Tel Aviv Nightclub Blast
We went to sleep early-ish last night, and woke up this morning to find out about the suicide bombing at the night club in Tel Aviv. It's something that you just knew would happen the second any Palestinian announces a "cease fire." Honestly, I'm surprised that it took this long.

This is what happens when you have schism in national, revolutionary movements. It happened in France in the 18th century; in Russia in the 20th. Read your Brinton. There is always a faction within the larger framework, usually across several different existing groups, that will "flank" any leadership which allows itself to be coopted into a process.

This is not the end of the cease-fire. This is just the beginning of the test of the PA's resolve to consolidate their power and their willingness to actually shoot their own people. It is also a test of Israel's restraint, but in this situation that will largely depend on the Palestinian response.

This is little consolation, I'm sure, but it is actually somewhat encouraging that Saeb Erekat, that overgrown mouth with a Palestinian minister attached, didn't try to pin the blame on Israel in his latest statements. He is just a lackey and yes-man, of course, but Abu Mazen is saying all the right things, too. It's just a question of how he will put his words into action. Arafat didn't even say the words, so there was no question of his undertaking appropriate action.

All politics aside, our hearts go out to the victims and their families and friends. It's easy for me to sit here and type analysis while they go through hell.
- posted by @ 8:31 AM

 
An Ever-Shrinking Planet
I have been waiting for inspiration to update this thing. While I was on break, there just wasn't much going on about which I felt interested enough to post. So I kind of let the journal slip through the cracks a bit, since "We had chicken for dinner" didn't seem like the kind of thing that was particularly newsworthy.

But this week, as school starts, there have been a couple of incidents that got me thinking about just how small the Jewish world is, both within Israel and without. And nobody is very many degrees separated from anyone else.

On Sunday I went over to JSS to pick Elana up; there she was talking with a classmate of hers, Hanan, who mentioned that he had cousins in New York who share my last name, which is not common. The names he gave me didn't sound familiar, but I'd bet they are probably not-too-distant cousins of mine. But then the stranger thing happened. We were talking about religion, and I mentioned my friend Jacob, who is getting married next month. I told him a little about Jacob's engagement party last month, as well as his background. He said, "Let me guess. He's a such-and-such type of Jew." I answered honestly that I didn't know. I then mentioned his name, and he said, "Jacob? You mean Ya'cov." The Hebrew name for Jacob. I assumed he was making a comment on the propensity of American religious olim to adopt the biblical forms of their names; I nodded. "He goes to culinary school." I blinked. How could he know that? Then he gave Jacob's address. My jaw hit the floor. All I could think to say was, "Wow...you've really got the type nailed down..." It took me a bit too long to come to the understanding that Hanan and Jacob had met; turns out Hanan's cousin's best friend got married last month to Jacob's roommate, and Hanan had attended a party at the apartment.

As small as the world felt after that, nothing really could have prepared me for what happened last night. Around eight o'clock Elana and I were chattiing in our living room when there was a knock at the door. We exchanged a puzzled glance; Who could that be? I opened the door, and standing in front of my was Shapir, one of my older brother's best friends since they were in elementary school together twenty years ago. "Shapir?!" "Hey, what's up." "What are you doing here? Come in, come in! What are you doing here? I didn't know you were in Israel."

Yeah...this doesn't sound like much of a coincidence, necessarily. He obviously obtained my address and stopped by. Except..."Yeah, I didn't know you were in Israel, either."

Turns out he's in Jerusalem teaching at an American high school on Ben Zakkai Street, currently in the midst of an aparment search. He had been studying at Pardes, the reform-ish Yeshiva which is in the next building over from JSS in Talpiot, as had our neighbor, Jim, a nice guy we have met a couple of times. Well, while Jim was out of town, Shapir had been basing himself in Jim's apartment, number 8, literally the other side of the wall from us. He had noticed my name on our doorbell ringer...wondered if it could possibly be me...finally decided to take the chance and knock. We caught up, and he's coming over for dinner later tonight.

What are the odds?
- posted by @ 2:10 PM

 
An Israeli Day
Yesterday was outstanding. And we owe it all to sponteneity.

Allow me to start at the beginning. Two days ago, two really wonderful things happened. First, there was the cease-fire announced between Israel and the PA. I'll write about this soon, probably a couple of entries, first on the chances of the cease-fire to hold and second on what I think will happen to Israeli society should it do so. The second wonderful event was the critique Elana had on Tuesday, which went very, very well for her. So, yesterday we decided to have a fun day, and head to the Jerusalem Zoo and then perhaps see a movie.

The zoo actually has a theme; biblical animals. The only animals at the zoo are those mentioned by the bible. We'd been meaning to check it out for some time now, but it was one of those things that somehow never quite happened. We loaded into our car and puttered to the zoo, noticing that we were basically the only ones there. As we were waiting to buy tickets, a man came up and told us that we could go in today for half-price and walk around, but since it was so cold, all the animals would be inside and we really wouldn't see any of them. Somewhat discouraged, we trudged back to the car, wondering what we could do to make sure our celebration day didn't get off to too much of a false start. On a whim, we decided to check out Gush Etzion, a nearby settlement bloc that was the site of a major battle of the 1948 War of Independence. However, a combination of bad signage and insufficient maps found us at a checkpoint that read: Beit Lehem Border Guard. Deciding that today was not the day to visit Bethlehem, despite the cease fire, we turned around and drove through a five-minute hailstorm back towards Jerusalem.

We weren't ready to give up the day so easily, despite two thwarted attempts. Again on whim, we decided to leave Jerusalem and head north; in pretty short order, I asked Elana, "Do you want to go to Haifa?" Sure, she replied, why not? So, off we went, taking the shortest route possible (which, incidentally, led us past Ramallah). I guess you could call the two seperate excursions into the West Bank our personal celebration of the cease-fire.

The drive up to Haifa took us about two hours. We turned up Mount Carmel, the mountain that gives the city its character, and climbed toward Ahuza, the area my family lived in while my father taught at the Technion and the University of Haifa in 1985. I remembered it vividly, although that did not prevent a little bit of a detour down a one-way street called Vitkin and another wrong turn that had us heading back down the Carmel before we made our third U-turn of the day. Haifa was not an easy place to drive; crowded and, because it is built on a peninsular hill, unplanned. The hill also gave Marvin some trouble; being a French car, Marvin has an unfortunate tendency to roll backwards when requested to start while facing uphill. Eventually, we parked at a mall called the Horev Center. A stroll around the mall revealed a movie theatre, some clothing shops and a bagel joint, where we had a lunch that was quite tasty. Following lunch, I requested a nostalgia session, which Elana was more than happy to oblige. We returned to our car and consulted the map, and discovered that we were a mere block away from Mapu street and my old apartment, a visit to which was the very purpose of my reminiscing. It was amazing how clearly everything came back to me. There was a bench in this park over here, and one time while Max and I were playing hide and seek...That clothing shop used to be a candy store...This Grocery was here even then! Even the name on the door of our apartment was the same; our erstwhile landlords still lived there. More memories flooded in. Quiet hours from 2-4. The way my dad had descended those steps after returning from seeing the Broncos lose to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXI in Tel Aviv (the only place the Super Bowl was broadcast in '86; how things have changed!). Revital and Inbal, the two girls from Max's class who loved to hang around outside our apartment, evidently to stalk him. Ehud, the strange boy from one floor below who liked to climb the tree and peer into our apartment. The Mount Saint Helens eruption-inspired sunsets over the Mediterranean, visible and spectacular from our balcony.

Pulling myself from my reverie and back into the modern day, I was most surprised by how upscale it had become. On the corner of Mapu and Horev, there was now a sushi bar; trendy cafes and shops all over the place; what happened here? I was mostly delighted to discover the little arts-and-crafts store down the street, at which my brother and I both blew our entire allowance for a year on Fimo which we would use to create little colored sculptures and then sell to each other for five shekels, was still in existence, although closed. We walked up and down the main street, from the apartment to my school and back again (this walk was a huge part of my first-grade experience), and I was startled to discover how warped the distances were in my memory. I remembered the walk to our school to be twenty minutes; even for a first-grader on five- and six-year-old legs, it could not have been more than five minutes. The Bank Leumi where I got dragged from time to time was not an hour away by foot, but fifteen minutes. We explored the width and breadth of my existence during the 1985-86 academic year (and more) in a little under an hour. If only all memory could be so easily recaptured.

Haifa felt very much the same to me, despite the neighborhood's swing to the upscale. Very pleasant, green, with spectacular views (like this one, taken from just below our apartment building; we could see more of the Mediterranean Sea than I remembered)...but still, like much of Israel and especially Jerusalem, not quite perfect. The trees were lovely, as were the paths and alleyways; the streets were cleaner than Jerusalem's (and certainly cleaner than Tel Aviv's), the air fresher...but there was still too much apathy towards the loveliness of the place, which is an epidemic in this country. Too many pipes sticking out of walls, too many borders and fences falling into disrepair. A year's worth of work and care could make Haifa among the loveliest cities on earth.

Again on a whim, around 4 we headed back to the Horev Center to see Finding Neverland, both an enjoyable movie and eminently appropriate for what had become the theme of the day. We had thought about going to see the Baha'i Gardens, but it was already getting dark and that is something that in itself deserves another trip and proper attention, not a faded-light drive-by. So we watched the movie and drank peach nectar. The movie over, we headed back towards Mapu street for dinner (something I would never have imagined saying in '86). The aforementioned sushi bar, called Frangelico's, was right next door to the Fimo shop. We had miso soup and split a combination platter of 18 pieces of cheap but delicious sushi. The pieces were small, so we indulged in a second order. Looking out the window of a new and upscale sushi bar and seeing the familiar intersection and the same flower shop and makolet, I happily reflected on how little and how much things change.

There was some bad traffic exiting the city, but we drove home fully satisfied. It's good to know that if you pull a spontaneous surprise inspection, sometimes your past will still be there.

"He did not want at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces,
to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay
there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down
there, and he know he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to
think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these
things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon
for the same simple welcome."

-Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

- posted by @ 11:27 AM

 
Snow Falling on Palm Trees
This morning it was raining, so I drove Elana to school, returned home and set myself to work. An hour's endeavor saw the first and most difficult of the three questions on my final exam completed; the last two will be a relative breeze.

I emerged from the seclusion of the bedroom five minutes ago to stretch my legs around the apartment. I glanced out the window, and had myself an Arthur Dent moment. White, I thought, and nodded my head in some secret joke that is beyond me. With apologies to Douglas Adams, the word white wandered through my head in search of something to connect with.

The snow falling outside sure was white.

Snow.

Snow!

Snow!!!

Snowfall in Jerusalem is supposed to be a once-a-decade event, and this is now the second dusting in two years. Perhaps Jerusalem sensed that I come from a white-winter town, where rain is an sparkling event of early July and not a cold, damp faucet-drip dribble of February, and wanted to make me smile a bit. So what if the snow melts as it hits the ground and will likely not last the morning? I love seasons, and now, cold as it has been, gray as it has been, drab as it has been...this morning, at last and probably for once this year, it is indubitably winter.

I will waste no more time in front of the computer right now. There is a furious snow falling on confused palm trees, and that is a truly unique sight to see.

- posted by @ 9:35 AM

 
Dear Boston
Aren't you bored yet with all this winning? Don't get me wrong, I'm plenty happy for you. And I was rooting for the Pats when I woke up at 1:30 AM to watch the game, snack on schnitzel and pita and humus and wreck myself for today. All I can say, as a native of Denver of the late 1990's, is: don't get used to it.

My German Blog has been progressing very nicely, I think; I still make plenty of mistakes. The funny thing is, I've gotten quite a few random commenters who just step in and correct my grammar for me (as per my request, granted). One mysterious poster one even signed his name: Die Spinne, or "The Spider." The German urge for order truly knows no bounds, as I have yet to post a little blurb about my Tuesday or the fact that I ate and enjoyed brussel sprouts without somebody posting a comment within the hour.

On Thursday we went shopping, and were assaulted not once, but twice, by an aggressive woman in her late twenties, who was evidently in the employ of a maxi pad comany. Strolling through the aisles, pushing the cart, we were confronted by this woman, shoving a box of maxi pads in Elana's face and, with a desperation that I am at a loss to explain, cried out, "Two for one sale!!! Would you like..." to which we, flabbergasted, could only reply, "Lo, lo..." ("No, no...") and hurry to another aisle, resisting the urge to glance back lest we make eye contact and encourage further conversation, or simply turn into pillars of salt.

On Saturday we were in Ashdod for the afternoon; the Foigels took us bowling (or, as it pronounced in Israel, "boweling." As in, "Disem..."). When I was growing up, I went bowling with what I think was more than average frequency (every other birthday party I went to was at Monaco Lanes on Leetsdale), and I understood the etiquette of the place. You wait for the person next to you to bowl before you go, and you most certainly do not enter into your neighbor's lane. Also, if a pin is wavering, you must crouch down for luck until it topples or stands its ground. Well, at the Israeli bowling alley, as with most things in Israel, etiquette goes right out the window. It didn't strike me as particularly odd that there was no waiting of turns. I was somewhat startled by the fact that people seemed to have no problem allowing their toddlers and small children to wander freely down the lanes, causing several near misses. And the "luck crouch" became more of a "hop-to-your-right-on-one-leg-until-you-block-or-crash-into-the-bowler-in-the-next-lane." Let me just say that on more than one occasion did one of these children come within inches of sharing the bowling ball's journey. Still, in all, I have to admit that it was a good time. I bowled well the first- and third- game, each time realizing my goal of breaking 100. Elana cleaned up the third game especially, leaving myself, Tova, Vova, Liat, and Alla all in the dust.

We're back in Jerusalem right now, where it has been rainy and cold the past couple of days. After living in Boston and Chicago, I swore I would not complain about the "cold" that strikes here in the Middle East, but it's been pretty nasty and wet. We've stayed indoors, mostly. For now, I'm going to get some more of my work done; my goal is to finish my final exam by the end of tomorrow.

I hear the wind howling outside. Or maybe Condoleeza Rice is somwhere nearby.

- posted by @ 1:41 PM

 
Alternative Learning
When I am on break, I tend to freak out a bit. I tend to thrive on being very busy; the busier the better. When I wake up in the morning and there is nothing on my agenda, I have a real hard time starting my day.

That is why, for this break, I've instituted some lessons and goals for myself. First of all, finish my assignments from this past semester (one exam and one paper). Back in the US, I would never have imagined going into a break without having finished all my work, but here in Israel it's impossible not to; assignments are given on the last day of class and are due sometime in March (although even that deadline is flexible; I know some people have still not turned in a paper for a class from last fall). I've started keeping another blog in German: http://schlechtdeutsch.blogspot.com. For those of you (1) who read and understand German, you will find the amount of mistakes I will make there truly appalling. Furthermore, given my rudimentary skill and vocabulary, I imagine the result will be something resembling the prattling of a second-grader who speaks like Salvatore in The Name of the Rose. Still, without anyone with whom to practice, I am sure that my fledgling German will all but disappear in the next three weeks if I don't make some effort to use it, and sitting and studying a language is never going to get you conversational. I've also started trying to prepare more foods of greater health and complexity. Thus far Elana has taught me the basics of non-instant oatmeal, Israeli salad, schnitzel, and chicken soup; tomorrow I am graduating from the stove- and counter-top to the oven, where I will be baking (with her guidance) my first baked chicken and vegetables combo. With the exception of my patented buffalo wings (and most of the credit for those goes to the sauce, anyhow), the meals I know how to prepare tend to begin in boxes with directions on the back. It's fun to be making some real food myself, although I say quite honestly that when Elana does it, it pretty much invariably tastes better. But still: why should she get all the fun?

Also on the agenda are day trips and perhaps vacations within Israel. But in true Israeli style, those will be organized and undertaken more or less spontaneously.

- posted by @ 3:13 PM