German Holstein and a cow native to the Middle East, allowing the cow to withstand the high temperatures. Apparently the cows produce more milk because they are milked three times a day rather than twice, the food is brought to them so they don't waste energy finding it, they eat alfalfa (Arabic for the best food for cows) rather than grass, as well as because of the low altitude. Israeli companies have developed manufactured “high-tech” computer based management systems and dairy equipment, which are sold worldwide. These include pedometers that track the activity of the cows so that on the one day in the month when they are jittery the farmer knows that the cow is in heat, and on days when they are less active the farmer knows that they might be sick. We learned, actually, quite a lot about cows as one of the teachers in Daniel's program holds a masters in dairy farming (from Rutgers!) which he obtained for a previous career as a kibbutznik.

After a quick snack with some members of the kibbutz, we set off on the road for home. It was a terrific, relaxing, warm, and pleasant trip, and we can hardly believe that in a week from today we'll be flying away for another adventure - this time to Moscow!

PS: I posted pictures from the trip online, and you can see them here.

A Lovely Shabbat in the Midst of Hard Times

Earlier in the week I was feeling pretty lonely without Daniel here, but things are picking up, and people have been incredibly generous and nice in spending time with me. Last night after services at the synagogue around the corner from our apartment, I went to the home of an HUC couple for dinner and we chatted well into the night. This morning I went to services and the cantor invited me to his home for lunch, since he saw that I was alone. I had a lovely afternoon with the cantor and his wife, his parents, a lovely woman from the synagogue, and the cantor's bright and energetic toddler. The cantor made aliyah several years ago, and his family is all from the New York/ New Jersey area, so it was so warm and wonderful to hear the familiar accents. The cantor's wife is from Northern Virginia, and so I was able to chat about both of my homelands at one table! It was very nice.
The cantor asked me to sing in the synagogue choir for the commemoration of the birthday of the synagogue, so I'm going to be practicing for that. It's so nice that people are so eager to make me feel as though I belong. I really love this synagogue and in many ways it reminds me of CBI in Charlottesville - a small close knit community with a lot of things happening, people committed to their Judaism and to one another... If you're ever in Jerusalem, you should check out Har El. http://www.kbyonline.org/har-el/

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Over the course of this Shabbat I've finally been able to understand a little bit about what it means that this country is at war. A few days ago an air raid siren went off in Jerusalem by accident while I was in class at Hebrew University, and the teacher told us that she was sure there was nothing to worry about. Class went on as usual and I didn't think much of it - I assumed that it had really been a police siren and I had been mistaking it for something more serious. However, last night at services during her sermon the rabbi spoke about hearing the siren, and trying to get all of the preschoolers out of the building and into the nearby bomb shelter (I later overheard a conversation where the cantor said that they should build a bomb shelter in the basement of the shul because if there was an emergency there's no way that they could get all of the kids to safety on time as things are). She talked about how scared the kids were, and how hard it was to see them so scared, and spoke of how this was only a taste of what children are experiencing in the south - on both sides of the conflict. The ferverency of the prayers for peace this week were almost palpable and when we prayed for the safety of the soldiers in the army, at least five pairs of parents and grandparents mentioned their loved ones who are in Gaza by name before we recited the prayer. Until now I had not really sensed how the conflict was affecting people here, as it is not disrupting the daily flow of life. But what must it be for so many people to go on with their lives knowing that their children or grandchildren are fighting not far away? On the other hand, last night at dinner I was speaking to some friends about the conflict and we remarked on how few Israeli casualties have resulted from this conflict as compared to Paelstinian casualties... Some say that Israel was right to start the conflict, but that now it has gone too far. Some say it should never have happened in the first place. Some say that it has been very successful so far and that when civilians are being used as human shields, perhaps it is moral to kill them in order to execute the aims of the war. I don't know what to think... I just keep reading the news and hoping that a lasting peace will come, and soon.

A visit to the gan (preschool)

I went to visit the preschool at Har El today (Har El is a Reform Shul around the corner from our apartment) as I plan on volunteering there twice a week. Oh it was so great. I came at the beginning of circle time and stayed until its end. We did Havdalah with Cantor Evan (whose wife, incidentally, went to Lake Braddock Secondary School, like me, and was a member of Adat Reyim, the synagogue where I went to high school, and went to UVA), and all of the kids sang along. After the Cantor left, the teacher told a story about a man who prayed for rain - it's amazing how differently rain is valued here, it is a huge topic of conversation and Israelis are so joyful to see the rain when it comes and always say that it is not enough. There is a droubt in Israel, btw, which explains why Israelis look forward to rain while Americans see it is a pain in the neck. The student of the week stood up while the teacher read what her parents had written about her weekend, which had included eating popcorn, so the student passed some popcorn out to the class (there are about 20 or so 3 year olds in the class). Then, they all washed their hands, went to the bathroom, and pushed together in a throng to get out the door and go outside - a bit like grown up Israelis getting on to the bus. Lines are not really part of Israeli culture at all. It was pretty fun to experience preschool all in Hebrew, though it will be sort of embarrassing not to understand what's going on in the classroom as well as the preschool students do. The teacher is excited to have me though, and tells me that she believes that language is not essential to communicating with or playing with small children. I totally agree. I'm sure you'll be hearing much more about preschool in upcoming posts.

As Promised, Our Trip to Tel Aviv

Our trip to Tel Aviv began on Thursday afternoon when we packed up and made our way, via Egged bus, to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station - which is a madhouse on Thursday afternoons. After waiting on what seemed like an endless line, we finally got into the bus station, which is sort of part shopping mall and part bus station, bought tickets, and waited on line for our bus. We were pushed and shoved onto the bus in polite Israeli fashion, and sat down to enjoy the 45 minute ride, which went much faster than expected because of crazy Israeli driving.

We disembarked at the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station. Which is CRAZY. The Tel Aviv Central Bus Station is supposedly one of the biggest in the world. It contains floors and floors of shops, office, buildings, etc. and an entire Shuk. There were more shoe stores in the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station than I think I've ever seen in my whole life. Wikipedia tells me that it has more than 1000 shops and restaurants. We had a lot of trouble finding our way out - the building is seven stories tall and our exit was on the fourth floor, but we couldn't find any signs to indicate that it was there. We had to ask a few times, and eventually we found ourselves on the Tel Aviv streets.

We walked, backpacks on our backs like regular hostel-hoppers, to our hostel, Sub kuk Malega, where we dropped off our belongings before going out into the city for the evening. The hostel is located in a sort of less-nice area of Tel Aviv, but not far from the nicer areas and quite close to Jaffa. On the bottom floor it is an Indian restaurant. The front room has a few tables, and a buffet, and in the back patrons recline on sheet-covered couches while they eat their lentils and rice. The second floor is a guest-house lounge - one computer with comlementary internet, live music every night, couches, a pool table. The third floor is the guest house, featuring two bathrooms, a refrigerator/sink area, two private rooms, and a dorm room (where we stayed) full of bunk beds. The shower, we were surprised to find, was no more than a shower head with a drain underneath, in the bathroom - no stall or tub - and there was a squeegee-like mop to use to push the water toward the drain when you have finished your shower. Not exactly the Ritz, but it was a place to sleep. On the fourth floor, the roof, rows of couches were set up facing a large screen where they projected movies, and you could order food and drinks from the bar on the roof as well. It was a pretty hip alternative kind of place, and we were quite excited about it, despite the showering conditions.

We dropped off our bags and headed for the city, not going anywhere in particular, but hoping to buy a map and then decide. It took us a while to find the map but in the meantime we browsed through a series of stores with colorful skirts, a few bookstores, etc. We walked through Nachalat Binyamin Market, and had dinner at a fabulous hummus restaurant there - we shared hummos and salad, and it was definately excellent. After walking around a bit more, we made our way back to the hostel, where we watched James and the Giant Peach and The Nightmare Before Christmas on the roof, and then went to bed.

The next morning we were up bright and early - too early for the free breakfast offered by the hostel. We bought breakfast from a bakery on Allenby and then caught a cab to the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora. The museum presents the history of Jews from the Destruction of the Second Temple until today, in a thematic (non-chronological) fashion). It begins with sort of the basics of Jewish life - family and community, and describes community organizations as they existed in various communities, as well as the celebration of holidays and the life cycle. Next, it moves on to the idea of faith, and contains 18 models of synagogues around the world - we spent a lot of time there, gazing at synagoges of all shapes, sizes and colors. We learned about Jewish art, architecture, and literature around the world, and we went to the 'return to Zion' area which included a model set of two family trees - one sephardic and one ashkenazic - that demonstrated how some of these extended family members might have ended up in Israel. There was a memorial area to all of the destructive events of Judaism's past, and we spent a lot of time reading the "Scroll of Fire" which had 365 pages in memorium to tragedies of Jewish history. We also walked through a bit of ancient history, where Daniel tried to decipher some ancient Greek (it was all Greek to me). We didn't get to see all of the museum because we had to get going to our next adventure, but we did get to see nearly all of it, and what we did see we of course saw in great detail.

Our next stop was to Habima, the national theater of Israel, to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat in Hebrew. We asked the taxi driver to take us to Habima, and he dropped us off by the Habima Quarter, where Habima used to be located, but, as we learned, is no longer found. We asked a number of different people including those inside the office of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, but they couldn't help us. We were getting pretty nervous about the whole thing when Daniel called Habima (he'd conveniently written down the phone number before we left, just in case) and the person who picked up directed us on somewhat of a long walk - off of the small maps given to us by the hostel - to a new building where Habima now performs. We arrived just in time to pick up the tickets and sit down before the show began.

Habima was one of the first Hebrew language theater groups, founded in 1918 under the Moscow Art Theater. It left the USSR in 1926 and came to Tel Aviv for good in 1928. Since 1958 Habima has officially been considered the national theater of Israel.

The show we saw was excellent. It was so much fun because we knew all of the words in English already so it wasn't a problem that we didn't understand all of the Hebrew. In the Elvis scene the actors made fun of Americans quite a bit, mispronouncing Hebrew in American accents, etc. The production was colorful and energetic, the dancing and singing were fabulous, and we had terrific seats right near the front. We were very pleased with the whole event, and were only disappointed that they weren't selling CD's.

After the show, we walked to Beit Daniel - the center for progressive Judaism in Tel Aviv. We got there quite early, so we went to a restaurant and had some dinner beforehand. Beit Daniel is very large and the congregation was quite full with people of all ages in attendance. The cantor was for sure American and had a lovely voice, and sang familiar (American) tunes. A guitarist accompanied her, and the rabbi had a melodic, sympathetic, deep alto voice. The service on a whole was really quite lovely.

We walked back from Beit Daniel to the hostel by way of the beach - meaning that we basically walked the entire length of the city. The beach at night was a bustling place full of big fancy hotels and folks out and about enjoying the cool(er) weather (Tel Aviv is very humid and felt much hotter than Jerusalem). We arrived at our hostel quite late, and went to bed.

In the morning we decided to wait for the hostel's breakfast, which was to be served at 9:00. We sat at the tables in the front, I did a little homework, and we read together from my book of Israeli short stories. 9:30, and still no breakfast. Apparently the cook hadn't arrived yet - it seems that most people who stay in the hostel don't wake up as early as we do. At 10:00 we were served a delicious breakfast of fresh Israeli salad, cream cheese, laffa, cheese, apples, honey, and granola. Full and happy, we went on a walk to Jaffa.

We passed many many many closed stores, it being Shabbat, and were a bit discouraged. When we finally arrived at Jaffa, we realized it was definately worth it, as the view of the Tel Aviv beach was absolutely astounding. Jaffa is an ancient port city, inhabited by 7500 BCE, and is mentioned a number of times in the Bible, for instance it is the site where Jonah took a ship to Tarshish because he was fleeing G-d's command to go to Nineveh and tell the wicked people there to change their ways. King David and King Solomon conquered Jaffa and used it to import cedars for the construction of the First Temple. The Maccabees captured Jaffa from the Selucids, and the Romans burned it during the Jewish Revolt, killing thousands of inhabitants. It was in Christian hands until it was conquered by Arabs in 636 CE and served as the port of Ramla. Jaffa was captured by the Christians during the Crusades, and there was a lot of fighting there during that time. In 1268 it was captured by the Egyptian Mamluks, and in the 14th century the city was completely destroyed for fear of new Crusades. In 1799 Napolean captured and ransacked Jaffa. In the 19th century Jaffa was an industrial area known for its soap factories, and was also the center of book printing in Palestine. Jaffa also became a center for citrus growing. In the late-1800's and early 1900's the population swelled considerably and suburbs were built that in 1909 were reorganized into the city of Tel Aviv. In the early 1900's there were many Jewish residents in Jaffa, but in 1920 and 1921 Arab anti-Jewish violence caused many to resettle in Tel Aviv. In 1936 the Arab leadership of Palestine declared a general strike which paralyzed the economy of Jaffa, and as the uprising continued many Arabs hid in the narrow hiding places of Jaffa. As a consequence the British Royal Engineers blew up homes and buildings in Jaffa. During the Israeli War of Independance, Israeli forces took over the largely Arab city. Today, Jaffa is home to a heterogeneous population and the old city area of Jaffa has become a tourist attraction full of souvenir shops and art galleries.

Daniel and I gazed at the terrific view of Tel Aviv from Jaffa, and then, like the tourists that we are, we walked through art galleries, and gardens, and took lots of pictures. We particularly liked the Art Nova Gallery, which is full of soft art paintings - pictures made out of colored fabrics and fibres.

It was hot, and we were tired, so we made our way back to the hotel around noon, grabbed our belongings, and took a shared taxi home. We arrived in time for me to take my take-home mid-term before bed.

I had trouble putting pictures in this post, so they are in the next one. Enjoy!