Shabbat So-long November 23, 2008

I took off from Jerusalem Thursday night to visit the family friends for the weekend. I needed a break from the city. Wednesday night, I kept calling the next day Friday, because Friday is still the last day of my week, and will always be. ”Thursday” night travel to Rishon LeZion was a nightmare, with everyone, including soldiers, rushing home for the weekend. At the central bus station in Jerusalem, there was one security guard looking through the bags of every passenger, and people yelled and complained, like they do every time there is a line. I can’t understand why it’s not possible to add just one more guard during those hours. Then I found myself in the middle of a mosh pit, trying get on a bus. I tried to get out of it, but I was literally pulled into the bus ahead of most people and got a choice window seat. The bus rolled out, and it was already dark outside. It’s probably just me, but I feel that night really “falls” here. One moment it’s sunny and then without a warning, it’s dark, all before 5pm.

 

The bus sat in traffic, and I sat hungry, smelling the food on the lap of the large Russian woman next to me. In almost all the inter-city bus rides I take (I typed “long distance” initially, then erased it, remembering nothing here is truly far), there is a moment in which the bus drivers slams on the brake, a large backpack rolls down the aisle, and the owner scurries down the aisle and then back into his seat. This ride was no exception. Otherwise, the ride was unremarkable, but blissfully quiet, and once the bus got out of Jerusalem, “chik chak” and I was in Rishon LeZion.

 

 I passed by this nightly scene on the way. The eldery Russians (mostly men) of the neighborhood get together and play chess and backgammon in the brightly lit area adjacent to the park.  I wasn’t able to capture how long the tables are with my camera. I could have walked closer, but I didn’t want to draw any mustachioed glares.

 

I stopped by a store to pick up an oversized bar of what I think is Polish (every language was represented on the back of the bar, and I didn’t want to read too closely lest my eyes fall upon the nutritional information) chocolate with almonds. I didn’t want to arrive empty-handed. I wasn’t satisfied with my selection, but the place had either that or junky Israeli cholocate or Oreos. I arrived at the family friend’s place and placed the bar on the table. “Sorry, all I could get is this. I wanted a cake but didn’t know where the good bakeries are, and they didn’t carry a good bar of dark chocolate, like the ones you like.” The wife thanked me, but seemed a bit disappointed that I brought a huge bar of something she didn’t care for, or maybe she was worried her husband would eat all of it. I then endured an hour of family related speeches and advice, and reheated a dinner of shnitzel and home-made crustless quiche.

 

Oh, how I craved chocolate for a dessert snack. Having my period did not help the intensity. The bar remained untouched on the kitchen table. Would it be bad if I opened the bar? Then it would really look like I got it for myself. I milled around the kitchen, made myself tea, and made the motions of searching around for someone, which normally ellicts an instant, “What do you need?” from the wife. No reaction. “Oh, are you going to open the chocolate?” I asked, not so innocently. “No, if I eat chocolate at night, it keeps me up.” ”Oh.” DAMN! She didn’t even give me a follow-up, “but if you want some, go ahead!” Only pride stood between me and sweet satisfaction. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I blurted, “Well, do you mind if I open it?” “Sure, do what you want.” I swear I detected some disappointment in her voice, but I couldn’t care anymore. The chocolate was well worth it. I considered bringing a bar home with me, but I know that would bring me down a dark path.. or maybe more milky, almondy, Polish-y.. mmmm….

 

 I spent the next day reading my Israeli graphic novel and studying. I’ve been reading graphic novels because I enjoy the combination of text and illustrations that provide context, and also because less text means more satisfying page turns. If I tried to read a regular novel, it would probably take me at least an hour to read and fully absorb a page. Maybe one day I will graduate to an Etgar Keret short story.

 

I spent Saturday with the daughter and her in-laws. We made food, watched a movie whose name I didn’t even catch, and then went to another in-law party, where I met up with a few people who are actually my age! I went out with them in Tel Aviv back in the early days (i.e. a month ago).

 

The ride back on Saturday night was a pain because I was dropped off at Gedera, where a bus was supposed to take me to Jerusalem. I was dropped off at an outdoor central bus station that reeked of urine, but didn’t see my bus number listed. I asked a group of punky Ethopian kids, and one guy told me I had to take a bus to Rehovot, and then catch a bus to Jerusalem there. Annoyed, I waited until the bus got there and asked the driver to let me know when he gets to the central bus station in Rehovot. Turns out he didn’t stop here, and he let me off at a nearby street and pointed into the distance and told me to walk there. Thankfully, I had been to that station before so I was able to orient myself past a huge park and through some streets to get the mall where the station was located. On my way there, I saw the same bus line (but different bus) drive directly to the area where I needed to go, and I was confused as to why the driver made me get off earlier. I waited for the next bus a while, remembering the last time I was there and a supposed rabbi who in any other place would just be a crazy, dirty guy with a shofar, ran around and blessing security guards, who were nearly crying, and made some young boys blow on his shofar (yes, it was just as awkward to see as it is to read about). No rabbi this time, but the bus soon pulled out into the street, where I saw a religious guy dancing at one end of a busy intersection. Showing off his joyous Jewish life, and inviting us all to join, perhaps? Or maybe he was just as happy as I was that Shabbat was over. I was disappointed to find out that the bus retraced almost all the roads I took on the earlier bus to Rehovot, and I was left very confused and further annoyed, but I got to Jerusalem quickly enough.

 

I was not willing to take a third bus, so I hopped into a cab with three other University students heading to the dorms. I sat in the passenger seat. No one in the car said a word the entire time, and I thought I was going to die about four times, thanks to the driving, but we made it to campus, and the three other students were dropped off at their respective stops. I was left in the car with the cabbie, who proceeded to ask me where I was from, if I have a boyfriend, and within about 15 seconds, he asked me if I would like his number. Yes, please, mister 50+ man! May I have your number?! I’m new to this country, and ever so naive!

 

Today I was playing music in my room at about 11am, when a girl who doesn’t even live very close to my room knocked on my door and asked me to turn down my music so she could study. I get a noise complaint?! Me??? The girls in this area leave their doors open constantly, one blasts and yodels to The Cranberries, another belts out diva power ballads, while others flip through nearly identical Arabic dance songs at all hours, and I get the noise complaint?! Of course, I was nice and considerate, because she isn’t one of the ones blasting music (I’ve never even seen her before actually), but I’m still in shock.

 

Wow, what an exciting post- multiple bus rides, chocolate, dorm complaints. Keep checking back for more updates, if you can stand to wait!

Freezing in Jerusalem November 16, 2008

I’ve been settling into my classes more and more. My intro linguistics teacher is really young and wears black nail polish and shiny Mary Janes. I saw her at a lecture and she was with a friend who also wears black nail polish. Which reminds me- when I was hanging out with my friend last week, he brought up hearing about goth parties in Jerusalem. This possibility was too amusing for me to pass up, so I looked it up and found a Jerusalem Post article about goths in Israel. The article was recent, from April, and it included quotes from party organizers claiming the scene was “alive” and kicking. It also provided two page links for the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem party organizers. The Tel Aviv link is now ”dead,” and the Jerusalem link has the legitimizing list of every goth/EBM/electo/industrial band in existence (not to imagine awesome gargoyle/Old City imagery), but the next party date is unknown. Could it be the bustling scene died since April, or perhaps it goes on hiatus during hot Israeli summers, when the goths succumb to the summer uniform of capris and Crocs? Or maybe all the goths left for India or South America? I’ve seen a few girls on campus who may be goth, but they could have also been very dramatically dressed Russians. I’ve also seen some impressive eyeliner work here, but mostly on the Arab girls.

 

Anyway, on Thursday I went to Birman, a bar/restaurant owned by Dan Birron, on Dorot Rishomin street. The place is owned by Dan Birron, who was the Green Leaf party candidate for Jerusalem mayor. He didn’t win, of course, but I enjoyed seeing his shaggy head on posters around town. I liked the place- cozy, warmy lit, bi-level space with live music, and even the recorded music they played was edgier than the stuff I’ve heard here so far.

 

Photo taken from the upper level of Birman. Only the hands of the piano player moved.

 

Scene from a neighboring bar on the same street.

 

When I stopped by a nearby convenience store, the guy behind the counter looked at my oversized camera and motioned for me to take a photo, and this is it. He seemed really sweet.

 

I spent most of this past weekend reading and studying.  I slept badly the last two nighte because it’s so cold in my room. Last night, I took a shower and felt especially chilly, so I got under the covers with the intention of studying in bed, but I was so cold I couldn’t take my hands out from under the blanket and I had to breathe into my comforter to get some warm air. Before I got under the covers, I turned on a video uploaded by the Library of Congress about a recent lecture about the developments of RDA (Resource Description and Access, will will replace AACR2, which means nothing to you non-library people) and international cataloging standards. I ended up watching about 25 minutes of it because I couldn’t move my hands. I’m not proud.

 
To battle the cold in my sleep, I’ve been cuddling up to myself so much that I’ve been waking up with leg cramps and chest pains, probably from constricted breathing. Today, I went to the housing office to ask them how to turn on my radiator, and they said the heaters won’t be one for another couple of weeks, and that the University decided when to do that. Bastards.

 

This week I have a language study date. I met an Israeli who wants to improve his English, and I need to improve my Hebrew, so we agreed to meet twice this week and help one another get some speaking practice. Ulpan is not giving me much of an opportunity to speak in Hebrew. I’m not all that happy with the Hebrew Uniersity ulpan- it’s helpful, but I’m not sure if it’s worth all that money when there are other good, cheaper ulpans without Rothberg kids in town.

 

Let me leave you with this video of the Russian version of “We are the World,” featuring some of best Russian stars from, gulp, 1998! Sent to me by my cousin in Moscow, without a hint or irony.

Tel Aviv photo dump! November 12, 2008

Here are some photos from my week spent in Tel Aviv with Eli.

 

While sitting at at an all-day breakfast place on Allenby (named Benedict? When will I learn to write down names? It was on the corner of Rothschild), this cat grabbed Eli and mine’s attention, and we took some photos of it. After we finished out meals, the cat came up to me with this desperate and harmless look belied only by those claws, which even my camera couldn’t help but focus on. It jumped on me, kneaded my flesh with those talons, and made itself very comfortable. Eli has the photos of it on my lap, since I was left immobile. I felt bad moving it off me in part because I didn’t know if I could without getting clawed in the face. When I tried to move, the cat let out a growl, but eventually I gave up and tried to stand up with it still on my lap. It hung there, nearly defying gravity before I gave it a final push and it sauntered off, as if saying, “I was done anyway.” When I went to the bathroom, it landed on Eli’s lap.

 

It was a rather windy evening one night, and the surfers took advantage of it.

 

 A typical apartment building on a side street parallel to Sheinkin.

 

 Same sidesteet. What can I say. I enjoy taking photos when the sky is still blue but the street lights are turned on.

 

 I also enjoy taking evening photos where light pours out of entrances.

 

 Ok fine, gratuitous night shots also because we didn’t see many daylight hours. This is the Nachalat Binyamin area in Central Tel Aviv, where you can find a weekly artists’ fair, as well as stores, cafes and restaurants, as with everywhere else in Tel Aviv.

 

 Photo credit to Eli here. A hot dog stand on Lillenblum, open all night for the drinking crowd, although I doubt this guy had a few. We subletted an apartment on Lillenblum which turned out to be perfect location-wise, although imperfect when it came to the constant construction outside the apartment. We could barely get to the door a couple of times, thanks to paint-slathered scaffolding that was set up by the landlord, who laughed at our plight, with what the girl who rented the apartment to us referred to as his “Mediterranean ways.”

 

 The view from inside The Minzar, a bar off Allenby. We found ourselves here a couple of times. Eli fell in love with the steak sandwich, but it wasn’t available the next time we came here due to a changing menu.

 

I threw this in just for fun. Two soldiers on our train ride “upstate.”

Two big reasons to stay here November 9, 2008

That’s it. I give up. No more libraries. No more English teaching jobs. Is it a concidence that my arrival here has coincided with the recenting Israeli opening of this popular American establishment?

Librarian killed in 2002 bombing November 8, 2008

I was searching the American Library Association (ALA) website for some information on a library science program at Hebrew University I know exists, but have been having trouble locating. I plugged in a few key words and found a memorial page for Dina Carter, an American working as a librarian and archivist at the National Library, who was one of nine killed at the bombing of the Mt. Scopus campus in 2002. She was on campus to take a Hebrew proficiency test in order to start a library science progam… if only she were able to get out of taking the test like I did!

 

I felt goosebumps as I read that short memorial page. It was not a search result I expected. Of course, I know about the bombing, but I realized that I don’t know exactly where it happened on the campus I walk through every day. I did a search and found out it happened in a cafeteria of the Frank Sinatra Building, which is located right next to the Rothberg School building, where I have my ulpan and where Carter was due to take her test.

 

This article from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has some more information about her. She converted to Judaism and then moved to Israel, and the last paragraph states that she lost contact with her family in the US after moving and started “a separate life.” I found it to be an odd choice of personal information to include on a memorial page, especially with her father’s somber quote concluding the piece. I wonder if her her conversion caused serious riffs in the family, or if she really did get caught up in an entirely new life.

 

Dina Carter

Smells like old news… November 7, 2008

Israel is still fascinated with trance music and raves, billboards feature models sporting Chinese symbol tattoos, and even today, Haaretz is featuring a story about a Riot Grrl zine?! Did the second intifada cause Israel to sleep through most of 21st century pop culture?

 

From the article, about a zine written by a Zionist death metal feminist:

 

But Ben-Ari wasn’t destined for a career in Israel’s mainstream media [after an internship at Jerusalem Post]. “Whenever I want to write something for a newspaper,” she said, “most of the time they are going to reject my articles on the basis that they are too radical or too outspoken – they are not looking for my style of writing. My style is very specific, very blunt and very honest. I am just saying exactly what I think.”

What sort of writing scared off the newspapers with its radical social commentary? The article continues:

 

In the zine’s latest issue, which came out this summer, Ben-Ari wrote: “Yes, tattoos, piercings, metal chains, black clothes, stuff that I clearly like as a prerequisite for being a highly enlightened metalhead. Stuff that I also get bashed for or simply unappreciated for by highly close-minded dickheads. No, I do not do it for your attention, and no, this is not a phase. I’m 25. My time for ‘phases’ was over about 6 years ago. This is what you might call ‘a way of life.’”

 

I guess the grrl managed to keep enough media contacts to get this story in the paper!

19:25-12×3.76+100g-Yom ג = just another day November 7, 2008

Weekend! And it’s… Thursday night? I still can’t get used to the Sunday-Thursday work week here. The days of the week in Hebrew translate roughly into Day First (Yom Rishon, Sunday), Day Second (Yom Shni, Monday), and so on, so with the Monday work week still in my head, I have to take a moment to calculate the current day by subtracting one. To further complicate my delicate brain,  the work week is also described by the first 5 letters of the aleph-bet, so Sunday is Yom א, Monday is ב, Tuesday is ג , Wednesday is ד, and Thursday is ה , so again I need to calculate that ה is the 5th letter of the aleph-bet, but the 5th day of the week is really Thursday. I’ve had about a dozen near heart attacks thinking I mixed up days during my first week of classes! My paper class schedule is already tattered from taking it out compulsively and reassuring myself that I’m living in the right day.

 

Also, let’s not forget the calculations involved with currency exchange, a 24 hour clock, and not to mention the metric system! I’ve even been buying prepackaged cold cuts because I don’t want to tackle the issue of how many grams or kilos to order.  I leave it as a battle for another day.

 

I have to mention.. OBAMA! A great US moment missed while being here. I woke up the morning after the elections, which was about 2am in New York, and I was shaking when I turned on my computer to see who won. The majority of the young Americans around the campus seem to be Obama supporters, and my ulpan teachers definitely are, but there are some exceptions. Today, one of the teachers made a joke comparing Obama to a messiah, and one girl said, “More like the antichrist.” Everyone ignored her, except her equally bothersome friend. When we had had to tell a story to illustrate an Israeli expression- “yardah li evan mehalev”- which is used to express a heavy feeling (stone) in the heart, they both used the story of when they thought they were registered for two different Bet uplan classes! Oh no! I’m so glad their issue was resolved peacefully, and that they took the time to share the story with me … Partially related, can someone please do a phonological study of J.A.P.s, particularly in relation to why the sound of their voices gives me a headache?

 

I’ve been homesick on and off lately, and I’ve even enquired about spring schedules at schools I was interested in in New York previously. I like it here, but so far I don’t love it. When I walked into a lecture hall this week to find out that a crucial foundation course I was told is in English was actually in Hebrew, I was already trying to calculate if I could get a 100% refund on my tuition. I emailed the advisors who steered me wrong, and they pretty much told me not to go to the class, read the required text for it (in English), and go to the discussion portion only. It’s supposedly in English, although I don’t know because I was so fuming that day, I didn’t go. I decided I can’t make any real decisions about whether I stay or go until I’ve been here longer, though. I’ve gone through so much, I’ve toppled so many bureaucracies, I can’t drop it now!

 

I need to update more so my posts aren’t snippets of about a million different things. There is so much I want to write about… characters I meet every day, this erratic eretz, and this crazy city. I promise I will!