Kitchen Duty...usually

I'd wake up four days a week at 7:30, and by wake up I mean turn off my alarm and wait for Louis to come yell at me to actually get up. I'd have until he made his coffee to actually start moving otherwise he'd walk down without me. After I threw on my jeans and t-shirt, we'd take the 6 minute walk down the road to the dining hall. We either met up with Mia outside her building or down at breakfast, but we'd take our time eating. Fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers that we cut up the day before; cottage cheese; two bowls of cereal; and a cup of tea that was never quite strong enough, but the excessive amount of sugar in it made up for that.

As our friends showed up to eat, the three of us would head into the back and throw on our aprons. During a week one of us would work in the שתיפה (dishwasher) while the other two would start cutting up trays of vegetables for tomorrow morning; 2 trays of diagonally sliced cucumbers, 2 trays of thinly sliced peppers (usually red or yellow), and 2 trays of tomatoes. You really only had to wash the cherry tomatoes and take off the stems, but the large tomatoes had to be cored and sliced. We got pretty good at it, but only after a few close encounters (don't worry, Louis's hand is fine).

After about an hour or two, a sweet old Russian lady would come around asking who wanted tea or coffee? This tea was much better. Louis, Mia, and I would grab a few oranges from the fridge and take our tea out to the back loading dock for a break. We'd try being nice to the cats out back, but (as to be expected) they thought they were too good for us. So we were friendly with the cats until they were mean…then we hated them. O! Except for this one hideous one! We hated it all the time. It's not our fault though, it had this one eye that looked like it was going to pop out and it lived in the dumpster…it was terrifying.

One day we were out on our break and Louis and I decided it would be fun to climb up onto the roof. We had done it a few days earlier and all our scratches from the ledge had healed, so we were ready to go again. I never said it was a smart idea, but we had a good time so shut up.

Once up there, obviously we were going to have fun yelling at our bosses and watch them look around for us only to then realize that, "yup, the dumb American kids are on the roof again." Then, Chaim walked by. Now my Hebrew isn't amazing, but I'd been working with people who spoke no English for 3 months at this point; I clearly recognized when he shouted, "stay up there, I have a job for y'all" in Hebrew.

After a bit of shouting, I pieced together that there was an old air conditioning unit on the roof that Chaim wanted Louis and I to carry over to the edge of the roof. So we did. Then came the fun part. Chaim threw us a rope and said, "now lower it down." Louis and I were volunteers in the kitchen, and neither of us were in scouts…we didn't know jack about tying knots! We had no clue how to lower this 100+ pound unit off the 35(ish) foot roof, but we were willing to make it up.

We tried to wrap up the A/C, but after a while Chaim grabbed a ladder to come up and show us how it was done. Again, after a bit of struggling through the language barrier, Louis and I understood how exactly Chaim expected the three of us to lower down this appliance without dropping it…o ya, or falling off the roof.

We braced, kicked the air conditioner off the edge, and began to lower it down. Everything was going fine until it got stuck on something that stopped it from lowering. Chaim told Louis and I to hold tight while he went to check what happened. We pulled tighter, and waited for Chaim to tell us the problem. He peered over the ledge and just started laughing. It was already on the ground. Louis and I were preventing a stationary, broken air conditioner from falling to the ground.

Cycone Sunday

At the Hebrew University I took a lot of classes that I'd love to talk about. I learned a lot of really interesting things…just not in Israeli Legal System. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the class, my professor was awesome, and I did learn a lot, but the class was at 6:15 at night until 9:30…on Sunday. THIS IS THE MOST DIFFICULT CULTURAL DIFFERENCE TO ACCEPT WHEN GOING TO ISRAEL FROM AMERICA! Sunday is a work day. We asked Aryeh's grandparents, who made aliyah to Israel over 30 years ago, and even they still miss Sunday. Luckily, I carefully planned my schedule so this was my one and only class on Sunday (it may not be a weekend, but I'll be damned if I wasn't going to sleep in).

Now, again, I did enjoy this class, I just wasn't sure why it had to be three hours long. There were six of us from Nativ in the class, making up almost a half of it, and we honestly spent most of our time in class people watching. There were people from all over the world in the class. We had one or two students in the class that were on their way to have professions in a legal field that were looking to learn more about a foreign legal system; the information they were getting in this class was not what they were expecting (one of them never came back [good riddance…she sucked]) The rest of them just asked the most ridiculous questions, distracted Dr. Hammer, and made 30 minutes of actual information take three hours to learn. I know the time frame because the six of us missed a class due to a Nativ program, and Dr. Hammer was nice enough to meet up with us one night to go over the lesson. We met him at a little restaurant, had a 30 minute lecture, and then enjoyed a cup of coffee (it was a much better way to learn). Then, we left and saw him later at a concert that he suggested we go to 2 weeks earlier. Dr. Hammer was awesome.

Honorable mention: Reuben "Ruby Tuesday" was a huge guy that we loved to just listen to speak. I won't get into it, but everything out of his mouth was a riot…AND HE SPOKE FLUENT FRENCH!!! WHAT?!?!?!

After class, we'd take the 9:45 19 bus back up to Beit Nativ. Dr. Hammer was always on the same bus. For a while we didn't talk to him, but a few weeks in we decided to take some time to chat with him. Again, he was awesome. Three or four of us would stay on an extra stop to get let off across the street from our favorite pizza place, Cycone, and spend a few extra minutes hanging out with "The Hammer." We'd get a pie or two (each), walk back to the fountain across from Beit Nativ, eat half of a pizza there (or a whole one…it's a college leadership program, don't judge me), and put the leftovers in the fridge for later in the week. It was perfect.

Not IL, IL - 2

I was spending yet another weekend in Ramat Gan with my family. It was right near the beginning of second semester and my friends were going to see the Hunger Games at a theater in Haifa. Being that I never read the book and honestly had no idea what the hell it was, I didn't feel bad ditching the group of Nativers to go see my family. Shortly after arriving in Ramat Gan, my 21 year old cousin told me he was going to see it with some of his friends. Since I wanted to spend time with my cousin, I agreed to go. I traveled for an hour and a half to go to another city…to do the same thing my friends were doing in Haifa.

I had been in Israel nearly five months at this point and not much shook me culturally at this point. That being said, as we drove up to the mall I was blown away by what happened.

After picking up my cousin's two friends, we were driving up to the mall and went to find the parking garage. As we pulled into the parking garage, a man in a yellow traffic vest came over to meet us. My cousin pulled down the window and the man asked him to open the trunk. From the passenger seat I was thinking, "excuse me?! You can't just walk up to us and ask us to pop the trunk…mind your own damn business (expletive)." Without a question, my cousin opened the trunk, the guy took a look, closed it up, tapped the car, and we were on our way.

Israel lives with the constant threat of terrorist attacks, and a commonly reoccurring theme between the thousands of attacks Israel has experienced are bombs and public places full of civilians. The slanted tree next to the cafe at the Hebrew University that I ate at marked one such location.

Maybe a second after we pulled away from the garage attendant, it occurred to me that everyone who pulls into that garage gets searched. I imagined someone in America being asked to pop their trunk, the yelling match that would occur, the declaration that his constitutional rights were being infringed upon, and the weeks of media coverage that would surround the issue.

I commented about the encounter to my cousin when we walked into the mall. He hadn't given it a second thought.

Basketball

Most nights during the first semester we'd go out and play ball at Gan HaPaamon. There were public courts set up and most of the hoops were close enough to ten feet. Usually you could get a handful of guys together to play a game, but the scheduled night for ball was Wednesday. About thirty of us would head over and play ball for a couple hours, but almost everyone cleared out by 11:30 or so; everyone except Brian, Moshe, Aryeh, and myself. We'd stick around getting in on pick up games with local guys. A lot of them were religious guys studying at Yeshiva, Arab Israelis, and once we played with a few guys from a tank unit in the army.

We played regularly and we recognized a lot of people around the park…we also happened to hate a few of them. One of these guys was an older guy from a Yeshiva named Aaron. He played violent basketball, called for the ball every ten seconds, yelled at his teammates, and had the ugliest damn shot I've ever seen. What's worse: it went in (probably a bit too often). Aryeh usually got stuck defending him and he looked forward to getting a chance to put Aaron in his place every week. Aryeh speaks great Hebrew and I'm positive all the trash talking Aaron thought we wouldn't understand only made Aryeh play better.

Long after everyone else had left the park, the four of us would still be hanging out. It was a great time to be with people I love playing basketball. We'd stay out until the lights would shut off (about 2am); then we'd walk up the street to the 24/6 market, SOS, (not open on Shabbis), and get snacks. Each of us would get a 1.5 liter of Fanta Orange Mango, Fanta Exotic, or Fanta Lemon and a big bag of chips. I usually went for the Terra Chips, Aryeh and Moshe liked to get a variety of stuff, but Brian would always, ALWAYS get the flaming hot Doritos. Every week he'd talk about getting something else, but he could never bring himself to do it. We'd take our snacks outside, sit on the couches in the courtyard, and talk about how we had to wake up for classes in the morning.

We'd usually be out there until about 3am, but even after we walked back to Beit Nativ we'd sit in the lobby until about four. I'm really not sure how I got to Hebrew class every Thursday morning...

Social Unrest

With just one weekend left to spend in Jerusalem, I thought it would be nice to talk about the first weekend I spent on Agron St. Shabbat was just ending when the barricades started coming out. The stage had been set up already, but the police were only just showing up. In late August, the entire country of Israel was coming off of a summer of social strife. What began as a few friends camping out on a street in a nicer part of Tel Aviv turned into a summer of tent villages, social rallies, and protesters taking to the streets every weekend. The last big one of the year was mere days after we arrived in Israel, and it was taking place right outside my window.

The youth hostel Nativ stays at first semester is located smack dab in the middle of Jerusalem. My room overlooked the busy intersection of King George and Agron; usually the noise just makes it hard to sleep, but that night the noise was the main event. All around the country thousands of people were taking to the streets, attending similar rallies in every major city. The one in Jerusalem just so happened to be taking place a block away from the Prime Minister's house. The protest was going to begin with a walk down the block, so the actual mass of people was waiting about five minutes away near one of the touristy streets in Jerusalem, Ben Yehuda Street. A lot of us were debating going to the protest, but being that we had just gotten to Israel, we weren't 100% sure what we were protesting. As we later learned, neither were a lot of the Israelis. It turns out that the tent villages began springing up in response to high living costs in Israel, but as the movement got bigger various causes jumped on the social justice band wagon and eventually even gained some support from different political parties.

Anyway, we decided to take advantage of our balcony/roof that overlooked the intersection and just watch from there, but what's a social justice rally without Burger's Bar? A crowd of us made our way 'up-stream' and carried out burgers just as the rally was beginning. I have never seen that many people in my life; it was completely insane. We finally waded back through the crowd to the front gate of the hostel; everyone in the group got lost in the crowd along the way, but eventually we met back up on the roof. First of all, the burger was incredible, but the atmosphere was something else. It was an incredible dive into Israeli culture as we watched men, women, and children take to the streets to speak out and say, 'something is wrong with our country and we want something to be done about it!' It was a different side to Israel that summer trips and other programs won't usually show you: the 'we have our problems, too' side of Israel.

I hung my Israeli flag off the balcony that night to show my support for the young country, and it stayed there all semester. I spent the night taking photos of the rally on my iPod and watching in awe as thousands of Israelis took to the streets. Relative to it's size, it was as if 18 million Americans met up for the rally!
 
Finally, when the rally ended, we were all concerned that the protesters would make a lot of noise and we'd be woken up throughout the night by idiots with megaphones (which would have sucked considering we had to go to orientation for school the next morning). To our surprise, the protesters filed out quickly, left nearly no mess, and the stage was taken down within half an hour. It may not be completely perfect, but this country sure is efficient.

Hi Mom

I really shouldn’t be putting this story online, mostly because I haven’t actually told my mother about this in person, yet. Last week Nativ went on Northern Tiyul and we did a lot of hikes and interesting trips. One of these trips was rafting down the Jordan River. Actually, you begin on a smaller river, then it merges with another river and those become the Jordan River. Prior to getting in the raft there are rubber ties you can put on your glasses to make sure they won’t fall off. I didn’t see them. I was also wearing my prescription sunglasses I had gotten the previous summer. Now that you all know where this is going, here’s what happened.

I was in a raft with Maya, Moshe, Zach, and Ira. We were actually really good at the whole rafting thing. Even with eighty or so other Nativers jumping around in the water trying to pull people off their boats we were making great time down the river. We got so far ahead of everyone that we decided to pull over and tell people we were stuck. Obviously, when they would come help us we’d splash them with water. Good ole fashion fun. Then everything changed. I jumped off of our boat to go shove the assistant director in the water. After succeeding (hell ya) I jumped into the water, off come the glasses, down they go. My first thought was, ‘HOLY CRAP MOM’S GOING TO KILL ME.’ My second thought was, ‘ just reach down, maybe they’re right there!’ They weren’t.

I debated with myself the best way to look for them. If I assume they float, then checking as I float down river is smart, but if they sank, then floating away looking for floating glasses took me away from the glasses, making it nearly impossible to find the spot they fell off again. I looked around the spot where I jumped in for a while as boats full of my friends floated by. Nothing. Although, Zack was a little bit to close to the edge of his boat and I got to close line him. That was fun.

I began floating down river with my hands scraping across the bottom of the Jordan. I caught up with my boat about a minute down river. They were all ready to get out and help me look for my glasses. Honestly, I was a little flustered and sick of fighting the current looking for a pair of glasses I was convinced was gone, but Ira told us he once found a watch he lost after getting out and looking for a half hour, so we took a chance. Ira, Maya, Zach, and I got out and started walking upstream back to where we had stopped before (Moshe stayed to hold the raft). I took off a shoe and began probing the rocks for my glasses. Again, I was let down and convinced I would never see my glasses again. I was ready to give up, we were way behind our group now, and I appreciated what my friends were doing for me, but it was hopeless.

Ira and I were standing in the middle of the Jordan River, waiting for Maya and Zach to reach us when Maya yells over, ‘well, they’re not yours, but I did find a pair of sunglasses…wait! They are yours!’ It sounded like some sort of cruel joke, but sure enough, she had stood up, sick of laying in the water blindly searching, and then she saw them. I went to put them on, praying that they were in fact mine and not some other pair of identical glasses (anything is possible…). We couldn’t believe it: she found them.

Everyone on Nativ who had passed us in the water was laying out in the sun. They were all amazed to see me wearing my glasses. It was pretty damn lucky.

Impulse Buys

Every year at the Seder we say 'next year in Jerusalem;' how could spend all week in Ramat Gan and Tel Aviv? It was Pesach break and I was going into Jerusalem to meet up with some friends. There was just one problem: I had no idea which friends I was meeting up with. So I made the usual phone calls, checked to see who was in Jerusalem or if anyone knew someone in Jerusalem from Nativ. Eventually, I had a list of people I could spend time with, but I still had nowhere to stay. I called my friends Rozzie, Moshe, Aryeh, and Ethan. Each call was carefully planned out; I was sure to mention that I wanted to see them (and their families when applicable), but I never mentioned where I was staying or that I was considering sleeping in the park. I like to think I'm polite...from time to time...so there was no way I was inviting myself over to anyone's house, but if they bring it up first, who am I to turn away their gesture? Rozzie offered first.
I hopped of the bus and headed over to center city to meet up with Moshe and Aryeh at Arkadesh. Back in the states during Pesach, you pray you don't get sick of Matza Pizza before the third day; in Israel, most restaurants in Jerusalem (and any kosher restaurant around the country) does intensive spring cleaning and is Kosher for Pesach. I got shwarma in a kosher l'Pesach laffa. It was delicious.
We finished our lunch and wandered around Jerusalem for a bit. Moshe and I had every intention of visiting a funny T-shirt store and, after a little convincing, so did Aryeh.

We headed over to the t-shirt store and began looking through the collection of tasteless, hilarious t-shirt designs. The shirts are sold for fifty shekels each, but as the good, capitalistic American I am, I couldn’t resist the three for one twenty deal; now the only problem was finding three shirts I could actually justify buying. We spent so much time looking for shirts that would be appropriate enough to wear back in the states (because political correctness does not exist in Israel the same way it does in America: in Israel they have practically correctness [still pc]) that quite a line built up in the store. They press the shirts right in the store and we were not in any mood to wait in line for an hour to get some shirts we weren’t even sure we could ever wear in public, so we left.

We walked around the block, but soon found ourselves on the phone with Rozzie, telling us to come back to Ben Yehuda Street so we could meet her family. Aryeh, Moshe, and I began walking back, but in order to get to Rozzie we had to pass the t-shirt store. I vowed that if the line was gone in the store I would march in there and order the two shirts I wanted and one more practically correct one. Sure enough, no line: three shirts (and two magnets) later, we were late to meet Rozzie so we just went over to her apartment.

Throughout the day we bummed around Jerusalem, met up with Ethan and his family, shopped for nik naks, ordered out Burger’s Bar, and went to bed early. The excuse for our boring night was our early morning mission; Chaviva and Rozzie didn’t come, but Moshe and Aryeh accompanied me to the old city of Jerusalem at three in the morning.  In the old city there is a famous jewelry store that engraves silver rings with Hebrew sayings (it’s quite popular amongst Jewish summer programs). The kick is if you are the first one at the store (that opens at 5:30) then they will engrave your ring for you within twenty minutes and it is half off (so only one hundred shkalim). We wanted to be there first and I wanted to get a ring with part of my favorite verses from Kabbalat Shabbat. We got there at three: nobody was there. There was no reason for us to be there that early, we had no competition. Still, we had stopped at a twenty-four hour market and we had breakfast to occupy us (breakfast means some salami sticks, pop, and cheese sticks) (I’ll clarify, I got salami, Aryeh got cheese sticks, and we sat on opposite sides of the alley in order to abide by the rules of kashrut).

The old city was empty, quiet, and beautiful. It was incredible overlooking the sleeping city of Jerusalem from outside the walls of the old city; it was so amazing we were inspired to toast to our amazing year and the opportunity to be in such an incredible place (we toasted pop, salami, and cheese…we still laugh about it).

You’d think the best part of the night was getting the ring half off after all that waiting. You’d be wrong. After about half an hour of sitting, just the three of us, a very drunk man came walking up the street. In his jeans, button down shirt, and fedora, he looked quite American and I guess we must have, too (or he was just really drunk) because he bent over and tried talking to us. He began by reaching for Aryeh’s hand: Aryeh took his hand, but pulled away when the guy tried to kiss it. The man insisted, ‘no no, it’s ok,’ and a very nervous Aryeh let this stranger kiss his hand. The man, who later told us his name was Meir, crouched down, looked at the three of us, and began spouting out praises for Hashem and the Torah, comparing the Torah to a movie script that is each of ours ‘to direct for the public in our own way.’ Maybe he was just on another level (or, again, very drunk) but he attempted explaining that same point for thirty minutes! I thought I got it after the first time, but it is hard to be sure with all the subtle laughing that was taking place. Then something happened, Meir said something really profound. After getting up, staggering over a bit, then sitting back down, asking for a light, and deciding to stick around a bit longer, Meir asked us if we were about nineteen, twenty and then proceeded to tell us that he’d do anything to have the experience we were having: to have the opportunity to spend an extended period time in Israel, learning, volunteering, living. He then continued to tell us we were all perfect and that he loved us (we decided he probably wasn’t drunk any longer; this guy we met out of nowhere clearly really must have loved us in all our perfection. He did say it about seven times). When Meir finally left, we really missed him, especially since we had about another forty minutes before the store opened. I called my dad to pass some time and told him about our meeting with Meir. My dad asked me, ‘are you sure he was real?’ Aryeh, Moshe, and I decided that we met Elijah the Prophet that Pesach, drunk on the streets of the old city at four in the morning. There’s really no other explanation.

The rest of the morning was pretty routine; we watched Moulin Rouge for about forty minutes (right up to the Elephant Love Song Medley), got the ring, stopped by Aroma for ice coffee for breakfast, Moshe left to catch a bus, and Aryeh and I went to nap at his grandparents place until about three in the afternoon. Productive day.