Words of Torah

This year, each of us is required to give one D'var Torah, basically a sermon on the weekly Torah portion. Mine was today. I thought it went well, and I got lots of really positive feedback from my classmates. The professors/rabbis who critique us gave me some interesting things to think about; their suggestions mainly related to ideas I could have included if I did not have such a short time restriction, and the place of pop culture on the bima. (I maintain that it has one.) Because I have had a few requests (some of them from classmates!), my words are posted below. It's long, so I'm going to let it speak for itself. But if you have LOTS of time on your hands, my friend and classmate Michal and I just added links to each other's blogs. She updates frequently, always has interesting insights, and is heading to Cincinnati with me next year! Enjoy...!

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בקש שלום ורדפהו. In Psalm 34, we are instructed to seek peace and pursue it (Psalm 34:15). The judge Gideon tells us that one of God’s many names is Adonai Shalom, God of peace. Masechet Derech Eretz Zuta tells us: Great is peace, because all blessings and prayers conclude with peace. We are a people obsessed with peace. We like to make peace, keep peace, and even run after peace. In Divrei HaYamim alef, we learn that God did not permit King David to build the Temple in Jerusalem, because he was constantly at war; peaceful King Solomon built it instead. Even the patriarch Jacob fled from his home rather than face the possibility of war with his brother Esau. And here in this week’s Torah portion, Be’shalach, we arrive at the pinnacle of the Exodus story. The people finally escape from Egypt, cross the Sea of Reeds to safety, and sing a song of Thanksgiving to God: אשירה ליהוה כי גאוה גאה; I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously (Exodus 15:1). And then the Israelites move on, wander in the desert, leaving peace in their wake and eventually settling peacefully in the Promised Land. Except…that’s not exactly how the story goes. In the midst of the Song of the Sea, praising God for rescuing the Israelites from their Egyptian oppressors, we heard today: יהוה איש מלחמה - יהוה שמו. Adonai is a warrior. Adonai is His name! All of a sudden, after receiving one miraculous rescue from the peace-loving God, this peace-loving people lauds Him as a great warrior. A man of war! Our teachers have long struggled with this militaristic aspect of Shirat Ha Yam. How can we seek peace and pursue it while we are praying to God the warrior? Why is being a strong warrior suddenly a good thing? Maybe it is precisely out of this contrast that God’s divinity emerges. Although God is a warrior, God does not fight dirty. According to Rashi, the second half of this verse, Adonai shemo, teaches us that God does not fight with traditional weapons of war. God uses only God’s divine name, and the battle is won. Except that with all due respect to Rashi, God’s name alone seems to be quite destructive on the shores of the Red Sea. After all, as we read today, “Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has cast into the sea; and the pick of his officers are drowned in the Sea of Reeds.” Whether the Egyptians were defeated by traditional weapons or the terribly awesome divine name, they did not fare so well. The God of peace and compassion has seemingly been replaced by the vengeful God so rejected by the Reform movement. In all daily Jewish prayer, including Mishkan Tefilah, God has another warlike name, Adonai צבאות, literally God of armies. Open Mishkan Tefilah to Tsur Yisrael, Kedushah, or Ma’ariv Aravim. Read the English translation of these prayers. Notice the italics in the middle of the translation where it translates “Adonai Tzvaot” so literally as “Adonai Tzvaot.” Every single day, although we may not realize it, we continue to pray to this God of war. We have prayers for peace interspersed throughout our service, but the heart of the tefilah includes more than one mention of God’s warlike attributes; we simply choose not to acknowledge them. But this verse from Shirat Ha Yam, Adonai ish milchama, Adonai shmo, shows us a way to come to terms with this violent image of God. God is not only a warrior. Masechet Sanhedrin (39b) gives an interpretation of what happened after the Israelites were safely across the Red Sea onto dry land. The Egyptians have just been swept up in a massive tidal wave, and the angels begin singing God’s praises. God stops them. “מעשי ידי טובעים בים ואתם אומרים שירה לפני?!” “The works of my hands are drowning in the sea, and you sing a song before Me?!” God is not impressed. Sure, God just killed an entire Egyptian army to save the chosen people, but that doesn’t mean God is happy about it. Sometimes even God has to do what has to be done. And so the words Adonai ish milchama are followed by Adonai shemo. Adonai is God’s name. And the rabbis teach that the name Adonai, in contrast to Elohim, encompasses the attribute of compassion. S’forno teaches that this battle between God, fighting for the Israelites, and the Egyptians, was ultimately a fight between good and evil. If not for the destruction of the Egyptian army, the whole world would have been destroyed. In this case, the destruction was actually a necessary element showing God’s great compassion. יהוה איש מלחמה - יהוה שמו. In Biblical writing, we are constantly looking to see what is not written. Here, it’s a conjunction. God is a warrior, BUT God is His name. Or alternatively, God is a warrior, AND God is His name. But there is no conjunction in this verse in the Torah, and it is troubling to us. It is disconcerting, because showing several opposing qualities at once is something humans have not figured out yet. But God is always a few steps ahead of us. Unlike a human king, Rashi points out that God can embrace two attributes at once, even when they contradict, as the attributes of רחמים and דין, compassion and justice. God can make war compassionately, or remain merciful in the midst of an ugly battle between good and evil. In a moment of insight from a more recent source, DreamWorks studios, Shrek tells Donkey that ogres have layers, like an onion. Similarly, humans have layers and facets, revealing different parts of ourselves at different times. And if humans and ogres have different attributes that show themselves under different circumstances, then God, in whose image we were fashioned, how much the more so. But unlike our one-at-a-time layers, God’s facets can sometimes shine all at the same time. Ultimately, the Song of the Sea is full of tension, as Aviva Zornberg points out. The people are overwhelmed by the experience, thankful for their freedom, mournful of the loss of everything familiar. The Mekhilta, our most ancient midrash on Shemot, reports that even the slave women, those Jews who were the least enlightened and educated, saw more on the shores of the Red Sea than the prophet Ezekiel saw in his lifetime. But the Israelites saw good as well as evil, death and life, a warring God and the hope for peace. We praise Adonai Tzvaot. We pray for peace. It does not always make sense to us, but we have to get beyond our human perspective and try to look at life from God’s point of view. There is always more than one side to the story. There is often more than one right answer. So God can be simultaneously the warrior and the peacemaker. We should absolutely seek peace and pursue it. We never know when God will decide to jump in and fight for us, as at the walls of Jericho, or when God will let us fight it out for ourselves. We run after peace, even though war sometimes pursues us, and we are hopeful and grateful, in awe of every aspect of God’s presence in our lives. We praise יהוה איש מלחמה, God the warrior, we pray for Adonai shalom, and we remember יהוה שמו, that even in the midst of conflict and destruction, God’s compassion is always lingering just under the surface of our lives.

Looking Forward

I’m now two weeks into second semester, and I think I’m ready for another vacation. Happily, the upcoming visitors should help me get through the almost-spring stretch more happily. I was outside this morning, enjoying the beautiful weather: today it’s sunny and cloudless, and somewhere around or above 60 degrees. I noticed that at the same time, it’s about 14 degrees at home. Granted, it’s the middle of the day here already and it was still earlier than anyone should be out-and-about at home, but still…that’s farther apart than our weather has been this year that I can remember. (Yes, Dad, I know you were at work already. I don’t really count your waking hours as normal though.)

My Google countdown tells me I go home in 109 days. As I was sort of hoping would happen, I’m having mixed feelings about those 109 days. I really, really am looking forward to going home and seeing everyone and being back in the US. But 109 days doesn’t seem very long, and there’s also still a lot more I want to do here. I guess I should get down to enjoying my next 109 days and getting everything out of this year that I want to.

That said, I’m also already looking forward to heading to Cincinnati at the end of the summer. The HUC deans of each of the campuses just visited us here in Jerusalem. We had more time divided by campus than we have yet this year, and I really enjoyed it. The dean of the Cincinnati program is great; he’s friendly, helpful, and easy to talk to. The group of us heading to Cincy is an amazing group; I like all of them, and I’m really excited that I’ll be spending the next four years with such a great portion of my classmates. There are also frequent discussions about visiting NYC and LA, to see my friends on those campuses, of course. When I met with the Cincinnati dean, he pulled out a goody bag that he had brought for each of us. I am now the proud owner of an HUC Cincinnati t-shirt, at least until I find someone who might fit into it more effectively; a Cincinnati Reds bumper sticker, which I would be really excited about if I liked baseball…or had a car…; a packet of chili mix, which I will definitely be making use of; a Procter and Gamble stress ball; and a piece of Grater’s chocolate. Which reminds me that I’ve been meaning to eat that chocolate. In a visit of a few days, we got excited about where we’re headed in the fall and got more information on the city that will be my home for four years. I’ll be leading Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services at a congregation somewhere in the middle of the country. I’ll have a student pulpit, where one weekend a month, I’ll visit and be The Rabbi. I’ll be teaching Religious School again. I’ll also be taking lots more classes, which I have heard are much more intense than the Year-in-Israel program, but also in English. Not to wish away the rest of my time in Israel or the summer, but I’m also excited for everything that awaits me in Cincinnati. I guess it’s good to have lots of things to look forward to.

I also have one more thing to get excited about, that’s also in the future but not quite as far away. I’ve mentioned my Passover trip to the Former Soviet Union, at least once or twice. I got my group assignment and location assignment! My immediate group is my friends Josh and Hayley. Josh was in the Barcelona group in August and headed to Cincy with me, and Hayley is another fun friend who will be a great travel buddy. We are psyched to have been grouped together. They’re the people I will be leading seders and programs with, but we also get a couple of touring days at the end of the program with the other people in our country. There are about 12 of us going to the same country, and they’re all great! I know that sounds silly, but I’m looking forward to touring around with people who I don’t often spend tons of time with, but who I really like from the little time we have spent together. Where am I going? I am in the Polotzk-Vitebsk group, traveling in Belarus. Our free days at the end will be in Minsk. Feel free to start passing on suggestions of things to visit, and any information you may have on Minsk family history, PLEASE share!! There will be lots of pictures and probably lots of stories.

Now that I have about an hour before I have to get ready for Shabbat, I’m considering attacking some homework. Or responding to some of the zillion emails I have been neglecting. Or one of the other things on the page long to-do list. Shabbat shalom!

Birthday Special

A quick early morning post. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHAEL! Hope it's a great one, even though I'm on the other side of the world.

And...off to school.

Resettled

Well I’ve made it through the first week of classes, and now I can officially say…116 days to go! That’s right. After a couple of weeks of being pretty homesick (visitors, while wonderful to have, tend to have that effect on me after they leave), I finally got on top of things and my friend Cassi and I booked tickets home for the same day. I’ll be home mid-May, and chose to land at JFK in the middle of the afternoon instead of before 6 am. Somehow I see that as more pleasant for all parties involved in picking me up. I know I seem excited to come home, and I’m definitely psyched that I have less than four months left until I get to go home. But at the same time, now that I have that ticket in hand, I think I’ll be able to enjoy the last almost-four months even more. I know exactly how much time I have left, there is an end in sight, so now I can (hopefully) buckle down and focus on school and friends here and enjoying the opportunity I have to live over here. Temporarily. (For the record: Google does the countdown for me.)

I really like my classes this semester so far. Not all that much changed, but it feels very different. Instead of having a rabbinic literature history lecture and two rabbinic literature classes every week, we have Bible three times a week. I think my bible professor is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, and I am so excited to have him so often now. He’s also my biblical grammar teacher, so everything is finally coming together. The grammar made sense to me last semester because I can follow specific rules and logic, but now we’re actually applying everything, so I am, of course, really enjoying that. The class is also what I’ve been waiting for since college. In college, I took “faith busters (that's the nickname),” a course on early Christianity that approached the development of the religion and the New Testament from an entirely historical point of view. I loved it, and was disappointed that there was no parallel class on Judaism. I finally have it! It is definitely a bit jarring to be sitting in rabbinic school and dissecting bible text without mentioning God, but it’s also fascinating to delve into the text and think about how it all came together. Also, the bible we use for class is Hebrew-only. It’s pretty exciting that in most places, I can understand most of what’s going on! The professor’s favorite exercise when we start a new passage is to read it verse by verse and translate from biblical Hebrew to modern Hebrew. (Think: translate from Shakespearian English to normal American English.) It’s an amazing way to reinforce the grammar we have learned and to see the weird way the bible phrases things, but it’s also really nerdily cool that I can understand both biblical and modern Hebrew!

I also have a new history class that I think I’m really going to enjoy, because it’s a subject I really haven’t had before. I’m taking a class on Islam and the Arab world, and it’s being team taught by two professors. One of them I had as an educator on one of our trips, and I know he’s great. The other I had for the first time on Tuesday, and I thoroughly enjoyed the class. Basically it’s going to be two separate classes on sort-of-alternating weeks. One professor is teaching about the religion of Islam and its history, and the other is teaching about the Arab world from a sociological-political point of view. I’m really excited!

My other new class is a once-a-week Hebrew literature class. I am still on the fence about it, although I think I’ll come around. The teacher likes to move at lightning speed, which I think will be a theme of the semester, since my bible/grammar teacher does so as well. But even though I felt almost out of breath at the end of class, I realized I did understand what was going on, and that is always nice. We’re starting with children’s stories, and reading them, discussing them, and talking about what makes a story a children’s story. It’s not just the level of Hebrew, although that helps. But reading a story in rhyme in a foreign language is not easy. It’s hard to stay in rhythm when struggling to read words correctly!

Our Wednesday Israel Seminar this week focused on Reform Judaism in Israel. While it is now the largest Jewish movement in the US, it is a small fraction of Israeli society and struggling for recognition and its place here. After a lecture by our dean, we got to split off to go on different field trips to see different Reform communities first hand. I went to a synagogue in Mevasseret, in a Jerusalem suburb. Coincidentally, it is the same area where I volunteer with the Ethiopian absorption center every week, but the groups are almost entirely separated. The whole area of Mevasseret used to be cheap land, close but not too close to Jerusalem, very close to the pre-1967 border with Jordan and therefore less desirable, and where the government built lots of low-cost housing for immigrants. But after gaining Jerusalem, there was lots of urban sprawl, and it became a much more attractive location. The immigrants were slowly replaced by upper-middle class Israeli natives and Anglo immigrants, and costs went way up, and it’s now a really nice neighborhood. Except that there is still this absorption center right next to the expensive housing, and the two populations more or less ignore each other. So I was excited to see the rest of Mevasseret. The contrast is fairly unreal.

We got off of our bus to be greeted by the community’s rabbi, who happens to be the first native Israeli woman to become a rabbi, and she had quite a story. She took us first to the preschool/kindergarten, and the kids were of course adorable. It is exactly as one would expect a Reform preschool to be, with lots of Jewish content on the walls, a basket of kippot that the kids and their families decorated, and that they all, girls and boys, wear when they’re doing specifically Jewish activities, and lots more. Amazingly, because it’s not an Orthodox school, this school is classified as secular by the Israeli government. Israel is not so good at a middle ground, which is part of why Reform Judaism struggles here. The most fascinating part of the preschool was the bomb shelter. I know that sounds weird. Schools here are required to have them, and they are frequently part of a tour. (We had a tour of the HUC shelter over the summer. I sincerely hope I will never need to be in there again.) Over the summer, during the Lebanon war, the school had to have bomb shelter drills, and the kids freaked out. They were being packed into this little, undecorated room that was generally just used for storage. It was scary for 3, 4, 5 year olds! So the synagogue realized that they needed to make it a less scary place, and they have certainly done an impressive job. The room now has several murals on the wall, with more to come. There is a big Noah’s ark that the kids can play in, a TV with movies, and lots of pillows and blankets. They also have started using the room regularly, so that it’s not a new place if it ever becomes necessary to use it: they have some quiet time in there almost every day, so it has become a haven for these kids even though hopefully it will never need to become a physically safe space for them. It was fascinating to hear about the process of making it into an attractive place and seeing how successful they had been.

I think I’m now all the way back into my routine, although my study skills, as usual, could still use some work. Hopefully this weekend, now that I have a really long to do list again, I will get back on track and remember that I’m a student with lots of work to do. At least until the next waves of visitors show up in a week and a half! Thanks for all the comments on the last post:)

Shabbat shalom!

Feeling Rabbinic

Most importantly, after spending LONG periods of time on the phone, we have our internet back. It turns out that we’re supposed to have a static IP address, but the cable company decided it would be fun to change it anyway. At least the tech guys spoke English!

On Tuesday night, I stayed up late to greet Saroj! A good friend from college and post-college in DC, Saroj had just finished her Birthright trip and extended her trip for a few days to visit me and have more time on her own in Jerusalem. Even though both of us were completely exhausted, we hadn’t seen each other in the more than six months since I left, so we stayed up far later than we intended, just talking and catching up. Unfortunately for furthering my tour guide skills, she was about to be on her own for a few days.

HUC decided to ease us back into school this semester. We had to be back at school this past Wednesday, but classes don’t start until Sunday. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning were spent in a colloquium discussing issues of Reform Judaism in America. Many people in the class, myself included, did not have high hopes for these few days. Happily, I was far wrong. In the last couple of days, it has finally felt like I am in rabbinic school! We spent our days listening to engaging speakers and discussing big issues in small groups. We talked about issues of Jewish affiliation, non-Jews in Jewish life, the past and future of Reform Judaism, and the formation and development of our own Jewish identities. In small groups, we discussed huge issues and discussion questions. What has been my most significant experience in shaping how I think about the meaning of being Jewish? Who has been the most significant influence on my Jewish development? How has Israel impacted my sense of Jewish identity? What are qualities that stand out in outstanding Jewish leaders we have known personally? How can non-affiliated Jews be encouraged to become part of Jewish life? How can non-Jews in Jewish families be integrated into the synagogue? Where is Reform Judaism in America headed? How can the increasing individuality of religion be combated by the synagogue community? I know that these questions may not sound that exciting to you, but for many of us here, it reminded us of why we came here in the first place, and it was hopefully a taste of at least some of what we will be doing when we get back to the program in the States. It may have been the first time this year that discussions from the classrooms spilled over into lunch time, dinner time, and other free time. It has really made us all think and get excited about our futures, and that has made me very happy!

The colloquium continued on Friday morning, which broke my usual Friday schedule of running errands in the morning and attempting productivity in the short afternoon before Shabbat. Instead I went to the end of colloquium in the morning and relaxed for the afternoon. Friday evening Saroj and I headed to HUC for student-led Shabbat services as a class with lots of visitors. The service was great. HUC does not hold Friday evening services most weeks, so my class scatters over Jerusalem, each of us attending the service we have grown accustomed to this year. For the last few weeks we have been on vacation. Friday evening, though, we gathered together at school for our own service, and it was really comforting. It was nice to be all together praying and celebrating Shabbat as a group, and I was definitely content for the moment to be exactly where I was.

After services, we were all going to different professors’ and administrators’ houses to be hosted for Shabbat dinner. Along with Saroj and a few of my classmates, I was heading to the home of one of the Hebrew teachers, a woman I had never met, although she will be teaching my class once a week this coming semester. I had heard that she was a tough teacher, but a great one, but nice with a great sense of humor outside of class. While I’m going to have to wait until Monday to validate the in-class part of that description, the other half is exactly right. We were warmly welcomed into her home, and had a delicious meal, learning that Jewish mothers are the same across the world. There was more food on the table than twice as many of us could have eaten, and she pressed containers of leftovers on all of us to take home. I have big tupperwares of chicken and potatoes and sweet potato soup in my refrigerator, and I’m kind of excited about it. The food was delicious! In addition to our hostess and fellow HUC students, her oldest son, out of the army for a week now, was there, and her daughter, who is currently in the army but serving in Jerusalem, was also there. The younger son is still in the army and wasn’t there. After dinner we stayed at the table, and then in the living room, talking for several hours. There were family stories about universal subjects: losing track of children (in amusement parks and at gas stations), traveling, and other things. We talked about school and told our teacher about how much we enjoyed the colloquium. We talked about Hebrew. We talked about differences between the United States and Israel, and since this family has spent time living in the US, they had some very interesting opinions! We talked about Reform Judaism in Israel, army life, and so much more. We finally all realized we were tired and should head home around 11, and our teacher even called the cab company for us, and handed us our bags of leftovers, and sent us on our way. It was a really fun evening, and very different from the usual routine!

Today, Saroj is exploring the Israel Museum and making one more visit to the Old City, and I’m having my last real lazy day of vacation, because I’m back to classes tomorrow. Have a good long weekend at home, and sleep a little bit extra for me!

Vacation from Vacation

My internet seems to be down right now, so I will write in the meantime and hope that it’s back up for me to post. And check my email. And read the news. And sign onto IM and skype. And, well, to have internet. Sadly, the guest blogger had to head back to the states to go back to school. So while he may provide a nice long comment, you just get my side of the story for now.

New Year’s in Jerusalem was fairly uneventful. I had heard that it was really not celebrated here, so I didn’t even make dinner reservations. That might have been a mistake. It turns out that it’s not really celebrated here by Israelis, but it’s still during the time when Israel is filled up with Americans on vacation, so restaurants are booked. We did find one eventually, and had a good dinner. The rest of the night was quiet and very low-key. Among other things, we packed for our trip to the Dead Sea…

Monday morning we woke up far earlier than planned to the sound of my landlord banging on the (bolted shut) door. He wanted to fix something in the apartment, and when he said he would come by on Monday, I assumed it would be in the evening as usual, or at least after 9 am. Apparently I was wrong. I went to the door and explained that I was still sleeping, and asked him to come back later. He agreed, although I don’t think he apologized for waking me. I guess I can take that as proof that New Years really isn’t an Israeli holiday. Around lunchtime we made it to the rental car office to pick up our car that we had reserved online a few days earlier. They informed us that they didn’t have the car we reserved, but they could upgrade us to a minivan (thanks, guys) or downgrade us (and we would pay less) to a Getz. We really didn’t want the minivan, but the Getz was one of the smallest cars I had ever seen. Michael went outside to look at the two cars and decide, and when he came back in, announced that he had seen a sedan close to what we had reserved, sitting in the lot. They told us they couldn’t give us that car, because someone else had reserved it. That seemed a little illogical to us, since we had also reserved a car, and it wasn’t there. Ultimately, they gave us the car we wanted. As we were filling out the paperwork, another group came in. From their conversation, it was unclear whether they were the ones who had reserved the car we had now claimed, or whether they simply had more claim to it than we did, being part of their frequent rental program or something. In any case, we apparently did a good job of arguing. They told the other group that the car was not available. They could have a minivan or a Getz. We finished as quickly as we could and drove away! Among other things we found in the car was a booklet of Israeli driving laws, at least the ones that are different from the US and Europe. The most random may have been that it is illegal to turn left into a parking lot. I guess I was comforted knowing that in contrast to what I see on the roads, there are, in fact, driving laws in Israel.

The drive to the Dead Sea is on a (perfectly safe) road through the West Bank. (Seriously, there are tourist stops on the way there.) The views of the Judean Desert are amazing. It’s not desert like I would normally picture a desert, but instead hilly and mountainy and rocky and gorgeous. I tried to take some pictures as we drove, but they are mainly blurry and/or have my finger over the lens. But a couple of them came out. We also had to stop once to let a herd of camels cross the road. There were 8-10 of them. We have a picture of the last few going by. It definitely made for good entertainment on the way there, and a definite realization that we were in the middle of a desert.

Our hotel was very…Israeli. And it was filled with lots of…Israelis. They tried to make people stand in lines, but that concept still hasn’t caught on so well in this country. It was a hotel where there were only rooms on one side of the hallway, and the middle was open from the top floor to the bottom, so when there were kids racing up and down hallways and shrieking a few floors away, we heard it. Frequently. There were signs not to drink the tap water, because it’s salty. It’s ok to shower in and brush teeth with, but not so good for large quantities of drinking. The signs said there was drinking water available at a designated location on each floor. We expected a water cooler of some kind. That was a silly assumption. No, there was a tap sticking out of the wall, but instead of being labeled “salty water, not for drinking,” like the rest of the taps in the hotel, this one was labeled “drinking water.” Was it really any different? We’ll never know.

We went to Masada, of course, and debated hiking to the top (supposedly about a 45 minute climb) or taking the cable car (a 3 minute ride). We decided to hike it. It was beautiful outside, and how bad could a 45 minute hike really be? After you’ve committed to the hike and gone well past the ticket counter and cable car entrance, you see the sign at the beginning of the hike, saying it’s a steep climb that also includes about 700 stairs. And they’re not even stairs; they’re uneven stone ones, and some of them should definitely count as two, especially for someone my size! A little over an hour later, we did make it to the top. At the top, I found the ticket counter and upgraded our ticket down to the cable car. It suddenly felt like 700 stairs down was a bad idea. We wandered around the top of Masada for an hour or two, looking at all the ruins of Herod’s palace and the Jewish fortress that used the mountain many years later. It’s a beautiful site, and a fascinating story of the Jewish rebellion and mass suicide that occurred a few years after Jerusalem was conquered, in 73 or 74. Everyone believes the story, the Israeli army brings many of their soldiers to Masada to basically swear that Masada will never fall again, and most tourists stop by to pay homage to a group of rebels who decided to kill themselves rather than become Roman slaves. The story is all written down by Josephus, who apparently got it from a couple of women and children who survived. Archeologists have found a lot of evidence, including the storerooms that contained enough food to survive months or years on the mountain and the stone shards with names carved into them, apparently used for lots to decide who would kill the others. But…they never found the one little piece of evidence that you would think people would need to believe a story about a mass suicide of almost one thousand people: there were never any human remains found at Masada. Weird. I guess everyone likes the story anyway.

The next day we went to Ein Gedi, a nature reserve in the same area. It’s gorgeous. In the middle of desert, there is this area with naturally occurring waterfalls and plants and really pretty things you wouldn’t expect in a desert. And also cute animals that don’t seem so afraid of people. We have some pretty close up pictures of some of them. We did a short hike through the reserve that went to a few waterfalls, each bigger and more impressive than the one before. The last one before hiking back, of course, was beautiful. There was a couple around our age who was hiking right in front of us, then they would stop and be behind us, then in front of us again, and we kept sort of acknowledging each other quietly. We all ended up stopping at the same end waterfall though to take pictures and enjoy its prettiness, so we talked some. One of them was American, went to Penn, lives on the west coast now. She was Israeli. We left the waterfall at the same time and basically hiked back together, pointing out good pictures to one another on the way back. Then we wanted to go see the ruins of a synagogue a short walk away, so we all walked over together. It was entirely random, and I’m sure I’ll never see either one of them again, but it was an amusing way to spend an afternoon.

The trip back from vacation was…well looking back, it was pretty funny. We were in a rental car. We walked back to the car on the last day, about to drive back to Jerusalem. I noticed that something was hanging down in the front. Basically, the front part of the undercarriage is made of cheap, thin plastic. So if you pull all the way into a parking space, it doesn’t always hold up. It didn’t on this car. Michael pushed it back up into place, and we went on our way. A couple of kilometers down the road, it definitely sounded like it had come down again. So we pulled over into a spa parking lot (on the right, of course). Clearly as we were about to drive into the West Bank (a safe part, but still…), we didn’t want to have to stop again. So Michael took a shoelace from one of his shoes and tied the piece back up, wrapping the shoelace around the grill of the car. There were several knots and it seemed very secure, although he mentioned after we were back that he wished he had used both shoelaces; he was worried about it the whole way back. (The drive was about an hour and a half.) We arrived back at my apartment, and still had several hours before the car had to be returned. We debated what to do. Michael wanted his shoelace back, so the piece was going to be hanging down. On further inspection, there was more of the plastic piece missing right behind where it had broken, probably damage that was done before we ever had the car. So we really didn’t want to be charged for something that wouldn’t have happened if the car hadn’t been broken in the first place, although we of course didn’t know that the piece was missing until the little piece that was left broke. So we did what any good Israeli would do. We walked up to a hardware store, debating ethics the whole way there. We decided this was, in fact, taking responsibility: we were fixing the car so that the same thing wouldn’t happen again any time soon. We bought a roll of black duct tape, came back to my apartment, and fixed the damage. Michael got his shoelace back. The car rental place got their car back. Everybody was happy. Hopefully including whoever has that car next…!

Friday morning Michael was a trooper and got up to go on my way early morning shuk run. We bought yummy things and spent the day walking around Jerusalem and not doing a whole lot more. We had a quiet Shabbat dinner at home and enjoyed the treats we had bought ourselves at the bakery in the morning. Eventually his airport shuttle came…at 2 in the morning. An amazing vacation. But always too short.

Now I’m gearing up to go back to school and have lots more visitors. I have a D’var Torah (sermon) to give to my class the end of the month that needs to write itself, travel agent work to do for my parents' trip, some reading to do, and various other errands I would like done before classes start again. I also am (as expected) pretty homesick again. I know that once classes start and I’m busy I’ll do better with that, but right now, I really just feel far away again. So as not to end on a sad note, here’s a link to Michael’s pictures from his trip. I haven’t posted mine, mainly because they’re the same pictures, and also because I haven’t had internet all day. I’m at a friend’s apartment mooching internet for an hour! Talk to you soon…