Germany & Amsterdam

So last week I left Haifa, first to go to Tel Aviv to see Mindy, who was finishing her Birthright trip. We slept at Dara's apartment and went to the shook and did some random Tel Aviv shit before she and her brother left for Amsterdam and I left for Germany. Germany was so cool! Except we didn't spend that much time in actual Germany because Lisa and I decided to go to Amsterdam. I really wanted to see Berlin and get more of a feel for Germany, but I also REALLY wanted to go to Amsterdam, and Lisa has never been there, so I'm really glad we got to share that.

When I first got in at Frankfurt, I couldn't believe how quiet the airport was, which is when I realized that Israel is really loud. We ended up missing the last train from Frankfurt to Marburg (where her university is), which meant we had to pay a lot of money for a cab or stay in Frankfurt all night until the trains started again. Fortunately we're young and excitable so we decided to stay and after being scolded by some German police officers for being where we weren't supposed to be in the train station, we left and found a 24-hour bar. In the bar, there were a bunch of legit weirdos (it was the middle of the night) included two Americans who I ended up sitting between while they screamed to each other about Obama bowing for the King of Saudi Arabia, and something about business taxes. Sure makes you miss home, right? Also, there was this German 70-year-old whoasked one of Lisa's friends in German if I was Jewish when she told him I was visiting for Israel and then came over to me and produced a copy of "Goethe und die Juden" (or something... Goethe and the Jew) and told me I should read it. Which kind of freaked me out. Also, I don't exactly speak German, which he couldn'tunderstand.

So anyway, we spent the next day hanging around in Marburg (actually I slept most of the day) and then it was one of Lisa's friend's birthday parties so we went to that and then went out. And then at like 4 in the morning that night we bought some train tickets to Amsterdam and the next day was spent traveling to/arriving in Amsterdam. As soon as we got off the train in Amsterdam I had these really intense positive associations. It's such a beautiful city, everyone is there just to chill out and have fun and relax and everyone is in a good mood all the time and it's just such a relaxing environment. I really think everyone should go there at some point. We met up with Mindy and Ben and went to dinner with them/hung out with them a little. The next day we went to the Anne Frank House which was really well done and touching.

I had a lot of fun, but I'm sad we had to spend so much time traveling because it meant we didn't get to see as much of Amsterdam as we would have wanted. But it was definitely worth it and I was really glad I got to do it with Lisa.

I might post more later about actually being in Germany and what that meant for me as Jew when I go back and write about this whole experience after. This is more just a record of my travels.

My family is coming here on the 3rd and then we're touring Israel until the 15th, when I go home. This semester has gone by so incredibly fast. I really can't believe it's over.

On America and stuff

Jeeze, I haven't updated this jawn in forever. Mostly because I haven't really been doing anything since the Pesach break. I guess I've had some schoolwork, but I haven't been doing too much of that either. I know it's a cliche, but I literally have no idea where the time has gone. It feels like maybe two weeks ago that I took that sharoute ride from the airport to the University for the first time, and now the semester is almost over.

I think being here has been really good for me. I have a much better conception now than I had when I first got here of what is important to me. I've been around a lot of people who are radically different from people I would be with at Simon's Rock, which has been important to my development, I think. I forgot what it was like to be around with people who are so ideologically/intellectually/emotionally/etc. different from me. I think I have a much clearer idea now of who I am, which is probably also a cliche, but I don't care.

I've been thinking a lot lately about American identity and what being an American is. I've spent quite a bit of time abroad by now, all over the world, but before coming to Israel, I rarely thought about my conception of the United States and how having been born there has informed my decisions and my personality. There are things about living in the U.S. that I never appreciated until being away from it for so long. I know that America is a very flawed place in many ways, but I no longer feel like I have to hate living there or resent being an American in order to be cultured or worldly or interesting. This is truly a progression for me, as I am a person who has a lot of liberal guilt and thinks a lot about how much better the country would be if I ran it. But now I can see it for its benefits, too. Anyway, after having been here and been thinking about this for so long, I've decided I want to pursue a more active interest in changing things back home as best I can. So I got a canvassing job in DC for the summer--saving the country, one doorbell at a time. It's better than nothing.

I've also been interested in documenting cultural differences. I mean, in many ways, Israel is very Westernized, and, in many ways, it isn't at all. I am taking this class called Psychology of Conflict Resolution (I think I've discussed it on here before), which in some ways is a load of shit and, in other ways, is by far the most interesting class I've taken here. I see examples of what we learn about in class every day, embedded almost imperceptibly in the culture here. What I may have thought of as rude or un-American when I first got here, I now see as beautiful indicators of a different mindset that is incredibly complex and difficult to understand as a foreigner. Of course, the class leaves a lot of infuriatingly complex questions that are pretty much impossible to answer. For example, we spend a lot of time discussing the vast differences between individual and collective mindsets, but we never talk about the genesis of these divergent mindsets. I want to know where the difference really is--whether it's in the actual thoughts of the individuals, or whether it's just an affectation picked up by societal norms which dictate the way people should behave. It's hard to say, and the professor can't answer it.

Anyway, I'm going to Germany this week to visit Lisa, and, before that, I'll be spending time in Tel Aviv with Mindy. So things are really only looking up from here on out. I will update about Germany, I'm sure.

Jordan!

Dara--who is a friend from Simon's Rock, for those who might not know--and I left for Jordan the day after I got back from London. We took an afternoon bus down to Eilat from Tel Aviv, which is at the southernmost tip of Israel and borders Aqaba, in Jordan. The bus ride was fine, although it's a bit of schlep. We crossed the border, which was kind of expensive--it's 100 shekel to cross, which by Israeli standards is quite a bit of money. But we had no problems crossing and we met our cab driver on the other side of the border. Dara's cousin in law or something had the number of this guy, Erav, who apparently operates some kind of cab empire because he basically organized our entire trip and we never even actually met him! But we drove to Petra from Aqaba, which is about a two hour ride, and our driver was cool and pulled over to get us Bedouin coffee on the way and stuff. When we got to our hotel in Petra we checked in and went to get something to eat. We managed to really offend a Bedouin guy (cultural differences or something?) but we met two guys we recognized from our hotel at the restaurant who invited us to go with them to Wadi Rum the next day after touring Petra, which we thought was a good idea. Basically, the guy we offended was trying to get us to hire him as a tour guide (EVERYONE is trying to get you to buy something from them in Jordan... it's worse than China and Mexico) but it was really sketchy and kind of creepy and we felt a lot more comfortable with these guys (they are from Madrid, studying in Istanbul). So the Bedouin guy came over and was like, "Yeah, tourists trust each other and not us." Which I guess is kind of true.

Anyway, the next day, we got up early and went into Petra, which was also expensive... The dollar is weaker than the dinar, so changing over 50 USD and 10 pounds only got me like 35 dinar which was just enough to actually get me into Petra and seemed ridiculously steep to me. But Petra was really cool! For anyone who might not know about Petra (I don't remember learning about it in MCPS), it's a really well preserved ancient archeological site where Nabataeans lived and has tons of ruins, tombs, evidence of their water system, etc. It's fast becoming a HUGE tourist attraction (it was probably one of the most touristy places I've ever been, and I live in Washington, DC...). We did a tour there and looked at all of the sites and we saw the Bedouin guy we offended the night before so we had to avoid him (it's like Simon's Rock!). Basically, when you get there you go on a walking tour that takes you through this narrow valley out to the treasury, which is probably the best preserved site, and then through to where there are restaurants and stuff, and then you walk back. It's probably about 4 miles total and definitely worth doing if you have money/like to walk/don't mind all the tourism.

Then we met up with our friends from Madrid and headed to Wadi Rum with the same cab driver from the night before. I was having some money crises (my bank wouldn't let me withdraw any dinar for some reason and virtually nowhere lets you pay with a credit card), so Dara basically had to pay for me for most of the trip. By the time we got to Wadi Rum, we had switched drivers (this is common) and he invited us to have dinner at his house and then sleep in his camp in the desert, so we agreed. We went to house and played with his kids and his wife made us dinner (basically meatball stew, so I had rice in a pita, haha!). And then his nephew or cousin or something took literally into the middle of the desert where their family has a camp. He made us a fire and made us Bedouin tea and then we all went to sleep. We were supposed to get up for the sunrise but we managed to sleep through it... The Bedouins have a different concept of time than we do, I think. For example, we asked the guy whose house we ate at how old his children were, and he only knew that his son was seven. He said something about them not measuring age that way, and that people just kind of grow up. And then the next morning when we slept through the sunrise, the guy who was touring us asked Dara what time it was. I guess he didn't have a watch.

So we ate a nice Bedouin breakfast of pita and stuff, and then we went on an open jeep tour of Wadi Rum. We saw a LOT of cool stuff, and the desert does kind of look different than Eilat. We went to Lawrence of Arabia's house and we climbed a sand dune and we went to this other Bedouin camp where there were a ton of French and Austrian tourists and things and they were having such a good time... it was really cool. We met this older Austrian couple who were touring the desert by themselves in a jeep they can sleep in, and I decided that's what I want to do for my honeymoon; it seemed so romantic and also just kind of really awesome. So we sat and had tea with the Bedouins and one of the men dressed up one of our Spanish friends in traditional Bedouin clothing and then he took me and dressed me up too! It was kind of weird and awesome. I took some pictures but I am afraid of our government so I'm not going to post them on the internet in case I decide to run for President or something. But I can say that when he put the veil over my face so only my eyes were visible, I had this intense feeling of panic, like I couldn't speak or had nothing to say for the rest of my life or something. It's really hard to describe.

After that, we drove up to Aqaba and hung out on the beach and talked to a Jordanian family for a little bit. It was nice to be with the Spanish guys because everyone in Jordon LOVES Spain, apparently... everyone was so excited when they said where they were from. We had lunch with our friends (which was a lot cheaper than Petra; Petra was really pretty expensive but Aqaba was pretty cheap) and then said goodbye to them and caught the bus back to Eilat. We paid everyone for everything at the end, because I guess money is kind of different there, too. Basically, we paid Erav at the end, and he took care of getting all of our different drivers their money and stuff. And everyone knows everyone; everyone is related to the person you're looking for or can pay them for you or whatever, like everyone is one gigantic family.

Overall, the trip was amazing. I am so glad we did it because I doubt I am going to have the opportunity to go back to Jordan any time soon after I leave Israel and I really have been doing a lot of stuff here that I haven't ever done before and never thought I could do. The Middle East is incredible.

London!

I really want to blog about the two trips I took over spring break before I forget all of the details, so here goes! When I landed at Heathrow, I realized I had no idea when my dad would be getting in or what flight he was on or even what airline he was using, but he eventually found me and we took the train into the city and then the underground to our hotel. We stayed near London Tower Bridge in Southwark. So once we got settled we were both hungry and out of it so we went in search of a cafe or something and found an Arab sandwich shop (go figure) so I got some falafel, which was actually better than I was expecting, and then we got tea and went back to the hotel so I could do some thesis work that I needed to send in that day and he could do some work because it was Thursday and that's when his paper goes to bed. Then we asked our concierge where the best Indian restaurant was because I have really been craving Indian food! So we found one near the hotel that was really good.

The next day, we had to get up early because we had tickets for a tour to Salisbury, Stonehenge and Bath. Salisbury was cool but it was raining really, really hard when we go to the Cathedral so it was hard to walk around, and we got there just as they were getting ready for Good Friday services so we didn't get to spend too much time in the actual Cathedral. But we did get to see the Magna Carta which was pretty cool and we had some cauliflower soup in the cafeteria before heading to Stonehenge. At Stonehenge we all had one of those audio tour ear things which explained a lot about the site and why it is so cool and such a tourist attraction. Fortunately, by then it had stopped raining and I really enjoyed being there because it's definitely something I have always wanted to see. We didn't have enough time there, though... we had to leave after like 45 minutes (the tour guide said "It's just a pile of rocks, really."). Then we headed to Bath, which is an ancient city that has really well preserved Roman Baths and a museum about them so we took a tour there, too, and learned a lot about them and how they were made and what the Romans believed about the natural springs. And Bath is a pretty cool city in general.

Then we went home and we found a vegan Chinese restaurant in the West End because we were trying to get tickets to a play but ended up just going to Shutter Island. The restaurant was so good we actually ended up going there again the next night. It had all of these amazing fake meat dishes that you would find with real meat in a normal Chinese restaurant, so it was a lot of stuff I haven't eaten in a really long time (it was a buffet). And the first night there we met some Israeli guys because they were speaking Hebrew so I asked where they were from and we talked to them for a while. I thought it was really weird but in retrospect I guess it wasn't that weird because, being a vegan restaurant, it was also kosher. But I felt really cool for recognizing they were speaking Hebrew and talking to them. And Shutter Island was kind of bad but not that bad. I've been wanting to see it forever so I was kind of disappointed. Also, European people like to talk all throughout movies so I was getting kind of annoyed. Two Germans next to me literally talked for the entire movie and all I did was click my tongue at them (which I am getting really good at...).

Then the next day we walked literally all over London and bought shoes, and then we went to see Avenue Q on the West End which was funny and good. And on Sunday we had a tour on a double decker bus of literally all the tourist sites... Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the Marble Arch, all of that stuff, which you really have to see when you're in London. It was one of those tours where you get off and on the bus wherever you want all day. And we got off at Big Ben and took a river cruise back to our hotel across the river and saw some more sites that way. Then we went to another Indian restaurant, where we had a really interesting and insightful conversation about Israel and the conflict, and about World War II and the nature of England as a country and how the Holocaust happened and what will happen to Jerusalem and I really enjoyed getting my dad's perspective on these things because he is so smart and has so many opinions and he and I don't get to talk about it enough.

And then on Monday we went home... him to DC via Atlanta and me back to Tel Aviv via Austria. Austria Air royally fucked up my flight so after a ton of yelling and fighting with them on behalf of my dad and myself in a way that Israelis would be proud of, they offered me a 600 euro flight voucher which is like $775 and definitely enough to go visit Lisa in Germany this semester, so yay!!!

I really enjoyed my time in England and it was really good to be with my dad. I am so lucky to have such a close family and to have the parents I do, which I thought about a lot over the trip. And after I got home I went to Jordan which I will have to blog about another time because this is getting really long! So I will update again soon.

Hello from Ben Gurion!

I am blogging to you live from Ben Guiron Tel Aviv's DAN business lounge. In case anyone is wondering, it is about the same as all the other business lounges in the world (I'm flying Austrian Air), but there's MATZAH here! So cute. Like, seriously, seriously cute. Anyway, I'm flying into Vienna in about an hour, and then I have a few hours of a layover there before I fly to Heathrow and meet my dad!!! I am so excited! I just wish I wasn't sick. I have a horrible cold that I started coming down with at seder. I went to seder in the north with Dara and her sister and her sister's friend, at Dara's family friends' house. It was really nice, although it kind of made me miss home. I think I may have missed a Pesach last year because it didn't coincide with the Simon's Rock April break, but in general I try to be home for Passover. It's kind of weird not to be, even though I am in the Holy Land and all. I mean, it's, like, the Jewish dream... Next year in Jerusalem and all that. Beseder.

Things at campus have been very quiet. Most people didn't go to seder in the north, so the campus was relatively empty yesterday and Monday, but I was sick so I was sleeping a lot and doing nothing, anyway. When I come back from London next week, Dara and I are planning a trip to Petra, which I am also really excited about. Then classes start again on the eleventh or something, and there's really not too much left after that. This semester is going by so much faster than a Simon's Rock semester does. Maybe that's a good thing. Meanwhile, I am assembling a thesis committee (looks like Mark and Becky, for anyone interested in my Simon's Rock life) and writing a proposal. Actually, I haven't started that proposal yet. It's kind of due tomorrow (today). I guess I have something to do on the plane...

It's occurring to me right now, after I've checked my bags, that I probably should not be wearing flip flops. I'm basically going from summer to hella winter (the weather in London is supposed to be nasty for the next week). Oh well...

Time for an academic post

I'm taking this class called the Psychology of Conflict Resolution, which I kind of took last semester with Anne, only with Anne it was an actual psych class, and this one isn't, really. But it's still interesting, in a different way. The professor is Israeli, and he is really fixated on the differences between collective and individualist societies. Which at first I found kind of annoying, but I'm starting to understand more what he means after having been here for a while. So he assigned each of us our own book to examine for examples of divergent ways of thinking from what we're used to. The book I got is called Negotiating for Peace in the Middle East, by Ismail Fahmy, who was the Egyptian foreign minister and deputy prime minister before Sadat signed the peace treaty without his knowledge. I'm only like 100 pages in, but there are already a lot of interesting examples of cultural differences from the western way of thought. I read part of the book aloud in class yesterday [the Americans and Egyptians are at a dinner in a hotel. Kissinger and his people have been in Egypt for a little while, trying to "manipulate" (if you believe Fahmy's viewpoint) acceptable solutions out of Sadat]:

"Kissinger relayed to the participants the terms of the agreement he had reached with Sadat on military issues. President Sadat had suddenly agreed that the Egyptian military presence on the east side of the Canal would be limited to 7,000 men and 30 tanks. By so doing, he had astonished everybody, including Kissinger and the Israelis. In fact, Kissinger had argued all along that Sadat could not possibly settle for less than 250 tanks. General Gamasy, who had not been consulted, was very upset, feeling that he and the Egyptian army had been humiliated. His eyes filled with tears, he rose quickly from his seat, retiring to a far corner of the hall and started to weep. Everybody watched General Gamasy uneasily. The Egyptian delegation was affected and emotionally moved, sharing Gamay's humiliation. From the look on the faces of the American delegation, one could easily see they too were upset by the injustice inflicted upon Egypt. But Kissinger, typically only thinking in personal terms, turned pale and kept on muttering, 'What did I say wrong?' When General Gamasy returned to the table, silent and downcast, Kissinger started showering him with extravagant praise...General Gamasy, who is a very modest man, listened in silence. The dishonour was not to be expunged by a few words of personal praise. Sadat had singlehandedly given awy all that the Egyptian army had won with great effort and sacrifice. Without consulting anybody, he had caved in to the Israeli request that Egyptian military presence be reduced to nothing...According to Kissinger Sadat was apparently quite taken aback by the attitude of his senior officers and was to comment: 'My army! First I had trouble convincing them to go to war. Now I have trouble convincing them to make peace.'"

That's kind of long, but if anyone read it, it's very interesting. First of all, there is the fact that Sadat supposedly made this choice without consulting anyone (Fahmy is highly critical of Sadat throughout the entirety of what I've read so far). But there are more subtle things. General Gamasy weeping in a banquet in front of everyone is pretty shocking, but it's also interesting that Kissinger's praise did little to rectify the bad news he received. Our professor says that personal praise does not have much of a place in collective societies and is more a source of embarrassment than anything else. And then there is the disparaging comment that Kissinger was essentially only capable of seeing things through his lens of American self-centeredness, which Fahmy refers to as "personal terms." This is, perhaps, the largest distinction our professor wants us to draw between the two divergent ways of thought.

We haven't done too much actual analysis of what these different examples indicate about the larger social structure, but I'm definitely getting a lot better at spotting them. I was talking to one of my friends last night about the class, who is from Mexico, and he commented on the fact that the professor has us move all of the desks to the side of the room and sit together in a circle of chairs in the center, which I always found kind of annoying, but which is not that weird coming from a place of Simon's Rock, where we like to pretend (?) we are best friends with our professor and have classes outside on nice days sitting on the grass, and in some ways we are kind of like a big, if not happy, family. But my friend commented that it's funny how difficult most of the Americans in the class seem to find his method of teaching and some of his odd habits, and that in Mexico, sitting in a close-knit circle is not so strange a request at all. I guess Simon's Rock really is unique, but that's another blog post for another time.

Things are going well. Pesach break starts today, so the school is going to shut down for a few weeks soon. I leave for London on the first! And then I'm going to Petra with Dara when I get back.

One month

It's kind of hard to update this blog regularly because everything kind of melts together here and I can't remember what I've documented and what I haven't. But it's March 17 today, a month after my arrival in Tel Aviv, so it's probably time for an update.

Two weekends ago, we went to Jerusalem, which I thought was pretty incredible. We went to David's tomb, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and, of course, the Wall. Having never been to Jerusalem before, I was relatively mesmerized by the (perhaps transient or unfounded) holiness of the city. And I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that people actually live there, and walk those streets every day. I'm looking forward to going back to see more with my family when they come in June.

And last weekend we hiked the Negev and ended at the beach in Eilat on the third. We camped out for one night in the middle of the desert which was pretty cool, and I got some really awesome photographs. Of course, I accidentally ate a little meat on Friday night and spent most of Saturday and all of Sunday violently ill, which kind of ruined my trip, but I still appreciated it in some ways. For one thing, I have literally never seen a desert before. I mean, I've flown over some desert states but we never went to the Grand Canyon or anything like that while I was growing up. So the thought that I was experiencing something I've never seen before wasn't lost on me, despite the vomit.

And other than that, I've been getting into a groove here. I feel pretty good. I am mostly enjoying my classes, although I do miss the academic and intellectual companionship Simon's Rock offers. I like most of my professors and I am really enjoying Hebrew. Today, I went to the mall with my friend Jaime and we asked some ladies on the bus how to get there in Hebrew. Even though it was a really basic conversation and they eventually switched to English (not to mention that about four other Israeli women we weren't talking to jumped in to give their own advice), I was really proud of myself for addressing them in Hebrew. Of course, once they answer in Hebrew, it gets a little more complicated...

This weekend I'm going to Tel Aviv to visit Dara and I am really excited because I still haven't been there! So I will update more after Tel Aviv. Then, after next week of classes, Pesach break starts. I'm going to meet my dad in London for a few days, which I am REALLY excited for and hoping he will bring three months' worth of Mexican food with him) and then I'm hoping to go to Egypt or Greece or something for the rest of the break.

I want to say more, but something about the quality of life here defies extensive description. Maybe it will be easier in retrospect, but recording it while actually living it seems somehow contradictory to something I can't explain. Beseder.