Cultural Learnings 7.0

This is a long one! In this post: Trips to Tel Aviv, dialog seminar in Ein Gedi, Lag B’Omer, the Pope, traffic circles, an old friend, and finding a new feeling.

7.1 There are two traffic circles where I live in California. One is called “The Circle,” and the other is the Kensington Circle, because it is in Kensington. Most intersections are circles here. Probably a few have stop signs somewhere. Major intersections have lights, which are also different from the US. Traffic circles are better for the environment because you don’t have to come to a complete stop and then accelerate again. Israelis just go for it. I’ve definitely spent a solid minute or two waiting for space to go in The Circle. Israelis would never do that. The way they see it, if their car is in front of another car, that car will avoid hitting them. The circles in the middle are often landscaped nicely. There is a brick slope between the flowers and the street, because the city was planned based on the assumption that people drive like psychos and will inevitably go up on the curb. Likewise, many of the sidewalks have a metal fence at the edge.

7.2 Career Israel had a dialog seminar in Ein Gedi with Israelis. In classic Israeli style, our bus left 45 minutes late. We drove through the West Bank. It was desolate. There were clusters of shacks on the side of the road. We stopped at a truck-stop which offered camel rides. I had one of those “holy-crap-I’m-in-Israel” moments. Three soldiers patrolled the spot. In America, I thought riding on public transit was dangerous, and the West Bank was some kind of a black hole. But I take buses all the time, and there I was, right in the middle of the West Bank.

Ein Gedi is a spring next to the Dead Sea. The stream has a series of waterfalls and pools, with lots of vegetation and mountain goats. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. The Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth. I also love it there. In our youth hostel we were roomed with Israelis. Some people had no Israelis, and a few of us were the only holnikim in the room. I was with three Israelis. I think they paired me with them because they are religious. Normally I enjoy being with strangers, but I really missed my friend Anna. We were really hoping to room together. I felt so isolated from the group. First I didn’t live in Beit Leni in Tel Aviv, then I move to Jerusalem, and now I don’t even get to spend time with my favorite friend on our trip, or even get to know one of the girls I’m not friends with. Anna is getting closer with all sorts of people on the program, and I’m not. I don’t get to spend my nights on the disgusting roof of Beit Leni. Compounding everything was my Shabbat observance. Carrying is forbidden on Shabbat, so I couldn’t take a towel to the Sea or a water bottle on the Ein Gedi hike. I stayed in the hostel and chatted with people. I very much want to return under my own conditions, when I am not observing Shabbat and I can take my favorite people.
This is the Dead Sea, with Jordan in the background.


The dialog seminars we had were somewhat interesting. We discussed what a Jew is in one. The one I liked best involved the madricha saying a word, and everyone saying only beseder or lo beseder—ok or not ok. Gay marriage, circumcision, an Arab prime minister, making aliya, McDonalds, dating a non-Jew, and marrying a non-Jew were some of our prompts. Coming up with an answer for some of these made me see where ideology and reason conflict for me. I was one of the only ones to say beseder for an Arab PM, and I explained myself at the end of the game. Even the most progressive American abolitionists in the 1800’s probably couldn’t see a black man being president. But things change. I said that sooner or later Israelis were going to have to deal with democracy. Will an Arab be PM in the next 50 years? No way. But at some point Israeli Arabs will have to be incorporated into society. They’re not going to tolerate being treated as unfortunate baggage forever. And I don’t think Israelis will view them as threateningly forever. I asked if it was possible that an Arab could represent the best interests of all Israelis, and I was met with comments suggesting Arabs are more loyal to other Arabs, and other Arabs hate Israel. I let ideology prevail when I said circumcision is beseder, but I listened to reason when I said moving out of Israel is also beseder. The only mother in the group said circumcision is lo beseder.

I met a cute, clever boy, but I stopped talking to him because he doesn’t brush his teeth. He was also a little annoying with teasing/flirting. I decided I wasn’t interested in him sexually, and I ignored him the rest of the day. I realized that I have been looking at guys as potential conquests for a long time now. It saddened me. I would like to see guys as humans, but I have this crazy sex drive. It’s been feeling lazy lately, but I don’t know if that will hold. I think I’ll take a break from being on the prowl. It seems to always end in speedy disappointment. As they say in the movie “Saved!” “The muffin factory is closed!”

I sat alone on the bus ride back, after briefly saying goodbye to Anna. I was rather despondent until I saw fireworks on the other side of the Dead Sea. A Jordanian wedding!

7.3 The Pope was here this week. I could hear his helicopter landing on Hadassah hospital while I was at work. Sara saw him get out of it from her dorm window. He made hardly a ripple. He managed to piss off both Palestinians and Jews. And he made traffic suck. My friend who works at the Jerusalem Post said she was so bored moderating comments on articles about the Pope because no one was posting anything. Other than giving people the privilege of saying “I saw the Pope,” that guy is pretty useless.

7.4 A friend I made at camp in 2003 is here on the Otzma program. I called him and we met up. He was just like he was at 17. I saw him for a day in 2004, and we didn’t really keep in touch after that. I was delighted that we could see each other again after all this time. I made friends from all over the country, and the best chance I have of seeing most of them again is in Israel.

7.5 America goes crazy for its holidays. Each holiday has a sale. Everyone goes to Union Square to light a giant Christmas tree. The pharmacies play season-appropriate muzak. Everyone is aware of the holiday, even if they don’t observe it. I have gone through life having no part of these holidays, and having to explain my own to stupefied professors.

Here in Israel, I get to see what it’s like to be normal, in the mainstream. I didn’t have to miss work for the holiday, I didn’t have to explain it to anyone. The whole country knew what was up. For Lag B’Omer, the national bus company ran hundreds of special buses from all over the country to a small town in the rural North. They made a special rest stop. My school was closed. There were extra firemen in case of unruly bonfires. The whole country was aware of this holiday, even though it’s Hasidic and most people don’t observe it. I was filled with a kind of jealous glee at being able to have meaning in national holidays, and knowing that I’ll eventually return to my minority freak status.

I felt Zionist. This is what it means to have a national home. Here, no one can oppress or even inconvenience me for being as Jewish as I want. Oddly, I feel more compelled to assert my Judaism when I’m in gallus (Yiddish for exile.) I don’t know how I feel about that. But here I can be Jewish easily—there were whole pessadic grocery stores! There is a certain significance of being a Jew in a foreign land, but I can barely articulate what it’s like to be in the majority. It’s like if you wear glasses, and you go to a land where everyone is near-sighted. Signs would be bigger, eye care would be convenient and available, and glasses tans would be fashionable. It’s like that!

7.6 There are 7 weeks between Passover—celebrating the exodus from Egypt—and Shavuot—celebrating receiving of the Torah. The interim period is called the omer (which means barley.) Each day has a mystical meaning which I will not attempt to clarify. The 33rd day of the omer is Lag B’Omer (the letters lamed and gimmel representing 30 and 3, respectively.) The omer is considered a time of mourning in which we do not cut our hair or listen to music. The 33rd day is a holiday. We celebrate a number of victorious moments in Jewish history with bonfires, archery, weddings, and haircuts. Secular people stick to bonfires and barbeques, while Hasidic Jews delve into the mystical aspects of the day. We celebrate the death of a rabbi who wrote the Zohar, a book of Jewish mysticism. His grave is in a town near Tsfat called Meron. Sara, Maliya, and I went there.

Buying our bus tickets took an hour. Israelis don’t have lines, so you have to be constantly aware of who is cutting in front of you. They also don’t have personal space. A fight almost broke out. In front of us were two American seminary girls, fresh out of high school. One was batting her eyelashes, chewing gum, and constantly on the phone. She also spoke fast enough to tense my shoulders. Her friends were trying to get her to get them tickets, and she was willing to even though it made things more difficult for all of them. Sara said she was stressing her out. We got McFlurries in the bus station. I hadn’t had one for 10 years. There is a separate McDonalds for dairy products. Our bus actually left on time. Men sat in the front, and women in the back. It actually didn’t bother me at all. People pray and sleep on the bus, and it’s not proper in that community to do that in mixed settings. We drove along the West Bank, possibly inside of it at times. I could see shepherds with flocks, donkeys, and even a camel. The separation wall blocked the view for part of it. The hay had just been baled. The Arab cities were beautiful. I was nervous about having to pee during the 3-hour ride. But midway through, we turned off onto the road for Jenin and came to a rest stop that Egged made just for us! There were separate entrances for men and women. Each side had Porta-Potties, and there were concessions in the middle. Sara said she’d never seen me more happy about anything. We could see some giant bonfires when the sun set.

There were separate entrances when we arrived in Meron. A tent was giving out free food to women who gave tsedaka to the men out front (or not.) We got salads, cookies, and berekas. I saw someone with a noodle kuggle, so we went to that tent, too. You really have to fight for everything here. Pickle juice dripped into my shoe. I got my damn kuggle. We found the two Chabad boys who were at that Shabbat dinner we walked to that one time. They were dressed casually! The cute one was wearing a cadet hat and playing guitar. Sara also spotted the sister of someone we knew from college. I had never met her, but he had told me I’d recognize her from facebook. And I did. She was probably creeped out. We walked through the women’s section, and it was jam-packed. They were praying around the building which houses the rabbi’s grave. There were plenty of bathrooms around, but they were all full of women. Men’s restrooms turned into women’s. An estimated 400,000 people were there. While women got free food, we found beer when we wandered onto the men's road.

For how religious most of these people were, they sure touched me a lot. Even taking the crowds into account, there was still unnecessary touching. I saw a guy walk directly into Maliya even though there was plenty of room around her. She and I were standing together behind a frum man and his sons in a place that was not crowded. When he turned to go, he brushed against me to the point where I was thrown off balance. Not necessary!


Israelis touch way too much, and sound really hostile when they’re not. They don’t form lines, they’re often homophobic and racist (afraid), and they drive like maniacs. I am having a wonderful time here, and I feel magically included in this Jewish nation, but I don’t like Israelis. I could never be Israeli, and I would never want to have Israeli children. I have many Israeli friends, but the problems I have with their personalities can all be traced back to being Israeli.

Maliya and I decided to back to Jerusalem around 12. Sara had met up with another friend. We asked the guards where to go, and we got pointed in various directions. We spent 15 minutes walking up and down the crazy street with the entrance, until I finally asked a guard to explain to me in English where to go. He said go down to the intersection (I had to supply the word,) make a right, then a left. OK. So we went to the intersection and started walking up hill. We asked each guard if we were going the right way. We walked for half an hour in the dirt up this freaking hill! The women rushed the back of the bus, but the woman with the double stroller knew she wouldn’t get a space. Maliya and I conked out for the 3 hour ride. The bus station was closed, so the driver drove around Jerusalem letting people off wherever they liked. I asked if he was going to Har HaTsofim (Mt Scopus), and he didn’t seem to know what that was. A passenger nodded at me as if to say he would go there. One by one or in groups, the bus was soon emptied of young, frum Jews. He pulled into a neighborhood called Har Hotzvim and told us to get off. What. None of us knew where we were. It’s an industrial neighborhood, where cars speed past factories and warehouses, and no one would hear you if you screamed. There were 4 of us girls from the Student Village, and a religious dude. We tried to convince him to just go up Kvish 1 a little, but it was 4:15 am and he was not interested. So we got off and started walking. I said we should just take a cab, it couldn’t cost more than 40 shekels. “No way,” said one of the girls, “I never pay more than 30 shekels anywhere in Jerusalem. No way.” Really? Really? Just for the record, 40 shekels is $10. In US dollars, she was saying that she wouldn’t pay her share of $2.50, but rather would insist on paying $1.85 for a ride home at 4:30 am. We got a cab, and we paid 35 sheks. So you WOULD pay more than 30 shekels within Jerusalem, you JAPy little skank! I fell asleep to the first call of the muezzin.

7.7 I surprised my friend Anna in Tel Aviv for her birthday. We got Thai food with a bunch of people. Birthdays suck.

The next week Maliya, Sara, and I were going to meet up with our friend Miriam in Tel Aviv. I called one of my good friends there to see if I should come in early so I could see him and Anna. He said yes. When I called him two hours later upon my arrival in Tel Aviv, he said he was going to Ulpan at 7. So was Anna. “Why didn’t you tell me that before I left? I could have come with Sara and Maliya instead of alone!” He didn’t seem phased. I went to Beit Leni, and spent 15 minute with him and Anna. They pay 20 shekels per class. But they both went, with the parting remark of “You’re not mad, right?” I saw some of my other friends, but they were going out to dinner. I went to the bus station to meet Sara and Maliya at 8, as they had instructed. But when I called they said they would be 40 minutes late. I was so unhappy!

Eventually we all met up, and we sat around with two other people from Santa Cruz, and Miriam’s hot cousins. We got jahnun and berekas on Alenby St. Jahnun is a Yemeni bread made of thin dough rolled up with butter. A bereka is a flaky pastry filled with potato or cheese or mushrooms. They’re served with harif (spicy,) crushed tomatoes, and a hard boiled egg. We met more Ethiopians. It was a nice evening. Four of us slept in a bed together.

In the morning Sara, Maliya and I got Benedict, a great 24-hour breakfast place. I went back to Jerusalem alone. I bough challas, veggies, and pitas in the shuk, and the rest of my dinner at Yesh in the religious neighborhood by my house. I made the mistake of hitchhiking, because I was so hot and thirsty. A religious boy picked me up, and proceeded to make inappropriate comments and touch me. He shook my hand, which is fine with me, but not if you’re Hasidic. Men and women don’t touch outside of family and marriage in that community. But let the kid get his thrills, right? He drove past my village and pulled into a parking lot across the street. He got out and shook my hand again, then opened his arms for a hug. I had been talking about Shabbat, and saying he was doing me a mitzvah for taking me home, but he grabbed me. If he had known what to do, I’m sure he would have tried to do it. I pushed him away and walked off. I wish I had scratched his face open. I wish had said in Hebrew that he has no G-d, that there is no Messiah for him, that he must honor women, that he is the son of a whore. I looked him in the face and told him to go fuck himself, which I think is pretty clear to most Hebrew-speakers.

I’m so tired of men treating me worse than garbage. Sara said frum boys are told that secular girls just have sex with everyone all the time. Does that matter?

I’m still sad about being disappointed by my friends, and almost getting raped by a religious boy.