Eema v'Savtah came to visit!

My mom and grandmother came to visit me here in Haifa. As mentioned before their tourguide sucks. But there have been good moments when they've been with me. On Thursday night we went and had dinner in the German Colony in Haifa and saw the Baha'i gardens all lit up. As mentioned before, we went on a tour of the Zichron Ya'akove winery yesterday and then had some lunch afterwards without the tour guide.

Today, the came for lunch. I made a bunch of food and bought some Middle Eastern delicacies and we had a very pleasant lunch. It played backgammon with my mom several times and won all but one game. I also made my grandmother actual coffee. She normally drinks a lot of coffee, but in Israel they don't have drip coffee. All that's here is instant or espresso. So I made her coffee with my French press and she loved it. Unfortunately while my mom was doing the dishes, she broke it. So no I have to settle for instant until I leave. Oh well, I'm only here for 10 more days.
Tomorrow, we're going to Daliyat al-Karmel to do some shopping. Tuvia can wait in the car if he doesn't like it or the people.

The Tourguide from Hell

My mom and grandmother came to visit me and they hired a private guide to take them around while I'm in class. Big mistake. This guy is a schmuck. Seriously. He got us lost yesterday in the hills around the university thinking that it would be short cut. Wrong. We were lost for nearly an hour trying to find the highway so we could go to the winery in Zichron Ya'akov.

Before that though, he had been ruining the trip for my mom and grandmother by taking them to places that they had no interest in, such as the Palmach museum in Tel Aviv. The last straw was when he took them to the Illegal Immigrants camp in Atlit, which is neither interesting or handicapped accessible (my grandmother uses a walker). Everything this guy wanted to take them to had some sort of relation to Israel's wars. And his political commentaries are not just right wing, but fanatical right wing. He's levied serious charges against the U.S. government and said that the State Department is full of anti-Semites. He's seriously a racist. And I mean it. He says the word "Arab" like it's a deragatory word and views Ethiopians as non being Jewish or as Jews who should not marry European Jews.

The guy is also a West Bank settler. He lives in Samaria. I don't remember where, but yesterday he raced back to Haifa from the winery so that he could make it home in time for candle lighting. I wonder what he will have to say tomorrow when we go to Daliyat al-Karmel.

Anyways, if you are looking for a private guide for Israel, DO NOT hire a man named Tuvia Grossman. His website is tuviatours.com. DO NOT HIRE HIM!

Roaches

We've been finding roaches in our apartment and have been disposing of them accordingly. (We throw them out the window with a broom)

Sorry for not posting in a while...

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. There hasn't really been anything exciting in the last 2 weeks or so since my Jerusalem trip. I've been here in Haifa, going to class, studying, and not doing much else.

The university is really boring on the weekends. Most of the Israeli students go home and the non-Israelis are left with an open campus. I spent last weekend working on my project for Intro to Rabbinic literature. I did a presentation about the rabbinic stance on war. It was really tough because not much has been written about it because during the time when the laws were written, the Jewish people were unable to go to war because of the exile. Therefore, there is no black and white legal text about war. Everything is extrapolated from the bible and strung together to create standards of conduct and what constitutes a correct war. It was a tough project and in hindsight I should have chosen another topic.

For some reason, Hebrew has gotten drastically better. I think it's because my teacher realized that I am the only one who does their homework every night. Terrorism and Responses is still the same course. We keep going off on bizarre tangents and it's really impacting what the course is supposed to teach. I'm disappointed by it. And so are other people. Arab-Israeli Relations remains a waste. The teacher gave out our final assignment a few days ago. It's due February 3, one month after courses end. That means I have to work on it back in Pittsburgh. I am not happy about it at all. Thankfully we have a program review sheet to tell the university everything that is wrong with their program. Other people, including myself are going to write letters as well.

The teacher strike still has not been resolved. The last day to resolve it is January 13. My Israeli roommates are not happy that their education lies in limbo like this.

These last few weeks have been really uneventful.

Haircut, Shabbat, and Jerusalem

I had a great weekend that started on Thursday night.

Thursday Night:
Roommate and I made spaghetti and home made meatballs and sauce. They were delicious. And spicy.

Friday:
My friend gave me a haircut. You can see the before and after pictures.
After my haircut, I went to Shabbat dinner at a different synagogue in Haifa. The family I went with this week was wonderful. They were very pleasant and funny. They were also Americans. But most importantly, they were not trying to convince me of any political ideology or religious beliefs. They were just great, friendly, people. With delicious food. When my friends and I got back from Shabbat we decided that we would go to Jerusalem Saturday night. More on that later. I ended up going to sleep early so that I could get up early the next day so that I could go with my friend to synagogue because his grandmother passed away a few days before and he didn't want to go alone. We got caught in the rain on the way back, and it warped my kippah.

Saturday:
Services in the morning. The services were quick and both my friend and I received an aliyah and a blessing from a 90 year old guy. It was one of the best services I've been to ever. No stop and go. No annoying people running around. Nobody was there who didn't want to be there. Plus, the synagogue had a really friendly atmosphere. After services we went to lunch at the home of the guy who owns the largest electronic business in the Middle East. His house was huge and full of nice things. Easily over a million dollars. The food was delicious. It was all made by his mother. His wife died a few years ago and he decided that in her memory he would rededicate the synagogue in the neighborhood to her and keep it running as a community oriented institution. He and his 3 sons were definitely closer because of the tragedy. It's a shame that that's what it took for them to be close. Anyways, the food was delicious. There were homemade tuna, egg, and pepper salads as appetizers and the main course was a 6 liter slow cooker filled with cholent. Desert was homemade cake and chocolate mouse along with a glass of cognac. $150 cognac. It was a great lunch.

I got an interesting insight into the Israeli impression of America and George W. Bush at Saturdays lunch. In America, Bush is considered a failure at best and a criminal at worst. In Israel, they think he's the best friend they could have, or at least the Israelis who I talked to Saturday did. They spent time trying to convince me that Presidents Carter and George H.W. Bush were vehemently anti-Israel and quite possibly closet anti-Semites. I wanted to ask if the Egypt-Israel treaty or the Gulf War and Iran-Contra meant anything. Or about Nixon being a full blown anti-Semite (documented in the Oval Office Tapes). I guess that's forgivable in their eyes because of how much military aid he gave. They also did the usual anti-Arab/Muslim fear mongering that comes with their political persuasions. I'm not quite sure why or how they managed to work it in, but it was there. I sipped my tea politely. Politics is a dirty business and quite possibly the easiest way to wreck any social gathering. My friend and I just nodded our heads and smiled.

After lunch, I came back from lunch, did laundry, and packed for Jerusalem. It was hard for me to move because lunch was so filling. But I managed. We got on a bus for Jerusalem around 6, after hanging out in the train station and missing the first bus because it filled up. We got to Jerusalem around 8, took a cab to our hotel, the Beit Shmuel guest house, and then from there we walked around Ben Yehuda street, which is the nice shopping area of Jerusalem. There were all sorts of vendors and street performers out. Even the Hassidic Messiah gang was there, who I've mentioned before, with their LA Kings throwback flags. Anyways, Jerusalem is a really pretty city at night. We ended up eating dinner at this sketchy Russian bar which turned out to be pretty terrible. Thankfully, I only had a beer there. For some reason I could not trust the food and instead got myself a shwarma later on in the night.
After the amazingly sketchy dinner, we went to the main bar area of Jerusalem. However, the entire place was full of Birthright kids. Seriously. Now I know how people felt when we were there 2 years ago. Birthright kids are obnoxious, loud, smoky, and rude. They think they're the kings of the world. Just like we did. We went to a bar with reasonably priced beer, good music and free hookah. Unfortunately, it was packed and we couldn't move around because of all the Birthright kids thinking they were so cool because they could legally drink for the first time in their lives and because they were getting free hookahs at their table. I remember when I was one of them. But I'm over that. That was when I was young and stupid. After that bar, we went to this really relaxed coffee house. We ordered so drinks their and relaxed, chatting with the baristas. They gave us free drinks and food. They were great guys.

We got back to our hotel around 3:30. I went to bed as soon as we got there. My friends stayed up until really late.

Today (Sunday):
We woke up around 9 and went to breakfast at the hotel. It was a typical Israeli breakfast with bread, salads, and instant coffee. The grapefruits were awesome. Afterwards, we headed over to the Old City and spent all morning wandering through the Arab and Jewish quarters. I got myself a $5 Led Zeppelin t-shirt and a box of Jordanian hookah tobacco, which is way better than the standard Egyptian tobacco that they have here. It's honey flavored. And delicious. While we were wandering around, shop keepers kept treating us like Birthright people by telling us higher prices. That's where our Hebrew classes came in. We were able to haggle down to some good deals. There was an Arab guy trying to sell me a Chinese hookah. He first said $200 and that it was the best there was. I said I had no dollars, only shekels, and that I would give him only 200 shekels. He said ok. Then I said that I really didn't want it. He wouldn't take no for an answer. I made a final low ball offer of 100 shekels. He wouldn't take it. I started walking away, he chased after me, I told him I wasn't buying it and that I was going to go to the legit place in Haifa. So Hillary, if you're reading this, I'm getting your hookah in Haifa, from the same guy I got mine from. He gives good prices and lots of free stuff.
Anyways, we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It's beautiful. That's all I can say about it. It's worth a gander, so go see it. You may recall that the last time I was in Jerusalem, I did not go in because one of the people with us was Orthodox and I felt bad that he would have been outside for an hour in a half. Anyways, the 30 minute self guided wandering about of the Church was just fine. We actually asked a Greek Orthodox Monk to tell us some info about the Church. He was more than happy and was very friendly to us. It was obvious that we were Jews walking around, mostly because when I go to Jerusalem I wear a kippah because you never know where you're going to need a head covering. And baseball hats don't cut it in a lot of places. Nevertheless, he was still friendly and told us all about the architecture and the story behind the site. There was a chapel in the Church where some old ladies were singing very beautiful songs. I'm not sure what they were, but they sounded good. After the Church, we went back out and wandered around the shuk some more.
We got really lost in the shuk area. We ended up in the really Arab area, where people shop for the food next to mosques in claustrophobic ally ways. It was crazy. People were pushing and shoving and shouting things. We saw a lot of neat stuff though. There was a guy that made a spice pyramid and put a Dome of the Rock statue on top of it. It was neat. Somehow, we manage to make it out from the Arab quarter and went to the shopping center right outside of the Old City walls and ate at Aroma coffee house for lunch. Aroma is essentially Israel's Starbucks, except they have good food. And they aren't evil. They're actually quite pleasant. It was my first time going. I had an Iraqi sandwich with eggplant, onions, hard boiled egg, and tahini.
During lunch, we decided that we would split up and go different places. My friends decided to go to some museum over in East Jerusalem. I decided that I wanted to go to the Western Wall and go hang out there for a bit. My trip to the wall was an adventure. I got lost for bit in the Jewish Quarter of the city. It wasn't bad though, people were really helpful. Eventually, I found the Wall. I went down, did the usual prayer thing and left a note wedged in between the stones. When I finished up there, I made my way to the bus and started the journey back to Haifa by myself.

While on the bus, I had an interesting discussion with an Evangelical Christian from Kansas. I asked him for directions earlier, unaware that he was going to try and proselytize to me. (Proselytizing is illegal in Israel) I did not see that coming. He seemed like just a guy out with his daughter on a Sunday. He even looked a little Jewish. He kept asking me all these questions about my beliefs about God and why I came to Israel and Jerusalem and he kept telling me about his opinions about how Islam and Christianity were going to fight it out in the next few years. I was getting pretty uncomfortable. I didn't realize that asking which bus went where would turn into a conversation like that, but it did. The end came when he kept hassling me to move to Jerusalem to keep ensure a Jewish majority in the city because of the whole controversy over dividing/sharing the city. There's signs up all over Jerusalem celebrating the victory in 1967 that reunited the city. I told him I'd do that when he packed up and moved to a swing state to make sure it stayed Republican. I moved a few rows back and sat next to an Orthodox guy who heard my conversation. He said I handled myself well.
I got the central bus station, boarded a bus for Haifa, and arrived back around 7. All in all, this was a great weekend and I'm glad I got to explore Jerusalem on my own.

Long Update

Please pardon me for not writing very often. Here's what you've missed:

Thursday night:
Ska music swap with my roommate. We traded almost 4 data cds worth of music. It was a good swap.

Friday:
I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I had Shabbat dinner on campus with the rest of the international school. There's usually Israelis here, but they all went home because of the potential for a strike on Monday.

Saturday:
Not much during the day. I hung out and watched "Wet Hot American Summer" with some friends. It's a hilarious movie about Jew Camp. I highly recommend it. Saturday night my friends and I went to a pub to celebrate a birthday. It was a lot of fun. There was a band covering good rock songs and everyone was in a good mood.
Sunday:
My friend and I went to the Druze village of Daliyat al-Carmel. It's a short ride away from Haifa and is a neat place to visit. There's lots of touristy type shops where everything is "Druze work" and "made by my cousin". You always get a "special price" because "you're a good boy" and will "bring friends from the university" to visit the village. It was a good time. I finished my Chanukah shopping and so now I have gifts for people.
Monday:
The Israeli students went on strike in support of the teachers. They closed down the campus and burned tires in the parking lot to keep people from getting in. Our classes are "unaffected", they're just being held in the dorm's social hall and synagogue. My class on Monday afternoon was canceled because the teacher couldn't make it to Haifa because his wife got injured or something, so my friends and I made some shakshuka for lunch and played backgammon in the afternoon. I got the review sheet for my Hebrew exam on Monday. The test had more vocabulary words and grammar subjects on it than our midterm did. After tutoring on Monday night, I spent almost 3 hours making flashcards for the test. Tutoring was alright. I've been teaching young kids the alphabet. I don't know if it's sinking in, but at least I'm doing something more than getting spanked at checkers.
Tuesday:
Went to Hebrew in the morning and started to stress more and more about my exam today. Have I mentioned my teacher is a b****? If not, my teacher is a b****. In the afternoon I had my Terrorism and Responses class. We watched the movie "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West". The footage in the movie is chilling, but the argument and the logic that it uses are inaccurate. The glaring argument of the movie is that radical Islamic terror is an offshoot of Nazism. It's an interesting idea and could probably be proven, but the movie's proof lies in Nazi propaganda being redrawn in Arabic and the similar structures between terrorist youth programs and the Hitler youth. I can't say that I buy the argument that radical Islam derives itself from Nazism, however the main thing that bugged me about the movie was that it essentially re hatches Cold War propaganda framing Islamic terrorists as being people who attack America because of its freedoms and liberties (both are ambiguous terms by the way). It did a very good job of framing the conflict of us vs. them and stopped short of overtly advocating suspicion towards Arabs and Muslims living in the West. The film also implores mainstream Muslims to essentially apologize for the acts of the radicals and creates this expectation that mainstream Muslims are obligated to speak out. It recognizes that many are too scared to do so because it's very dangerous to do so, but nevertheless the attitude is there.

Honestly, I am very disappointed about this course. If you were to ask me what I know about non-Palestinian terrorist groups, I wouldn't be able to tell you much. And if you asked me what I could tell you about how governments dealt with those groups, I also wouldn't be able to tell you much. I understand that we are in the neighborhood, but that doesn't mean that there aren't examples and parallels that can be drawn from other groups. It's irresponsible of the professor to condense over 100 years of Irish and IRA history into 20 minutes, presented by students. The course is called Terrorism and Responses, not "A History of Palestinian Terrorism".

After class, I went back and ended Chanukah and my roommate and I made cous cous for dinner. Later on, we smoked some hookah and kicked it with out Israeli roommates. Then it was on to studying.
Today:
Hebrew test. If I get a C, I'll consider myself lucky. I spent 3 hours learning words and grammar last night and got up early this morning to keep studying. Most of the stuff on the review sheet wasn't even on the test. For some strange reason, our test was today, while the rest of the Hebrew classes have there tests tomorrow. One of the classes had there test postponed until they get a classroom. And they got to VOTE on the decision. I heard that my teacher gives tests on Wednesdays because she doesn't want to grade them on Shabbat. It's a legit concern, but she is done teaching, especially now, at 12pm on Thursdays. That leaves Thursday afternoon, Thursday night, and Friday morning to grade tests. That also leaves all day Sunday to grade them and even Monday. It's not like she reviews the tests once she gives them back. That woman makes absolutely no sense to me and has sucked all of the fun out of learning Hebrew.

Chanukah

Monday night we had a pre-Chanukah party with the Ethiopian children that we tutor. My kid gave me some gelt, I gave him more gelt. It was a sold investment on his part. I let him listen to my ipod while we were there. He wanted hip hop. He kept asking for 50 Cent and some other people who I didn't know. Instead, he got Dr. Dre and N.W.A. Thank God he doesn't understand English. His parents would kill me if they knew the vulgarity. They also don't speak English. I realized Monday that I was getting sick.


Tuesday was the first night of Chanukah. It was fun. The international school had a Chanukah party on campus. I played some dreidel, a little shesh besh, ate some sufganyot...the usual Chanukah stuff. Afterwards my friends and I made latkes in my room. Not much else to report. I realized that I was actually sick Tuesday night and decided that I was not going to go to class on Wednesday. Happy Chanukah to me!


I light Chanukah candles in my room. One of my Israeli roommates said it was cute. The guy who I live with was amazed that I knew the prayers and was actually lighting candles. And yes, I did make my menorah out of bottle caps.

We had a second night Chanukah/Birthday party last night. It was fun. We had stir fry for dinner and afterwards introduced Israelis to the art of shotgunning beers. They were really confused. My friends and I also noticed that the cans here are a lot thicker than American cans. Therefore, you can't just stab your key into it. You have to exert effort. Lots of effort. Possibly more effort that it's worth. But nevertheless we did it.
Tonight is the 3rd night. It's been pretty uneventful. I lit candles and made some dinner. I had the most boring class ever this afternoon. My teacher did not stand throughout the entire class. It was so boring and the respect that I had for him went out the window because he sat for 3 hours and did absolutely nothing. It was a serious waste of my time and his. I also went grocery shopping today and had a delicious schwarma. That's about it. Maybe it's the holiday spirit, but for some reason my Hebrew teacher has stopped being a b**** to me. I'm sure everything will be back to normal on Monday.

Speaking of Monday, the Israeli students are striking and blocking entrance to the University. Because of this, the International school is moving classes to the dormitories. They NEED to solve this strike. They're almost at the halfway point for their semester and chances are they're going to have to cancel the semester. My friends and I were talking about this last night. If they cancel our classes, which they said they wouldn't, we're going to demand refunds. We came to get credit. And if they cancel classes, we can't get credit. What a lovely situation.

Blog Feedback

So apparently my blog is boring. And dry. And other things. Leave some feedback if you want something changed. Also, let me know who you are. Sometimes I wonder if people read this site or not.

Update cont./ Tel Aviv/ Haifa Mayhem

Thursday:
I did my oral presentation in Hebrew. We were given 5 minutes to speak about anything. I spoke about ice hockey. I needed to get some words from my teacher for the project. Apparently there are no words in Hebrew for puck, hockey stick, or ice skating. When I said puck to my teacher, she thought I was saying something else. I really would like to say the other thing to her. She deserves it. She makes patronizing comments to me and makes me feel stupid.

Arab-Israeli Relations is the most boring class I have ever taken. We turned in our midterm on Thursday. It was 4 questions contrasting the 1922 and 1939 British White papers. People write doctoral dissertations on this. We wrote 25 sentences. What a waste. People were literally falling asleep in class. Towards the end of the lecture, somehow the teacher started talking about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and couldn't remember what his name was before he converted to Islam. I shouted out "Lou Alcindor" because I was really bored. I was right. People laughed and were woken up. The teacher said I would not get extra credit. I know too much useless information. But I guess in this case it was useful.

After class, my friends and I went to a pub for happy hour. It was happy.

Friday:
My friends and I woke up early to go to Tel Aviv instead of going on the trip this weekend to Masada and the Dead Sea. We took the train there and for some reason security was tight. They asked for our passports at the train station. All we had were our driver's license. They asked me questions about mine and butchered all of the Spanish/English words on my license. They let us take the train, but they told me to get a new license because I don't look like I did when I was 16. Mostly because I don't have a beard anymore.

When we got to Tel Aviv, we took a bus to Dizengof center and to the art market. Dizengof center is huge. There is a verb in Hebrew that means to waste time there. We got there just as it was opening, so we didn't do any shopping.
After Dizengof center we went to get some lunch. I made a major faux pas at the restaurant by ordering a "coos mayim" in stead of a "cos mayim". I'm not going to explain what it means because there could be children reading this. Let' just say what I ordered was not a cup of water.

After lunch we went to the art market. I got Chanukah gifts there. There was a good ska band playing at the market and a giant tree walking around and juggling. It was a pretty cool market. Afterwards, we went to the shuk and walked around for a while, seeing all of the counterfeit merchandise and smelling the dead fish. It was lovely. Afterwards, we took a sherut to the train station to head back to Haifa. On the way to the station, the driver stopped in the middle of the road and hopped out to help a blind guy cross the street.

We got back to Haifa in the afternoon and missed the last bus from the train station to the university so we had to take a cab. In the cab, I posed an interesting would you rather question to one of my friends who I was covering for the fare: Would you rather pay Streeter 12 shekels or shear the back of his neck? She paid me 12 shekels and lent me her mirror so I could do it myself. Anyways, back at the university, I found a site online that had episodes of "The Office" for free. I doubt it's legal. So I've been watching those for the past 2 days.

We had Shabbat dinner on campus instead of going somewhere. It's provided by the Student Union and it's really depressing. It isn't even close to the experience at Hillel in Pittsburgh, where there's tons of people and energy there. Most Israelis go home on the weekend and the international students are usually there, but a lot of them went on the university's trip to the desert this weekend. I would have gone, but I've already been there and wanted to explore other parts of Israel. Regardless, I was most amazed at how the Israeli who was doing kiddush didn't know what he was doing and none of the other Israelis in the room seemed to know either. But who am I to judge. It was a free meal. That's what counts.

Yesterday I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I just watched TV online, sheared my neck, and made myself dinner. Afterwards, my friend and I went to the same pub that we went to on Thursday for happy hour. It was happy. Very happy.

A Week Without a Post

I've gone a week without a post. So here's what you missed:

Friday:
Went to the Wadi Nisnas market in Haifa and bought some pitas and fruit. It was a good shopping trip. The Israeli who my friend and I were having dinner with that night called me while we were out and he told me all of the details for that night in Hebrew and I actually understood. When we got back to the university I changed for Shabbat and then my friend and I walked to the synagogue and met up with the family. They were nice people. They spoke mostly Hebrew to us and didn't try to convince us of any particular ideology or beliefs, as previous families have done. Instead, it was a very pleaseant meal with lot of food and good company. I think my Hebrew got a lot better because of that night. Afterwards, my friend and I walked back and played backgammon.

Saturday:
I made shakshuka for lunch and spent the day stressing about my Hebrew exam. The shakshuka was good, but the stress was not. That night my friends and I went out to a pub for happy hour. After that, we went to the supermarket and went grocery shopping. One of the things I bought was a bottle of scotch. While on the bus back, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about alcoholism and when the bus stopped the old woman in front of me got up, stuck her finger out, and said really loud "It is not good to be an alcoholic". That was a very Israeli thing to do.

Sunday:
Studied. All day. Except for when I had the make up class for Arab-Israeli Relations.

Monday:
Hebrew Exam. I got a C. Much better than last time. Hebrew is hard, but my teacher doesn't make it less hard. In fact, she makes it more difficult by forcing us to write with vowels which is not done by Israelis.

Yesterday:
Terrorism and Responses exam. Complete waste of time. All multiple choice/ short answer and only 20 questions. That class is garbage. My group did our presentation about ETA. The teacher liked it, but I wish that we could have studied it as a class.

I'm still eating from the massive pot of vegetable soup I made. One of the things I bought Saturday night was a bag of soup nuts to eat with the soup. It was a smart purchase.

Jerusalem Post Removed

I've removed the Jerusalem Post from this site. It's nothing but fear mongering drivel. Bye bye!

Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving was great. There was lots of food, great people, and even football broadcast on the internet. Here's some photos.



Thanksgiving was great. There was lots of food, great people, and even football broadcast on the internet. Here's some photos.

Thanksgiving

Today is my 20th Thanksgiving, but I am not home for it. Instead my friends and I will be having a pot luck dinner. I don't know if there will be any turkey.

This week has been really rough. I was supposed to give a presentation on Tuesday but we ran out of time in class, so now it's been put off until this coming Tuesday. I have a Hebrew exam on Monday. It's going to be brutal. And I have my midterm for Terrorism and Responses on Tuesday. And I have a make up class on Sunday. Which means no going anywhere this weekend.

Tuesday night the international school held a cooking class. I learned how to make shakshuka, which is a Middle Eastern egg dish. It's made with eggs, tomatoes, onions, and peppers. The vegetables make a sauce and then the eggs are cracked right into it and simmered until the eggs are hard. It's delicious. It's become one of my new favorite foods. I tried it for the first time on Monday from one of the restaurants on campus. The best way to describe it is that there was a party in my mouth and everyone was invited. Except you. Just kidding.

I had a really bad day yesterday, so I made myself a pot of soup for dinner. From scratch. It was delicious.
It's been raining, so soup was a good thing to make. The thunder here is really loud. It almost sounds like bombs are going off.

Tomorrow night I'm going somewhere for Shabbat, as usual. Hopefully it will be neither awkward or a time share presentation for Israel or Orthodox Judaism. And hopefully the synagogue will not have people reading the newspaper during services. And most importantly, hopefully the food will be tasty.

Jerusalem

Yesterday I went to Jerusalem on a trip with the International School. There were only 15 people who came, but it was still fun. In the morning we went to the traditional site of King David's grave. It's neat, but apparently it's not where he would actually be buried. Who knows? It's still neat.
Afterwards, we went to the room where the last supper was held. It's actually right on top of King David's tomb. It was cool, but it's just a room with some stained glass windows. After that, we walked through the Jewish quarter and saw some underground ruins from the First and Second Temple periods. They were also really cool. I got a pita with za'atar on it for a snack. It was delicious. After snack time, we saw some more ruins and then went to eat lunch. I had a delicious schwarma in a laffa. It was very tasty.
After lunch, we went to the Western Wall. I went over to the tefillin table and did the usual Jewish things in front of the wall. When I got them from the table, one of the guys told me that teffilin are the best life insurance policy you can have. When I was returning them to the table, one of the Chabad guys asked me what my name was and when I am going to come to his house for Shabbat. I told him my name and that I didn't make it down to Jerusalem from Haifa very much. However, he told me that I now have a reason to come. He made me put his number in my phone. I'm not going to call him. Another Chabad guy asked me where I go to school. I told him Pitt, and he asked me if I knew Rabbi Weinstein and if I go to Chabad there. I told him I go sometimes for meals and that I usually help Rabbi Weinstein make a minyan on Shabbat if he needs men. He told me that they were friends and that I should go back to Pittsburgh and tell him that we'd met. I'll do it if I remember.
After the wall, our group walked through the Jewish quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Christian quarter. I didn't go in because one of our guides from the International School is Orthodox and he doesn't go into churches. I don't want to say that I felt bad for him because he's a great guy and I like him a lot, but I felt that it would be rude to leave him outside of the church by himself for an hour and a half. So he and I wandered around the Christian quarter, bought a new backgammon set, got some drinks, and played backgammon. That was by far more interesting to me than going into the church. This was my second time in Jerusalem and I won't get that many more chances to go back, so I felt like I learned more by walking around the neighborhood than by going into the church. Plus, our tour guide was really boring and I didn't feel like standing through an hour long remedial Christianity lecture about its formation and the Great Schism and Christian theology. I say remedial because I took both Religions of the West and the Bible As Literature at Pitt, so I know what's up. While we were playing a Greek Orthodox Monk walked by and looked like he wanted to ask us if he could play. If he had asked, I would have said yes.
Once everyone got out of the church, we went to the Mahne Yehuda out door market for a bit and then we headed back to Haifa. It was a good trip and I hope to get back to Jerusalem at least once more before I leave. As glad as I am to be going back to Pitt, I'm sad that I won't get to do as much exploring now because I have to be back so early for classes.

Outlying Statistics on Shabbat

Friday night my friend and I went for Shabbat dinner with another family in Haifa. The food was declicious, but the conversation felt like a mix between and interrogation and a time share presentation for aliyah. The parents came in the late 1960's after the 1967 war, and so naturally, they were big proponents of all Jews returning to Israel. It got to the point where the conversation became uncomfortable because all the was discussed was aliyah, military service, how much "better" life in Israel is, and how every Jew should find his or her own connection to not just the recognized State of Israel, but also the occupied territories. One of the sons offered to take me on a tour of different places in the West Bank. My response to him was that I have no business going to the West Bank because there is nothing there for me.

I have no plans to make aliyah. I have nothing to gain and I certainly do not believe that it is my divine right to move into the occupied territories. I guess I'm the outlying statistic. Some of my friends in my program are planning to make aliyah after college. It's cool, but it's not for me. The ultimate goal of MASA, an organization that gave me scholarship money, is to get Jews to make aliyah after spending a year here. Again, I am the outlying statistic.

And don't tell me that I'm paranoid about them and their intentions. When they gave their presentation to us, they said 5 times that they were not trying to get Jews to make aliyah, however the very next day I went to their website and saw that they were having an aliyah fair. Similar to a career fair in America. WTF? They also said that they were trying to encourage dating and marriage within the Jewish people and to get people to go back to their home countries and tell Israel's side of the story, whatever it may be. So to sum up, they want people to blindly defend Israel publicly, have lots of Jewish children, and move here. I'm glad I gave the money back. I like thinking freely and standing up for what I believe in, not what people tell me to. I like being the lone outlying statistic. It makes life more interesting.

Concert in Tel Aviv

Last night my roommate and I made the trip from Haifa to Tel Aviv to see the Abyssinians and Black Uhuru. They may have been old and way past their heyday, but it was still a great show. It was the first reggae show that I've been to where there were actually real Rastafarians and not the poser white kids who are only in it for the sacrament. The Rastafarians consider themselves to be an offshoot of the Jewish tribes that migrated to Ethiopia and they worship King Halie Selassie, who was the last king of Ethiopia. They also consider Marcus Garvey, who led the Back to Africa movement in the early 20th century, and Bob Marley to be their prophets. The Rastafarians believe that God created the world from Mt. Zion, like the Jews, and so they come and hang out in Israel. Not to mention, there were a lot of Ethiopian Jews there.

I must say that it was probably the first reggae show I've been to where white people were outnumbered. It's about time. There's too many casual Bob Marley fans who go to shows in the states and think that they're so cool. They're just posers. If you're a real reggae fan, than things such as Trojan Records, Toots and the Maytals, The Skatalites, and Peter Tosh mean something to you. Owning the Bob Marley greatest hits album or one Matisyahu album does not make you a fan of reggae. Branch out. Listen to lots of it. If you need to start slowly into getting into reggae, listen to the Blues Brothers' "Briefcase Full of Blues" album. They cover King Floyd's "Groove Me" which is a great start for getting into real reggae. Not commercialized pot smoking music like Matisyahu.

Anyways, the show was great. Both bands were great and the show actually started on time. After the show we went straight to the train station and got a train back to Haifa. We got back here at 3:30am. It was worth the trip to Tel Aviv for the show. It's really unfortunate that most of the really great reggae acts are old and their days are numbered. The next act on my list to see is Toots and the Maytals, although I have no idea where.

New Friends

Yesterday was a day of new friends. While watching the concert and drinking free beer, two guys from the Haifa student union came up to my friends and I and talked to us. They told us about how the Arab student group in Haifa is putting out propaganda comparing Israel to Nazis or something like that and that they're protesting. However, after we got off that topic, they started telling us about the night life in Haifa. They gave us their phone numbers and said that they could get us in to any club or bar in Haifa and get us free drinks. I don't remember their names, however one looked like Lenny Kravitz and the other looked like Donald Sutherland. That's really wrong, but I can't remember their names. I feel bad. They were cool guys.

I made dinner last night with my existing friends. We made beef stir fry and it was delicious. We ate the stir fry, drank some wine, and had some delicious pancakes with nutella on them. Afterwards, we broke in my new hookah, which works wonderfully. Thanks for asking.

While we were smoking, an Arab guy named Nasser just walked up to us, said he was bored, and asked if he could join us. He seemed like a nice guy, but my roommate Evgeni was there and he was not too happy. Not because he's anti-Arab or anything, but because he feels cheated that he spent 4 years in the Israeli Navy while Nasser, who I'm guessing is named after Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian Pan Arabist leader, was able to go straight to college without doing any sort of community service. I completely understand Evgeni's frustration. I would be pissed too. There's a bill in the Knesset right now that would mandate a year of communal service for all Arab youth in Israel. It seems like a good idea, and I support it and think the US could use something like that (NOT MILITARY SERVICE), but who am I to make that call for Arab youth in Israel. It seems like a win-win situation. Arabs would get full military benefits without having been in the military and their communities would be strengthened. But again, who am I to say that it's right or wrong. I'm just a guy with a computer. One of the first things Nasser said was that he was not a bad guy with a bomb. I was a little confused by it, but I understand why he would say that. Arabs have a really bad image in the West and I certainly hope that his visit to our table was not specifically intended to debunk this myth. If my friends and I truly believed this, why would be in Haifa, where half of the students are Arab? Anyways, Nasser seems like a nice guy and he said he would come up and visit sometime, however I think it's all talk. When it comes down to it, I think he was just free loading.

Wednesday!

Wednesdays here are great. There's music and free beer. And I only have one class. I had a falafal for lunch to go with my free beer and free music. Wednesdays at Pitt are nothing like this.
Aferwards, my friend and I went to the Arab market and Wadi Nisnas to do some shopping. I came back with a big bag full of fruits and vegetables, a dozen fresh pitas, some fresh olive oil that was pressed last week, and a brand new hookah. It was a great shopping trip. Plus everything was really cheap. It only costs me about $5 for all my produce, which included grapefruits, red peppers, onions, and eggplants among other things. The hookah was probably a fourth of what I would have paid in America. It was a good day.