Menachem's Birthday

Today is Menachem's 61st birthday and we spent all day celebrating. I went to Menachem and Devorah's house this morning and waited there until Amir joined us. We all piled in the car and drove about 20 minutes to a Brazilian style steak house. There we met my cousin Carmit, her husband Shani and their two kids Shachar and Shai.

Amir and Shachar.

This is the first time I've had red meat since I arrived in Israel nearly three weeks ago, and I definitely made up for lost time. Amir ordered a dish for us to share: An entire kilo of meat. Beef, lamb and chicken. Steak on a sword. Delicious but serious overkill. This lunch brought me back to my "Basar Tuesday" days in Champaign. If you want to be grossed out, the old url is still online for some reason: http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~kagin/basar_tuesday/

Menachem and I at lunch.

Shai is absolutely beautiful. She is six months old now. I missed meeting her by a week when I was here in March. Hopefully I will get to know her pretty well. Carmit already asked me about babysitting. I spent most of the post lunch chat time playing with her. She is a very active baby with a really strong grip, and she loves to laugh. Just love her!

Meet Shai!

After lunch Carmit and her family loaded the car and headed for home. We came back to Menachem's for a while to rest. I had the chance to call home and my parents got to wish Menachem a happy birthday. At 4:30 we rolled out for Netanya; I was on my way to seeing my first Israeli soccer game.

The family at lunch. Carmit is holding Shai with her brother Amir next to her. Devorah is sitting on the right and Menachem is partially blocked by me.

Menachem is a big Maccabi Haifa fan. He has been going to games since he was 16 years old. Of course it doesn't hurt that Haifa has a history of success that is both lengthy and recent. They won 3 consecutive Premier League championships as recently as 2006. Unfortunately, Haifa is not the powerhouse it has been in the past (they lost 4 players to free agency during the offseason), and they lost to Maccabi Netanya 2-1.

This is Menachem BEFORE the game. You can imagine how pleased he looked afterwards.

The Netanya soccer stadium is a dump. Apparently they call it "the box in Netanya." It actually reminded me a lot of Wrigley Field, but without the charm. It was old, small and crumbling. The bathroom (there was only 1) was filthy and poorly lit, and the pitch looked like the outfield grass after a Sting concert. Plus there is a short bleacher section on one side of the pitch and balls kept being kicked onto the street. Reminds me very much of balls flying onto Waveland on a hot summer day.

The Netanya colors are yellow and black. I have always felt this is the worst color combination in sports. Who wants to look like a bunch of bumblebees?

Of course if the stadium is a Roman era relic, the atmosphere in the stands was pure college football. I say this with the utmost reverence: these fans are fucking insane. They stood the entire game, singing and chanting, waving their M. Haifa scarves and screaming at the top of their lungs. The chants were very creative, and generally so dirty that they made me blush. I won't print them here in English, but as a bonus for those of you who read and understand Hebrew, I offer this little gem:
!נתניה זונה! נתניה זונה! נתניה מוצצת את כל השכונה

Haifa fans react to a first half goal.

The ride back home was somber for a few minutes and then loosened up. We stopped at a strip mall where one of Amir's restaurants is located so he could pop in a check up on business, and got ice cream afterwards. What a day! I finally got back to the dorms around 11:30. There is a home game next weekend against Beitar Jerusalem that I will most likely be going to with Per and maybe some other people. It was so much fun, I can already feel myself being drawn in. I want to close by once more wishing Menachem a happy 61st birthday, until one hundred and twenty. Today was his birthday, but I had such a great time it sure felt like mine.

The Haifa faithful performing one of their cheers.

One more gratuitous shot of Shachar and Shai, just because.

My First Israeli Salad

You'll have to forgive me but this post will be mostly about food. I'm starting to get my swagger back in the kitchen as I learn how to shop in Israel and how to use the instruments I have to make the dishes I want. Here is my first salad in Israel, and it turned out very nicely. I went to the Hadar shuk this morning to buy produce for the week, in what I plan to make a weekly affair. The fruits and vegetables are so much fresher and less expensive than in the supermarkets that if you have the time to go to the shuk, it's a no brainer.

Last night I had a couple of people over and we made chicken in a pot. Its exactly what it sounds like. Take fresh chicken, some vegetables, herbs and oil, and put it all in a pot. It's so easy we were able to chill outside on the porch and talk while dinner cooked. We ended up going out for drinks afterwards. I'm still hoping that eventually I will have an oven and a microwave to work with, but for now I'm getting comfortable with what I do have.

My Friend Cho and I waiting for a bus back from Hadar.

Apparently there will be a dorm Shabbat dinner every week, which is excellent. It was a much smaller turnout than we had during the international students weekend. I imagine this is what it will be like most weeks. I was definitely overdressed. I showed up wearing a blue knit dress shirt and khakis. Everyone else was wearing whatever they had put on in the morning when they left the house. Plus I was the only guy in the whole joint wearing a kippah. What is very interesting is that a lot of the people who came are not Jewish, including a number of my international school colleagues, and also a handful of Arabs. Sometimes Judaism in Israel is very strange to me. Shabbat shalom.

Countries represented include: South Korea, Lithuania, Argentina, United States, Switzerland, Germany, and Azerbaijan.

Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Day

Today we commemorated the 12th anniversary of the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a religious extremist. There was a ceremony on campus that drew about 500 people. As it was all in Hebrew, I got the essence of the speeches if not every word, but what really moved me was a performance of the song "שלום, חבר" which was written by Shalom Hanoch.


The representative from the student union talked about how everyone in the audience remembered where they were when they heard that Rabin had been murdered, and actually I do. I was in our basement and turned on the television and one the news jockeys (Peter Jennings?) announced Rabin's assassination. I was only 11 years old at the time, and this made a big impact on me. Most people don't know, though I'm sure that my parents remember that I wrote a silly song about Rabin when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. Of course Oslo was not the redemption it promised to be, but at 11 years old, Rabin's murder signaled the end of a child's dream for peace.

On a more cheerful note, another person is now living in my apartment. Hamzan has not moved in yet but I saw him again today. The new roommate is also Arab so I'm beginning to wonder if mine will be an otherwise all Arab apartment. My dad joked to me earlier that I would be the "token Jew." Seriously though, is it irony that I come to Israel and for the first time in my life have non-Jewish roommates? Who knows. Anyway, I haven't talked to the new roommate much yet but I think that he may be shy. Soon I suppose.

I have met a few more Israelis. I played a few games of basketball last night with Israelis. Not that I didn't already know this, but the Camp Ramah "camp Hebrew" that we use is total bullshit. To whit; the Israelis were yelling "foul" and "shoot." Of course at Ramah it would have been some nonsensical, ridiculous Hebraism that is completely removed from reality. This demonstrates two things: The first, as I said, is that camp Hebrew is bullshit. The second is that Modern Hebrew is really English repackaged with a handful of extra sounds that make Americans spit when they talk. Oh yeah, and I sprained my toe playing. I can walk on it, but I don't think I will be doing any running this weekend.

Chutzpa

It's what Israelis do best. Allow me to set the stage. I went to the supermarket with Menachem last night. At Israeli supermarkets, you need to put down a deposit for your shopping cart. The carts are locked together. To unlock one, you insert a five shekel coin, and when you are finished, you lock the cart to the wall again and your money comes back out. It's a nice system, it keeps carts from piling up in the middle of the parking lot like at American supermarkets. Menachem was returning his cart in the basement of the mall when a woman approached him and asked if she could lock his cart to her's. The wall attachment was broken so she couldn't get her money back; instead she wanted to take Menachem's money and stiff him with the same problem! Needless to say, he told her to take a hike.

I spent about two hours at their house in Ramat Eshkol last night. We watched some Israeli television, which still seems funny to me. There was a cooking show on that was the same as any number of cooking shows in the states, but the show is called קרב סכינים, literally "battle of the knives." I love it! Devorah and I chatted for a while and ate, and she helped me to outfit my kitchen some more with a pot (which until yesterday I still didn't have) and some food and silverware. It is really nice to have family here.

I spoke with one of my roommates-to-be this afternoon over lunch. His name is Hamzan and he is Arab. This will be good for me I think. We chatted (all in Hebrew) for a while and he looked over my Arabic homework and chuckled. Apparently it isn't on a very high level. I don't know how his English is. We've spoken twice now, but never a word in English. Whether we are using Hebrew out of convention or necessity, this should do wonders for my ability to speak and understand. The university strike is still going on, so he went home and won't be here to stay until classes start. I would think that people would want to get out of the house and come to college, especially if they don't have to worry about classes. Apparently not though, considering that there are still 4 empty bedrooms in my apartment.

The Ramon Crater

Or more accurately, מכתש רמון. I'm back from tiyul in the Negev. I will spare you the geological definition of a machtesh, but if you are interested here is wikipedia's entry on the Ramon Crater: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Crater. One thing that should be noted is that it is not a crater, but rather a huge depression caused by millions of years of erosion and plate tectonics.


We left Haifa at 6 AM, but the trip didn't really begin until a breakfast stop in Be'er Sheva. We walked into an open air market, bought hummus and lafa bread and sat down on the side of the road to eat. There wasn't much remarkable about the stop. We did see Ben Gurion University and the Soroka hospital from the bus, but otherwise there was very little to see. I did get into an argument with a Druze guy in the market, who wanted to know how much it would cost to buy Lina (second from the left, above.)


Once we had left any semblance of civilization behind, we stopped at the Ovdat archaeological site, about 40 minutes south of Sde Boker. The site is the ruins of an ancient Nabatean city in the middle of the desert. The Nabateans were a Roman - era people who made their livings by carting Indian spices across the Arabian Peninsula, through Petra and then crossing the Negev to the port of Gaza, where they sold the goods to waiting Roman and Greek patrons. This became known as the "Spice Route." What keyed their success was their ability to survive the trek across the desert. They accomplished this through shrewd water conservation and collection, and desert cities and camps like Ovdat.


We did a relatively short 2 and a half hour hike that afternoon, going down into the crater and walking to our campsite at a Beduin tent. From there we spent the next 3 hours cooking our dinner, eating, and then talking around the campfire. As hot as it gets in the desert during the day, it gets very cold at night, so the fire was extremely welcome. That night it was very difficult to sleep because an Israeli family was staying in the tent as well, and they were miserably loud and obnoxious all night. Needless to say the dinner and conversation was more memorable than sleeping in the tent.


Yesterday we left for the long hike: 9 hours through the desert. Here is the basic route we took; Leaving camp, we walked up a winding pass through one of the mountains in the machtesh. Once we reached the top, we followed the path along a ridge of the mountain for a while, before turning back down into one of the wadi's (a dry riverbed.) We walked through the wadi until we reached the point at which several of the wadi's come together and then followed another. The hike ended with another trek up the highest mountain inside the machtesh, where we got the most spectacular view of all of the surrounding area. Not that my photos do justice to the incredible natural beauty of the desert, but I'll close this post with a selection of other photos that are fairly representative of the hike.

The first real difficult part of the hike. This was about a 45 degree grade.

Part of the group looking out over the ridge into the machtesh.

We stopped to rest by more Nabattean ruins.

My friend Per and I at the Nabattean ruins.

Walking through a wadi. Some vegetation grows here because of the annual floods.

Napping in the shade after lunch. We rested here for about an hour.

The face of the cliff. You can see the different strata of rock from different periods in the creation of the machtesh.

Exploring a cave with some guys from the Habo U.

On the road to nowhere.

Victory!

קפה ערבית

Arabic class is finally underway, and I think I'm going to enjoy it. Because there are only 2 international students with any Arabic experience, my class is tiny. This will mean plenty of advantages for me. For one, individual attention from the professor is guaranteed. My professor's name is Rina Charash. Beyond that, she plans on letting us dictate the pace of the class. Therefore, there is no syllabus and our aptitude and ability to learn will determine how far and fast we go with Arabic. Plus, she is a very sweet woman! We will be having coffee and cookies or cake every day with class, and she told us to feel free to bring munchies in to share
if/when we choose. Maybe if I ever get a toaster oven, I will bake something.

One experience in Israel that is identical to its American counterpart is the feeling that you are hemorrhaging cash at the campus bookstore. Books here are plenty expensive, and unlike at American universities, there is no book buyback/used book option. Everyone is forced to buy a new book every semester. I would love to get in on the educational materials mafia in Israel. Sounds like it's a lucrative field.

My schedule is full now so here it is:

Monday: Arabic - 8:30 to 10, Hebrew - 10:15 to 12, Rabbinic Literature - 12:15 to 3
Tuesday: Hebrew - 8:15 to 10, Arabic - 10:30 to 12, Terrorism and Responses - 3:15 to 6
Wednesday: Hebrew - 10:15 to 12 (Whew)
Thursday: Hebrew - 8:15 to 10, Arabic - 10:30 to 12, Arab-Israeli Relations - 3:15 to 6

In 4 years in Champaign I never took an 8 AM class. On the other hand, Haifa is definitely not Champaign. Guess I should count my blessings. Tomorrow I leave for an overnight tiyul in the Negev. Stories and pictures are sure to follow. Shabbat shalom.

Haifa Has A Subway!!!

This is of course more exciting for me than it would be for most people, but remember that I wrote my undergrad thesis on light rail. It's called the "Carmelit" and apparently nobody uses it because it only goes up and down the mountain, from Mercaz haCarmel to Downtown and back. Even so, I was thrilled. For your sake (but really for mine because I think this is beyond cool), here are some pictures of the train:

I've never seen a train like this before, but it's probably because Chicago is flat. The cars go down the mountain at what I guesstimate to be a 30 degree grade.

And of course, here is a picture of me with some of my friends in the international school, just before boarding the train. This all went down while I was touring Haifa this afternoon. We started in Mercaz haCarmel, which is a neighborhood I'm already superficially familiar with. It's pretty upscale, lots of bars and cafes. The uppermost station for the Carmelit is in the center of the neighborhood, on Moriah street. We took the train down the mountain to Hadar, an older neighborhood in Haifa. Getting there by train takes 5 minutes, while getting there by bus takes about a half an hour.

Hadar used to be the nicest shopping district in Haifa. This is before the mall was built. Personally I prefer the shops and the local businesses, but globalization only moves forward. For better or for worse, the landscape has changed. For Hadar, it has changed for the worse. The shops are still there and there is a nice shuk where I bought some very cheap bananas (3 shekels per kilo.) As the shops were becoming an afterthought, wealthy people began to leave Hadar and move further up the mountain. The result is that Hadar has become a less than savory neighborhood. Nice to visit, and the fruits and vegetables in the shuk are very inexpensive, but I would not want to live there.