Finally Starting to Realize I'm in a Country with Conflict

Hey everyone!

So I know it's been a ridiculously long time since I've updated my blog...with classes and work finally under way, it's been difficult finding time to sit down and update.  So let's recap the last two weeks...I'll try to remember as much detail as possible! (so I apologize for the fact that this entry is going to be REALLY long!)

Wednesday two weeks ago was a LOOOONG day of classes.  I was still trying to figure out exactly what classes I was taking, so I had to go to 4 classes, even though I ended up dropping one of them.  I went to Hebrew in the morning, then Israeli Legal System, which I have now added as a class.  After a two hour break, I had Israeli Foreign Policy (which I have no dropped in order to solve the conflict between that class and Arab-Israeli Conflict and picked up Israeli Legal System instead), and then went to a three hour class on Modern Iran, Shiism, and the Iranian Revolution.  It was an unbelievably long day, and I'm just glad my normal Wednesday schedule is a bit better than that, with a four hour break that allows me to go home. 

The one highlight of the day, though, was that I finally booked my Spring Break tickets.  We have a week off plus Passover, so I am going from Friday, April 11th until the following Thursday morning to Athens, Greece!  I'm really really excited, especially because I have always wanted to go to Greece.  I'm going with my friends Amanda and Jordana, and am really looking forward to it.  After Athens, I am flying an unbearably long series of connections to Tuscon, Arizona, to spend Passover with my family, and then come back to Israel the end of April to finish off the semester.

Thursday was a nice relaxing day.  I had decided since I hadn't stayed in Jerusalem since the first weekend we got here that it was time to stay in Jerusalem again for the weekend.  So, after Hebrew class, I spent the day relaxing, and then went out downtown with a couple of my roommates and some other friends.  Thursday, though, was also the day that the conflict in Israel finally hit home.  For those of you who haven't been following the political situation here, Hamas in Gaza had been shooting Kasam rockets into the nearby Israeli city of Sderot for some time now.  It has recently gotten more frequent, but that Thursday they started firing rockets on Ashkelon, where my roommate Roi lives.  First of all, this meant that Hamas now has longer range rockets, but also worried us greatly because Roi was home that night.  We called him to make sure he was ok, which he was, but later we found out that his family had definately been affected by the rockets.  Apparently the windows in his family car had been blown out, and later that week, his brother was 15 meters away from a rocket when it landed.  He also said that when he got home, there were rocket sirens going off, but because he had just arrived he didn't have time to go into the bomb shelter with his family.  Basically, we got really scared, and this sparked a whole range of debates in our apartment for the next week or so.  It was interesting to hear everyone's opinions, especially Guy and Roi's perspectives as Israelis (and even more so because they had just recently served in the army), and to hear Jessica's perspective from an economic view. 

 

Since then, Israel has gone into Gaza, and after being condemned by the US and the UN Security Council, they went out, under the assurance from Hamas that rockets would stop.  While for a while they stopped shooting at Ashkelon, rockets continued to be fired into Sderot, and last night, they started again in Ashkelon.

Anyway, on to happier things.  That Friday, since we weren't going anywhere for the weekend, I finally got to sleep in which was very nice.  After that, Jordana, Amanda, and I went to the Shuk to get produce and wine and dessert for our shabbos dinner.  It was lots of fun as always, and it's amazing how good the produce is for so cheap!  I got a bunch of vegetables to make salad as my portion of the potluck dinner we were having later, and they were really really good and really cheap, which was nice.  Probably the highlight of that trip to the Shuk though was the really cool cab driver we had on the way back to the Student Village.  We were driving and I saw a really cool looking building, and I asked if he knew what it was.  He started going into this whole historical discussion of all the buildings in the area, who used to own them, which ones were Russian Christian Monasteries, etc.  It was really interesting, and we all agreed after that he was way too knowledgeable to be driving a cab.  It was really cool though, and a very enjoyable ride.

Dinner on Friday was a lot of fun!  Both Guy and Roi were also staying for the weekend, which is rare because apparently Israelis go home every weekend.  We had a potluck dinner in our apartment, with me, Amanda, Jordana, Guy, Roi, and a bunch of Guy and Roi's friends.  It was a LOT of fun, and it was cool that we got to sit around and listen to everyone speaking Hebrew.  Often when a few Israelis are over they will speak English for our benefit, but when there were a dozen Israelis and three Americans, they obviously were going to speak mostly in Hebrew.  After dinner, a few of the guys took out guitars and had a little jam session, which was also really fun.

Saturday was a nice relaxing day.  Amanda and I had considering walking pretty far to go see some sights on the other side of Jerusalem, but in the end decided that it was better that we relax.  It was supposedly beautiful outside, as it had been for the day or two before, so we were planning on going to lay out and read outside in the Student Village.  Well, by the time we went out, it was pretty cold and windy, so we ended up just reading and hanging out inside until the evening.  After Shabbos was over, we went out to dinner at Luigis (again, the amazing Italian restaurant downtown) and then went out for a little while before heading home.

Sunday was my first day spent in the library, which was not so fun.  Classes here have readers instead of books, which are basically coursepacks composed of photocopied articles.  Well, for some reason, one of my readers didn't actually include the reading for the first week of class in it, so we had to go to the library to take the books out there.  After the library (during which I greatly missed my GW library group) I had class in the evening, and then I quiet night at home. 

Sunday was also when I finally had my class schedule totally figured out, so I guess it's time I discuss my classes a little bit.  I have Hebrew for 6 hours a week, for an hour and a half in the mornings Monday-Thursday.  We have two different teachers, and while they are in some ways better than my Ulpan teachers, they have their faults too.  We had our first quiz earlier this week, and as my roommate who had my teacher during Ulpan had warned me, the quiz didn't really test what she claimed it was going to test.  We had been given a list of verbs in a certain form to learn their meaning and everything, and then she threw in a LOT of words that weren't on the list, which was weird since she had told us to learn that list.  It is nice to only have an hour and a half day of Hebrew class though, rather than the five hours we had during Ulpan.

My first honors class is the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which is called "The Middle East: Rapprochement and Coexistence."  It's a really interesting class, taught by Dr. Meron Medzini, who apparently has been teaching here since when my friend Amanda's mom was abroad at Hebrew U.  Every so often in class he'll throw in random statements explaining what it was like when he was there for EVERYTHING, except that he won't directly come out and say why.  For example, yesterday in class he was talking about the 1977 election, and how he was in line for the polls behind his neighbor, current Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who his daughter used to babysit for.  Another day he was talking about a hostage situation by the PLO in which over two dozen students were killed, and then will randomly say "I've never seen so much blood in my life."  Amanda and I look at each other and just wonder "HOW WAS HE THERE TOO??"  It's crazy!  So last night I finally found a bio of him, in which we found out that after working for a few years in the Israeli Embassy in DC, he served as the Head of the Government Press Office under Israeli Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin.  That helped explain a lot how he was everywhere - obviously Head of the Government Press Office would have to be everywhere.  Anyway, the class is really interesting, and I'm enjoying it.

My other honors class is on Modern Iran.  It's three hours on Wednesday nights, which makes it kind of difficult to concentrate.  Luckily though, Amanda and my roommate Jessica are both in the class, so between the three of us, I'm pretty sure there is someone paying attention at all points, so we should be ok later on.  What I can pay attention to is interesting, and I'm looking forward to getting to more current times like the Iranian Revolution (right now we are in the 1500s which can be a little dull at times).

The Honors program also requires us to go to a 1 credit honors critical reading group.  It's still kind of unclear what it's actually going to be, but it's definately not my favorite time of the week.

My last class is Israeli Legal System, which is interesting in theory and the readings are interesting, but the class moves at a pretty slow pace.  He tends to repeat himself a lot and go off track, but we do go over current events a decent amount which is kind of cool.

Anyway, Monday was the start of week two of classes.  It's also my earliest day besides Thursday, so I'm done at 2:30 which was nice.  After class I came home and rested until it was time to go back to campus to meet with my Chevruta at Hillel.  We had decided to try to actually go there this week since we had been meeting at my apartment mostly.  But when I was about to leave, my roommate Jessica had come back, and she was going to go straight from class to Hillel, but decided to come home instead because there had been a big protest outside the gate to campus earlier that day and there were still a lot of police cars.  Apparently the Israeli students had taken position on one side of the street while the Palestinians were on the other side.  Both Courtney and Jessica said it was really scary, where Guy came in to the apartment jokingly shouting things like "war!" which definately freaked us Americans out.  I'm pretty sure the protest was because that was the day that the Israeli army withdrew from Gaza after retaliating for a few days from the attacks on Sderot and Ashkelon.  Anyway, it was pretty scary to think about, and I'm glad I didn't go (though I did see pictures from my roommates).  So, I ended up meeting with my Chevruta here, which is always fun.

I don't have class until 10:30 on Tuesday, but I woke up early to go into the Jerusalem MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) office.  I interned for them in DC last semester, and I'm able to intern for the office here too which is a great way to make a little extra travel spending money.  So I went into their office to meet the President, and I'm actually really excited about it.  Because their office is downtown and I don't take busses, getting into their office every time I have 4 hours between classes isn't financially logical, so I'm doing most of my work from home and then going in about once a week.  What I'm working on right now is going through this whole list of journal articles related to the Middle East from various publications and summarizing them so that the President can read the summaries and doesn't have to spend hours reading through hundreds of pages of journal articles.  He also took me down to where they do the tv monitoring and translating of the clips, which was really cool to see because that's one of the major things that MEMRI does.  He told me that I'm going to help them with the translations, which I'm really excited about.  Basically, all the translators are Israelis who know English, but because they aren't native speakers they don't really know about the "flow" of the language, so I'm going to be helping to make sure that the translations work well.

After the meeting with MEMRI, I went to class, then went back to the shuk with Courtney and Jessica, and then had another class.  Overall the rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but I was really excited about the internship so it put me in a good mood.

Wednesday was a pretty long day of classes, but we had a fun night because we had a party in our apartment.  Basically between mine, Jessica, and Courtney's friends from the International School and Guy and Roi's Israeli friends, we constantly are having people over, so we figured it was about time we had an actual party.  It was a LOT of fun, and there were a ton of people there, many of whom have been here before but a lot of whom I didn't know too.  It was really cool, and it ended up being more Israelis than Americans (and more guys than girls) because a lot of Guy and Roi's friends came.  It was funny because I guess when we asked them about having the party Guy had misunderstood and thought we only wanted a small gathering of like 10 people, and we had been making fun of him because there are usually close to 10 people here anyway.  But there ended up being a lot more than that, obviously, and Guy and Roi both had a great time.  He's now asking us when we are going to have another party, so it's definitely going to have to happen again.

Thursday after Hebrew class, Jessica, Amanda, and I took a bus to Tiberias for the weekend.  Tiberias is up north, near the Golan Heights, along the Kinneret, or Sea of Gallillea.

After  we arrived, we dropped our stuff off that the Hostel, which had a gorgeous view of the Kinneret, and then rushed over to Pagoda, the best Chinese restaurant ever.  I went there with my dad four years ago, and still remembered it.  Plus, it was in both Jessica and Amanda's guide book, and Amanda's guidebook has kind of become the source for all things good.  Dinner was amazing!  We got rice, pad thai, sesame chicken, and beef with cashews and vegetables, and tea.  Everything was so yummy - just as I had remembered.  Also, it was really late, so we were really hungry, and therefore enjoyed the food that much more.  After dinner, we went for a walk, and then to dessert at a restaurant along Tiberias' Pedestrian walkway.

Jessica, Amanda, and I at Pagoda

Dinner would have been perfect, except that we found out some pretty terrible news at the beginning of dinner.  For those of you not up on world news, there was a shooting at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem called Merkaz HaRav Kook.  A Palestinian from East Jerusalem came in and shot hundreds of bullets into the main study room, killing 8 and injuring others.  The terrorist was later killed by an Israeli soldier who was living in the area, and it was later confirmed that there was no other accomplice on the loose.  We didn't get all the details very clearly at first, as it was still going on, but it was really scary.  We all immediately took out our phones and called our parents to make sure they knew were were okay, and far away from Jerusalem.  It was really scary because it was the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel in 2 years, and the first attack in Jerusalem in 4 years.  The first month or so that we were here, it was pretty easy to forget that there is conflict here, but between the rockets in Sderot and Ashkelon, and now this, we've begun to worry a bit, and realize what it's like to be in Israel in times like this.  Hopefully nothing else happens, and peace will come soon.  I later was told that the Yeshiva was very much connected with the settlement movement and religious Zionism that has been fighting to keep Israel as it is supposed to be according to the Biblical borders.  Because of this, there has been a lot of conflict between the people of the Yeshiva and the government, because the Yeshiva is telling the government not to come to the Yeshiva and the funerals of those killed because they feel as though they are fighting the battle to keep Israel together, and the government is willing to give land away.  I definitely understand both sides of the issue, but it still seems sad that there is conflict at a time like this among the Israelis, and they can't just all join together in times of tragedy.   I also later found out that it was the Yeshiva that my cousin Sarah's husband studies at, but luckily he wasn't there.

Anyway, Friday was a brand new day, and it was REALLY hot outside (in the mid-80s!).  On our way to being touristy, we stopped in some shops on the streets downtown, and I got my first pair of Naot sandals! (They are like Israeli Birkenstocks that mold to your feet, and they are really comfortable!)  After shopping around a bit, we went to Maimonidies' tomb, which was really cool, especially because his Yarzheit (Hebrew anniversary of his death) is the same as my Papa's.  There are also a few other graves in the area, like Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai, who snuck out of Jerusalem when it was under siege by hiding in a coffin.  After that, we had lunch along the Pedestrian Walkway, then ice cream along the water.  Then we went to Hamat Tiberias, which is the location of natural hot springs (which weren't as impressive as we had hoped) and the ruins from a 3rd-5th century synagogue.  The synagogue was really cool, especially the mosaic floors.  They were gorgeous, and covered in various Jewish and pagan symbols.  It was interesting that there were pagan symbols, and it was explained that it was because Judaism was not threatened by Paganism at the time, so they felt it was ok to incorporate Pagan symbols into the synagogue artwork.

The view from our hostel of the Kinneret

The view from our hostel on the other side

Maimonidies tomb complex

The tomb of Yochanan Ben Zakai

Maimonidies Tomb

The Kinneret/Sea of Gallilee

The Kinneret/Sea of Gallilee

Amanda, Jessica, and I in front of the Kinneret

Mosaic on the floor of the Synagogue at Hamat Tiberias

Another part of the mosaic on the floor of the Synagogue at Hamat Tiberias

After that, we went back to the hostel to pick up our stuff, and then met up with Amanda's family friend who we were staying with for Shabbat.  The parents of the family had gone to college with her parents before they moved to Israel, and they have 6 kids of varying ages, only 3 of them were home for the weekend.  The father, Yossi, drove us up to the Moshav where they live, about 15 minutes outside of Tiberias.  We drove through the Swiss Forest, which is a forest on a hill that had an absolutely gorgeous view of the Kinneret.  I was really tired, but forced myself to stay awake so I wouldn't miss the view.  After arriving at their Moshav, Moshav Hazoreim, we got ready for shabbos, and then basically all passed out and took naps before shabbos.  We thought the hot sun had just warn us out, but I think the long week of classes and actually having to do homework might have had something to do with it as well since we pretty much slept all Saturday afternoon as well.  After dinner, which was really nice because we haven't had home-cooked food really the whole time we've been here (except for what we've made ourselves which isn't the same as what a family has for shabbos dinner), we all went to sleep and slept very well.

The front yard of the house we stayed at in the Moshav

More of the front yard

Birds of Paradise flowers plant in the front yard

The view from the backyard of their house

More view from the backyard

Saturday as I said we got LOTS of sleep!  We had lunch, and then Jessica, Amanda and I went for a walk around the Moshav which was really nice.  After that we had a loooong reading/nap time.  After shabbos, we had a light dinner, and then took the bus back to Jerusalem, which was much more crowded than the way to Tiberias has been followed, and for some reason the heat was on ridiculously high to the point that the side of the bus actually burned my foot when I touched it.  But we came home, watched the Project Runway finale on YouTube (how Christian won I don't know...) and had a nice relaxing evening at home.

Sunday we were going to go the Old City but decided to be more careful and wait because of the attack on Thursday.  So I basically relaxed until class my class at 4:30, then went to hear the former Chief of Staff of Israel speak at a lecture he was giving for the international students.  It was actually a lot more boring than I had anticipated, and was pretty disappointing.

Monday I had class, and then a two hour break during which I did work for my internship in the library.  It was really exciting, because one of the articles I was summarizing had a lot about an article I had read in one of my classes last semester, so it was cool because I felt as though what I am learning in classes at GW is actually worthwhile, which is always a good feeling.  After another class, I had lunch with Rabbi and Leah Fradkin, the Chabad Rabbi from San Diego who are good family friends.  They were in Israel for a few days, so went to this meat grill restaurant that was really good. They also brought a special present from my Nanny - every year for Purim she makes my family a cake in the shape of Haman (the villian from the Purim story), which is a German Jewish tradition that was passed on from my Great-Grandmother.  For the last few years she's been sending them to me at school, but I figured I wouldn't be able to get one here because shipping is really hard.  Well, she sent it with the Fradkins, which made me really happy and excited for Purim. Later that evening, I actually went to the place on campus for Beit Midrash to meet with my chevruta which was cool.

Yesterday and today were both pretty uneventful.  Basically it was just class with some breaks during which I did work.  Nothing too special, except we went to a lecture during my Iran class that was about Islam but didn't talk much about Iran so our teacher was kind of disappointed. 

Anyway, tomorrow after Hebrew I'm going with Courtney, Jessica, and Amanda to Tzfat for the weekend to stay at this mystical hostel.  They are having a special program that weekend, so that should be a good weekend.

Hopefully it won't take me so long to update again!  Love from Israel, and I promise I am staying safe!

<3 Leah