Sunlight and tears

This week contained some of the most wonderful and most difficult moments of the past few years.

The  red mountains at the Red Sea 

It started with, after a year, my Yome falling in. I got an email from a community mate at the beginning of last week telling me that the weight of the snow had caused the structure to collapse. I am currently negotiating with the insurance company. This came on top of feelings I have been very homesick. Very homesick and suddenly without a home.

Every resort city needs a giant blue pyramid/IMAX

This morning when I woke up, there was a message from my mother asking where this week’s blog post was. I think she wanted to know because I just spent the weekend in Eilat.

Turtle conference at the aquarium

Eilat should be known as the Jewel of Israel. It is a small city at the northern tip of the Red Sea. It sits just across the water (and border) from Aqaba, Jordan's only port, and is reminiscent of many other coastal resort towns. Palm trees line the streets, the beaches seem to have more chairs than sand, and the resort hotels tower over everything. But the view is out of this world!

In Eilat, you can see four different countries. To the east is Jordan, to the south you can see Saudi Arabia, and to the west is Egypt.  Between it all is the Red Sea. The water of the sea is so clear and so blue, but it reflects the rich red of the mountains around it.

Looking up from the Underwater Observatory.

Two kilometers down the beach from the main city, is the Coral World Underwater Observatory Marine Park. It is a small aquarium with the most amazing feature I have ever been to. A sunken observation deck. From this vantage, I got to experience a coral reef from as close as possible without getting wet. This attraction puts the people in the "tank" and lets the fish swim free, in their - only slightly modified - natural habitat. It was an amazing experience, being inside the tank and watching the water and fish go on seemingly forever. I don’t know when the last time was that I felt so calm or at peace from just being in a place.

There were so many fish that I have never seen before. It was so amazing being in the middle of a coral reef. Everywhere there were shoals of fish, living coral, bright colors, and blue, blue water. The light filtered from the surface turning anything translucent into a rainbow. The jellyfish at the surface reflected the light. Shinning silver was everywhere. I really wish that I had gotten good photographs there, but either the quality of the glass or the quality of the light was not conducive to good pictures.

Sunset in Eilat

Moon over the beach

This is not a busy season in Eilat. The weather is not hot enough to go swimming and a little too windy for most sailing. I stayed at Motel Sunset. It was neither a motel nor had a good view of the sunset, but it was amazingly sweet. It was the kind of place that I wanted to visit in the summer, when it was so hot that all the visitors would sit in the courtyard late at night chatting and playing cards. In February, it was very quiet.

I spent my last night on the beach. I took pictures of the sunset and enjoyed the presence of the troublesome beach-cats while eating mediocre sushi. The cool night air reminded me of sailing with my father of a spring evening (I called him to tell him that). I was ready to go home.

The next morning, I woke up and saw that I had missed my alarm and my bus home.

Night in the open air lobby of the motel

I raced to get dressed and out the door, checking out in a hurry and running to the bus station. Not only had I missed my bus, but the next one was full. I would have to find another way back to Jerusalem in order to get to my apartment  in time to Skype into my grad school class.

After waking the program director here, and my mother in Maine, holding back tears in Eilat's central bus station, I ended up flying from Eilat to Ben Gurion airport (a very inexpensive flight), and I was back in the apartment by 2.   Waiting for me at the apartment was a letter from my Junior year RA from Marlboro. I read as I climbed the four flights of stairs. By the time I got into the apartment, I was crying. Every ounce of emotion from the past week, both good and bad, poured out of me. 

Two days later, as I edit this post, I am still feeling drained.

The view from the sea level observation deck at the Underwater Observatory

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Leading myself

A night time walk on Shabbat. Check out the almond tree
blooming on the left.

                It is easy, when you are far from home, to follow the crowd. Here in Israel, it is very easy for me to dress like the Orthodox Jews in my neighborhood – long skirt and long sleeves, it is easy for me to join the girls in my program in their activities, it is easy for me to act like a religious Jew, to follow my leaders. It is more difficult to go my own way, to lead myself, to be myself. But once you break free, leading yourself can be a much more productive use of time.

I love street art.

                The glamour of being in a foreign land has worn off. I am still enthralled by the streets of the Old City, but I am no longer desiring to wax poetic on them. As I sit in a sizable bakery in the Jewish Quarter people watching and writing, I find myself uninspired. I am still amazed whenever I walk past an orange tree, but I no longer wish to stop and comment upon it. This is the time in this adventure that I must look first to lead myself, and second to become inspired again.

There is so much interesting art in
this city if you know where to
look. I'm never sure if stuff like this
sanctioned by the municipality
or if it's really just street art. 

                This past weekend, I spent all of Saturday by myself and spent most of the day at the Israel Museum. It is an amazing place, I feel like I could spend an entire year there and never see everything. It is almost a city to itself. I started at the “Model of Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period” I may have spent two hours just there. It is a fascinating scale replica of the city which has been updated based on archeological finds, though according to the audio tour, there are still quite a few parts of the model that are not up to date. From there, I went to the “Shrine of the Book”; the beautiful chamber that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls. Of course I couldn't read any of what was on the parchment in front of me, but it was something special to be in front of those pages. I finished my day in the Archaeology Wing. I did not, however finish the Archaeology Wing in my day. This wing of the museum is a tour through the history of the land of Canaan/Israel from the first known burial site on earth to modern day. I could probably spend several days just in this wing, and I’m planning to try to go back before I leave.

This casting is apparently the first human burial ever found.
They know that it was an actual burial because of the deer
antler seen to the right and below his head.

                On Saturdays, public transportation in Jerusalem does not run until after Shabbat, this week, that meant around 7:00PM. The Museum closes at 5:00PM on Saturday. I found myself with a choice. I could walk, wait, or take a cab. My walk that night took me across the city to the German Colony where I had a very interesting solo dinner at “The Waffle Factory.” (Good pizza, the waffle was WAYYYYY too sweet).

A drinking horn from a dig site in Israel. I don't remember where.

                I think that this has been my best weekend so far. I was alone, I was doing my own thing, I was not dependent on anyone else and no one was dependent on me. I walked more in one day that I think I have ever done before. I took control of my life and it felt good. I feel like I have begun learning about myself in a whole new way. I am learning how to take control and lead myself, even if I don’t know where I’m going. Over the past month and a half, I have been learning about my history, now I am learning about me.

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Tu B'ishvat

[I would like to note to my readers that the image I am getting of Israel is based in an orthodox religious community in Jerusalem - in fact it is one of the most religious parts of this city.]

The Ottoman battlements of the ancient city of
Jerusalem.

This week, I had been planning to write about the little known Jewish holiday of Tu B’ishvat. It is my favorite single day holiday of the Jewish year, the New Year for Trees. The truth is, though, the more I think about the ways in which I spent Tu B’ishvat, this year the more I think about the ever present contradictions surrounding me here in Jerusalem.

One of the many speakers we have had through this program said that the reason the people of Israel seem so rude is that they treat every part of the country as home, from their living rooms to the middle of the street. This is an amazing statement in any country, but there is a certain truth to it here. People are free with their thoughts and ideas, they share their feelings in every venue, public and private. You can see it in the way Israelis drive and park as much as in the way they debate and discuss. There is still a line between public and private, but it is fine and fuzzy.

There really are olive trees
everywhere here.

When I was growing up, we went to synagogue for Tu B’ishvot. We talked about the spiritual values of different fruits, we followed a seder*, read poems, drank wine in a ritual manner, said prayers, and generally enjoyed a beautiful ritual about the meaning of spring**. It was a reminder that every part of creation is important, that we can not live without taking from others, even if those others are not human.

This year, I was very excited to experience Tu B’ishvat in Jerusalem. I felt that the spirit of Tu B’ishvat, the spirit of the land in which planting a tree is a mitzvah, a divine prayer, would shine forth showing me a beautiful display of all the ways in which a New Year for Trees could be celebrated! Apparently, I had no idea where to look. While there are many amazing things to do for Tu B’ishvat, it is not a very popular holiday in Israel. In fact, some of the people I talked to didn’t even know it existed! I did end up going to two seders, the first with the Jewish learning program, the second with Rabbis for Human Rights, a group working with underprivileged residents of one of the oldest communities in the New City of Jerusalem.

Yes this is someone's front yard. Right next to the sidewalk.

As I think about my experience with Tu B’ishvat in Jerusalem, I am awed by the struggles of environmentalism even in a setting where the need to care for the environment seems obvious. So many of the people living in this land believe that is was hand-picked for them, and they can’t even pick up the trash on their front lawns! They believe that they were given this land, and they are willing to risk the lives of their children to keep it, and that many of them have over 600 commandments that they try to follow every day, in order to strengthen their relationship with their creator, and some of them make decisions about whether it is good in the eyes of G-d for children to build snowmen on Shabbat. Yet, the first gift their creator gave them, the entirety of Earth, this they can not be bothered to maintain!

I give up, I'm going to spend the rest of my life
taking pictures of doors in the Old City. Isn't
this a nice door? Aren't monasteries pretty?

I expect this kind of behavior from the secular world. I don’t like it and it hurts me (see my earlier Ramble on the Environment), but it is not unexpected. But here, in the most holy city for, not one of the largest religions in the world, but three, I am ashamed. I am ashamed of all the ways in which humanity can destroy itself. I am ashamed of the people who live without thinking and thanking. I am ashamed of the waste generated by the people who see themselves as higher on the spiritual ladder than those around them.

I’ve seen the way Israelis treat the streets of Jerusalem, and it is nothing like the way they treat their living rooms. In many ways, it feels as though the living room is considered more public than the street, because on the street, it’s only between you and God, in your living room, everyone who sees it knows it was you.

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*Seder is the Hebrew word for “order”. It is the word used for several Jewish rituals including Passover. A seder generally follows a Haggadah

**February is defiantly the beginning of spring in Israel. It is a time when seeds are considering the possibility of life and preparing to spring forth.

Judea and Samaria

After the rains and flash floods, the desert
hills turn green.

While It is clear by the difference of language that I am far away from home, much of the time, Jerusalem feels like any city in the world. There is the hustle and bustle of city life. The sound of sirens and motors, the smells of bakeries and back alleys, the local diversity of people; there are differences, but on the whole, Jerusalem is a city like any other.

In several places during our hike, there were
ladders we had to climb. They were often quite
steep.

The real differences come when you leave the city behind and travel East towards Jordan. As soon as you cross over the Mount of Olives into the Judean Valley, you know that you are in a different world. The mountains of Jerusalem melt into the desert valley where the difference between the rainy season and the dry season becomes suddenly clear. This is a land with no room for grey, only black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. It is a land where you either know how to survive, or you die. It is not, in this time of globalization, an empty land; in fact it has never been an empty desert, but it is a land of dust and rock and history.

Looking back on the hike from above.

This small stretch of desert land has more history in it for more people than (probably) anywhere else on Earth. This is the land of Judea and Samaria. The biblical promised land. The first place the Hebrew people walked when they came out of Mitzriem. In the eyes of many Orthodox Jews, this is the land that God gave to the Jewish people.

According to Christian tradition, this is the site of Jesus'
baptism. It is a popular site for Christians to be re-baptized,
and a lovely place for anyone to eat some lunch and get within
a stone's throw of Jordan - seen on the other side of the river.

This is also the land where Jericho stood, and stands again. This is the land of Canaan and the land of the Bedouins. This is the place where Jesus lived and the place where David fought Goliath. This is where the Zealots ran to when they were driven from Jerusalem. This is a place where every, ever-changing hill and valley has a story  known by hundreds. This is a place where the bible ceases to be mythology and becomes pure history.

This week, we traveled to the Judean Desert twice. First we spent a day hiking in a Wadi; a canyon in the desert crated by the flash-floods of the rainy season. This particular hike is a part of the Israeli National Trail. We had a beautiful morning with lunch at the Jordan River. We ended the day at Wadi Prat which is a natural spring and oasis.

View to the South East from Mitspe Yeriho overlooking the Dead Sea.

The second time in the desert was at Mitspe Yeriho, an Orthodox settlement overlooking Jericho and the Dead Sea. We went for Shabbat, spending the night with families in the settlement and getting a tour of the area.

A camel in the distance...

Back in Jerusalem, I am thinking about what it means to be in a different place. My time here is still just beginning, with three months still to go. There is no real prospect of seeing any of the things that are familiar to me until then, so I have to embrace the different. I can either mourn what I do not have and what I am missing, counting down to birthdays, or holidays, or festivals; or I can do my best to find the things that make this place special. While I already know that I am having an unforgettable experience, I need to remember to truly enjoy it for all that it is.

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