Bomb Blast in Gaza
Underscoring what I said already about the Gaza Strip, a bomb blast just destroyed a checkpoint, killing (according to some reports) at least five soldiers and wounding many others. Then, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the rescue workers.

This attack is in "response" to the killing of top terrorists in Nablus, including the city's Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades chief and Hamas chief. "At least" it didn't target civilians, at least initially. Look at what a low expectation I have come to have of the Palestinian resistance: they didn't attack uninvolved civilians (until the rescue workers arrived)! Good for them!

It's sickening, isn't it? The ridiculously low standard to which the world holds the Palestinians and the ridiculously high standard to which it holds Israel?

This attack produces a mixed reaction, as far as the politics go. My default position is to get out of Gaza to prevent just such attacks. Gush Qatif, the Gaza Settlements, aren't worth it in my opinion (to be fair, I don't live there). If there were no settlements or settlers in Gaza, this would not have happened, and five Israeli families would still have their sons today.

On the other hand, there are Israelis there, and they need to be protected, at the very least until they can be withdrawn. But despite my previous thoughts, I worry that a withdrawal will be perceived as a result of the terror, and I fear what that means in the future. I stand by my earlier analysis. But every attack deepens the occupation and makes it more difficult to leave, as other Israelis conclude that to evacuate will be tantamount to tucking the tail between our legs and slinking out, and the security apparatus decides that to leave Gaza will be to leave Gaza to lawlessness and Islamist rule. The attacks swing the conflict in favor of the extremists on both sides (Islamist terrorists on the Palestinian side and ultra-Zionist settlers on the Israeli) and it is the moderate majority of each population--the Palestinians under continued occupation, and the Israelis under constant threat of bombings--who must suffer the consequences.
- posted by @ 10:50 PM

 
An Easy Weekend
Tomorrow morning my parents head out. It's been a very nice visit with them.

Yesterday, I had my final Hebrew exam. I finished after an hour. I'm sure I passed, and I'm glad to be done with Hebrew classes, at least for my time in Israel; I have completed the necessary level for my Masters degree, and would rather devote those eight hours a week to going to the gym or doing other work, and focusing on classes that feel less like busywork. I'm going to advance in Hebrew at this point by using it on the street and in stores, and by learning new words by looking up their roots. Not by worksheets.

After I came back from the University and my parents came back from Haifa, we almost immediately headed to Ashqelon, where there is a 24-hour non-Kosher (read: Open on Shabbat) restaurant called "Meat Me," which was the first restaurant we patronized in Israel, way back when we got our bank account. It was not as good as we remembered, but after the meal we headed deeper into Ashqelon to the National Park there, which boasts a nice view of the sea and some ancient Canaanite ruins . Ashqelon might as well be Ashdod's twin city, located just down the coast from it, as the two city's have boomed recently through the Russian immigration and seem to have been designed almost exclusively by the same architect, but Ashqelon has a much longer history (a fact to which the ruins stand in evidence). It was a key city throughout history, having been Canaanite, Israelite, Muslim (it was even burned down by Saladin to keep to the Crusaders from controlling it), Ottoman, and, of course, Israeli. Like Ashdod, it was a dumpy town before the early 90s, at which point its population exploded and the city's appearance and culture vastly improved, as well. From my discussions with people, it's reputation is lagging behind, but that won't last too long.

After that we went up to Ashdod, where we visited and chatted, and, as usual, had a great time with Elana's family. They and my parents got along very well (not that I feared they would not, but it was still nice) and we left this afternoon. We're back in Jerusalem now, where I am taking a break from studying and straightening and my parents are packing in preparation for their flight.

I'd like to thank all my readers for pushing the counter over 1000. And I'd like to close by giving you this photo of Elana's latest painting, which is a portrait of our friend Nava.

- posted by @ 7:23 PM

 
Momentum
Life has been very busy the last couple of days.

Two days ago my summer course in intermediate literary Arabic started (despite the fact that the semester still had not, and has not yet, ended; I was going to write a gripe about this and the scheduling difficulties it created, but, then again, what's the point?) and I've had finals and papers due. I've also been dealing with trying to cancel our membership with Bally Total Fitness (and have been for months), whose customer service representatives are either totally incompetent or tell bald-faced lies. Again, that's enough of that. I refuse to turn this space into a kvetch-a-thon.

The literary Arabic course is really intensive; five hours of class every Sunday-Thursday for six weeks. I'm finding it easy to keep up thus far, although my pronunciation is apparently pretty terrible, and I'm also finding it to be excellent preparation for my introductory Arabic final, which is coming up on Tuesday. Let's see, I finished my Lebanon take-home final last week, I finished my Baha'i final today (that one counts for 100% of the grade, but Professor Sharon was VERY nice with the questions he asked), and my Hebrew final is tomorrow. So all I have left are my two language finals and two 15-20 page papers, one for International Relations Theory and the Middle East and one for Modern Lebanon, both of which are due at the end of the summer. That's all the school stuff...

Yesterday, as I said, was our anniversary, our second. It's strange and wonderful to think that we've been married for two years. We've been together, as in dating, now for a full quarter of our lives. It's hard to imagine what life was like before we met, but it's also hard to imagine that we've been together for that large a part of it.

My parents visit has gone very well, of course. We've had some great conversations and done some really fun things. We've also made use of the laundry setup in their apartment; they have a drier, so in effect we may have become the first people in history to drag our laundry to our parents' place in order to do it ourselves.

The political scene has, thankfully, been relatively quiet (knock on wood). I think Israelis are breathing a little bit, thankful to be out of the top world headlines for a while. There is still plenty of intrigue--for example, the corruption prosecutors have decided that Ariel Sharon is as clean as Yukon snow, and the nation's security command and that of the various Palestinian factions are weighing the role of Egypt in Gaza after the pullout--stuff which, forgive me, I haven't felt motivated to comment on. I figure if you care about those types of issues you already know what's going on and, in truth, I can't really add anything, and if you don't, well, then, I shouldn't write about it anyway.

Elana has been working on painting and has produced some really wonderful stuff.

I think that's about it from here. I'm going to study for my Hebrew final.
- posted by @ 2:07 PM

 
Two and Counting
It's our anniversary! Yay!
- posted by @ 1:37 PM

 
The Future of Zionism
When my parents were in Denver, they met a man named Shaul who is the City Manager (perhaps a misnomer) for the Ramat-Negev region in southern Israel. I can comfortably say that it is a misnomer because he offered to take us on a jeep tour of this region of the northern Negev desert, south of the city of Be'er-Sheva. It was a phenomenal experience.

We pulled out of Jerusalem on Friday morning and headed toward Kibbutz Mashabei Sadeh, about halfway between Be'er Sheva and the small city of Mitzpeh Ramon (which overlooks the Ramon crater, the world's largest impact crater). When we met Shaul at the Kibbutz and checked into our rooms in the guest house, he explained to Elana and me (my parents already knew) of the special connection between the Jewish Federation of Denver and the Ramat-Negev region; Denver has more or less "adopted" the region as a target for monetary donation. The effects of this partnership were visible on the Kibbutz.

We had a picnic which Shaul prepared for us: lachmaniot (literally, "bread rolls," but they taste so much better than rolls that I feel ashamed of my translation), deli, humus, natural mint tea, cheeses...we were under an acacia tree which provided plenty of shade, a must in the desert. After the short meal we loaded back into the 4x4 and drove a short distance to 'Ein Aqev, a natural spring that requires a drive over perhaps the bumpiest dirt road imaginable. It's a long hike, so it's clear that they purposely made the road that way to discourage people from coming. Still, there were a few people there when we came.

We had forgotten our bathing suits at the guest house. With my parents and Elana dipping their feet, I stripped to my boxers and, with a declaration that "you're only here once," I dove in. It was cold, but not in any way that I expected. The shock of going from the desert heat into the cold spring knocked the wind out of me. Somehow, I became accustomed to the temperature in relatively short order, and pretty soon I was joined in the pool by each member of my family, who decided that the dry desert heat would dry the clothes quite quickly and that we were, indeed, likely never to have this particular opportunity again.

After we dried off (we were right; it didn't take long, at all) it was back to the jeep for a continuation of the day. We were all already pretty exhausted, having crammed more physical exercise--and under that heat--into the course of a couple of hours than we do into an average day, but Shaul, who bikes and is active in that region all the time, would have none of it. We made our way to a vineyard a friend of his built over the course of five years. There had been an argument with the Greens here in Israel about the use of the site, which had been a Nabatean vineyard and was still terraced with the original Nabatean stones. The compromise--to use the land again as a vineyard, using the original rows and terracing--was truly win-win. It was astonishing to see what this man had created: not only a vineyard, but a small factory for producing wine (we bought some) gardens, stables, pools, even some small guest-houses which were absolutely charming. We ate watermelon there, and Elana and I fed the rind to their two horses--and we were startled to discover that when horses eat watermelon, the juice almost explodes out of their mouths in the form of drool. I guess you learn something new every day.

Our next destination was Kibbutz Sdeh Boker, the adopted home and final resting place of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's near-mythological pioneer, freedom fighter, military leader and first Prime Minister. It was his dream to "make the desert bloom" (which, as we saw at the vineyard, Shaul and his neighbors are doing--but more on that in a bit). He and his wife are buried together on a hill overlooking two springs--the first was 'Ein Aqev, where we swam, and the other is called 'Ein Ovdat. Israel's airport, several higher institutions, and about a billion streets (at least two in every city) are named Ben-Gurion.

Shaul had done a really good job of activating all the latent Zionism in us. He explained to us the potential of the region, as Israel's next great frontier. There seems to be a fundamental problem with this: it's a desert. There's no water. It doesn't seem like a likely place to be developed, the vineyard aside. But, as Israel was searching (as it continues to do today) for oil in the region, the engineers found, deep underground, brackish water--water which was left over, undisturbed and underground, since the last ice age. And lots of it, too--enough so that, with the know-how and the patience, could provide the region with enough water and crops for the next 100 years (at which point, one hopes, there will be other solutions for water, such as cheap desalinization). Remember, we are talking about growing food out of sand, here. The mission of the Negev Israelis is closely analogous to the Halutzim, the early pioneers, who came and started planting trees, clearing rocks and creating farms, small settlements and Kibbutzim with the blessing of the Ottoman government. The desert truly is the next arena where Zionism can flourish, even as it seems to have outlived its usefulness in the developed north, and seems to have evolved into an extremism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

We ended the day back at the Kibbutz, where we ate in the dining hall (a nostalgic experience for me, as you might imagine: I think all Kibbutzim get the same food and employ the same cooks) and slept through the cool night very well.

The next day was even more incredible than the first: we saw a zoo at another nearby kibbutz--which, I think, was not quite as beautiful as my zoo at Beit Hashita, but was bigger and still quite impressive considering that it, like my zoo, was conceived, planned, and physically built by one man over the course of a couple of years. Shaul then took us to a regional hothouse, where they grow all sorts of vegetables (again, in sand). We poked around the cherry tomato hothouse and we all kept snagging the little red globes off the vine; we couldn't help ourselves, they were so sweet.

We drove then along the Egyptian border, which is very quiet (at least visibly; there is sadly a lot of smuggling that goes on across it, drugs and, yes, prostitutes). This part of Egypt, the Sinai peninsula, was captured and held by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, and not returned until 1982, when it was given back in accordance with the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. On the Egyptian side of the border was sand; on the Israeli side, there were desert shrubs growing out of the ground. The reason is that the Egyptians allow their herders to graze their flocks there, but the Israeli army uses it for training purposes. The Egyptian side of the border is manned; the Israeli side is not, although we did see, as we drove along the border, units of Mishmar HaGvul, the Border Guard, which is technically a police force but which is trained by the army. The terms of the treaty stipulate that no on-duty army is allowed within a certain distance of the border, and this is a way around that; the Egyptians have a similar force. The sand had overblown the fence in some places and I climbed up it, over the line of the fence but probably not all the way across the border; still, there were some Egyptian officers on the other side watching me. They waved first. I happily waved back.

Shaul asked us which restaurant we wanted to eat at. After surveying the landscape (right) for a nearby eatery, we said we would trust to his judgement on this case. He took us to a small ramada overlooking the large valley at the entrance of the Sinai Peninsula, where a lunch had been prepared by a friend of his. We ate, enjoyed the food and the view. Incidentally, behind my mother's head in this picture on the left is one of the possible sites of Biblical Mount Sinai.

After the lunch we went to Nizzana, a youth village further up on the Egyptian border, where we got the remainder of the political history and the conclusion of the Federation tour. Nizzana is a village for people between 18 and 24, where they are trying to provide an example of an environmentally conscious moshav which helps Ethiopian and Russian immigrants learn Hebrew and be absorbed into the society so that they can continue on to University. See if you can spot the visual pun on this mosaic on the side of the recycling center (which was one of the first things they built).

We closed the visit with a short swim back at the Kibbutz and dinner with Tova, Alla and Liat (the latter two were visiting Tova in Be'er Sheva, where she studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Yes, the same one). The desert is a different world. Everything from Jerusalem north is generally what most people call "Israel," and the desert is a place you come to hike, sweat, or visit the Red Sea and the Dead Sea. But as we saw on our tour, the desert--which makes up 60% of the land of Israel--is being developed, and has the potential to dramatically improve Israel's standard of living. The desert is being rolled back, in an ecologically sound way. The technology Israel has developed for desert irrigation has been put to use all over the world (ever see a sprinkler drip-drip-dripping? One hundred percent Sabra technology). Shaul and his fellow pioneers don't want a town on every hill. But Israel's housing, employment, and even Settlement problem all have an outlet valve in the country's southern half. It will take a lot of work, but after seeing what we saw, I have to say it's only a matter of time. "Israel" will come to mean the whole country. Regardless of the terrain.

- posted by @ 4:38 PM

 
Baha'i To You, Too!
On Tuesday, Professor Sharon took us to the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa, in the North.
Haifa is, of course, where I lived with my family for a year in first grade, and is also the center of the Baha'i faith, which emerged out of a Messianic Iranian group of Twelver Shi'i Muslims, but which is not Islam itself. The Baha'i believe, essentially, that the world is one country and all mankind its citizens; it accepts all prophets (Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Krishna, et al) because it does not believe that God would create all these different groups and then only speak to one of them. I got to speak to one of the nine members of the Universal Court of Justice (the "high council" of the Baha'i faith worldwide, that makes rulings on religious issues that arise from Baha'i communities) which meets in Haifa, for about twenty minutes. I talked to him about the Baha'i conceptions of the afterlife, creation, and history, all of which was extremely interesting. I also spoke to the head of the Jerusalem Baha'i community; of course, all of these people know Professor Sharon quite well.

I found these Baha'i very enlightened, but not self-important at all; I asked the significance of the eight-pointed star I saw everywhere in the Gardens, and they answered, "Well, your professor would say it's nine points because there is always something, a flower or a statue or a plant, sticking up in the middle (the significance being that nine is a very important number in Baha'i and Islamic numerology), but I think it's because eight pointed stars look nice." It was very refreshing.

The gardens were unbelievable. Going up the height of the mountain, there were thirty-six terraces in all; eighteen above the Shrine of the Bab (which I got to go into; the Bab, or "the door," was the man who predicted the coming of a teacher greater than he who would usher in the new religion. That man, that Baha' Ullah, was buried nearby, and we got special permission as non-Baha'is to visit that shrine, as well) and eighteen below. Small aqueducts carried water down the mountain, running through the gardens and alongside the almost eerily symmetrical staircases that cut a path down the mountain, like veins. It was perfectly maintained; there was not a blade of grass out of place, not a dead or wilting flower to be seen, and a breathtaking view of the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Haifa.

I asked the Australian man who was a member of the Universal Court of Justice why the gardens were built. I expected a religious or even eschatological response. He replied, "Gardens are very peaceful, aren't they?" The simplicity of the response, in a region of the world where the religions are about as legalistic as can be, absolutely floored me.

- posted by @ 10:45 PM

 
Well and Truly Plucked
It's been busy, what with my parents here and all. But it's also been a lot of fun.

They arrived, and were immediately greeted by a stress Elana and I know all too well: their luggage was nowhere to be found. Oh, well...at least they had a ride.

In Ben Gurion airport, there is one room where you wait for everyone to come out after clearing customs. It has two long fountains that all the eager Israelis (and others picking people up from a long flight) gather around and wait for the exodus from the plane. My mom called my cellphone from the one they rented and let us know that they were going to be a while because they had to make a claim. What a pain! So we waited by the rail and got to watch lots of happy reunions. Fortunately, we were all so happy to see each other when they finally did come out that the fact that my parents currently lacked a change of clothes didn't ruin anyone's mood. And besides, as I predicted, they found the bags and delivered them to our apartment by the next day.

The main activity of the first full day was to take my parents to the tayelet, which we did at dusk. They were duly impressed. The next day we were due in Ashdod.

The trip to Ashdod went very well. Elana and I didn't translate nearly as much as we thought we would need to; like with me, my parents' dormant Hebrew switched on, and although they couldn't really speak, they found they understood a lot of what Grisha and Valya were saying. Even when Grisha started talking politics. So that was good. We went to the beach and swam in the Mediterranean, a first for all of us this particular trip: the water was cold, but warmed up (I hope it was the fact that I got used to it and not the fact that the approved swimming area was crowded and full of children) quickly. After that we went back to Grisha and Valya's and had a barbecue in which food for 25 was prepared, and although all ten of us each ate our share, we nonetheless barely made a dent in the shishlik and kababs and wings. Feeling absolutely stuffed but somehow with a dim sense of failure for leaving so much food on the table, we all sat around and chatted for a while in an amalgamation of about five languages, and then we got back in the car and moved along back to Jerusalem.

Yesterday, Sunday, I had class; when it was over I returned home. My parents had rented their car and gone to the Bible Lands Museum upon finding the Israel Museum inexplicably closed. Napping and homework ensued, and then I made dinner: my famous buffalo wings (which, in fact, are merely baked chicken wings with a storebought sauce that we asked my parents to bring with them, so I don't know if claiming them as my own is really fair), which turned out much better than my previous attempt--thanks both to the sauce, which needed no experimentation or alteration, and the fact that we bought the wings themselves at Mania (pronounced "MAHN-ya"), a Russian supermarket in Ashdod which is open on Shabbat and which, because Russians wouldn't tolerate it otherwise, plucks their chickens of feathers. Mostly. Israel may be the only country in the world where the food standards of immigrants are known to be more exacting than the "native" population (perhaps a misnomer in this case--"native," in Israeli street parlance, seems to refer to anybody who's been in the country six minutes longer than you). Kashrut, of course, notwithstanding: the Russian stores sell pork. But their chicken wings have no feathers. That's my point.
- posted by @ 6:43 AM

 
Puddle Hop
It's been a while since I updated, mostly because I liked having the family pictures as the most recent post and didn't want to replace them here in the top slot with something inane. But, the good news of the day is that my parents are arriving in about nine hours! They're currently over the world's second-largest water-hole speeding closer at about 800 feet-per-second.

Yesterday I had a ridiculously long day (an experience with which, of course, my parents can currently relate); my Lebanon class was rescheduled from 9:30 AM-12 PM to 5:00PM-7:30, meaning that I was at school from about 10:15 (when I met with my Arabic teacher to go over some of the make-up work I'd have to do) until Lebanon finally got out at 7:30. My teachers are all being very understanding and supportive about make-up work--not that I expected any different, but it's still quite nice and I appreciate it nonetheless. When I finally got home last night, we did a little cleanup and Elana and I shared a sample of the large amounts of great food she set herself to cook yesterday. She's an artist in all.

Today, I have Hebrew from 12-2, and then I am immediately driving down here, picking up Elana, and then, off to Ben Gurion! I'm excited about my parents' visit, for a number of rather-obvious-when-you-think-about-it reasons which I won't list for fear of sounding like a third-grader. Trust to your logic, people.

On Saturday we are taking them to meet the family in Ashdod. It will be an interesting meeting, since my parents and Valya and Grisha will find they can communicate with each other only in the most basic Hebrew of my parents, Grisha's cheerful English (which, as Elana has observed, is really about 80% Yiddish, so that's no good) or caveman-esque grunts and hand gestures. It's okay; I'll translate English-to-Hebrew and back and Elana will translate English-to-Russian and back. And when Alla and Vova and company arrive, we'll find that the English flows rather freely.

Off to the day!
- posted by @ 9:53 AM

 
Looking Forward, Looking Back
We are back in Jerusalem, after the long flight (which didn't seem quite as long as the flight out to LA) and a weekend attempting to recuperate in Ashdod. Tomorrow we get back to "normal" life, as much as possible.

While we were in LA, we did something I'm very proud to have done. We bought a scanner/printer for Elana's grandfather and digitized onto my computer about 450 photos, dating back through Elana's childhood, her mother's, her grandparents', all the way back until before her great-grandparents were married. They were all organized in albums--it's a very lucky thing to have the albums and most of the photographs in such good condition, and now that they are digital they are going to last forever, for our grandchildren and beyond to see. I know, from the few pictures I have, what my great-grandparents looked like in the middle-to-later years; beyond that, I have no idea what in the world their parents looked like. No matter how tedious the scanning got, each newly-digitized photograph brought with it a feeling of immense satisfaction, that these images would not be lost and that our descendents, as long as they are computer savvy enough to avoid any "delete all" commands (though by then they will surely be saved on more than one disk), will be more connected to their family history. Each little whirrrrr that the scanner emitted was one more photo saved for eternity.

Many of the pictures date back to Russia, including these:

Here we see Elana's grandfather in the army and again with a dog, her grandparents with their motorcycle, her mother with her grandmother, and three other younger pictures of her mother. Of course, none of the pictures of her grandparents really compete with my personal favorite:

Some other pictures, including these, are from Israel and America:

Here we have Elana, her mother and her grandfather (and Hairy, the dog) in shots that capture them rather perfectly. And that's exactly what I mean about this project. For those of you who know Elana's side of our family, these pictures are likely to make you laugh with recognition; for those of you who don't, they give you at least a good sense of the wonderful people they are; they simply can't hide it. Not from you...and now, not from our (their) descendents, either.

- posted by @ 10:58 PM

 
Going Back
Thanks to all who emailed, called, commented here or otherwise made contact with us during this difficult period. Return emails are on the way within the week. Special thanks to those who made the hour-and-a-half drive to see us (some, three or four times) in this little mountain town north of Los Angeles. It is times like these when you learn who your real friends and family are--and, sadly, in some cases, who are just pretenders. Fortunately, almost everyone we know turned out to be the former, and as strong as we assumed our friendships with people who currently reside in LA are, we were shown that the friendships were even stronger by the help, care, and kindness our friends and families offered.

We are returning to Israel tomorrow and landing on Thursday afternoon. We're looking forward to seeing our friends and family there, and getting back to classes. Until then.
- posted by @ 3:51 AM