I Am Going To Catch Tuberculosis From A Classmate

Is it so much to ask that someone who is violently ill not come to class where she can infect the rest of us? Seriously, it's really starting to bother me. There is a girl in my Hebrew class who seemingly comes down with a terminal illness every six hours, but she insists on coming to class, sitting near me and then hacking up a lung all over the classroom! I don't want to catch your flu!

School is almost over for the week and then I have a second weekend with my family in the north. By the way, I'm planning to update all of you on all my travels with the family after exams are finished. Right now I simply don't have the time. My exam schedule is as follows: Monday afternoon I have my Rabbinic Lit exam, and I'm a little concerned about that one. Simply put, my mind does not work the way the mind of a 1st century Rabbi did. This makes it difficult to analyze the text. Even so, I've been studying hard for it all week and I have a basic understanding of the material. My Terrorism and Responses exam is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, and I'm not worried about that at all. I'm a rockstar in that class. Wednesday afternoon is Arabic, and I will be prepared by the time I have to take the test. Thursday morning I will take my Hebrew final exam, thus ending a marathon week of testing. I'll also have some kind of final assignment for Arab Israeli Relations, but our professor hasn't deemed us worthy of learning the details of the assignment more than a week in advance.

As for the weekend to come, it will be a mash of family, studying and goodbyes. Many of my closest friends at the University are only staying in Israel through the end of the semester, and then returning home or to programs in other countries. My hope is that we will all get to go out and spend a last night together chilling as a group. I'm going to miss them. Shabbat shalom.

Dahlia And Itay's Wedding

Last night I attended my first Israeli wedding. The bride, Dahlia Weinberg was the President of IllinIPAC when I was a freshman at the U of I. I still remember vividly sitting in the Hillel library with Eli, yelling our opinions to anyone who would listen. I don't think the group had ever seen a couple of freshman like us. Fast forward 4 years and Dahlia is now married! So weird. I'd met her husband once before, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem last June. He's a real nice guy, and he looked significantly more nervous before the ceremony than Dahlia did.

I had a definite Israeli moment on my way out of Haifa. I missed my intended train because the bus from campus left 10 minutes late. When I eventually got to the station, I asked the mouth breather behind the ticket counter when the next train to Netanya would leave. "15 minutes." And when will it arrive in Netanya? "15 minutes." Needless to say she didn't know what she was talking about. I bought my ticket anyway and made my way onto the platform where there are train schedules posted on big signs. The signs aren't the clearest things to read, and I knew I would need to transfer to another train, so I flagged a woman down and asked if she could confirm to me how I was going to get to Netanya. We got to talking and lo and behold, it turned out that we were both headed to the wedding! I really think this sort of thing only happens here. She got off in Binyamina to meet her husband, while I transferred to the next train and wound my way to Netanya, where I met up with Reut.

For those of my readers who don't know Reut, I met her 4 years ago in Champaign when she was working as the Israeli שליחה to Hillel. She's 34 years old but she acts like she is 19 sometimes, and she is definitely a free spirit. My date for the evening. We spent most of the night chatting about people back home, but we moved out onto the dance floor for the last 45 or so minutes. It's a shame the wedding was on a Monday night; there were caterers walking around with bottles of liquor, just offering shots to anyone who wanted one. I maintained my discipline, drank one glass of wine and called it a night. After all, I did have class this morning. A hearty mazal tov to the new husband and wife!

Fairy

Not a whole lot going on today, so instead I wanted to note another one of life's little culture shocks.


This is a mostly empty bottle of dish soap in my kitchen. Thing this would fly in America? Neither did I. My family arrived today and I am eagerly awaiting their first hike north to Haifa.
ברובים הבאים, משפחת ברנר!

Trying To Catch My Breath

The weekend has come and gone and I'm just struggling to keep up. The work is really starting to pile up as we draw close to the end of the semester. My Arabic workload is a solid 2 hours per night, night in and night out, and I have lots of other classes on top of it. I will be giving a presentation in "Rabbinic Literature" a week from today on the legality of smoking tobacco according to modern interpretations of Jewish law. Tomorrow morning I have a Hebrew exam. Things are getting plenty dicey and I spent a solid part of the weekend pouring over my notes. This is all with an eye to the future. I need to get my work done now because my family arrives in Israel tomorrow afternoon and will be spending the two upcoming weekends here in Haifa with me. I would really rather go touring with them than sit with books open studying.

I did have some fun over the weekend in spite of myself. Thursday night I went out with a group of friends to a pool hall in Mercaz HaCarmel. Dominique and I lightened the mood considerably by cracking open a bottle of vodka for the group before hitting the strip. I probably had a little too much, and the lowlight of my night was lining up to shoot at a ball that I didn't realize wasn't mine, and then making the perfect shot to sink it.

I went over to the Mor's home for a wonderful Shabbat lunch with the whole family. Amir came, and Carmit and Shani brought the kids. Devorah made a lot of cholent, just the way I like it. I got my standard playtime with Shachar and I tried feeding Shai. She wasn't having any of it, and most of the apple sauce-ish stuff I was trying to give her ended up on her bib. Now I'll shamelessly post pics of the kids, with many thanks to Carmit:

To me, this is what Shabbat is all about.

One of the few moments where Shachar wasn't running around.

I think this photo was taken before the high tide of apple sauce.

And one of me and Devorah, since this is my space anyway.

As for the situation on campus, the student strike has come to an end beginning today, without accomplishing a single one of the goals they set out to accomplish. Totally pathetic. The only thing they managed to achieve was the cancellation of university classes for a week. The government is still not meeting with the professors who remain on strike. It's the status quo, ladies and gentleman! I mentioned in an earlier post how disappointed I was with the efforts of the student union to affect policy change. Now I'm just disgusted. The semester is all but assured to be canceled at this point. If the students hoped to make a point that the Israeli government would respond to, they failed.

Fukudome!!!

The Cubs have signed Japanese outfielder Kosuke Fukudome to a 4 year, $48 million contract. There are a lot of things that excite me about this roster move. Certainly I look forward to Fukudome's patient plate approach, high OPS, above average speed and cannon arm. I'm thrilled that this roster move will not cost the team any players or minor league prospects. I'm even glad we will be adding some ethnic balance to our team. However, all of these factors pale in comparison to this: I can't wait to hear the creative ways that this man will find to mispronounce "Kosuke Fukudome."

Strange Happenings At Haifa U

The student strike is well underway as the union promised. There have been demonstrations every day since Monday, and the student union built a physical barrier blocking the interior road that runs parallel to the university. Today they burned car tires. Even so, I've been a little disappointed with what seems to me to be a contrived demonstration by a student base that is not terrifically committed to the stated cause. The end result has been the effective closure of the university without making an effective statement to the professors or the government about their rights and expectations. I've taken part in better protests than this one. If I was the student union, I would be embarrassed. I stopped by the barrier to see the protest in action. There were maybe 20 students there, and they were sitting around eating. Totally pathetic.

The student's "demonstration" on Monday afternoon.

The strike has not canceled my classes, but it has succeeded in making things really inconvenient for me and the other international student types. We've held class in the dorm area for the last few days. We nearly had a full on disaster in Hebrew class Monday. We were given the dorm synagogue as space to hold class, which is not optimal to begin with. It was cold in there so we turned on the radiator. 20 minutes later we began to smell something acrid. The fucking radiator was going up in flames! The class went bananas, running around trying to find a fire extinguisher. Here's what really gets me; there was no fire extinguisher in the synagogue! I just can't believe that. We even found a room in the back filled with hookahs and board games, but no fire extinguisher! It's unconscionable. Thank God the fire burned down on its own. There was a stack of wooden chairs leaning up against it. This could have been a disaster. Clearly, the University of Haifa does not take fire safety seriously.

I've had classes in two different rooms in the moadon, the Federman lounge area where I normally check my email and post to this page, in the synagogue as I mentioned, even in the living room of my apartment! Starting today the union agreed to open one wing of one academic building to us so we could continue with class in an actual classroom. The result is that I stayed in one room for 5 consecutive hours today on a beautiful sunny day. What started out worth a few chuckles is quickly starting to get on my nerves. I really hope that this strike ends soon. Actually, I hope the government will finally sit down to negotiate a fair agreement with the professors, but it'll be a cold day in hell before that happens.

I went to a pub tonight to meet Menachem and Amir and watch the Maccabi Haifa - Beitar Jerusalem soccer match. Apparently tonight's game does not count towards the league standings as it is a game in the separate "Toto Cup" competition, but nobody told the players this. It was the dirtiest game I have seen since I got to Israel. A Beitar player drew a red card less than 5 minutes after we sat down. The refs are probably icing down their wrists tonight after having to reach into their pockets for yellow cards so many times. In spite of (or maybe because of) the dirty play, it was also the most exciting game I've seen all year! In Toto Cup play, there are no draws and if after a 30 minute overtime session the game is still tied, it is determined by penalty kicks. Maccabi and Beitar were deadlocked 2-2 after 120 minutes of soccer and headed to the penalty kick segment of the game. What a finish. Maccabi trailed early but got back back into it and eventually bested their arch rivals by a final score of 7-6. At one point in the extra session, Menachem pointed out the Beitar player lining up for his kick, and told me he was an old Maccabi player who had been their captain for years. I asked Menachem what his name was. Without missing a beat, he responded with "son of a bitch." God love that devotion!

Haifa To Tel Aviv To Haifa

It's not quite a palindrome, but who cares. Lina, Lauren and I took a 10:20 train to Tel Aviv this morning and stayed all day to romp about in the sunshine. What an absolutely perfect day. Mid 70's, sunshine, low humidity and endless visibility. A Chicagoan could get used to this! Check it out:

Bet this looks pretty nice on December 9th. Or in mid July for that matter.

The only disappointing thing about my trip is that I had hoped to meet Reut for lunch. She was in Tel Aviv for a work meeting of some sort, but the damn thing lasted until 5:30 in the evening. I guess I will have to wait until Dahlia's wedding in a few weeks to see Reut. Even so, romping through Tel Aviv on a beautiful day was more than rewarding enough. Our first stop was the Maccabi Tel Aviv ticket office, so the girls could buy tickets to an upcoming game. They have a list of their accomplishments hanging on the wall, and their dominance in Israeli basketball would humble George Steinbrenner. In my 23 years on this earth, they have failed to win the Israeli national title once.

We walked Arlozoroff street down to Dizengoff street and wandered all the way down to Kikar Dizengoff. Along the way we passed the Turkish embassy which was pretty cool to see. The girls did a fair amount of window shopping. I spent the stroll enjoying the two fundatmental aspects of Tel Aviv that I miss in Haifa: The city is essentially flat, and every other person owns a dog. I even got to play with a small puppy while we were resting on a park bunch in Kikar Ha'Medina.

The Chanukka display at Kikar Dizengoff

We stopped at a falafel joint for lunch. It was good but not great falafel. The most memorable part of lunch was that I ate a really hot pepper and ended up having the hickups for ten minutes. Makes it tough to eat a sandwhich. Our next stop was Kikar Rabin, the largest square in Tel Aviv and the site of Yitzhak Rabin's murder. We stopped at the stop where he was killed to pay our respects. The square is very large but I still can't believe that 100,000 people can be packed into it as have been for demonstrations like the pro-teachers union demonstration a few weeks back. The municipality is holding a big candle lighting party in Kikar Rabin every night of Chanukka at 6:30. I had hoped to stick around long enough to see it, but we were all exhausted and ready to head home 2 hours earlier.

Grafitti and newspaper clippings memorialize the late Prime Minister Yitzkah Rabin.

We grabbed the bus back on Dizengoff and rode back to the train station rolling down Judah Maccabee ave for part of the trip. I got a kick out of that. We got on our train and all promptly fell asleep, waking up 45 minutes later at the "Hof HaCarmel" main train station in Haifa. I plan on spending some real time in TA and hopefully checking out the famous nightlife their sometime during my trip. It was enough for one day.

I couldn't resist!

I was a little tense from the day, but Levi (one of our madrichim) had a remedy for that. He was running a "visual imagery" relaxation workshop in the moadon at 8 P.M. It was phenomenal. I felt like I was filled with warm pudding by the time we were finished, and yet I felt more energized than I had all day.