I Should Be From Boston
Red Sox win World Series. Patriots on a ridiculous record winning streak and looking primed to repeat. With no hockey this year, all it will take is an overachieving Celtics team to complete the trifecta.

Congratulations, Boston.

- posted by @ 7:00 AM

 
On the Deaths of a National Heroes
By the Hebrew calendar, today is the ninth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin. I was here nine years ago. I remember the confusion on the radio and the general feeling of disbelief that such a thing had happened in Israel. One radio reporter asked, in an anguished burst of shock just moments after reports confirmed that Rabin was dead, and that his killer was an Israeli Jew, "Eich zeh kara poh? Eich? Zot Yisrael, medina shelanu! Mah Anachnu? Eifo Anachnu pit'om, Drom America?" which means, "How did this happen here? How? This is Israel, our country! What are we? Where are we suddenly, South America?"

The shock that is evident in those words was felt by Israelis across the country and Jews (and others) worldwide. Since then, Rabin has been lionized by most of Israel--though he continues to be demonized by the ultra-Orthodox right, in much the same way that Ariel Sharon is going to be, now that it looks fairly certain that Israel is going to withdraw from Gaza, on the heels of the historic vote in the Knesset.

The memorial service was very moving--I even cried a little. The speeches were in Hebrew, so I only understood most of them, but certainly enough to get a general impression. The presentations were a combination of recollection, aggrandization of Rabin, and more than one Mea Culpa--that, when posters appeared showing Rabin in an SS uniform, showing Rabin in a Khafiye, nobody truly took notice of them and the horrible hidden depths they represented. One speaker asked for Rabin's forgiveness that we failed him.

The stature of Rabin has grown since his death. He was widely supported during a time of great optimism in Israel, that there would soon be peace. After he was murdered, many on the Israeli left felt that he was what was missing for a final peace--that Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak lacked his ability to negotiate a fair deal from a position of strength, and that Benyamin Netanyahu was a nationalist schmuck. He still is. Only Rabin could have gained us peace, cries the left in despair. I take issue with that; it seems more and more obvious that there is nobody to negotiate with on the Palestinian side, that Arafat was only interested in a Treaty of Qureysh and fully intended to resume the war when the secular Palestinians were strong enough--in the meantime letting the religious extremist Palestinians blow themselves up on Israeli busses to their hearts' content. Rabin was being duped, just as Peres and Barak were duped. This is not to say that Rabin was not a great man. But I doubt whether, with the current Palestinian leadership, there could be peace, Yitzchak Rabin or no Yitzchak Rabin.

Which brings me to my second point. I walked Elana to school today, and then needed to get to the University quickly to meet with my advisor, so I took a taxi. On the way, the taxi driver--an Arab--exulted to me, "There are strong rumors out of Ramallah that Arafat is dead!" I was pretty stunned. I don't take taxi drivers to be a reliable source of news--even though he heard it from his brother, who hates Arafat and runs a clothing shop in Ramallah and knows one of Arafat's ministers, who was with the ra'is when he died two nights ago--but it is possible. News out of the Muqata, where Arafat is currently under house arrest, has been strange of late. Arafat is sick with a fever and needs doctors from Tunisia. Israel is letting Arafat leave the compound for medical reasons. The Palestinian Authority insists Arafat does not need to leave the compound (Strange, that last one, since they've wanted to get him out of there for a couple years). Arafat had surgery and is resting comfortably. Arafat cancels phone interview on Egyptian TV.

I don't want to turn this page into a tabloid, but it did get me to thinking. What if Arafat is really dead? It has to happen sooner or later, and when it does, I don't expect to hear about it for at least a week, while the PA desperately tries to find a way to keep control of a population that seems, more and more with each passing day, destined for a period of bloody anarchy when he does die.

What would Arafat's death mean for the Peace Process? Well, at this point, it's hard to say that there is a Peace Process. In some sense, almost any movement on the Palestinian side would be welcome, even (especially?) if it's the movement of Arafat himself in a funeral procession from the Muqata to his final resting place. But Arafat the man has almost no power now (note: this does not refer to Arafat the symbol, which I will discuss in a moment), and the terms of the conflict in coming years are being set by Ariel Sharon who, by the way, is starting to be discussed in ultra-Orthodox circles in the same way that Rabin was just before he was killed. It is Sharon who just coerced the Gaza disengagement plan, which I support, through a Knesset vote of approval, and the Palestinian Authority (what authority does it truly have, anyway?) can only watch, absolutely powerless.

What will history have to say about Arafat after he is gone? I think it's clear that he will become to the Palestinians what Napoleon Bonaparte is to the French: a symbol and a national hero of the highest order. Despite the fact that both Arafat and Napoleon brought their people to the brink of ruin, if not all the way over, he will become a symbol of the nation, entirely divorced from his actual actions. What we can see from Rabin, from Kennedy, from the personality cults of Mao and Stalin, from Napoleon and, now or later, from Arafat: the "history" of a national hero reflects the needs and desires of a nation, rather than an accurate biography of that person. Americans point to Kennedy as a great President, despite the fact that he was only in office for three years--who knows what he would have done, in truth, had he served out his term and perhaps another one? The French love Napoleon because he restored the glory of France--at the meager cost of half a million lives. The left needed Rabin to be the man who could have made peace, so that they could ignore the fact that Rabin was negotiating with disingenuous vipers. The Palestinians need Arafat to be the father of their national liberation--despite the fact that he could have made peace and improved their lives, kept their economy from the shambles it is in today and prevented the perversion of their society into a martyr-glorifying sociological disaster.

Yasser Arafat may or may not be dead yet. But when he does die, it will be as if Arafat the man will never have existed. In the popular history, which is no distance at all from myth, only Arafat the legend will remain.

- posted by @ 1:48 PM

 
My Newly Baptized Toes (and other stories...)
My Aunt Vilma has been visiting in Israel, travelling around and doing tourist-y stuff, and spending time with us when all of our schedules permit. She's only in the country for a week, but we managed to have a dinner with her and to take a tiyul with her to the Galilee region, which she wanted to see but had not yet had a chance . We drove North--the drive took about three hours--to the Yardenit park. This is the supposed site of Jesus' baptism in the River Jordan. Elana and I dipped our feet; I couldn't resist the urge to drop a bit of water over my head. Vilma went all out, a full submersion. How often are we really going to be there, anyway? Really, it was quite beautiful; the water of the Jordan was a deep green, the cloaks of the pilgrims who participated in a Baptism ceremony were pure white, and the giant catfish were abundant and quick.

Our next stop was an ancient Roman bath called Hamat Gader, to the south-east of the Kineret and right on the borders with Jordan and Syria. The great thing is, this Roman bath is still working, and there is a natural hot mineral spring there. It was a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. All done, we loaded back into the car and chugged our way back toward Jerusalem--but I couldn't resist the urge to stop by Beit Hashita, the Kibbutz where I lived and worked for a year in High School, and which was on the way, to fill up on gas and contribute something to the local economy. The gas station attendant came out to fill up the car. The first question he asked me, before which kind of gas I wanted, was, "Ata hayita b'kita Amerikayit, nachon?" or "You were in the American class, right?" I was pretty stunned; he remembered me from almost ten years ago. I, sadly, did not remember him, but he laughed at the "Mookie" shirt I was wearing (Mookie was my work-boss at the zoo; when I first visited Boston half a year later, I saw a shirt that said "Mookie" at Faneuil hall and bought it. I was wearing it the day I moved in to college, too) and he knew a lot of the same people, the "celebrities" of the Kibbutz--Willie the Irish volunteer, Mookie, Gid'on, and Amichai, and of course, the Gutman Boys (who could forget them?). His name (Jen, this is mostly for you, as the only regular reader I know of who might know anybody there) is Eshel, and he's my age. And Mom--don't nag. I'll call her soon.

Feeling like a minor celebrity myself, I drove us back to Jerusalem, discovering on the way a shortcut that took us the long way through the lovely industrial town of Hadera. Once back, we said goodbye to Vilma, who leaves tomorrow, and headed home for sleep.

Today it was back to school, and I had some cause for anxiety. As students at the University, we are each entitled to one Tutorial per year--a Tutorial is a one-on-one independant study with any professor who agrees to do it, on any topic we wish. I had been trying to arrange one with my Professor from the Baha'i class, Professor Sharon, last semester on what he perceives to be a decline of scholarship as a result of political correctness in the study of Islamic history. He turned me down, saying that I had a great topic but that he would be too busy with his own research. He suggested a colleague of his; that colleague gave me the same answer, and sent me down the line to another colleague; her response was also negative, and again I was referenced to another professor; he, too, said no, and he let me know that he thought I may have exhausted all the possibilities at Hebrew Universtiy. I resigned myself to just taking regular courses.

Last Tuesday I was in Professor Sharon's regular course (side note: Natalie Portman is in that class), and he recognized me and asked me how the search for a professor went. I told him the story; how I had searched through what seemed to be the entire list with no luck. He regarded me a moment, and then said, "...Okay. Come to me, I'll do it."

Obviously this made my day. Today I had my first meeting with him, where we discussed goals and readings that I am going to undertake. This is a very exciting opportunity for me: an opportunity to study with one of the top academics in this field (who is notoriously difficult to get to agree to do a tutorial) on a subject that really interests me. School is exciting again.

- posted by @ 8:16 PM

 
This Has Happened Before
Three outs away from a sweep, they choked. For the first time in baseball history and only the third time in sports history, a team came back from an 0-3 deficit to win, twice in extra innings. They were this close to the World Series, and somehow fate reached out and made sure that it wouldn't happen.

The Boston Red Sox are used to this kind of history. Time and again, they have brought their fans so close to the World Series, or to the championship itself, and somehow, some way, the Curse of the Bambino yanked it away from them. Tonight was a marginally different experience for them, though. Because they are on the positive end of baseball history this time. The Boston Red Sox defeated the New York Yankees in convincing fashion, at Yankee Stadium, in a game they had no business even playing.

I woke up at 5:20 AM by accident, and went to turn on the TV. The crowd, I noticed was quiet; it was the top of the eighth inning, and a flash of the scoreboard woke me up completely. Could it really be 9-3 in favor of Boston? I asked myself. Wow, the manifestation of the Curse is going to have to be pretty spectacular. I know lots of people in Boston from my college years, and I know what passionate--and pessimistic--sports fans they are. I'm sure they were thinking something similar.

"The Red Sox will never sweep a series," my sophomore year roommate and witness at my wedding explained to me at Brandeis, almost prophetically as it turns out. "They will not get swept. They will come back from 0-3, build a one-run lead, and then lose it in the bottom of the ninth. They always need to make it interesting before they lose." I was watching the Super Bowl with him--the Patriots' first championship--and he was convinced they would find a way to lose. He has told me that a Red Sox World Series championship would lead to mass suicides in Boston, because so many people in Chowdahland center their identities around the fact that the Red Sox do not win the Fall Classic. And mostly, they are right; the Red Sox find a way to lose in heartbraking fashion. Last year, for instance, when the Yankees won game 7 in the 11th.

This year, something was different, and the team affectionately referred to as "the Idiots" are four games away from legend.

I do not claim to be among the long-suffering, though I am certainly quite happy with this victory. I was never a huge baseball fan, and really only learned about the Curse and the extent of the hate-hate relationship between the Red Sox and Yankees when I got to college. But I understand the feeling, certainly I do. You have to be made of stone or a Yankees fan not to be touched by the old guy who was holding the "BORN IN 1918--STILL BELIEVE" sign. Even if you don't understand the draw of sports at all, you can see what a sweet moment this was for those who do--like that guy, who waited through the end of World War I, World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, and two Iraq wars, not to mention 20-some Yankees championships in that time, to see the Red Sox, who lose in games like this time and again, finally win one.

They have not won the World Series yet, so the curse still has time. But somehow, I think that no matter what happens in the Big Games, the image of the Boys from Beantown celebrating on the field of Yankee Stadium, drenching the turf of their own historical house of horrors in champagne while the Yankees and their faithful trudged toward the exits, all of them wondering how in the world the Boston Red Sox--the Boston Red Sox, for the love of Steinbrenner--had managed to put the curse on them--that image will remain sweet, even if the Red Sox don't win a series for another eighty-six years.
- posted by @ 6:22 AM

 
The Jewish Canary
I apologize if what I am about to write comes out disorganized and disjointed, but I have a lot of thoughts scrambling about in my head, and even though it's late at night, I want to get them out in some form.

Part of the impetus for this is to respond to an email I received tonight. Part of it is in response to events in our life, which seem to be dramatically illustrating the same point, on a microcosmic level. The literal cause of these thoughts was a dinner we were at tonight with my Aunt Robin, who was with members of her Los Angeles synagogue in Jerusalem tonight, where the special guest was Yossi Klein Halevy, the LA Times/New York Times/New Republic, etc. columnist. He offered a cogent and comprehensive view of the Israeli middle, in which we have been immersed, as well as its role in the current conflict, and the nature of the Jewish people. I want to share his commentary (and perhaps offer a bit of my own). It's refreshing and so important to hear a strong voice from the Israeli middle, where what most of the world sees and gets comes from the extremes.

Halevy defined internal Israeli politics since the 1967 war as a tug-of-war between two equally fundamentally wrong extremes. There is the "Greater Israel" camp--these are the people who believe that all of Eretz Yisrael is religiously and rightly the property of the Jewish people. That includes, naturally, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and many of them still believe it was a mistake to return Sinai to Egypt as a part of the Camp David Accords. I know some of these people, and they are often scary nationalistic idealogues: they refer to Sharon's Gaza disengement plan as "the expulsion plan," and assert, "I oppose any plan that would forcibly remove Jews from their homes," implying that there be more understanding of a plan to put the Arabs on the backs of trucks and ferry them to Jordan and Egypt. On the other side is the "Peace Now" camp, a side I have in the past tended to sympathize and even side with. Yossi Beilin, one of the authors of the Geneva Accords which, many of you may remember, this page more or less endorsed, is a member of this camp. These leftist extremists feel that Barak's Camp David offer of 91% of the West Bank, a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, and limited right of return--an offer that, as Halevy pointed out, went way beyond even Thomas Friedman's expectations of what could reasonably be offered--simply didn't go far enough, and more concessions would lead to a peace treaty. Many Israelis have come around from these ideologically driven positions to a more sober and realistic view of the Middle East in general and the Palestinians in particular. I am not Israeli, but my particular journey, having lived here the past year-plus, has been from the left inward. I would not say that the rightists have moved left, necessarily, but I would say that most of them recognize that demographically, "Greater Israel" can exist as a Jewish state or a Democracy, but not both.

The 1988 intifada proved that the rightist dream of Greater Israel was unattainable, and led to the Oslo process, leading to the defeat of Yitzchak Shamir and the election of the Yitzchak Rabin-led Labor government. But then Rabin was assassinated in 1995, and then Arafat gave a speech--which, as Halevy pointed out, everyone in Israel remembers in detail, but most of the outside world has never heard--to a mosque in Johannesburg, in a meeting that was supposed to be closed to the press. There he equated the Oslo agreement he signed with the Treaty of Qureysh--a defense against his critics who were furious with him for signing an agreement with the Zionist entity. The Treaty of Qureysh was an agreement the Prophet Muhammad made with his Meccan tribe, when he was warring against them, along with his community of believers, from Medina. The key point is that it was an agreement made for tactical purposes, with the Prophet and Arafat each fully intending to resume his war against his enemy when he was strong enough. This made quite an impression on the Israeli public, and helped Binyamin Netanyahu get elected in 1996. Four years of his harsh policies drove the Israeli electorate back to the left and the election of Ehud Barak. Barak offered Arafat everything, more than even most leftists were comfortable with.

I ask anyone to name a country in history that has offered as much as Israel did for peace in the summer of 2000. Name a country that ever offered to divide and share its capital. Name a country that offered to withdraw from its cultural heartland for the sake of peace. Israel still finds itself playing the defendant's role in the world court of public opinion. Our friend Nathalie, who is French but made aliyah, pointed out that admitting to living in Israel is, in France, tantamount to joyfully proclaiming one's Nazism.

The current war--which Halevy pointed out is not an intifada (an uprising of unarmed Palestinians against armed occupation troops), but in fact a war (in this case, a systematic terror campaign of armed Palestinians against unarmed Israeli civilians)--broke the left's ideology. Offer what concessions you want, the Palestinians will keep fighting. Which, of course, leads us to Ehud Barak's call for new elections and his predictable defeat to Ariel Sharon, who ran on a platform of security. Sharon is traditionally very right-wing; he is remembered as a war hero, terrorist-fighter, and settlement builder. Sharon recognized that he could not be both a terrorist-fighter and settlement builder as Prime Minister, so he chose to be the terrorist-fighter--despite claims that settlements expanded on his watch, most of them were unauthorized and besides, all settlements physically take up 1.5% of the West Bank.

For two years, through 2001, the Israeli public was subjected to a horrible campaign of terror which threatened to pull apart the very fabric of society. People were not going out in public. People were afraid of gathering in large groups. When people are afraid to be in public places with other citizens, that is the beginning of the end of a society.

Israel was (and remains) the world's petri dish for terror, the canary in the cave, and the terror was winning.

Then, one Passover, a group of senior citizens in Netanya having a seder was blown up by a suicide bomber. Israel began its true counteroffensive, which is a combination of a war against the operatives and a psychological war against the Palestinian societal obsession with martyrdom. The war against the operatives was most recently seen with the offensive in Gaza, which just ended ahead of the holy month of Ramadan. The psychological war is evident in the demolition of the homes of suicide bombers' families--a tactic whose success is not measurable, since it is impossible to determine the number of potential suicide bombers who are thus dissuaded. While the Israeli public, during the Oslo years, was preparing for the peace, the Palestinian public was indoctrinating itself to glorify suicide bombing: Halevy told of his son coming home from school with peace flags, while Palestinians named soccer teams after famous suicide bombers (Saeb Erekat sponsors one such team), and are taught to look up to and emulate these martyrs/killers.

The point is, there is nobody on the Palestinian side to talk to. Those who truly want peace have no power, and those who have power clearly do not want peace.

This leads us to where we are today: the disengagement plan and the wall. The wall, though the route is contentious and periodically is altered, is almost universally supported in Israel: a realistic step that recognizes both the unsustainability of the ideology of the right and the naivete of the ideology of the left. It is, in many places, a cruel measure, but unfortunately, for the sake of defeating terror as a tactic here in the petri dish, for the sake of Israel's very survival as a sovereign nation, it is a necessary one. Then, there is the disengagement plan, also a cruel measure, which intends to uproot citizens of a Democracy, and remove their towns (founded with the blessings of a Democratically elected government) from the face of the earth--another first in the history of the world. The right argues, and convincingly, that the evacuation of the Gaza settlements will be a victory for terror. The only response is to point out that we are withdrawing from a position of strength (as opposed to what would have been the case if we had withdrawn in 2001), and to collectively hold our breath that terrorists the world over do not see the withdrawal as a huge green light that politically motivated terror achieves the desired result.

Another point: This is not the first time this has happened to the Jews. Halevy made the point that each of the world's three most dangerous totalitarian forces with a taste for world conquest--Nazism, Soviet Communism, and Islamist Terrorism--have always targeted the Jews, and the Jews have always been on the front lines fighting against those forces. You can know a global threat if it goes after the Jews first. This affects you.

Both historically and currently, the Jews have been the world's canary. When we are suffocating, that means something foul is afoot. It may start with us, but it never ends with us--as the United States learned on September 11, 2001, and Spain learned on March 11, 2004, and Russia, recently, with the school disaster in Beslan, and Bali, and Egypt, and onward, and who knows where next? If terrorism succeeds against Israel and the Jews, it will gain strength everywhere else. That is why Israel must employ sometimes cruel measures to defeat it. If the canary dies, the miners are next. If Israel is defeated, the nations of the world are next. And now that the world is a global community, there is no escaping the cave. You cannot outrun the vapors; distance will not avail you. The fumes of terrorism are potent and toxic.

All eyes are on the canary.

- posted by @ 9:55 PM

 
Beit Guvrin
I started school today; so far I've had one class. I'll write more about school tomorrow.

Yesterday Elana and I went with our friend Nathalie to the Beit Guvrin nature reserve, south of Beit Shemesh and not too far from Ashqelon. We figured it was good to get into our "tiyuling" right away, and Beit Guvrin was something we had been meaning to do for a large chunk of last year. It was almost as good as I remembered it being.

Beit Guvrin is a series of over 100 caves, some of them cisterns, some of them burial sites, many of them stone quarries, a few of them rebel hideouts from the time of the Bar Kochva rebellion, the failed uprising against Rome which resulted in the expulsion of the Jews from Israel, the second diaspora, and over 1800 years of homelessness. Those caves are great; a series of small caverns connected by passages so narrow you have to crawl on your belly, dragging yourself along by your fingertips, to get through. To our chagrin, we discovered that you can't enter those caves unless you are in a guided group, which I guess makes sense; I certainly wouldn't want to get stuck in those passageways with no guide there to help me out.

Anyway, the caves we did see were every bit as spectacular as the hideouts, as I hope you can see from these pictures. All in all we spent about four hours hiking and spelunking (I finally found an excuse to use that word in a real context), after which we had a bite to eat, and came home, tired.

We also discovered some rather happy news from next door. As a result of the kitty mob wars or natural selection, much of the Talpiot Mafia is no longer around; in fact, only two, the young male cat named Boxer and the crippled female named Tamurlane, have survived, thanks to the generosity of building number 6 on our street. Well, Tamurlane is newly a mother (and newly friendly) to at least three healthy kittens, born into the privilege of a mafia family. Join me and the street in wishing our new patron and his wife a hearty mazel tov.

- posted by @ 2:55 PM

 
Gearing Up
Coming back to anywhere after a break or vacation is bound to be busy. There's so much to take care of. The apartment was in great shape, of course, although we did have to arrange for a cable technician to replace a part in order to get back on the internet. A few minor troubles with the TV were easily solved, as well. Insurance renewal took five minutes.

So on we go. Elana started school on Tuesday. She is one of four people in the approximately 30-person class (12 returnees from last year, the remainder all newbies) to receive studio space at the school. There were more studios last year, but the school is undergoing some changes; in space that was previously devoted to studios, there is now going to be an exhibition space and a library. Getting a studio is obviously very good news, as it offers Elana additonal possibilities for subjects--she is no longer limited to the model, or the often-crowded big studio, at the school.

We're still sort of jetlagged, but that's okay; it's manifesting itself as a healthy "early to bed, early to rise" lifestyle, which we're hoping to keep. I have been taking care of my own stuff; yesterday I registered for classes (interesting ones, too!) and paid tuition; about an hour ago I went to the travel agency (yes, the very one where last year I politely requested that the clerk hand me her ass) and bought our tickets for our trip back to LA in November for two weddings (it was nice of our friends Carina and Luke in LA and my cousin Pam in San Francisco to coordinate their weddings so nicely for our travel convenience), bought my parking decal, and arranged for another year of between-class internet usage at the University. In fact, that's where I am now. Elana is currently undercover, pretending to be a student at Bezalel next door, and mining the art library* for all it's worth.

So, I'm registered and starting Sunday, Elana has already started, and we're situated in our apartment. Everything is in place and ready to go, another year in the land of milk and humus.

*mining as in "digging for useful information," not mining as in "land."

- posted by @ 2:45 PM

 
The Anti-Rosa Parks, No Food in Newark and Our New Mortal Enemy: Tales From a Transatlantic Trip
We are back!

We've been in Israel almost twenty-four hours now...still less time than the entire trip took. For you see, because of our different trips to Italy (Elana's two weeks before mine) our tickets were booked differently, and so we did not have seats together (we did manage to switch, sort of), and our itinerary took us from LAX through Newark and Rome.

Our day started at a quarter to 4 AM, at a Holiday Inn near the airport. A taxi arrived to take us the rest of the way at 4:30, through the thickest fog I have ever seen in my life. This was especially bizarre, given that we were in LA. We had some trouble at security, where the giant SSSS on our tickets assured us the VIP treatment (that's what you get for traveling to the Middle East these days). They searched our bags all the way through (paying special attention to Elana's apparently bomb-resembling easel) and gave us both, as my guy described it, "a light patdown." We had checked our bags through all the way to Tel Aviv, but the Continental Agent had been unable to give us seats together for the whole trip. She did manage to get us seats in close rows, and we ended up with a window in one row and a middle in another; it should have been no problem to change seats.

Nor would it have been. However, when we got on the plane, there was a Russian woman already sitting in the window seat (my seat), refusing to give it up. Now, it's one thing to refuse to give up the window seat. I can understand that. But it was my window seat she was refusing to give up. I was more than willing to sit in the middle seat; in fact, had I been travelling alone, I would have let her have the window seat. She explained to the flight attendant who was tiredly trying to help us change seats that she had "specially requested" a seat by the window, and thus apparently felt entitled to it. We were about to give up, unwilling to be as childish as to demand she move, but when the flight attendant was explaining the situation to Elana, and the stoic to my right saw that other people were staring at her bemusedly, she meekly agreed to change to Elana's seat.

The remainder of the flight to Newark passed without incident. We both read and waited.

We landed in Newark and had scant time to get to our gate (we again wanted to try to change our seats, which were about fifteen rows apart). We went through security, hoping to get to our gate, change the seats, and get a bite to eat. Well, there was nobody at the gate, and the only available food was at a busy bar. There had been plenty of restaurants before security (which was also a problem here--they again paid special attention to Elana's suspicious French easel, but the real trouble was my backpack, where an alert screener spotted what looked like a pocketknife in my bag, unpacked my bag, screened it again, screened all my stuff, and then still had to doublecheck it before she, with a look of consternation and bewilderment, conceded that perhaps there was no pocketknife after all). Anyway, I waited at the bar...and waited, and waited...until I, in order to get the bartender's attention, raised a finger. She snapped at me, "Don't get in my face! I see you there, I know you're there. Don't piss off a bartender!" She was absolutely seething. I feel bad for her; I certainly wouldn't want her job. But I also didn't especially feel like handing my money to her at that point, hungry as I was. I chuckled--which pissed off the bartender even more--and turned and walked to the newsstand, where I bought some snacks for the Alitalia flight.

I went up to the counter to change our seats. The young Italian woman managed to get us two aisle seats in the same row. Close enough.

The flight to Italy passed, again, without too much incident. We each had a personal TV screen, and could select the movies we wanted when we wanted them, as well as some Nintendo games and shopping. Then came the most surreal moment I've had on an airplane.

As we approached Rome's Da Vinci Airport, perhaps about a hundred miles out, the pilot's Italian-accented English voice came over the intercom. This is an approximation of what he said:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, you are about to breathe the Italian air...
Never was a land so good or fair...
A land of peace, a land of love...
With green all around and skies above...
You can sit all day, or walk at will...
Through pleasant valleys or gorgeous hills..."

This went on for roughly ten minutes. I speak without exaggeration. Elana and I were exchanging concerned glances by the end, each sharing the silent hope that he was not too drunk. It should have been prefaced by something like:

-psssht!-
"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the Captain speaking. Lately my first grade child has been experimenting with poetry, and would like to share some of his words with you, a captive audience with no way to escape except to jump."

He got a smattering of applause from around the plane. I snapped my fingers repeatedly. Shortly thereafter, the poem was repeated in Italian. By the time he was done we were almost on the ground.

In Italy, again there was some difficulty with Elana's easel, although they are more used to painters coming through Rome than Newark, so it was not nearly as much trouble. We managed to confirm that our bags had indeed been correctly transferred at Newark and were aboard the plane bound for Tel Aviv, so that eliminated one stress. We boarded the plane, hopped over the Adriatic, Aegean and Mediterranean, and landed, passed through customs, got our bags, and met up with the entire Foigel family who had come to pick us up at Ben Gurion. Surprisingly easy, actually. All in all, we were traveling for twenty-five hours. Next time: El Al.

This morning we decided to go to the Ministry of the Interior, Misrad HaPnim, in order to get Elana's identity card, which we had failed to do our last stay because of bureaucratic nonsense: they needed, they told us, an Apostille seal on our marriage certificate to confirm Elana's name change or a passport. Well, we had the passport from the Consulate--but that, apparently, is not enough. We had changed Elana's name officially with the Israeli government, but with the Consulate. No, the passport did us no good. We had to change Elana's name with the Ministry of the Interior. The Consulate, under the authority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, does not communicate with Misrad HaPnim. I guess they must be brogez or something. In any event, the Ministry of the Interior is our new mortal enemy, as the only branch of the Israeli goverment that refuses to acknowledge our marriage.

Despite the infuriating bureaucracy that Misrad HaPnim reminded us is rampant in Eretz Yisrael, it's good to be back here. It's a new year with new opportunities for growth and experience, and we are very much looking forward to it.

- posted by @ 10:39 AM

 
Eyes East
Well, we're packed (almost) and, in a couple of hours, heading down to Los Angeles. We are flying through Newark and Rome, so, given our recent travel history, I am taking bets on just how far off-course our luggage goes. I'm betting at least one bag ends up in St. Petersburg, Russia. Let's see how oracular I truly am.

I would address Dov Weisglass' recent comments, which caused me to have a bit of a "Whaaa...?" reaction, but I just don't have the time now. Shortly, I would say that this was probably a pressure tactic, not a boast of duplicity. These guys are too smart to admit to that kind of a deception in such a public way...or at least I hope so. At any rate, it is comforting to see the reaction of most of Israelis was similar to my own. I expect nothing to come of this, but I've stopped trusting my expectations when it comes to the Middle East.

One thing I do know: by Saturday, there we shall be. I'll update from Ashdod. Shalom!

- posted by @ 9:00 PM

 
Friends, Family, Return Plans
We're down to less than one week here before we go back to Israel. In the meantime, we've been having fun visiting with friends and family.

About half of the days, we've been down in Los Angeles. On Saturday night, we went to the premiere of a play called Garbo's Cuban Lover, which was our friend Molly's Los Angeles theatrical debut. Molly did theatre with me at Brandeis. She was very good (naturally) and we enjoyed the show. We also ran into another Brandeis theatre expatriate there, Lindsay, who also recently made the move to the Left Coast and has a debut performance upcoming. It was good to see them both, and I can't help but feel a touch of pride at how well my former ensemble-mates are doing here.

Yesterday our close friends Daniel, Gwen and Afsheen hosted a barbecue/mafia party. Daniel, I must say, rocked the barbecue; it's almost fifteen hours after I ate and I'm still pretty much full. There was an interesting combination of people from Brandeis, Elana's high school friends, and people they knew, and the mafia games which ensued were large, but generally well-played and interesting.

We also have talked on the phone to people recently, who made sure to catch us before we leave...friends around here, in Denver, Atlanta, Albany (of all places)...it's good to feel connected to this many people back here, shortly before we head ourselves back there.

- posted by @ 8:14 PM