Week in Review

I know it’s been a whole week since I wrote, but it’s because things have been so busy, not because I don’t love you!

Several people have mentioned security concerns, especially with my trips to the Machane Yehuda shuk. To do my best to address these concerns: After September 11, people in the US continued going to work every day, even in high rise office buildings. After the London subway bombing, people got up and took the subway to work. Here, if someone avoided places that had been bombed in the past, there would be nowhere to go. I understand that the shuk has been a center for bombing before. While there are many of us in my class here who avoid taking buses, we all go to the shuk. Most of us avoid the Old City on Friday mornings, when there are crowded prayer services on the Temple Mount. I try to avoid crazy crowds in general. I try to avoid the shuk during its peak times; I go on weekday afternoons after class, and never on Friday mornings when it’s packed with pre-Shabbat shoppers. Security here really has increased recently, especially with the current situation in Lebanon. Please understand that it is almost impossible to live here without going to certain places, and while I am always cautious and I do pay attention, I also want to live and experience Israeli culture this year, and not spend all my time in my apartment or at school worried about walking down the street. I do appreciate your concerns, but please try to appreciate that I am living here, not visiting for a week or two, and that I have to live.

It has been a very busy week though, which is why I haven’t had time to write. I can’t believe I’m already a third of the way through ulpan! I keep trying to use Hebrew when I talk to Israelis, but most of the time they hear my American accent and respond to me in English. It’s really hard to keep talking to them in Hebrew after that! Ulpan is going well though. I’m understanding a lot of what goes on in class, which is always nice, and we’re focusing more on grammar recently, which is great for me, because I am better at grammar than at vocabulary or speaking, so I’ve been feeling better about the class. We had a test on Wednesday, which I did not think was too bad, although we haven’t gotten it back yet. There were a couple people who thought it was horrible, so maybe I’m doing better than I thought! The teacher also keeps telling me to stop looking so worried, because I’m doing well. She recognizes that people in the class have very different strengths, and she promised me that she’s taught this class before, and it always evens out in the end. Yay:)

Classes end by 1:30 every day, which always seems like I have so much time to get things done. But then there are always programs to take up my time. This past week, we had two separate “ritual seminars,” a personalized tour of another part of Jerusalem, text study and field study of the first Temple period, and probably a couple of other things that I’m forgetting. The ritual seminars seem to be a taste of the liturgy classes we’ll be taking during the year. One afternoon we studied Birkat Hamazon, the prayer after meals, and the other afternoon we studied Kiddush, the wine/sanctification blessing, and Havdalah, the ceremony separating Shabbat from the rest of the week. At each of the seminars, we studied the text of the prayer, discussed its origins and differences between different versions of it, and at least started to learn the traditional chant for each of them. There are a lot of tone deaf people here! That said, there are also many, many people with beautiful voices. It all balances out.

The tour of Jerusalem was part of the same series as the one I went to last Tuesday. One of the Israeli rabbinic students is telling us, a week at a time, about his family’s history in Jerusalem, where they have lived for about 150 years. This week, we were talking about the history of his family around the time of Israeli independence. We sat in a classroom first, while he told us an amazing family story about a lost (and then found) family member, and then we walked to the part of the city where it happened, and he pointed things out along the way, like, “this is where my mother used to play every afternoon.” It was actually really cool. We ended up at a building about a 30 minute walk from campus where his mother grew up. He had talked to the people who now own the building and run their business out of it, and they let us come inside and look around. There is so much history here!

Wednesday night we had a text study looking at the first Temple period of Jewish history. On Thursday, we walked around Jerusalem, walking through the Valley of Gehinnom, the Hebrew name for hell. It was apparently a place where child sacrifices used to be offered, making the name much more appropriate. Now it’s a beautiful valley with a nice green park. Then we walked through parts of the Old City, looked in detail at a model of Jerusalem during that time period, and saw a still surviving “broad wall” that was part of the fortifications of the city. I think you could have driven a car across the top of the wall it was so wide. We’re divided into three groups for our Jerusalem Days Thursdays, and I lucked out and got a great group, so we have a great time no matter what, even if we’re sitting in a brief movie poking each other to wake up!

Thursday afternoon I went up to the shuk with a friend. Just on the walk there, I think we ran into a half dozen other HUC people on their way back from the shuk or another shopping trip, and then we ran into another 8 people or so once we were there. It’s a big city, and an enormous market, so I’m not sure why that always happens. Friends showed us which of the several cheese vendors is the “good cheese guy” who speaks English and is very friendly. I went into his booth to get some cheese, and ended up tasting a whole bunch of samples, which was really fun. I also found tomatoes for 1.8 shekels per kilogram. I haven’t done the whole conversion to dollars and pounds, but those are some cheap tomatoes. I also have a newfound appreciation now for the shuk cart, which is basically reusable shopping bag on wheels. I bought a half of a watermelon (in addition to a whole lot of other produce) and it was really easy to transport back on the 25 minute walk home!

Yesterday (Friday) I found a good bakery to buy challah for dinner, and spent much of the afternoon chopping vegetables for gazpacho. That’s right, at home I make it in a food processor. Here, I am the food processor. It looks and smells great, but I haven’t had any yet. It’s dinner tonight…and hopefully for more or less the rest of the week.

In between programs and errands, there have also been plenty of social gatherings. A friend and I made a delicious dinner, one of the best meals I’ve had since being here, of just a chicken with a good sauce and rice, and an Israeli salad. (Yes, mom, your recipe. I use your cookbook a lot and have even had requests for copies!) I was at a game/cards night at another friend’s place, which was a great time, and have had some other nights of just sitting and hanging out and having lots of random conversations about any topic. There have been Hebrew class study sessions, with several of us sitting together to get our homework done or study for a test, which is always more fun than doing it alone, if not always more productive. I’m definitely feeling more comfortable here every day, and recently came to the realization that I’ve been here for a whole month already! Wow.

On the note of the “situation,” my roommate just came into my room to tell me that Hezbollah is considering a cease-fire. I’ll believe it when it happens, but this is a nice step. If you’re looking for better-than-American coverage, try looking at http://www.haaretz.com/. It’s an Israeli paper online in English, and gives more information, less negatively toward Israel, than what you’ll see at home. It’s a nice change. Also, for more websites if you’re still reading, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkarpay/. If you don’t have a yahoo id, you might need to register for one, but that’s where I’m posting my Israel pictures now. It takes a really long time to load them on the blog, and I can only put up a few at a time. On Flikr I can put up lots of them, and quickly, and with fun captions! Only the HUC folder is from since I’ve been in Jerusalem.

I’m trying to personally answer emails, but there are many, and as my parents can tell you, it’s nothing personal! I’ll get there eventually, and I really do love getting them! Have a wonderful weekend, and I’m working on trying to update more often!