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

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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.