Jordan!!!!

The trip begins! After a long, sleepless night in Ben Gurion Airport, it was time to fly to Jordan. As soon as I sat down I fell asleep and the next thing I knew, we were there! We decided to go to Madaba first since it was closer to the airport and was also near Mt. Nebo.

Madaba was pretty nice, it gave us chance to get acclimated to the trip. We walked around the city, saw a mosaic in a really old church. the one with the famous map of Jerusalem with the Cardo in the center.

We got lunch in a small restaurant and when the owner heard Andrea was from Chicago he got all excited because he used to live there. He gave us free sodas and free icees (what he called "chilly willies") and the proceeded to tell us his whole life story.

Then we were off to Mt. Nebo to see where Moses died. To took out my tripod and got some really amazing footage. I wanted to pray there, but I know that's not the safest thing for a Jew to do in public in Jordan, so I made sure only to bow when the guards weren't looking, kept the schukling to a minimum and moved my hands around like an evangelical. No problems, thank God.

We then took a cab to Amman and we both fell asleep for a while since it was about an hour-long drive. It's really nice and there are pictures of King Abdullah everywhere. We walked around the city for a little while and went to some markets, but Jordan is really expensive. Who knew the Dinar was stronger than the Dollar? Not I.

After the markets, we wandered over to the King Husein Mosque. It was prayer time and Andrea wasn't allowed in. I don't think the women's section was open. I went in and stood on the side intending to film a little bit, but one of the men there pulled me over next to him to pray. So I imitated him and said the Shema quietly. I wonder when the last time a Jew prayed in there? It was pretty amazing. Afterwords I bought a kuffi (a Muslim Kippah) to wear for next time. I look so great! Ha! Also, one of the book sellers had a copy of "Mein Kampf" in Arabic, wonderful. I decided against buying it.

Right next to the mosque was a huge Roman Amphitheater. I had never been to one that was so big before. There were two museums attached to it but they were really boring. But one worrying thing I noticed was that whenever a town in Israel was mentioned, it was labeled as being in Palestine. It sounds insignificant but it reflects a much larger problem that exists with the peace with Jordan and Egypt. It seems to be more on paper than in the hearts of the people which won't ever change if they don't even have to acknowledge Israel's existence in state-run museums. This is the reason why Netanyahu keeps on insisting the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish State. Not out of insecurity, but because if they don't make it an official policy to teach that Israel has a right to exist, the next generation will not understand why there is a treaty to begin with and everything will start all over again.

We then went to get some dinner at cheap place that was recommended to us by a woman outside the mosque. Since it was early we had the whole place to ourselves. We sat on a balcony, ate fatat humus with pita and zaatar pizza (Jason eat your heart out!). It was delicious and only cost around $2! Amazing.

Then we had to rush back to the airport because we forgot that Jordan was still on daylight savings time so we lost an hour. But not a problem, we got there with plenty of time.

Next stop: Cairo!

Wow a New Post

So it's been a little while my last posting. I need to work on this a little bit, so here's how my day went today.

I woke up late because I have no class and I wasn't able to sleep last night until about 4 am. It might have had something to do with planning a trip to Egypt. So when I finally woke up, I got myself together and headed over to Andrea's (my new buddy in the masters program here) apartment to plan out the trip.

We're going to leave the day after Yom Kippur, fly via Jordan and use an 11.25 hour layover for a day trip in Amman. Then we'll head over to Cairo for about a week. Should be awesome. I'm looking forward to checking out an Egyptian Synagogue on Sukkot. I can't wait to see the sunrise at the pyramids, see the sphinx and just wander around in Egypt. I don't know when I'll be able to go again so I'm going to make the most of it. And of course I'm going to get some great footage. I'm so excited!

We then went with Loren (another masters student, and a guy) to the absoption center where he has been living since he made aliyah this summer. It's a reeeeeeeeally long building in Be'er Sheva, where hundreds of new immigrant families live while they study Hebrew and get used to the country. I met Jews from Turkey, Peru, India and Yemen. Then while we were walking around we passed a group of teenage boys playing and speaking in Russian. I made a comment about there being lots of Russians and then heard all about how they weren't Russian but Ukrainian, Latvian, Belorussian, Azeri... I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, we were walking by a mural with lots of different national flags next to the Israeli flag. Not very subtle, but then again, I don't think that was the point. It was really powerful seeing all those different Jews who were coming together, as new olim.

We sat down (Loren and I, Andrea sat with the women) and spoke with some of the Yemeni Jews for a little while. I was a little upset with myself because I wasn't really able to talk with them in Arabic so much. I really need to step up my reviewing. But I was still able to talk with some of them in Hebrew and at one point, one of them was translating from Arabic to Hebrew and I was translating from Hebrew to English. Kinda funny, but very interesting. While it is great to see all these Jews coming together in Israel, the Yemeni Jews I met were not happy at all about leaving Yemen (some had arrived just last week) and told me right out that if there weren't so many problems there and if they felt safer, they would all have preferred to stay there. I asked them if they would be willing to be interviewed about it on camera and they agreed so it looks like I have a possible topic for my next film. They then asked us if we were hungry. We said no, but they brought out some home made laffa anyway. Delicious.

We then turned around and saw that Andrea was gone. She had been taken up to one of the apartments by one of the Yemeni women who was intent on feeding her. Sadly, Andrea didn't know who to say she was a vegetarian in Arabic. Not wanting to be rude, she proceeded to eat a whole chicken (well, not a whole chicken, but that's how she described it). When I told Yehiel, our Hebrew-Arabic translator, what happened, he laughed and said that Yemenis love to eat and love to watch other people eat. I could get used to this.

When we got back to the dorms, I went to study some Arabic. Having not studied it for over a year, I'm noticeably rusty. But I'm sure that if I really force myself to review and study, I should be ready in time for class. Although, I'm still not sure which Arabic-in-Hebrew class I'm going to be taking, I'm sure it will be much different that what I've done in the past. I'll have to practice translating directly from Arabic to Hebrew a little bit to get used to it.

A little later I went over my class schedule. I've decided on the three non-language courses I want to take: Milestones in the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-1948 (Benny Morris), Studying the Modern Middle East: A Historiographic Review, and The 1979 Iranian Revolution: A Thirty Year Perspective. But I'm a little annoyed. I had recently been thinking about taking Persian (Farsi) in Hebrew as well, because I think it would be fun, interesting and would serve as both a Hebrew class and another language class. But there is only one beginners class and it is the same time as Benny Morris' class. How can there only be one class for the entire university?! Oh well.

Tel Aviv Shabbat

Last weekend, a whole group of us decided to head up to Tel Aviv for the day. After Ulpan we got on a bus and made the trek. I ended up sitting on the floor the whole way since the bus was full, but it wasn't too bad. Once we got there we made our way over to our hostel and checked in. We go up to our rooms to change into our bathing suits and I notice a problem: I forgot mine along with my towel. Great. Luckily, Nick had an extra pair of mesh shorts that he let me borrow and use instead. If only they hadn't been sooooo short. But they did the job.

We then walked a few blocks to the beach and got a late lunch of falafel. Not great, but not too bad either. Then it was beach time. I had forgotten just how soft the sand is there; it's not like sand on other beaches that can be rough. This sand is just really, really soft. It feels great to walk on... when it's not incredibly hot that is. But the problem of hot sand is easily solved by simply going in the water, which is so warm you can just jump right in. Wonderful.

After a few hours on the beach swimming, body surfing and seeing an amazing sunset, Ian, Shay, Robb and I decided to go walk around the city a little bit. We walked over to the mall to see if District 9 was playing; it wasn't. So we walked around a little bit and explored the mall for a while.

I had been in touch with my friends Yamit and Dani (her little brother) who live in Tel Aviv and we were trying to hang out with each other. I don't know if it was the language barrier or what, but after telling us he'd meet us at the mall with his car in 10-15 minutes, we waited for about an hour before I called again and he finally come over.

They took us to the port where there are lots of trendy bars. There were four of us in the back seat, so Robb and Ian kept having to put their heads down as we passed the police so we wouldn't get a ticket. Dani was very vocal about how he felt about the police. It was pretty funny.

It was great to see them again. Last time I saw Dani, he was maybe 15 and now he's 20 and in the army... but still just as crazy as he was last time I saw him. Yamit is doing great and it's much easier to talk to her in Hebrew now that I've been in Ulpan for a while.

After a few drinks they brought us back to beach where we met up with the rest of the group and walked back to the hostel. We hung out for a while on the balcony. Shelly and Rebbecca thought it might be a good idea to walk to Jaffa - we were not close at all. We decided against it and went to bed instead. It was pretty late.

We woke up the next morning and checked out of the hostel. Shay had to leave to go to the airport because he was going home, so we all said our good-byes. We then walked around looking for some breakfast. A few of us got bagels as a restaurant. Very disappointing. Tel Aviv is not New York and the bagels were terrible and very salty. We then split up to explore the city. Ian, Nick and I walked down to Sheinken, checking out little shops on the way. We then decided to walk through the shuk to get to the beach. What we didn't realize was that we were walking south, not west towards the beach. So when we finally got out of the shuk, we were almost in Jaffa (we could see the mosques). So we walked to the beach and then walked up to meet up with the rest of the group.

When we got there none of us really wanted to go back to Be'er Sheva so we decided to stay for Shabbat. We went back to the hostel (after swimming for a while) and checked back in. I then had to go to a grocery store to buy food for Shabbat. We then changed and then everyone went back tot he beach while Dori and I went to the Shul down the street. It was really beautiful and the cantor had a great voice, but it was more of a performance than a service. There was an American father with his two adult sons sitting in front of me who were completely lost. I tried to help them follow along but they were completely lost and left before Kabbalat Shabbat was over. I sat with this French Jew and Dori ended up sitting with his friend. But we both ran into the problem that we didn't speak French, they didn't speak English. So we made do with Hebrew, though his wasn't so great so I had to speak very slowly. I asked them to join us for dinner and told him he could speak with our friend May who is French-Canadian, but they already had plans. So we went back to the beach by ourselves.

We met up with the rest of the guys at a picnic table on the beach. I made Kiddush and then we all had some challah with nutella. Delicious. I then made some sandwiches of peanut butter and nutella and they got some pizza. We hung out on the beach for a while, some of the guys went swimming, played kings and then went back to the hostel.

On Shabbat morning we woke up around 11:30 and checked out. We then went to a restaurant to get some lunch. Well, everyone else got lunch, I brought my food and made some sandwiches. The girls at the table next to ours turned out to be from New Jersey (non-Syrians from Deal) so Ian and I made some small talk.

Then it was time to go to the beach again. We staked out a spot in the shade and played some cards. We then went in the water and stayed there for hours. Literally. I must have been in the water for at least four hours. It was so great.

I then started look for stars and finally davened on the beach. Afterward, we went out to dinner at a cool Mexican place and then got on the train back to Be'er Sheva. All in all, not a bad Shabbat.