The Days Are Just Packed
And after yesterday's dinner, so was I.

We've been completely busy this week, so much so that we've barely had a free moment. Besides working on applications (the deadline for one of them less than a week away) and getting back into the swing of our educations, we've had some adventures with the apartment. Jerusalem got 70 mm of rain at the beginning of the week, some of which snuck down from the balcony above our apartment, through our ceiling, and started dive-bombing our bed, one plunnk at a time. We called our landlord, who set about to fixing it. Still, we had some buckets in our bedroom collecting water for a couple of days while we dragged the matress into the living room and camped out there. I'm not sure exactly what Micha did, but he and some of his contractors sealed the leaky parts of the balcony, and our bedroom is once again completely indoors.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, too. Our sophomore year at Brandeis, we had no family to visit, no food to prepare, and even if we had, no kitchen in which to prepare it. We figured there would be at least some restaurant open, even a fast food joint. When we discovered that we were mistaken, we put our hopes in the cafeteria. When even that meager hope was crushed, we became very depressed. There we were on Thanksgiving, on an empty campus with no food, getting hungrier by the minute. We found a solution by going to a movie and eating concessions. Every year since then (with the possible exception of last year, where we went out for dinner) we've made sure to prepare a big meal. We've always invited others over when we were not with our families (one year we invited two vegetarians, who, I think, missed out on the best part). Thanksgiving is known in Hebrew as "Yom Hodu:" a brilliant double entendre which means both "Turkey Day" and "Day of Thanks" (although using "hodu" as thanks is rather archaic). The Mega was crowded with Americans yesterday, shopping for their dinners.

This year, we had two couples over, our friends: Nathalie and Elad, and Nava and Leonid. Elana made a huge meal: salad and fresh bread, followed by baked turkey breast, broccoli casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy. I prepared the dessert: my signature, homemade brownies (read: store-bought Duncan Hines). She never likes me to brag about her, but the dinner was outstanding.

Our guests stayed for about four hours, during which time we explained the true meaning of Thanksgiving--in this case, I joked, the eternal reward given the Native Americans for the mitzvah of saving the lives of the early colonists, or the duty of the American wife to prepare a huge meal while the American husband is obligated to watch Detroit Lions football games; an act which, no doubt, makes him newly thankful that he most likely does not live in Detroit.

It may be true that "you can never go home again," since "home" in this sense really means the people and situations that were around you at a particular time in your life. But you can weave the strands of domesticity around you wherever you are, and carry your home on your back. For this, we can be thankful.



- posted by @ 4:28 PM

 
And We're Back
I look back at the itinerary we planned, and only now, after somehow managing to pull it off, and sitting back in our apartment in Jerusalem, do I realize just how ambitious it was. We're both exhausted.

Both of the weddings were fantastic, both in very different ways. One was small (less than 100 people), the other large (more than 600) but both shared a warmth and joyousness that made them definitely worth the trip.

The East Coast swing was a success as well; we both looked at schools and got a definite sense of what we want (and what we don't). We both have tremendous challenges coming up in our lives, as admission to the programs we want will be no easy task. The trip did not go off without a hitch, however; on the afternoon of the third day, our attempt to drive from Princeton to Albany to visit Jen and Oren was nearly sabotaged by Yahoo! maps, which took us in the wrong direction. After about an hour of driving and saying, "Is...that...our exit? It must be...this is really strange..." we drove past our hotel again. D'oh! We were astonished, not so much that we had just made a large circle from Princeton to Trenton and back again, but that our attempts to follow the directions, based on the signs on the street and what was written on the printout, actually took us right back to where we started. In the end, we found our way, and had a lovely meeting with them at Chilis (a bit of a tradition the four of us have), which we had to drive all the way across town for. We also saw our friend Bry in Philadelphia, as well as Ben, Jen, Dan, and of course my sister Leah and her flatmates at Brandeis. We had a great time with all of them.

The trip back also had its positive and negative moments. Well onto the positive side, we met Celestial Blue, another blogger whom we met over the internet, for lunch during a layover in Toronto (yes, we did fly 2 hours in the wrong direction, thank you, but this time it was purposeful and had nothing to do with Yahoo!). She was nice enough to come down to the airport and have lunch with us; she had a little sign with our names on it so that we would recognize her. This was our first "net meeting," and it was indeed most pleasant. After a relatively uneventful flight to Paris on Air France, however, the difficulties started.

For one thing, the French lost our airplane.

I can understand this. I mean, anybody could lose an airplane. This wasn't even one of the big ones, this was one of those Airbus 310s, and I guess they just forgot where they put it. But there we were, a group of about 120 French and Israeli travellers, packed into a bus that was designed for half that number, puttering around the tarmac at Charles de Gaulle as the poor escort stopped the bus at quite a few planes for a closer look and then, with a look of the despondancy that can only come when you have a group of Israelis becoming impatient and your supervisors forgot where you are supposed to take them, exhaled, "Non...non..." to every plane we passed. When we finally found the plane, we had been treated to a half hour tour of half of Charles de Gaulle's terminals.

Then, on the plane, one of the call buttons was malfunctioning. On and off for the whole flight, it would ring out "Ponnng...Ponnng...Ponnng..." It got worse at landing. It was going nonstop for the last fifteen minutes. Elana and I joked that it was mourning being lost and used.

Vova picked us up at the airport, and we spent a couple of hours in Ashdod. The Foigels have a new puppy named Shemesh ("Sun"), a little one-month old poodle mix that looks almost disturbingly like the Luck Dragon Falcor from The Neverending Story. It's very cute and affectionate.

We then drove back to Jerusalem under cover of darkness, each had a shower and then more or less collapsed into bed. Today it's back to school, and it's raining pretty hard out there, and we both have raging colds. I realize we just got back, but we need a vacation.

- posted by @ 6:47 AM

 
Life as a Ping-Pong Ball
We're back in LA. I find it disturbing that I'm getting used to this whole Transatlantic and Transcontinental thing.

All is well; we're back on the West Coast for a week for two weddings, one of my cousin in San Francisco and one of our good friends Carina and Luke in LA. The two couples were considerate enough to arrange their weddings perfectly with our schedule in mind, so that we could arrive today, drive to San Francisco tomorrow for my cousin's wedding on the 11th, and then drive back down to LA on the 12th for Carina and Luke's wedding on the 13th.

You got all that? Good, because there is going to be a test. We left Jerusalem yesterday afternoon and drove to Ashdod, where Vova took us to the airport. Ben Gurion has recently undergone a face-lift; there is a brand new terminal. It's quite nice, indeed: the circa-1950s terminal that was in use until last week was small, crowded, and provincial. It had a kind of impermanent feel to it. The new terminal is beautifully constructed, with marble and stone and a big indoor plaza in the middle, complete with a waterfall-from-the-ceiling fountain that led Elana to dryly remark that the plumbing clearly still needed some work. The big improvement is that airplanes come up to the gates now, like at American airports; no more shuttles to the plane, waiting somewhere out on the tarmac.

I will say, though, that although the new terminal presents a much more modern and positive face to tourists who will, God willing, be coming to Israel in droves, it lacks the personality of the old terminal, which screamed "Israel!" out of every corner. New Ben Gurion is a beautiful and comfortable building, sure to be boon to tourism--but Israel isn't always beautiful and rarely is it particularly comfortable. The new terminal could be any airport, in any city or country, where the old one could have only been in Israel. I guess you could say that I am excited about the growth and development the new structure represents, and saddened by the closing of a building that was an indelible part of my mental impression of Israel.

There have been some delays at the new terminal as they work out the kinks; our flight, too, was delayed, though only because the jet arrived three hours late. We flew on Air France to Paris, where we were put up for a night at a hotel at the airport. We had considered taking a taxi into Paris to the area of the Notre Dame and Saint Germaine and Ile Saint Louis--this was our first time in Paris, and it seemed a shame to waste our one night at some airport hotel. But it was past midnight by the time we got to the hotel, and we decided to crash instead. It was a good choice.

We completed the rest of the journey here today, flying nonstop from Paris to LA. The flight was uneventful, and was made much more pleasant by the fact that Elana had the presence of mind to request an exit row when we checked in; since this was a 747, that meant we were able to keep our legs fully extended if we so wished, as, most of the time, we did.

So, here we are, bound for a drive up to the Bay Area and back down again. What follows next week is truly insane: a midnight flight to Philadelphia, a rented car and a road trip from Philly to Princeton to Albany to Boston, visiting friends and MFA programs and PhD programs along the way. Our return trip includes a two hour connection flight in the wrong direction from Boston to Toronto, followed by the return trip to Paris and Tel Aviv. Our schedule is hourly, with meetings with artists and professors and tours miraculously aligning with visits to friends and family at our various stops.

We've traveled so much recently, it's beginning to be confusing as to where in the world we actually are; Jerusalem feels like it's right next door, not halfway around the world. This was our sixth Transatlantic flight in just over a year (with our seventh looming a mere two weeks away). Now, if you'll excuse me, Elana and I have been awake for...let's see...coming up on twenty-four hours straight. We have a five-hour drive up the 5 tomorrow, and I am going to go sleep in preparation for it.

- posted by @ 3:54 AM

 
Arafat Omed Lamut; What Should Israel Do?
Right now most people we know in the United States are wondering what went wrong, how 59 million people could be so dumb. The blue states, when you look at the map, seem to be clinging onto Canada for dear life. The elections are now in the post-mortem stage, on CNN, FoxNews, and tons of blogs.

Here in Israel we're waiting for another post-mortem; a definitive and confirmed report that Yasser Arafat is dead. It hasn't come yet, but when the French military hospital where the Palestinian leader is being treated puts out a statement that pointedly asserts, "Mr. Arafat is not dead," you can read between the lines and know that it's only going to be a matter of time. In fact, I'm writing quickly here to make sure that I get this "pre-death" entry posted in under the wire. The latest rumor I've heard, which may be true, is that Suha Arafat (his wife) is waiting to pull Arafat off life support to make sure she gets his money. Yasser Arafat is going to die a wealthy man; he is still the only one in the PA with the authority to write checks, and one gets the sneaking suspicion that not all of his money was made on the up-and-up--indeed, it is considered common knowledge here that Arafat is a corrupt embezzler and stole foreign funds earmarked for the Palestinian people.

I have recently discussed what Arafat's death will mean for his image, and touched briefly on what it would mean for the Palestinian people and for the prospects for a negotiated peace. But what will the death of one of its greatest enemies mean for Israel, and for Israelis?

I'm in Ashdod right now, and Vova just told me a story: the football club Ajax Amsterdam was in Israel for an exhibition game, and the crowd (who, by the way, witnessed an Israeli win against the Dutch club for the first time in history) chanted, at the top of its lungs, over and over: "Arafat omed lamut! Arafat omed lamut!" which means, "Arafat is going to die!" This is obviously a far cry from the mocking "Ozzz-good!" chants that would give the Red Wings' much-maligned goalie fits at Colorado Avalanche home games. I realize most readers of this blog probably share the perspective that Arafat is a corrupt terrorist and a murderer, who celebrated when a bus full of Israeli children was ambushed and destroyed, who defended his agreement with Israel as a step in a long-term plan to eliminate the Jewish state, and who--even when offered almost everything he was demanding--incited the current war. I, for one, think it's a blot on the image of the Nobel Peace Prize that this man was awarded one. To Israelis, Yasser Arafat is the man who was going to make peace and then showed his true colors, crushing the hopes of all but the most dovish and naive peaceniks. With all this in mind, it's not difficult to see why there is some elation at the prospect of Arafat's death, and some relief that he seems to be permanently out of the political picture. Those who see him as an enemy see his coming death as a relief; those who see him as an obstacle to peace are grateful that a roadblock is removed. There are very few Israelis--in fact, I would not be going out on much of a limb to say none at all--who will weep for Arafat as a failed peacemaker. So when people holler "Arafat omed lamut!" at soccer games, they are cheering for different reasons: some cheer for the death of a murderer and a criminal, some newly-cynical leftists cheer for the progress that can now be made with Arafat out of the way, and some short-sighted right-wingers cheer for the chaos that Arafat will have left in his wake among the Palestinians, blind to the danger such chaos can bring to their own homes.

Israel is playing it low-key right now, as long as you don't buy into the theory that Arafat's deteriorating health is the Mossad's doing. And good thing, too; without Arafat, all the rules of the Israeli-Palestinian game are going to be different. Right now Israel should be quietly helping those who will make peace increase their influence, and assume a defensive posture while the different Palestinian factions and gangs jockey for power. Sure, they are professing unity at this time, but every group sees its opportunity to grab a more powerful role in Palestinian politics. Israel would be well advised to help its potential friends and fight its sure enemies only in dark places. In the light of day, Israeli antagonism is likely to increase a group's legitimacy, and open Israeli assistance is the quickest way to cries of "Collaborator!"

- posted by @ 3:55 PM

 
Four More Years
I'm not going to break down the election, I'm too weary. We woke up early this morning to watch it, and I think we should have saved ourselves the trouble. I have no classes, so I'll stay in and do homework today; maybe we'll catch a movie or something.

Life goes on. But I was really hoping to look my classmates in the eye again, proud to be able to assert that things like integrity and intelligence matter to Americans. Instead, it seems that I'll have to settle for the meager joy that comes with knowing that America can at least carry out an election that has the appearance of being fair and democratic, which has to be an improvement over 2000.

- posted by @ 11:30 AM

 
Tel Aviv Blast
It's only been about an hour since I last posted. There was a blast at the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv today; currently the count is four dead, dozens wounded. Police have confirmed that it was a suicide attack; it only happened about half an hour ago, and other details are still sketchy. Elana and I are both fine.

I'll bet anybody a quarter that whoever claims responsibility says that this attack was carried out in retaliation for Arafat's failing health, which is sure to be publicly blamed on the Zionist Mossad sooner or later.

- posted by @ 11:55 AM

 
Too Many Variables
I'm a big fan of not updating unless I have something to say; that's why my congratulations to Beantown has been up for almost a week now. Wouldn't you know it, I jinxed the Patriots. Boston, even when you win, you just can't win (not that I truly hear any of you complaining; at least, not yet).

Things here have been moving along; school has been good for both of us. Last weekend we went on a trip to Meitar to visit with Elana's relatives down south.

The two big stories here are Arafat and, of course, the American election. Elana and I sent in our votes last week, and are planning to get up early in the morning, have a nice breakfast, watch the returns come in and, like most people, pray for the right outcome.

Then, of course, there's Arafat. It would seem that my taxi driver's faith in his brother was somewhat misplaced, but the rumors he was excited to repeat were obviously not completely baseless. Whether or not Arafat dies this round (my guess is he won't) his days as a politician have to be done. When reports roll in that he's not in control of his mental faculties, the "what else is new" instinct kicks in among Israelis...until one realizes that those reports are coming from Palestinian sources. There's talk that he will be succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate PLO finance minister who resigned in frustration after a brief tenure as Prime Minister; I would be hopeful about an Abbas/Qureia' regime's propensity to negotiate. Of course, if this does happen, this calls the whole Gaza withdrawal plan's purpose into question (the logic of the withdrawal being that there's nobody with whom to negotiate on the Palestinian side, meaning Arafat)...but then one throws into the mix the added uncertainty surrounding the American election, Sharon's teetering support within his own Likud party and the Labor Party's wide eyes at the prospect of essentially enslaving the Prime Minister to their agenda in order to maintain his parliamentary majority, and what you get here on this page is a blogger who is, while not exactly confused by all this, at this point utterly unwilling to make a prediction about what the situation will look like a year from now.

- posted by @ 10:32 AM