Into the Thick of it

I have been rolling over these words in y head all day with no luck. What is to be said to resume work on such an intimidating project? further, what exactly do I write? Do I begin where I left off? last week? I last wrote about the fourth of july, a post that eventually became so boring I eventually abandoned it at a full page of writing. The fourth of July will not be first post of the new week. So how about the following Shabbat? I thought it would be so important to touch on, and yet, it was a boring event of which the complete recounting would take about half a page. Not to mention that it has faded a week from my memory and will likely be dull in forced recollection. That is out, at least for the time being, as is the events that followed. The kinneret and the Mikve, Tsfat, the trying night at the Hostel (I spelled it right this time), or the return to the kinneret and the second Mikve. No. Instead I must resume posting here and now. With current events.

As many of you must have been wondering, the rockets have been intense. To be absolutely clear, our campus has been in the shelter exactly four times. The first was a siren. The second was a planned campus drill. The third was a neighboring siren, the alarm was technically only for Tel Aviv. The fourth was a siren that interrupted class and sent us to the shelter for the song session that has been circulating facebook.

I feel no danger. Truth be told, the first siren was exhilarating. I was here! I was part of it! Its happening to me! I looked around the room trying to suppress a giddy smile and was surprised to see people shrieking, their faces frozen in anxious masks of fear. I didn't understand. I don't understand. Students are incapable of thinking reasonably when it comes to the shelter. They giggle and scream. They don't calm down even when the campus director is shouting at the top of his lungs for everyone to sit down. There is no order.

To their credit, most kids are not worried. The initial shock of the first alarm wore off for them and they became just as passive as me. And yet, that was when the problems began. Parents have been calling up their kids all week. one at a time, our number is being picked off by ignorant "guardians" stealing the lives of their own kids because of a misplaced, uneducated, blind fear. We've lost three already, five more will be leaving tonight. To those parents out there, I hope you read my blog. Let AMHSI publicize this so you can know exactly how much you are hurting this program and these kids. You appall me.

The first two left last Sunday. The class visited the grave of Rachel that day, so known she needs no surname. That was the last we saw them before they were bussed off to the air port. We said our goodbyes in the graveyard.

Sabrina was a wonderful girl. She accepted everyone and led a band of misfits in the girls dorm, not that she'd ever accept the title. She was the kindest person in the whole dorm, always thrilled to make the tiniest gesture of goodwill to make you feel included and all with upmost genuineity.

Ari was a rightwing conservative git that had thought Bush really knew how to run the country. After hours of arguments in which I was never quite sure if he would pull a knife on me, we had finally found our stride only two nights before. On those last days we'd argued better than ever. We said goodbye with a firm handshake, a hug, and a solid pat on the back.

They started the avalanche. Michelle left just yesterday, never my favorite person after her insistent rock-throwing, but I'd gotten over my petty grudge and with a few more weeks, we may have been friends... We may not have. The twins, Trevor and Elliott, were bound for the airport that same day, due to what we all thought was a miraculous twist of fate, they announced that they would be in fact staying. I remember the wave of relief that washed over me when I heard. I remember my heart sinking when they found out it would not be the case.

Tonight, we are losing five. The twins, Jared, Sophie, and Austin Bierman. Of all the people that could have left, I'll miss Bierman the most. Bierman, who swore that if his mother sent him home he'd run away and live with his sister in Jerusalem. Bierman, who smashed his favorite lacrosse stick to a mangled wreck when he heard he was going home. Bierman, who gave away half his possessions in what I'm sure is some last hurrah to spite his mother without confrontation. Bierman, who never once let himself be seen with anything but a smile on his face despite the pain he was feeling for leaving.

Last night I wandered the hallway of the dorm aimlessly. The passages of the Holocaust museum were a constant chattering echo in my head as I collapsed, motionless on my bed in what could not have been considered a comfortable position by any means. I stayed there, still. The memory of all the death and destruction and hatred was congealing a sharp pain beneath my sternum. I was angry at the kids for leaving. I was angry at their parents for taking them from us. for the first time in months, I let myself fall into sleep before even realizing it, sad and broken.

I haven't eaten today even as the clock pushes past seven. I only noticed when it reached lunchtime and I still hadn't had anything. At that point I decided to go all in. It's technically a fasting holiday today, although even most religious Jews aren't observant. This is my tribute to the kids who are leaving. This is my testament to my own dedication.

The slightest part of me envies them, and I hate me for it. The more I think, the more I miss the wet, green grass of Seattle. I miss the smell of whiskey. I miss showing my artwork to my dad. I making plans of what to do when I get home. I wish I could be here now. What right do I have to wish for home when my brothers and sisters are being forced home. The program feels like its ending. I can't help but think of home. The most I can hope for is to be able to savor my last two weeks to the absolute fullest. As the councilors keep saying, these are memories that will last a lifetime.

With a Deadline

Dear readers. I apologize profusely for my week of inaction. As activities stack up, posts I plan to write get more and more daunting. This combined with the infrequency of viable wifi coverage have made posting problematic. As it is, I currently have ten minutes before my wifi is shut off for the night. This makes the third consecutive day following my week of procrastination that a lack of update has been due in full to a lack of means, rather than a lack of motivation. We keep arriving from our daily outings later and later, making writing frustratingly challenging. Please know that I am alive, well, and all but unaffected by the rockets, though far from complacent in my thoughts. As soon as I have the means I will continue with updates. Please continue reading, you are my encouragement and reassurance.

Shenite Metzada Lo Tipol

The day on Masada is more or less a blur. As I must confess, with the late night in the hostile, the three am wakeup call, and the all but vertical hike, by midday I was too spent to stay conscious. I would wander along in the midst of the group whenever we moved, try my absolute hardest to concentrate on Akiva as he detailed the siege of Masada and their way of life, then, inevitably, I would feel the wave of sleep wash over my brain and I would not be able to stay awake long.

Masada, as we were taught, was a Roman fortress taken by Jews in the second revolution and renovated by king Herod, the last Jewish king. For years the Jews lived in their mountain palace in a perpetual state of rebellion against the, for the most part, absent Romans. However, by the end of its time, Masada had attracted the Roman eye a bit more than it would have liked and the Roman battalions surrounded the city and began their siege. The walls of the keep were made to be layered in times of danger. At their strongest they were made sixteen feet thick, virtually impenetrable. Yet, the Romans are a fierce enemy. The constructed a ramp up the weaker side of the mountain, aiming for a small area where the wall did not stand. On the night that the ramp was completed, the Romans withdrew to rally their forces and prepare their siege tower that would bring them the last 40 feet to the summit. The Jews despaired. In one last display of rebellion, they gathered at the center of town and made their decision. Suicide. That night, each man would comfort his family, lay them on the floor of his home, and kill them. He would then make his way with the other men to the center of town, and there they would select ten men to kill the rest. Those ten would then write their names on shards of pottery and draw straws to kill the other nine. The last man would kill himself. The shards were found in the excavation of Masada. When the Romans breached the wall, they found no one. Not a soul. They cautiously explored the city, eventually finding the rows and rows of bodies. They were in awe.

The story echoed in my head like a scream of despair. It struck me profoundly and made my stomach weak. I wanted to leave, but I sat, half in dream, and listened to every slow, painful word. The class got up and began to walk. Their were the usual grumbles of complaint, we were near the end of our stay and itching to begin our descent. I put the story out of my mind.

We walked to a part of the mountain we had not yet seen, an outcropping beyond any of the ancient construction of the city. There was a platform stuck into the face of the mountain, oddly modern beside its neighbors, that hung off into a valley. I have used the word valley before. Ignore that. This was a chasm. Hundreds of feet to the ground below, we were surrounded by mountains as tall as Masada or higher. I picked up a small stone and threw it as hard as I could into the gaping maw of the desert. I watched it sail upwards in a graceful arc, form a perfect parabola in the sky and fall, fall, fall until it dwindled in size to a grain of rice and was finally lost from view before even touching the ground. Any mark it made there was equally indistinguishable.

Akiva gathered us once again. We did as he said and copied his words, shenite metzada lo tipol. Masada will not fall again.

"SHENITE" He proclaimed
"SHENITE" We replied
"SHENITE" Came the echo from the mountains, startling us into eager chatter

"METZADA"
"METZADA"
"METZADA"

"LO"
"LO"
"LO"

"TIPOL"
"TIPOL"
"TIPOL"

The mountains chanted in reply to our exuberant declaration. Alone, we could not muster the volume to merit a reply. Together, even the desert gave us its blessing.

"AM"
"AM"
"AM"

"ISRAEL"
"ISRAEL"
"ISRAEL"

"CHAI"
"CHAI"
"CHAI"

The nation of Israel is alive!
Masada will not fall again!

The Hole in the Sky

From the desert, we had driven to a youth hostile, where we spent the night preceding our morning hike. For the sake of common decency I will avoid detailing the events of the night in the hostile, but in a word I think "male-bonding" is the best descriptor.

We were woken at three in the morning to the sounds of a very belligerent alarm, at which point we groggily rolled out of bed, gathered our belongings, and assembled in the lobby for a breakfast of shrink wrapped fruits and bread. We slowly filed into the parking lot, on the brink of despair at the heat, hotter then in the dark of morning than we had yet experienced, as we hypothesized that the heat would only climb as the sun raised in the sky.

We began our ascent on the rocky trail, many of my dorm including myself easily surpassing the majority of even the group ahead of us. In the first twenty minutes I had already downed half a liter of water and made considerable progress on my second bottle, trying to lighten the load of the bag strapped to my back. We raised higher and higher, almost never losing sight of the hostile where we had stayed the night before even as it shrunk to nothing but a dollhouse at the distance between us. The dessert had no texture, no green to block the view of any of its vast expanse. We could see all the way to the dead sea and past that on to Jordan.
I made a futile effort to capture the moment on camera, but even though, in absence of the sun, the light was now enough to see well, the camera could not grasp the majesty of the view. Its weak facsimile was dark and without definition, capturing only a pinprick of the detail or expanse of the landscape.

I looked up at the long, drawn out line of people preceding me, a line of Jews working their way up a desert mountain in a long, twisted line. The image evoked memories of old religious stories, the Jews walking through the desert on the way to the parting of the sea, on the way up the mountain to receive the Torah, walking for forty years through a wind blasted craggy terrain that I could barely stand for forty minutes.

To my grateful surprise, as we climbed the wind began to pick up and it became cooler. The heat was more crisp and defined. Its rays were harsh, but nowhere near as suffocating as the heavy, suppressive, dark heat of the morning. Nevertheless, I was sweating profusely from every inch of my body, the liters of water I had guzzled coming back and being released. It felt fantastic, I could practically feel myself becoming lighter, more limber, freer of the toxins pervading my system. I wiped my forehead again and again to prevent it from dripping down my face and holding longingly to my nose or my eyelids but to no great effect. The top of the mountain was nearing.

Higher and higher and higher, we were nearly at the top and the entire stretch of mountain was now laid out beneath us, illuminated by the blue pre-dawn glow. Finally, in one push of victorious effort, we rounded the last corner of the trail and stepped out into the crumpled fortress of Masada.

We explored the ruins to some degree, finding vantage points over the edge of the mountain where we could ogle at the view and take a few obligatory photos. Then we made our way up to Akiva on yet a higher ridge of the mountain. He had wrapped himself in a Tallis and Teffilin. He told us to face to the East, off the side of the cliff, and began to daven quietly, rocking back and forth to his own diatonic chant. We waited for the sun to rise.

I sat on the wall of the fortress, feet dangling out over a twelve foot drop, classmates on either side, looking straight out at the distant mountain range. Then, ever so tentatively, yet oh so determined, the first sliver of white peeked over the cliffs. And then it was out, rising steadily and actually quite quickly, pulling itself hand over hand to escape from the rocky turf. In less than five minutes, its whole circular glory could be made out, removed from the ground. The sun was whiter than I had ever seen. It was a hole in the sky, completely blank, as if someone had punched through the grey-blue material of the sky with a perfectly clean cut and through it we could see some other reality, surpassing the physical world, incomprehensible but for its clear white purity.

My neighbor gasped and said "Just think, four hours ago this was setting on the east coast." Suddenly I could see the turn of the Earth beneath my feet, I could feel us rotating, our face turning towards the light of this fiery burning ball thousands of miles away. I held in my minds eye a picture of the entire planet. I could see where I stood. I could see my Mom, my Dad, and my brother seven thousand miles away. We were united. Time was absolutely relative. In that moment, we both indisputably existed in that moment no matter when that moment was in our lives. Day and night were a fiction.

A Soft Silent Sound

I thought I knew what silence was. I had sat before in the forest of Seattle and listened to the quiet there. The only sounds the cracking of twigs and the scurrying of creatures. I had sat before n the park outside my house in the absolute dead of night. The only sounds the humming of the lampposts and the distant whir of engines passing every now and then. The sounds were soft, but not silent.

In Kings 19, there is a passage about the prophet Elijah. As he was fleeing for his life from the cruel king, he was told by an angle to go to Mount Horeb where he would meet God. On the mountain there was a great wind, a great earthquake, and a great fire, but God was not in any of them. Then, following these immense powers, there was a soft, silent, sound, and in that sound Elijah received his council.

I did not know silence until I went to the Negev
The Silence was audible. Tangible. Present.

The dessert stretched endlessly in every direction when we first arrived, burning hotter than any place we had visited before. Shortly after our arrival, we dispersed for silent meditation. I found a spot perched precariously on an outcropping of rock just above the valley that our party surrounded. I was farther out that anyone else. I crossed my legs and placed my forearms palms-up on my knees. I breathed the dessert in and out of my lungs following its progression down into my diaphragm, lower into my belly, up my spine and into my chest, then out in as slow and steady a stream as I could manage.

I could hear my breath in my lungs and hitting the back of my throat. I could hear my heart beating in my chest and temples with its heavy, dense pulse. I could hear the wings of a bird a hundred feet above my head. I could hear the teachers whispering to each other on the other side of the gorge. But mostly, I heard absolutely nothing. The lack of sound rang in my ears, a high pitch buzz of nothingness was being played in my head in insistent testimony from my brain that my ears must, in fact, be hearing something. The silent sound was only interrupted by the occasional whisper of the dessert. The click of a rock of the flutter of a fly.

I worked to clear my mind. I was absolutely still.

I was so still that a persistent fly took interest, curious about the invader in his patch of rock. He landed on my arms and my legs. In a moment I recall with a fair dose of pride and only a pinch of disgust, he even landed on my eyelid. Staying perfectly still even as he probed my face, my eye did not flutter and he stayed in place before venturing off unprovoked to explore elsewhere.

I was not sad to be rid of his insistent buzz. I was just short of pure emptiness of thought.

*clack*

someone had kicked a rock into the gorge, a nuisance, but passing.

*clack*

Again? I wished they would stop shifting. They didn't have to meditate but silence was the whole point.

*clack*

What the hell? Was someone throwing rocks? I turned my head to my left towards the noise. My neighbor of about a hundred feet was lounging uneasily. She swatted at an invisible fly around her head in exasperated irritation and picked up a rock. No, she wouldn't purposefully throw a rock into the canyon would she? That would destroy the whole point! The silence would be-

*clack*

...Really? Why? Why would you purposefully ruin such a beautiful moment?

*clack*

Again and again she threw rock after rock after rock after rock into the god damned valley. My cheek began to twitch uncontrollably every time I heard that god awful noise rattle around the desert and into my skull. How dare she? I just couldn't get past it. No matter how hard I tried to surpass the physical distraction, with each new stone falling to the ground I boiled up a little more inside. After the twentieth rock I was angry. Distracted and fully sucked into her little play for attention. I couldn't help but wish her ill no matter how hard I tried to purge thought from my head.

By the fortieth rock I was freely moving my head from side to side. Pleading to our neighbors to pass along some message to this girl who refused to look at me. When I made rare eye contact I would shake my head, no, no, no. Nothing worked. I had pulled myself out of my concentration and replaced it instead with this horrid obsession with this girl throwing rocks.

By the fiftieth rock I nearly spoke up. Barely holding myself back from descending to her level and breaking the silence even further. I had reached the conclusion long ago that I should pity her that she was so unbelievably insecure that she needed affirmation of peoples attention even during this, a sacred moment. Still, I couldn't find pity, only disgust. I was furious at her. I was furious at myself. I was giving her exactly what she wanted, regardless that she didn't even know. She had my attention one hundred percent.

after a short time, I managed to reach at least some level of peace again. Still, my cheek twitched each time the noise was struck again, but with closed eyes and stillness in my body I was able to achieve at least partial tranquility. Unfortunately, just a few minutes later, Akiva began a quiet song

"return again, return again, return to the land of your soul..."

and when I opened my eyes, people were muttering between themselves and edging back to the meeting place. The meditation was finished. I stood and walked back abruptly. Then sat in the circle with the same perfect posture I had maintained for the past half hour. I couldn't resist from passive aggressively staring, without visible contention, at my adversary who, when making occasional eye contact, would shift uncomfortably and look away. Again I gave her the attention she so desperately craved.

Akiva said a few words and we packed up to go. I had, at least for a while, discovered silence. I had heard the soft, silent sound of God. I would not let go of my spite for the girl for another two days. At least it passed.

The desert left me open. In the desert, I discovered a love for silence. In the caves, I discovered a love for darkness. In the dorms, I discovered an appreciation for solitude. Like I said to Daniel, as both good and evil are crucial to each others existence, so to is company and tranquility.

The Lazy Day

Final Part of the Shabbat Series

The next morning I woke up at 10:30, the family had all but vacated the house completely for school or morning services (although, unknown to me my cousin Gavriella was still sleeping upstairs) and had thoughtfully let me sleep for Shabbat. Not wanting to make a disturbance the house I did not yet know was empty, I quietly dressed and snuck downstairs, skipping my usual shower because I was unsure if it constituted "work". My phone and laptop were powered down and hidden in my bag, off limits for the day, there was not much to do.

I snuck down the stairs half way and saw Daniel in the kitchen. I didn't want to talk. I really didn't want to go to services again and while I knew he wouldn't make me or even push too hard, there's always the perfectly tailored Jewish guilt. I went back to the bedroom and looked over Eliav's books, eventually settling on a copy of Alice Through the Looking Glass which I made considerable progress through over the day. When I heard the door open and shut again, I wandered downstairs and fixed myself a cup of coffee, careful not to mix the milk and meat dishes or even place my empty milk designated cup on the clear meat designated tablecloth. The coffee, as I have learned, is not, as the campus brew led me to expect, universally terrible, but distinctly different. It is all ground and instant, no beans or filters. I'm actually coming to quite like the stuff.

A few hours later the family returned and I put aside the book. Conversation sprung back up and we prepared for lunch. Once again, the food was incredible. We sat down to a two course meal of salads and chicken and rice-like dishes and sweet potato pie. We said the Birkat again and then settled back in our chairs for some discussion. Then, as so often happens with discussion and Jews, we settled into our argument again. After yet another length of rousing debate, in which Aviva came out of nowhere with points that took me down a peg to say the least, we drifted to various corners of the house content and tired. Daniel had, during our argument, pulled two books off his shelf that he insisted I read even if I had to keep them. The family slept and I read, cover to cover, If You Were God by Aryeh Kaplan. The book was repetitive to the point of redundancy, self contradictory every other page, and written by an obvious narcissist who saw no other way of thinking than his own occasionally baseless claims towards the nature of Angles, Evil, and God. However, to it's credit, much of it was well cited in scripture and it raised some impressive questions that really made me think, first and foremost being,
'If you had the powers of God but could not reveal yourself, how would you form a community into a righteous, peaceful civilization?'
Unfortunately, Kaplan explored only one possible solution, very different (although worryingly similar in all but two key ways) from my own (reached independently prior to reading the large majority of the book).

Once he woke from his nap, I told him (in fewer and less critical words)what I thought. He gave me a sly look like he pitied me that I couldn't understand the pieces depth and just said
"read it again"
I laughed and said
"yeah that's the way to learn, read one source over and over until you believe it" hoping my deeper meaning was clear. He didn't say anything to that.

That night we revisited their shul for a Shabbat potlatch. We began with a service once again in which, again, I was hopelessly lost. Then we ate, we sang a little (more songs that I'd never heard), and went home.

We had been scrambling to find me a bus route home the night before because the computer was not shomer shabbat. It had seemed like it all worked out, but when I got to the station, after half an hour of waiting, we had no such luck. We had done a Havdallah at eight thirty, so we were free to work again. Even so, there was nothing for it. My intended route had me taking the first bus from Effrat to catch the last bus from Jerusalem back to campus. When it didn't come, there was no way I was making that bus. Daniel drove me halfway and we picked up a pair of hitchhikers before realizing it would be to late. We kept on just the same and took them to where they needed to go and then swung back around to their house where I would stay one more night.

I must say, in no part because of the Zahavi-Asa's, I was done. I wanted to get back to campus more than anything. My teacher Akiva was on the line with Aviva, still trying to get me back. Missing class was not an option in his book.
"just get him a ride" He said, meaning hitchhike. He, in a fully Israeli style, seemed to have no qualms with the fact that I would be getting into a strangers car no more than a mile from the scene of the kidnapping. Had not it happened only two weeks earlier, I would've been game. As it was, Aviva pointed out that the contract I had signed prevented me from "taking tramps" and that I was going to have to stay there. That was that.

I slunk into bed and slept for the last few hours before awaking at the ungodly hour of five to catch the first bus back. I arrived at campus at eight thirty, just in time for class to begin, and spent a delightful three hours waiting out the clock to go back to the dorms and take a well needed respite. Shabbat was well past over. I was spent.

Shabbat with Family

Part One of The Shabbat Series

My memory of last Friday and the weekend that followed is frustratingly sparse for the small amount of time that has passed since its occurrence. I find that I must write nearly every day to avoid losing precious moments into forgetfulness. Unfortunately, when so much is taking place, internet, not to mention motivation, is a rarity to be savored. As it is, I remember waking up the morning after the shloshim to Daniel quietly saying my name. To my relief, I did not take much coaxing (as far as my own memory goes) and was relatively easy to get up. There was a moment of confusion when I looked around at my all but completely unfamiliar surroundings and tried to puzzle out where I was, then I remembered and quickly climbed out of the bunk above my sleeping third cousin Eliav.

The morning was still grey, the sun not quite illuminating the stretch of road between the home of the Zahavi-Asa's and their shul so early in the day. I put on one of Daniels kippah's, a large style in conservative brown that slid back on my head when I moved began the short walk up the hill to the shul, where Daniel was bringing me to join his morning minion.

I struggled to follow the words in the Hebrew prayer book. Daniel had thoughtfully brought me one with an English translation, but seemed to forget that a translation wouldn't help me chant along any better than full Hebrew script. As the leader mumbled along at top speed through prayers, many of which were completely unfamiliar to me, the congregation of twenty or so men stood and bowed in unison without being prompted. I awkwardly followed their lead, enduring the stares from men around the room, all aware and silently critical of the stranger among them wearing a t-shirt,shorts and neither a tallis nor T'fillen like the rest. At least my Hebrew had been improving enough to say the bare bones of the service along with them.

The service finally came to an end and Daniel led me out to his car to go buy groceries. On the way, Aviva called him and we circled back to give a ride to Eliav and his friends. It was as commonplace to give rides to your own kids as it was to give to friends and even strangers. We stopped for a few hitchhikers after dropping off the boys. It was peculiar at first, especially in light of the recent kidnapping, but mostly they sat quietly in the back and didn't interrupt. We drove past the round about where the boys had been taken several times that weekend.

From there we drove to the "Peace Market", where jews and Arabs could shop side by side. Daniel intended it to be a revelation to me I'm sure, but raised apart from conflict as I was, it would've been far stranger to see a segregated market. That being said, there were very few arabs there. Tensions, it seems, were to high to mingle. Daniel told me that if I saw anything I wated I should grab it. I wasn't hungry, barely thirsty, and honestly just wanted to stay quiet and unobtrusive.
"Humor me" he said, laying on the Jewish guilt. I clumsily grabbed some chips, a flavor we don't have in America, figuring that if he asked it must be the polite thing to do. We went to the bakery, the health food store, bouncing all over the market, each time Daniel encouraging me to get more and more. I eventually got more comfortable but wound up with more food than I could eat all weekend. Later it would become clear that I was expected to eat everything before Shabbat and there was a definite air of disappointment when I couldn't. Daniel kept telling his family to ask me if they could eat "my" food that he had told me to gather and had paid for. How was I supposed to be polite?

We returned to their home and began to cook, that's when the conversation turned to politics. Daniel, a self proclaimed right wing fanatic and humorously attested fascist, seemed to be the incarnation of every old-white-republican caricature that the left wing news sources that I had been raised on had taught me to scoff at. He thinks Obama is weak, that the democratic party is full of naïve optimists who sing kumbaya (actual words), that government supported birth control is nonsense, and that Rachel Maddow is insane. We kept running into the issue of evil and what is to be done about it. He would cite the Talmud that "we must purge evil from our midst with fire" and I would question his definition of evil, why he thought himelf qualified to judge, and why the destruction of humanity, evil or not, should not in itself be considered evil. I was immensely grateful to my course for teaching me biblical history of the nation, because fresh in my mind were my own Talmud based rebutles and counter arguments. Over and over again we would return to the core issue, he could not imagine any reason why the Palestinians would do what they do. He said that they want Jews dead and that was that. He looked at no cause and effect, no exchange of cruelty, he was only a victim.
"They took our sons" he would say "that is all the proof of evil I need"

Our argument went most of the day and into the next to both of our satisfaction. We're Jews, we joked, argument is in our blood. Its fun. WE settled down on Friday a little before it got dark and got ready for Shabbat. When the rest of the family returned home, they got dressed in their nice clothing and got ready for services. Feeling underdressed, I borrowed one of Daniels white shirts that fit me about as well as a large tablecloth. To avoid the shirt falling to my knees, I tucked it into my shorts. Looking like a disproportional schoolkid, We walked back to the shul.

The environment had been rewritten to an unbelievable degree. We arrived to a room full of men bent over their books just the same, but instead of mumbling quiet incantations, they were now working full volume. The chorus filled out the room with out-of-sync harmonic minor gravitas. Each person sang soulfully and with passion. they each broke off into harmonies and supporting lines with absolute ease from years of practice and familiarity that I had never experienced in reform. The words resonated inside every person, their meanings were clear, not abstract as to someone who doesn't speak the language. They all knew exactly what they were saying and agreed with it full heartedly and still there was more.

I had never heard these melodies before. Many of the prayers, if I had ever heard them, I didn't recognize. Yet, in that musical little room, cramped with passionate daveners, I was able to follow along with ease. The words came, assisted by my neighbors and the scrawling text on the page, quickly and fluently. I sang the melodies when I could, improvised harmony when I had to, and fell right into the flow. When the services came to a close, we walked back down the hill to their home and had a truly amazing Shabbat dinner. I ate as much as I could but when I finished Aviva still asked
"do you want any more? No? Not a big eater huh?"
I hope as hard as I can that she didn't notice me openly gape at her. I was stuffed.

We said the Birkat HaMazon to close the meal and went to bed.

The Shloshim

From my seat at the front gate of the campus I struggled to avoid the glare of the sun, from whom I could find no shelter. I closed my eyes and sat fully upright, forearms outwards in a show of meditation, in reality only trying to encourage the slight bloom of brown that had begun to take hold on my arms and face. I wore the last of three shirts I had tried out to be formal enough for what I anticipated to be coming, but no so stylish as to draw attention to myself. My heavy bag sat by my side.

The taxi pulled up twenty minutes later, an hour earlier than the councilors should have summoned it, to take me to the nearby mall where my relatives would be picking me up. I sat for an hour in the lobby, distracting myself from my nerves with the last pages of Twelfth Night which I hoped to direct in the following year. I eventually called them, an unfortunately one way method of communication, and found them at the gate. Suddenly, I was rushed into the back seat of their car, pinned between the door and Meital, a relative of mine who we eventually settled on as my third cousin. Her mother, Liora, was at the wheel, instantly offering me food and family stories in (what I had previously found to be rare) a display of Jewish stereotypes in action. They felt like family all right. I was still quiet and a bit nervous but it was clear to me that we shared some basic aspect at our roots. I was honestly very surprised.

We drove for an hour or so into Jerusalem, where they made a detour to see the parents of an old friend of Liora's. Again, food, family stories (this time not about mine), and a very Jewish vibe. Then Liora tok off to the venue to set up with her husband and younger daughter, who had sprained her ankle, leaving me behind with my cousin and two seniors who I had never met. I was sure they looked at me a dozen times as if to ask 'who is this kid?' 'what's he doing here?' Meital suggested we walk and I eagerly agreed.

The walk took us past a train station from the Ottoman Empire that has been renovated into an open air market. We had been talking and walking and getting to know each other for a while now. She told me all about her school, what she wanted to do in the army, how she wanted to travel to Australia without a plan and just live, but that shed always been a to much of a planner. I knew exactly how she felt. She was surprisingly short though she was my younger by only a year. Her hair looked like it was tossed in the wind and backlit by the sun. She looked like she was always on the edge of the next idea, which, once attained would keep her comfortably six steps ahead of you.

At the station we ran into a friend of hers and a woman I took to be her mother. After introductions she asked "you're not Marty's son are you?". It was amazing. They were bound for the memorial as well, old friends of the family, and had apparently known my grandmother in California. The country is so small, so Jewish, that meeting a long lost relative is commonplace. It blew my mind.

Finally we reached the front gate and ascended the staircase to the door. A smiling portrait of Rabbi Hiam Asa himself beamed down warmly at us. I jumped in with a hand wherever I could. I always feel more in place when I have a job to do. Then people started arriving. Even the slow trickle in was unnerving. Each person gave me a look of confusion as they entered. Who was I? I disappeared into the back hallway to avoid the blatant fact that I was mute, conversationless with the growing crowd of strangers. I tried to eat but the food felt heavy on my tongue and gummed up my throat. I revisited the lobby to see that the crowd had doubled and receded again to my hideout. A light panic started to set in. The cousins formed their tight circles of talk without me. The adults downright ignored me. Why the hell was I there? My group had gone to Tel Aviv that night to take part in a headphones rave that I would be missing. I longed to be anywhere else.

I cracked. I couldn't hide in the back room any more and I would not stand idle in the busy hall with strangers. I broke my contract, I left the building. I walked out of the front door and took a hard right. I just wanted to circle the block, just to get my head straight. I clutched my plastic cup at my side and nervously fiddled with the edge. I turned the next right. The old city wall came into view in the distance. I toyed with the idea of running all the way there, maybe a twenty minute walk, but I put it aside. I was still clutching the cup as I rounded the third corner, that was a good sign. I took it to mean that I intended to return. The wall was ringing with music at my back, alive with some festival for Laila Levan, the White Night. I rounded the fourth corner and reentered the building.

The lobby was now empty but for my two youngest cousins running around top speed.
"We thought we lost you!" they laughed. They pulled me into the hall and sat me down between their two families, front and center, just as the slideshow ended and was turned off. The first speaker took the stand and, in what I assume to be flawless and unfaltering Hebrew, gave his speech.

They spoke and spoke. One after another after another after another. Some in Hebrew, Some in English. They spoke for forty years. As the Hebrew went on, I picked from its indiferentiatable syllables the few words that I knew. People, Connections, Bulgaria, Orange County, Argentina, Memorial, and many others in snippets and unsure parts. I let myself imagine what they were saying about him. I listened to their emotion and their tone. I waited until the last speaker had finished, and then they raised up a song, haunting and minor, that I had never heard. My cousin put an arm around me and an arm around her father and a short chain formed. Then, with many tears, greetings, and goodbyes, the crowd dispersed. It was over.

I was matched to the other branch of my family, cousin Aviva's and they drove me to their home across the green line into the West Bank, a name completely dismissed by her husband Daniel who preferred the Zionist name for the "liberated" Territory. These to, felt like family. I could not tell you why, but even when our beliefs differ so greatly, I can't help but feel a connection.

Thank you to the families of Liora and Aviva for making me feel like part of the family and for giving me this view of the country, unslanted by the classroom setting.

In Memoriam of Rabbi Hiam Asa 1931-2014

The Kotel

Final Part of the Jerusalem Series

My clothes felt wrong. They always felt wrong on some level, some last remnant of my middle school insecurities come back to haunt me, but today I had not packed well. I hadn't known where we were going. Over my shorts, pulled down past the knee for decency but still soaked from the water of Hezekiah's Tunnel, I had buttoned a sea green short sleeve shirt to imitate some semblance of formality for the experience I was preparing for. The clothes would have looked in place on a beach, not so at the Western Wall.

We made our way past security and paused just before we rounded the corner to see what we had come so far to see. Hundreds of people were all facing one direction, marveling at some unseen wonder. I edged forwards and caught the first glimpse of the wall, towering and stark white. Solid and heavy. Full of vegetation and life. A man, no bigger than my thumb at my distance, beat his arm against the rough stones of the wall over and over, pouring his passion all over the stones thrice his size.

I walked towards the entrance, the wall looming higher and higher over my head. To my left I saw Akiva talk with the Chasidics mingling around their booth
"Muss Boys!" one of them yelled excitedly, demanding my attention and drawing me towards him. "Come put on t'filin"
I waited, unsure and nervous for one of the men to help me. Then the man pulled me aside and began to wrap the leather tightly around my arm. The box on my arm to touch my heart. The strap thrice above it to form a shin, then winding down my arm, again around my palm to make a dalet, around my middle finger to make a yud, and back to my wrist to tie it off. One of the names of God had been bound to my arm. The final piece was placed on my head, the box between my eyes, the strap falling down my vertebrae, tying my ensemble together.

I wandered on, read the blessings they had given me, and found a space of the indoor portion to contemplate the wall. I produced the paper and pen I had brought and began to write. I wrote about my awe, then I wrote my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations, and my requests. I closed with a simple thank you. Thank You not for delivering these requests, but for helping me find the words to ask.

I folded the note and shoved it into a cranny where I could. I said a short blessing, and I moved on. I explored the exterior part where I ran my hands along the stones. What had from a distance looked rough and textured, was in fact smooth, nearly frictionless, to the point where it felt almost as if the wall had dissipated from beneath my fingers, worn to the bone by thousands of generations running their hands over its surface.

It struck me then, just how many people must have been there, to that very same spot. More than two thousand years, never closed, never one point in that time when it went unaccompanied or lonely. Thousands of years each made of hundreds of days each filled with hundreds upon hundreds of people. A monument to the perpetual dedication of humanity. At that moment, the concept that there could, out of all that emotion and all that time concentrated in one place, be some divine manifestation of faith, made more sense than anything else. God existed in that moment, pure, built by the people who needed him. It moved me. There is nothing more to say.

The City of David

Part Five in the Jerusalem Series

Thousands of years ago, while King Hezekiah held the throne over Israel and Jerusalem, the Tanach teaches of his great palace. The towering halls and deep caverns of the keep were his home to pass judgment on the people of Israel. After some time, the Assyrians attacked the city, leaving Hezekiah to save his people. In an effort to save his home and his people, Hezekiah commissioned a long, winding tunnel to be chiseled out of the solid rock beneath his palace well away from its gates. When the Assyrians attacked, The soldiers of Israel used the tunnel to catch them by surprise and to drive them back. Then, for thousands of years, they were lost.
Now the tunnel, as well as the ruins of Hezekiah's palace, first built by king David, have been found.

This was the palace I found myself standing on just yesterday, providing physical proof that Jews inhabited the land of Israel before even the Arabs, stretching back for hundreds of generations over thousands of years. We briefly admired the ruins. We learned the history of the castle. Then we sunk into the rocks for the second time that day.

The tunnel carried on for a short distance in cool dry levels, and then we reached the water.
"right when we get in it will be the deepest and the coldest" Akiva warned us as he rolled up his shorts revealing his thighs past the well defined tan line of life in Israel. "when we get in don't be afraid to yell and don't be afraid to sing!"

I rolled up my own shorts and steeled my legs against the cold I expected in the well practiced way of a resident of the Puget Sound. The girls ahead of me screeched loudly as, one at a time, they plunged into the stream. I prepared for the worst.

My feet touched the surface to a surprisingly pleasant coolness. Well past what any Seattleite would call natural "warm" water. Like ants in a hive, we walked, unable to stand side by side. The walls sloped inwards. The ceiling was often so low I had to crouch and I often scraped the top of my head. We continued on, and on. I had no Idea where we were going and I didn't much care. As Akiva had suggested, dozens of songs had been raised all clashing and morphing into one. I sang opera, Irish folk songs, Jewish Camp songs, anything I could think of. The girls in front of me were belting a tune from the radio indifferent keys. All the words and the energy spiraled up in a resonant cocktail to the sloping ceiling as it raised above our heads. Up, up, up.

We came to a stop. Akiva silenced us. We extinguished our headlamps. The thick blanket of black returned for an encore demonstration of exploring the senses. Akiva hummed a tune and asked us to add to it. Down the line in succession, each of us improvised a harmony or a single note to compliment the growing barrage of sound. The whole length of our party was united in a chant. Akiva began the Shemah. He drew out each syllable to the absolute end of his breath like a Buddhist Mantra. Only four students separated us and yet I could not make out his place. So, I forged my own. each of us found our own rhythm, complimenting the whole. Layers upon layers of harmonious discord were produced, eventually fading forever into irreplaceable nothingness.

Finally, there came a light at the end of the tunnel. We emerged from the opening sopping wet and grinning ear to ear. The darkness was powerful. We half ran, half limped to the top of the palace again, collected our things, and purchased much appreciated refreshments. Then we changed, the men into dress shirts, the women into ground length skirts. Our next stop, the final passage of not in the Jerusalem Series, was to be The Western Wall. We had been born from the channel of the mountain, now we headed to the most precious place in all of Jerusalem, the most core place on earth.

The Cave

Part Four of the Jerusalem Series

We stayed that night in a youth hostile, leaving first thing in the morning for our second hike of the weekend. We arrived at the mountain early in the afternoon and began our descent. The first stop we made was an olive tree about four hundred meters down the path. Climbing has always been a favorite activity of mine, even more so among the desert climate trees of Israel, crooked and different from the high pines of Seattle, not to mention of course, the hit of admiration I could get by scaling a campus tree in three seconds flat. I arrived at the tree behind the group leader by a ways to find him already seated comfortably in the low branches. All the boys had been awaiting my arrival, eager to see me scale this new obstacle. Quickly scampering up the side, I took a seat on a stylishly twisted knot three feet above the teacher as he began his lesson. It was an olive tree, as he told us. Warped and overgrown by its five hundred years in the soil, but deceptively small for all its years. The branches were tightly interwoven above my head and I could not have climbed further.

When the lesson ended, despite my seat above the rest of my fellow arboreal dwellers, I lowered myself easily around them to the ground and resumed the walk to a nearby pond littered with a solid layer of thick green scum and plastered with trilingual signs forbidding drinking, diving, and swimming. Who the signs were for was a mystery, no one would touch the acrid water. Instead we found its source, a clear stream coming from a hole in the rocks just taller than my head. One by one we ignited our headlamps and delved into the darkness in single file.

We followed the tunnel for a few hundred feet into the bowels of the earth until it opened up into a cavern the size of a small living room illuminated only by our lamps. The group congregated into a circle around the room, and then, at Akiva's instruction, turned out our lights. one by one, the white gleam of our lamps were extinguished bringing the image to my minds-eye of stars blinking out to leave the night sky endless and unlimited in its blackness. I could not see my hands an inch from my face. I could not see my neighbors. I could not see the ledge on which I was perched. I could not see the walls or the floor or the roof. I could only hear Akiva's voice, slow and methodic, as he spoke and then let the cave fall to complete, heavy silence. The blackness weighed on me like a blanket. I felt like if I tried, I could punch through it into who knows where. I felt the presence of everyone around me. I felt unbelievably alone.

My eyes clawed at the darkness, desperately searching for some light, counter to the peacefulness I found in my mind. I could only find a faint patch of lighter blackness to my left where the sneakiest light from the long distant entrance had managed to wriggle its way past the long length of tunnel. I turned my eyes away to rejoin the blackness...

After a time, Akiva raised up a song. The cave filled with a rousing cacophony of slightly out of key high schoolers singing away the dark, and the lights were relit. As the class began lowering themselves down the entrance one at a time, posing for pictures and resuming their lighthearted conversations, a few of us hung back and found the back wall of the cave where water, filtered by 100 years of seeping through the dirt and stones of Israel, dripped off the rocks as pure as rain. We drank straight from the wall of the cave, letting it drip into our hands and our mouths. We were connected to its lifeblood. Then we turned and left, never to see it again for the rest of our lives.

Both Profound... and passing.

Yerushalayim shel Zahav: Jerusalm of Gold

Part Three of the Jerusalem Series

Again we sat on the crowded bus as we neared the holy city of Jerusalem. The landscape, as always, was dry and brown in every direction. We had been traveling for over two hours now and the air in the bus was beginning to hum. The mic clicked on as the teacher took the stage to usher us into this holy place. We woke our neighbors and listened to him talk, his calm steady voice always a comforting source of meditation-like peacefulness. We entered a long, high tunnel, lit by the orange glow of lights filling every corner. As his speech came to its gradual conclusion he said,

"there is a light at the end of every tunnel, but only at the end of this tunnel... is Jerusalem"

Suddenly we came out into the stunning light of the late evening, Matisyahu's Jerusalem blasting over the sound system. The golden sun was low and tinted by the desert sky, sending long shadows across the city as it fell upon hundreds upon hundreds of buildings, reflecting its own brilliance off every possible surface. From our vantage point on the road, we could look down on the boundless expanse of the city with easy view of every possible detail.In the center of it all was an enormous dome, glinting of real gold in the early evening light. I would later know this to be the Dome of the Rock.

The bus rounded an exit and parked at a small terrace where we sat to see the splendor of the city. We sat, we looked, and then we started to sing. There is a song in Israel called Yerushalayim shel Zahav, or Jerusalem of Gold. As Akiva taught us, it had been commissioned only a year or so before the Six Day War to fill the space of counting votes in the Israeli National Songwritting competition. The managers wanted a song to reflect their city, possibly bring some good publicity to the Jews in what looked like a hopeless time. No one they asked wanted the challenge of writing the song. Jerusalem has been written about by prophets and poets and kings, how could they compare? Finally they found a songwriter, Naomi Shemer, to write it and a singer, completely unknown (as insisted upon by the author) and they prepared the song. On the day of the festival, the girl took the stage alone with her guitar, the blinding lights stopping her from seeing the crowd, and she began to sing.

Yerushalayim shel Zahav veshel nechoshet veshel or
Ha'lo lechol shir'ayich ani kinor
Jerusalem of gold, of copper, of light
Behold I am your harp for all your songs

She sang until the song came to a close. She was met with complete, terror inducing silence. She stepped out of the light with no applause, scared that she had made some flaw and looked at the audience. Every person in the stands, every person that had come that day, was crying.

/this is the song we sang as we overlooked Jerusalem, as I viewed it for the first time. We sang and sang. We sang Deep Inside my Heart. We sang One Day. We sang Jerusalem. We danced we cheered. And we returned to the bus. The day was over. We had arrived.

Hagan Shloshah

Part Two of the Jerusalem Series

The bus drove us from the mountain in our bedraggled state across a huge part of the country, nearly a two hour drive. We disembarked, sweaty and most of us still half asleep from the drive into Hagan. The Garden. The oasis. Imagine, if you will, a swimming pool, completely natural but for the occasional railing to aid its inhabitants. The water is clear and blue, luminescent of its own volition against any reasoning and lit brilliantly by the high middle eastern sun. Around the pool is grass, real, wet, grass. On the grass lie dozens of sun-browned Israelis on their towels. Three large hookahs smolder lazily around its perimeter. And among the epitome of glamor in the desert, among the dark rich tones of the locals, stands a boy as white as the smoke slowly spiraling above his counterparts' heads. Whiter even, than the brood of Americans surrounding him. Whiter than he can stand for much longer.

Isn't this country supposed to dye your skin? When do I get that sexy bronze complexion I see so often? Or must I just accept that I can be as white as the smoke of the hookah...or as red as its coal.

It's no matter. I leaped into the pool as quickly as I could, joining my friends in water much deeper than it looked. I quickly realized that, despite growing up on the Puget Sound, the next best thing to the Pacific ocean, my swimming skills were weak. Floundering around like a fish on land, The city boy had fun in the water.

Swimming to the other end, we found a small waterfall where fish would nibble on your feet. We broke for lunch, sandwiches, and rejoined the water. I became dedicated to the task of catching a fish. A challenge which my friend Ben was wonderfully willing to help accommodate. His feet provided the bait for my elusive prey as I crouched in wait. After dozens of attempts, leaving me gasping for air and somewhat disappointed, I gave up. My feet had been cut raw by the sharp rocks of the spring.

Shortly after, we reloaded our bus and took off again, this time for Jerusalem. I closed my eyes... and waited.

First Hike of Many

I'm sorry, my dear readers, for my long absence from the keyboard. Just preceding the would be publication of my previous post, as I scrambled to sort and upload the photos from my Tiyul, I was forced to run out of the room to catch the bus for our second, the later being two full days in the city of Jerusalem. I was, as such, unable to write in that time and have, as a result, accumulated quite an array of new stories, the writing of which I suspect will take me the better part of tonight. I'll be splitting the days up as I go to help avoid the feeling of no-end-in-sight in both myself, your dedicated author, and in yourselves. Unfortunately, I realized only as I sat down on the bus itself that my camera had not in fact charged despite the afternoon of leaving it attached to the computer so I will do my best to accumulate a portfolio from the other various cameras I managed to jump in front of. Here goes.

Part One of the Jerusalem Series

The bus ride was not unbearable by any means, nor was the hill to the lookout point over the west bank of which my peers found great pleasure in complaining about loudly and often to my thinly veiled amusement. And yet, right from the start, the view was amazing. As I rounded the top of the incline I looked around me and realized that, for the first time in my life, everything around me was completely unobscured. There was no next-mountain to get in the way. No thick cluster of trees to obscure my line of sight. The land was just rolling hills forever, until the buildings were the size of the rocks in the wall at my feet, and then until the mountains in the distance matched the size of the diminutive buildings from my perspective and every color faded to a nearly uniform blue. As I marveled at what would become almost a common sight over the next day and a half, my class settled down for the lesson.

As we concluded and headed down the hill for our hike, I purchased yet another bottle of water and tied my hair up in the Bedouin style that the councilors had showed us in order to poorly imitate the function of the hat I had forgotten to pack. We began down the trail, I myself in the front dozen, and promptly failed to go any further. What must have been less than three hundred feet down the trail, those of us in the front realized that we were no longer being followed. The conundrum took us a solid twenty minutes to navigate and, eventually, remedy, but once our party was reunited we continued on our way shortly to come out from the partially wooded area in which we had waited and came out on the summit of a cliff from which the view would topple even the magnitude of the previous peaks significance to me. On the rocky ledge of the mountain I could see nearly straight down. down. down. The cliff face of painted orange and white sloping so steeply beneath me that I could see the foot of the mountain clearer than the winding path in front of me. We began our descent.

I decided, in a flash of cocky self-confidence, that I would take the, often vertical descent, without once using my hands. I slid, edged, leaped, crouched, and scurried down the many crevices and rungs in the mountain without using my hands a single time. My arrogant challenge had attracted the competitive nature of a few of the boys, only one of which was even a challenger, but who too eventually failed. There I was, scaling a literal cliff overlooking the mountain on which the Judge Gideon had fought off the Philistines. I was blown away.

After a time, we reached the foot of the mountain. We were tired, sweaty, and most of us were complaining of how badly we had to pee.
"Come" said Guy, our councilor "It is bonding"
We stood single file just outside of and with our backs to the bus in an empty field of dirt six of us in all, no cover in sight. The wind blew firmly against my left cheek.
"look out at the mountains and just let it go" He said, a few feet to my right...
I think, dear readers, you can conclude what, because of no fault of mine, happened to our dear friend Guy.

To his credit he stayed, as is his fashion, perpetually in good spirits. He told us that in the army they would go in the group showers to talk to their friends and pee on their legs.
"By the time they notice, its too late!"

This country is one enormous oxymoron. Allow yourself in, and there is so much brotherly love. Stay out, and be forced out. The Jews hate the Arabs, the Arabs hate the Jews, everyone hates the government, and the Chasid's hate everyone. And yet I am finding so much love, and above all so much awe.

The Top Carrot

As little as I understand the translation of this places ridiculous name, the Tel Gezer has a charm unmatched by anything I've found in Israel until now. The average day is often so contained on campus that it almost feels as if we have not left the states and instead are camped in some backwater corner of California that seems oddly influenced by European-esque culture and an indecipherable style of writing. It almost makes me wonder if the nineteen hour flight actually happened or if I never left the sun struck city of Phoenix. And yet, The trail we have taken in Tel Gezer puts these, fanciful wonderings to rest. We have seen the Sabra cactus, the olive, the grape vine. We ascend a hill, bleached by the piercing sun to match its surroundings in sepia tones of gold and yellow and brown with the occasional tint of green as if an artist had passed over the film of the country and colored only the rare places where grass actually manages to grow before he too succumbed to the blazing heat of the terrain he painstakingly colored and set down his solitary colored brush. I know his struggle as I sit in the partial shade of a small wall at the high place of Gezer, a sacrificial alter to the God of defense from long before even the ancient Jews enter the land. The sun, persistent in its affront to my sanity, finds crevices and nooks in the wall to sneak through and paint my paper-white skin. My aching arms, sore from the exertion of activity and stress, are battered by it. I reach to the ground to collect some of the dozens of pottery shards that have littered the pathways for more than three thousand years. Our possession thereof has been described as a legal grey area.

I'm writing under pressure. they are pushing me out the door even as I type these last words but I know that if I don't make it down now, I never will. Breakfast time before a long day of hiking in caves and finally journeying to Jerusalem. Israel has begun to take its own shape. It has begun to come alive.

First Full Day

The sun has set and the day has finally come to a close. It began in lessons, a potentially harmless undertaking that would require little to no mental involvement at the average summer program. Unfortunately, true to its word about being an intensive program, we have settled in our seats for what is to be the first of three full hours of Torah study following the submission of the previous nights' three page homework assignment. The piece was not difficult to write, nor especially unpleasant. A creative piece featuring a conversation between a devout Jew and his ancient Babylonian counterpart on the subject of their respective origin stories. I had, in spite of my annoyance at the presence of homework on our first day of class, enjoyed writing the paper.

Class stretched on. The teacher, Akiva, frequently ventured off on tangents about popular musicians or the connection between the theory of relativity and the Kabbalah interpretation of Genesis (in truth, a truly fascinating perspective which somehow confirmed either my belief that Moses must have been a legitimate prophet, or that the Jewish people will grasp at any possible straw to prove their story, completely simultaneously). The air conditioner insistently blowing out cold air directly onto my desk and raising goose bumps on my arm. I never thought, in Israel of all places, I would be too cold.

Class eventually let out and we found ourselves free to wander the city. I surreptitiously struck out on a solitary quest for the toiletries I had not packed. Doing so alone would have been frowned upon, but I had not been out of the demanding company of new acquaintances for two straight days and I was in need of a retreat. After a short period of wandering, I eventually found a market and, after considerable consideration, separated shampoo, soap, sunscreen, and mouthwash, which I took to the register. My skin, white as ever under the fluorescent lights of the market, failed to deceive my teller for even a moment as to my nationality. "one hundred and six" she said in clean, unaccented English. I awkwardly paid with two hundreds and departed with my abundance of change.

Returning to campus, I lounged on the grass with a few other students waiting for Shabbat to begin. I showered and changed four times before settling on how to display my full white attire. Before leaving the dorm, regardless of the booming reggae my roommates were blasting, the jetlag took hold again and I fell hopelessly asleep to the tunes of loud teenage boys. My groggy state would continue well into services, much to my embarrassment as I was woken over and over again.

To conclude the evening, our makeshift "family" gathered on the playground to talk as the sky darkened. I have just come from yet another mixer in which every person was paired up and instructed to have a series of twenty second conversations with their rotating partners, an activity in which I finally began to thrive. I have found my comfort zone here. I can now carry on a conversation with most of the people I meet. I find that the key to this new found confidence is in two parts. 1) Dress for success. 2) don't try to be "always on".

I sit now in the silence of my empty dorm, debating an early bedtime even though we are not meant to be up until 11 tomorrow for the holiday, and enjoy the peace I get. A nagging voice in my head won't allow me to go so quietly though. I am torn between rejoining the group and attempting to strengthen the connections I have built, or taking a well needed withdrawal. In any case, I'm looking forward to a relaxing day tomorrow.

Shabbat Shalom and Laila Tov.

Early Morning. Israel

I am jetlagged.

This is new for me. Though I have twice made the trip across the country to New York, even reached as far as Amsterdam and Prague last summer, I managed to keep my inner clock from ever interrupting my sleep. Yet this morning, after retiring at 12:30, I awoke in a state of unquestioned assuredness that the hour was, in fact, 7:30. A number I all but pulled from the air. After attempting to convince my phone that this was indeed the time, that Israel was on a different zone, it eventually informed me (with a smug look), that the time was in fact 2:30. I returned to bed.

It is now 6:04 and I have settled on the fact that my wakeful state, insistently accompanying me for the past half hour, will not be denied. Taking advantage of my solitude in the early hour, I left my dorm for the family room across the way and fixed myself the worst cup of coffee I have ever had. I sat outside watching the campus wake up. I had abandoned my first cup down the drain and was now attempting to enjoy its replacement, a thick brown instant mix who bumped against my lips carrying the distinctive flavor of salt leftover from its persistent predecessor. I had mistakenly picked the latter of two identical white bags, both containing fine white crystals and marked only in Hebrew to give hint at their contents. The coffee warmed me, though strangely unnecessarily, as I watched one of the camps many cats recline lazily on a bench.

Finally, after waiting nearly all of yesterday, it dawned on me just where I am. What I'm doing. The sky feels different, warm like a blanket. The ground, even in this controlled place, is dry and desert. The moon smiles down at me with its familiar face and I can't help but think about its placement in the sky, where and when my family must see it on the other side of the globe. I am in Israel. I made it.

Bedraggled and groggy from my night of sleep, I sit at my monitor, trying to stretch out the hours of the morning until seven, when the school will be woken and I can wash the grease and sweat and exhaustion out of my hair without the shower making too much of a fuss. My skin feels oily and heavy. I need to start fresh and allow the first day of Israel to wash over me.

I am excited.

Day One Begins

After a three AM wakeup call for a full 20+ hour day of sitting on airplanes, I have finally settled down into the AMHSI bunk. I was unsurprised to find that the initial terror of the night before faded relatively quickly after making past the first security checkpoint in SEA TAC. Bolstered by my miniature victory against the TSA, The remainder of the morning passed uneventfully. Once seated I came to the odd realization that I was no longer concerned with my surroundings. The wonder of flight had officially worn off, perhaps for good, and while the flight between my home and Santa Cruz no longer holds the thrill of adventure in my heart, I always thought that New York would tempt me a little stronger. Perhaps my eager anticipation was diluted by the stop in desolate-brown Phoenix Arizona. Perhaps the real excitement would begin once the trip to my final destination had commenced. Perhaps the eminent foreboding at my journey had not quite passed me by as much as I thought...

Anyhow, as I sat, reading at page 434 The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay , on the flight leaving barren Phoenix, my bemusement at the miracle-of-flight slowly faded to boredom and I was forced to double the pace of my lazy reading in order to entertain myself. After what I assume to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a six hour flight, slanted somewhat by my sleep addled half waking state, and rounding the six hundredth page of my novel, I landed decisively in New York. Following my luggage claim and a brief, confusing foray into the layout of what I now understand to be the vast expanse of JFK Airport, I came across the loose and awkward conglomerate that would comprise my network of peers in the upcoming weeks. I recall wondering, never quite taking myself seriously, whether any of the multitudinous Jews I saw around me leading up to my induction could be heading my way. Whether, perhaps, my neighbor on the New York bound flight with the hairy arms and prominent nose could possibly be following the same path as myself. I entertained a fantasy of running into him again on my next flight and realizing, laughing at the coincidence. I allowed myself to imagine dozens of meetings with dozens of people around me. It helped fill the time of the endless, mind-killing, drudging, continuous, perpetual boredom.

But that was in the past. I had found AMHSI.

I picked out a quiet boy in red, very good looking in a Jewish sort of way, but unsure, as if he wasn't sure what he was doing there. His name, he told me, is Adam. I asked him if I was in the right place? who were we all waiting for? was this AMHSI? Pointless questions designed mostly to advertise my presence. It worked. The crowd turned to me for a brief moment. I was Jacob, from Seattle, as they all were answered one by one. Then the conversation rotated back to the usual epicenters, the alpha-males. Some of the boys looked like they'd been cut out of Aggressive Sports magazine, with the bodies of small albino gorillas and faces that I couldn't help but think of, much to my own internal amused chagrin, as Aryan. It quickly became clear that the head honcho was another boy named Adam. Taller than the rest but, lean, and with the face of Persian royalty, sporting a bucket hat that he proclaimed, effectively so as it appeared, to be bringing back in style. He would turn out to be my flight neighbor, where we would in turn discuss social caste, academia, our flaws, our skills, and his own charisma. He has yet to prove to me a reason to be disliked, although I feel there is one below the surface. His aforementioned charisma is nearly an affront to comfort. His constant alpha-male demeanor a little off putting. He is positive that I will hate him before a few days have passed. I must admit, the pseudonym he assigned me sent him down that path. I am Conan.

Yet, once the circles had been drawn (using the guidelines of previous acquaintance to the other participants, of which I seem to be the solitary loner) I found conversations. They were stilted and awkward, they took the effort of a dialogue with a partner who themselves lacked the conversation skills to be included in a circle but, thank god, they existed. I talked on and off with dozens of people, all fascinated for a brief time with the distant land of Seattle, then after completing my 638 page book on the trans-Atlantic flight, we arrived in Israel.

It was not, as I had hoped, complete with an exultant wave of awe. Seen from afar, it is by no means a beautiful country. Its residents, those who do not posses the ethereal beauty of the middle east, are old, fat, dark, wrinkled, and more likely than not enshrouded in conservative black. Its buildings are short, brown and stained to so many shades of beige that they eventually resign themselves to neutral gray. The dust is everywhere.

We arrived on campus to a waiting meal and a heap of new people, three of whom are now clumsily unpacking in varying degrees of undress as I write these final words. The taste of this country is so foreign. Our simple dinner of pasta, salad, and pudding refused to cooperate with my exhausted taste buds. I have yet to wash up from my journey.

Now, in the taunting promise of imminent sleep, I will close my first Israel post with this. Tomorrow is going to be incredible.

Crisis

I am visibly shaking as I pull the covers up to my neck. As I predicted, the preceding afternoon has contained a full repack of all my material, checking and re-checking the list for anything I ay've forgotten. I feel an odd sense of obligation to stay positive on this, the blog that I have promised to my generous benefactors, for the trip on which I am about to embark. Yet, if I have to smile any more, act as if I'm not terrified, I'm going to scream. My mother enters the room with my grandmother on the phone.

I snap at her.

I don't mean too but I'm panicked. Something about her tear filled voice, the pride she feels for me taking the plunge, the necessity of a good bye call… It all seems very final.

I'm not ready to go.
I'm afraid...

…I return from a brief, but anxious call from grandma in which she wishes me well and reassures me that she has been on trips just the same. She knows the creeping fear that comes with them. I'm sweating. Hot, even in this, seattle's rainy climate. What will I ever do in Israel? I push open my window as far as I can to let in the cool, Northwest air that brings back memories of sleeping in the woods under the stars. There will be none of that in Israel. I recall walking through the park today and looking at the rolling green hills and tall pines even in Othello, the tiny, baby park of Seattle's bounty of green. There will be none of that in Israel.

Now the methodic click of my keys has soothed my turbulent thoughts. I debate posting this crisis-I-have-witnessed to (what I hope to be) a growing mass of friends and family to gawk and croon at. I eventually decide that there is nothing else for it. My doubts will fade in time, the cool calm breeze will be replaced by a warm comforting blanket of air and I will fade to sleep, not in my own bed, but in an exotic dorm of the middle east. I will be at home there eventually, hums my sub-concious mind. I type the last wandering words onto a screen that I will not see for weeks.

Goodbye Seattle. This will be the last time my eyes will close for the night on your peaceful beauty until weeks have passed and I see you anew with enlightened eyes. Goodnight.

Before I Go

So far its been quite a week, closing out junior year, saying goodbye to all the outgoing seniors, passing around yearbooks and stressing over that one last test. Still I think its about time to start buckling down. I've packed my bag for what I'm sure is going to be the first of many times before I fly out on Tuesday morning, now it's time to wait out my last few days and say my last goodbyes. I must say, I'm having trouble containing my nerves that I haven't missed something. This really is going to be "The Adventure of a Lifetime" like they all say, so I'll just be sitting here bitting my nails and waiting for it all to start. Here I go...