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...