purim!

Today is Purim in most of the world outside of Jerusalem. In Jerusalem (and a handful of other ancient walled cities) purim is celebrated tomorrow. In order to enable us to have 2 days of drunkenness, the yeshiva has arranged for students to visit teachers who live outside Jerusalem. I went with about 10 students to a rabbi in Efrat, a city in the west bank. The bus was armored, with solid metal walls and double thick windows, so the ride was very bouncy, aas the weight of the bus strained the suspension, and we bottomed out after all the speed bumps in the settlement.

The rabbi brought us to his 3 neighbors to deliver purim food gifts, and we danced in each apartment. I'm sure the neighbors heartily enjoyed 12 sweaty men smelling up the place for half an hour, but it was nice, and fun.

Weather on Friday, Saturday, and today has been unbelievably windy and rainy. Thank God for artificial fibers; I had to take off shoes and socks in the tiolet after I arrived and wring them out, but my good Alaska hiking socks kept my feet warm despite being wet.

Going to hear megilla and a purim shpiel tonight at the yeshiva. Tomorrow morning I hope to go to a fun shul to hear megilla again.

Eilat flight and hotel reservation seem to have gone through. Crossing my fingers. Only 1 week plus 1 day of school left.

Mind if i dance... wif yo' date?

Last night my closeted roommate asked me for a date and I freaked out for a minute before realizing that he wanted one of the dates that I keep in a package with my stuff. I'm sure he didn't mean any double entendres...

Booked a hotel in Eilat (I hope) through expedia. Now to book a flight.

Petra-fied

Sent in an application and deposit for a trip to Petra. Hope it isn't a scam. Now I have to buy an airplane ticket and reserve a hotel room in Eilat, a holiday city in southern Israel on the Red Sea. The plan is to fly down late Monday night after class with all my stuff, spend the night in a cheap hotel, then Tuesday morning they pick me up and take me for a 2 day trip across the border in Jordan where they roll me for everything and leave me for dead. I'm back in Eilat Wednesday night-ish, hit the beach Thursday, and Friday head north to Haifa. I'm going to take the bus to Haifa, through the Negev desert. I could fly instead--it's a long trip (6+ hours total)--but it's supposed to be a really interesting drive. I'll stay from Friday through Monday with a friend in Haifa, and on Monday head back down to Ben Gurion and home.

Transcript

Transcript of last night's chatter from my closeted roommate:

[Me in bed under covers, lights out. Roommate browsing on computer.]
ROOMMATE: Is there a comprehensive guide to all the bugs in the world?
There doesn't seem to be. I wonder if there would be interest in something like that. Do you think there would be interest in a comprehensive guide to insects?
ME (sleepily): Why?
ROOMMATE: So that people could identify the bugs in their food. That way there wouldn't be all that craziness over kashrut with strawberries. People would be able to examine their fruit much more easily. Do you think that would be useful?
ME: A bug is a bug
ROOMMATE: No--some are kosher. Let's see what else is available
[several more minutes of chatter from ROOMMATE omitted. ROOMMATE goes to bed finally and gets into bed. Then starts fiddling with the window next to his bed. Then starts slamming the windows closed]
ROOMMATE: Do you have a hammer?
ME: No
ROOMMATE: Do you have something I could use as a hammer?
ME: No
ROOMMATE: Do you know anyone in the dorm with a hammer?
[I do not answer. Roommate gets up and goes outside]
ROOMMATE: Does anyone here have a hammer? [No answer] Oh well--I bet I could use my Shabbat shoe. [Several loud bangs then start coming from the window. Predictably, after the third or fourth, there's an "Uh oh". He puts the shoe down and gets back into bed. Etc]

previous night, the script was this:
[Everyone in the room in bed, asleep or near sleeping. Lights out. Crazy ROOMMATE is fluttering about. Goes out and slams the door shut behind him. Comes back, australian roommate shouts at him:
AUSTRALIAN ROOMMATE: Can you please stop slamming the fucking door?
ROOMMATE: [Pause] I don't think that was me.
ROOMMATE: [Ev

Sicker

Rats--it's getting worse. Still a head cold, but worser.

Sick

Made it almost to the finish line, and last night I came down with a cold. Dammit. Thought I'd make it all the way through, though everyone around me is getting sick. Hope it isn't severe.

Another mosquito last night. Buzzed me all night, until finally it made a fatal mistake and landed right on the tip of my nose, and then the hunter became the hunted.

Screwed by the mikvah

The mikva turnstyle screwed me out of 2 shekels today. But I'll get mine back...

Bought a 3-pack of white socks and gleefully tossed all those black shouk socks away, because they were staining my feet.

Yesterday my effeminate yeshivisher roommate told me how he was _sure_ that his brother was bi, and that everyone was bi to somw extent. He's trying out the bullworker that the other students are passing around now. I have to start changing in the bathroom.

People who snore

People who snore:
My first roommate.
My second roommate.
My third roommate.
My fourth roommate.

hiking trip

Had a lovely hike today in the Judean hills about 1/2 hour west of here. The hills are in bloom now with small red poppies and pink and white almond trees. The hillsides are terraced by crumbling stone walls into small plots to retain rainwater for the almonds. We saw a couple of stone crusader forts, and a spring, and a wine press--essentially a sunken stone pit tiled to retain the juice as peasants trampled the grapes.

Weather was hot, in the 80s, and dry. I had only 1 liter of water, so I had to beg some from someone else.

Because we were past the 67 border we had an armed guard with us. Hike took about 5 hours over low hills, and it really made me miss Seattle.

Welcome

Went to Male Aduma, a settlement in the west bank, for Shabbat. It's in a range of desert hills just west of Jerusalem, surrounded by arab villages. The landscape looks like southern california, but drier. Half the town is religious, the other half secular. In the morning the hillside facing us was covered by a herd of camels grazing. The local arabs also graze sheep (we saw some), and we also saw two antelope of some type darting down the hill.

They gave each of us a schedule that showed who we would be staying with and eating with for each meal; they mixed it up so we would visit different families during the visit. After shul on Shabbat, the lunch schedule showed that my classmate and I were due to eat with the Solomons in building 22, apartment 4. We walked up the road, and found the doorway to buildings 22-24. We walked upstairs to apartment 4, found the apartment marked "Solomon", and knocked. A 10 year old boy opened the door, and showed us inside, and his parents warmly welcomed us and ushered us into the dining room, where the table was set but missing one setting (they quickly put out another dish).

The family emigrated from Columbia only two years ago, and they were obviously struggling. The father and son spoke only fair English, so we communicated in a mixture of Spanish, English, and Hebrew. The mother spoke no English at all. We had a kind of sephardic cholent, consisting of chick peas, meat, and chicken, and they offered us sweet wine with water, "to make it softer" the father said, and it was wonderful.

The family was obviously struggling financially, and culturally as well. Though he was a unix programmer in south america, he couldn't find work here, so he was cleaning floors in a yeshiva. Recently he's picked up a job working at a matzoh factory. "But my son has a much better education here, very torah!" he said, and he took out and showed us his report card. The son, 10, entertained us with juggling and magic tricks, and gave a short talk in spanish about what he was learning at yeshiva. The father told us he as blessed to have visitors for shabbat.

After lunch, we went out on the balcony and admired the view, then he walked us all the way back to the family that had hosted us the previous night, and who was holding our bags. I asked him how he was connected to the yeshiva, how he had come to host us. He said he didn't know about our yeshiva. I wasn't sure I understood, so I asked again, and got the same answer. Then I took out our schedule, and showed him his name and address, and he said "Oh, I know that family, they are in the next building over. That's not us."

So--two families named Solomon, same apartment number, adjoining buildings. This family didn't raise an eyebrow when two Americans knocked on their door and walked in for a Shabbat meal. I can only hope to achieve that mindset someday.

Same old same old

Dinner tonight was a potato, tuna melt. Apparently they're going to keep sending this back to us until we eat it (see last night's menu) as you do with a 10 year old child.

My back tooth hurts--I think it's cracked. Damn.

Wimps

The yeshiva is having a five hour hike in the nearby hills for next Monday, but as of yesterday only about seven of my noodle-limbed compatriots had signed up, so they had to give an announcement during lunch asking more people to sign up. The trip looks cool--Maccabean caves, hills, springs, etc.

Dinner today was total crap--baked potatoes, a tub of tuna fish, and stone cold soup in a big pot (not room temperature--fridge-cold). I guess someone had a dentist appointment tonight.

Lowered Expectations

Tonight at dinner, they served us a big tray of oven-toasted bread slices. And I got seriously excited. It was fantastic. I put butter on it. This is the first toast I've had since I got here.

It's been three days since we had hot water in the dorms. I showered in a mikva on Friday, but have been stinky ever since. I think they just fixed it tonight, but we'll see whether that's the case. I am super excited if they have. My bar is now lowered to where toast and hot water make me ecstatic. Coming home will be a holiday.

Mikva

I've never been to a mikva before, but the hot water died here on Thursday night, and I really needed a shower Friday, or else it would be 3 days w/o a shower. So Friday afternoon I went with someone from the dorm to the mikva. A mikva here includes a hot shower before, so for 8 shekels ($2) it would be worth it.

The mikva turns out to be in the Arab quarter, oddly enough. The little courtyard was deserted, which was surprising to me, on a Friday afternoon. There was one of those big cheese cutter turnstyles with a coin entry box near it, to get in. Inside it was like a gym shower room: rubber mat floors, benches, tiled walls. There were more people inside than appeared outside, but it was oddly quiet. I started talking to the guy who brought me, but he shushed me, and said that you don't talk in the mikvah, which was actually kind of nice. My glasses fogged up immediately, which is a good thing, in a room full of naked men.

The hot shower was fantastic--the best since I've been here. Small, but perfectly formed. Walked over to the mikvehs without toweling when I was done. They were two small tiled pools, like hot tubs, but about 5' deep, and about 6' wide. One hot, and one cold. I was hoping to use the hot one, but it had 5 guys in it already, and 6 naked men in a pool less than an armspan across isn't my idea of fun. So I went into the cold pool, which had only 1 other guy in it.

"Cold" really turned out to be room temperature. A little chilly on first contact, but you adjust quickly. I got in, and stood in the corner.

One concept I've heard about the mikveh is related to the concept of 1/60: if you drop unkosher food into a pot of kosher food by accident, or a drop of milk into a pan of stew, if the total volume of the unkosher material is less than 1/60 of the surrounding material, the small amount is nullified--it becomes as if it doesn't exist. Aryeh Kaplan describes how the minimal size of a mikveh has the same effect: your body volume will be small enough to be nullified by the water in the mikveh. When immersed completely, you become nullified, essentially dead.

I breathed a few times, then exhaled and submerged. Sinking below the surface, feet off the ground, you get a little dizzy. For 10 seconds, I was dead. Which feels remarkably purifying. I dunked three times and came out. 42 years of impurity washed off, I hope, which I really need.

=========================

Cold today--cold enough to freeze ice on the cars when I got up this morning.

Spent this afternoon's Shabbat with some friends of my cousin. She was the most upbeat person I've ever met--a Muppet in the name of G-d. The woman was a child in Poland during the Shoah. Both she and her mother were captured by the Germans. Her father was a partisan, and gave her up to a Polish family to take care of; they took care of her for a year before a neighboring family told the Nazis that she wasn't their child. She kept in touch with them by mail after the war, until the mid 60s. In the last letter from her host family, they told her that the family that turned her in was still resentful about her making it through alive, and that other families in the village were too. The sons were growing up, and were claiming that when they grew up they were going to find her. So, the family said, please don't write back, in case they intercept one of these letters and find out where you are.

safety

Last night, walking home through the city, i heard a loud bang a few streets away. Looked around nervously to see whether anyone was panicking, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention. About 5 minutes later, a larger bang. Again, no reaction by those around me. So either Jerusalemites know what a bomb sounds like, or people here are assuming that it can't happen again.
On This American Life, they had people giving their predictions for 2010. And old Israeli woman predicted a third intifada (God forbid).

No snow last night, only rain. Kitchen staff is back, but wary.

Winter

Possibility of snow has been predicted for tonight and tomorrow in Jerusalem. I'm told Jerusalem gets snow once or twice a winter; it's an inch or two, and the city shuts down: grocery stores are emptied of bread and milk, buses and taxis vanish, stores shut down across the city, schools close, horrible traffic jams ensue as outgoing roads fill with Jerusalemites fleeing the city, and Tel Avivers flocking in to see the snow.

The yeshiva kitchen staff showed their colors by hightailing it out early, leaving nothing three trays of blackened food for dinner for all the students, who will end up eating each other if it does indeed snow, because the kitchen staff will be hiding at home.

I learned recently that Victoria's Secret has a factory in Israel, in or near Jerusalem.

Fat Bastard

There's a great big fat guy in the yeshiva. Yesterday at lunch I saw him take five plates of food. I don't mean that he took them one after another; he took five dinner plates from the table, filled each one with a full meal, lined them up on the table, and ate them all. I'd seen that line of plates on the table before but never made the connection.
Under other circumstances I would find that merely funny, and mildly gross. But we regularly run out of food here (especially on popular days, like lasagna day, yesterday).
Fat bastard.

Penury

As of yesterday, I am officially on leave without pay for the next 6 weeks. Break out the instant noodles.

It's not easy being green

Today at mincha they just announced the news that one of the students, a 24 year old guy, just got engaged. He wasn't in the room, and they brought him in and everyone clapped and sang, and we got in a big circle and danced, and you could feel the yearning and envy of 60 twenty-something guys all wishing it were them. It was like being in a roomful of girls, and I was the biggest girl of all.

Gorilla

Tonight at dinner I grabbed the serving utensil out of the hand of the sweetest student there, in order to get a bouraka before they ran out.

I'm becoming an animal.