Campus Negev!

We got back last week from a week-long trip to the Negev, which is the desert in southern Israel. It takes up about 70% of the land in Israel, but there are very few people who live there because it is a desert and there is very little civilization set up there. The trip was AWESOME-I learned a lot and had so much fun with the people I was with. Some highlights:

1. We spent a day learning about Bedouins. First, we went to "Ohel HaShalom," the tent of peace, and spoke to Bedouins who told us about Bedouins who go to the army. It is usually looked down upon in their culture to join the army, but there is an organization that helps them in the army if they decide to go. We also learned there about different specifics in their culture, such as the whole idea of hospitality (it is a rule that they must prepare tea or coffee for each guest they have), and how they live together in tribes with one man who is responsible for telling them what they can or cannot do. We visited about four Bedouin homes during the week, and we heard a different point of view from all of them, which was also really cool.

2. We learned a lot about what people who live in the Negev think about the Zionist idea of having people move from the cities to the desert in order to habilitate all the land that Israel has. Most people who live there told us that they moved because they love the sand, the peace and quiet, the security, etc. They have to drive an hour and a half each way to take their children to school, but it is worth it to them because they feel that they have a better quality of life. This is interesting because most people seem to think that habilitating the Negev is a purely Zionist idea, but the people who are putting it into action did not move because of Zionism.

3. We went on an all-day hike in Ein Akev, which was amazing. We did a little solo-hike, and it was great to feel alone in the middle of the huge desert. We also took a break to go swimming in a FREEZING spring before lunch-it was probably the coldest I've ever been in my life! You couldn't breathe as soon as you got in, and within a minute I could not feel my toes. Picture below :)


This weekend is "Shabbat Ptucha," meaning that many of our Israeli recruitees are coming to spend Shabbat with us, to see if they like the mechina and can see themselves spending next year here. Everyone is really excited about it, and we are working hard to put it all together!

A few hours after the recruitees leave, we are leaving for Jerusalem, where we will spend the week doing archeological digging and touring around the city. I'm very excited!

Getting into the water!



After a few minutes...




Our whole group at Mitzpeh Ramon!



Cats

On Wednesday, I was "toranit," meaning I cleaned the whole day. Usually, being "toran" is a non-desirable job in the first place, because there are lots of gross dishes and you get pretty tired. But I am pretty sure that nobody is going to be able to fight with me for the rest of the year about who got the worst day to be "toran." I definititely did.

I woke up at 6:30 to start preparing breakfast and the boy who was "toran" with me hadn't woken up yet, so I just started cutting up the salad. I didn't have a watch/the time with me, so I just assumed he would come  at like 6:45 or something, but at 7:15 (which is when breakfast starts), he came running in and we quickly set up the rest of breakfast. That wasn't too bad.

Then I walk out and see two people sweeping up a few broken plates in the corner of the cafeteria. I thought it was weird because I hadn't broken any plates and I hadn't even noticed that there were shards when I walked in that morning. Then somebody points out to me a broken window that we have with blood all over. Our eyes went down a little, and we see bloody paw prints all over the wall, and then all over the floor, and then on the tables, and then on the serving utensils that were left out during the night, and then on the garbage cans. It was disgusting to say the least. It turned out that a cat had gotten in during the night, had broken the plates, freaked out and tried to run around the whole room and escape through the broken window. Now it is stuck in the ceiling and we cannot get it out. Ew.

We moved breakfast outside and spent the morning moving everything in the cafeteria outside and cleaning everything ver very well with some kind of special toilet cleaner. We ended up having lunch outside because it was a beautiful day and the tables and chairs were already outside!

So that was my horror story of the week.

Tomorrow, we are leaving for the rest of Campus Negev, our trip in the southern desert of Israel. We already had a day on Thursday, in which we met with many Bedhoins.

Merry Christmas, and Shabbat Shalom!

Back in Israel!

It's Thursday now, and I got back on Tuesday from the US, surprisingly with very little jet lag. The trip home was very nice-I spent lots of time with my family, saw some friends (although I was upset that so many people were still at college), and I even went to my high school a few times (I know, ew).

It was great to come back to the mechina and see everybody! We missed each other a lot! Basically, during every single break we've had since I've been back, I've had a meeting with the trip committee to plan our trip to the Negev next week. It looks like it's going to be an AWESOME trip! I am in charge of one day with another person, and I still have to call a few places, but this is what it looks like may happen on our day:

1. We will visit a prison where they put Darfur refugees who have illegally immigrated to Israel (a controversial issue).
2. We'll visit a community of people who have moved to the Negev (the middle of the desert) from big cities like Tel Aviv and have made this decision with the intention of taking a stance against big-city living.
3. We'll go to some sand dunes!!!!
4. We'll go to another city where our Rosh Mechina, Zevik, will lecture. I need to look up more about this city-I'm not exactly sure about it yet.
5. At night, we are sleeping at Mechinat HaNegev, another mechina! It's always fun to meet people from other mechinot and compare (ours is obviously the best though).

So this should be pretty exciting! Other than that, we are starting work on giyusim (recruitment) for other Americans who may be interested in doing this program next year!

One thing I wanted to mention that happened before my trip to the States: I had my Shuir Chanich-my lesson that I gave by myself ALL IN HEBREW for a little over an hour. My subject was anti-Semitism on college campuses in the United States, and I started by taking a Palestinian side and telling them all about how Israel is a terrible place. After that, I took questions-they tried to defend Israel, and I responded to their defenses as a Palestinian. One person believed that I actually thought this way, which was pretty funny, but even though most people knew I wasn't being serious, they played along with it really well, and we had a good debate. After that, I showed a 6-minute clip about things that happen on college campuses with regards to Israel, and then I gave statistics and took questions. It was a successful shiur, and I'm proud of myself for doing it!

Meeting with Charedim

On Thursday night, we went to Jerusalem to spend the night with Charedim, really really orthodox Jews. The meeting was organized by an organization that tries to get religious and secular Jews to talk and try to understand each other. I think this is really important because I think that both groups have stereotypes about each other, and although they may never agree, it is important for them to at least understand in order for the Jews in Israel to stay united.

Anyway, I was put in a group with my friend from the mechina (Racheli) and two Charedi women, one of whom joined later. We had discussions about two topics in particular: the army and women. The Charedi community has a reputation for not going to the army because they think it is more important to learn Torah all day. The woman explained to me that the army does things that she does not agree with that makes it unreasonable to ask her and her family to serve. For example, in ceremonies for the army, everyone sings "Hatikva" (the Israeli national anthem) and stands up. In her opinion, this is treating the "Hatikva" as if it is a holy prayer, which it isn't for her. She said a lot of other things, including that there is no benefit for men to exercise all day, and that the Charedi community is doing just as good of a job protecting Israel as the army because they are praying to God for it. She used Hanukkah as an example; in the story of Hanukkah, the Jews defeated the Greeks even though the Jews' army was much weaker and smaller. She says the Jews must have prayed and that's why they won. I didn't agree with her on this issue, but it was interesting to hear from her what she had to say. I could tell that she felt bad saying all this stuff; she was always stopping to make sure that we were not about to blow up.

I felt a little more connected to the next issue we talked about: women. She explained to me how men and women are two completely different beings and as such have completely different roles in life. A man's role in life is to study Torah, and a woman's role in life is modesty. She should protect over herself as something so valuable that nobody can see it other than her husband. I kind of understand this, but it still bothers me how women are forced into a little corner of the synagogue where they can't even see or hear anything, and how if there is a party with singing and dancing, they are supposed to just sit and do nothing, since men are not allowed to hear their voice or see them dance. The woman I talked to was not bothered by this at all-she said she was protecting over herself.

Then, I brought up the issue of women in different movements of Judaism who wear kippot, t'filin, and talit. She said that this was forbidden by the Torah by the law that says that men cannot wear women's clothes and vice versa. I told her that this was the way that many women find a real connection with God, and she said that women need to find their connection in other ways, such as lighting candles on Shabbat. I talked about how some movements try to modify Judaism a little bit to make it more relate-able to people and times now, to which she answered that the Torah was written to fit all times and can never be changed based on what people think. She said that people cannot decide what God wants of them because God has written it all clearly in the Torah. I had a little issue with this, because many Jewish laws are not taken exactly from the Torah, but from the "mishna" and "gmara," which are two interpretations of the Torah written by rabbis a long time ago. Anyway, this conversation went on for a long time...I can see where she's coming from with the whole modesty thing, but I still disagree with her on a general level. It was very interesting to hear.

By the way, I am writing this in on my laptop on my bed in Chicago! I came home yesterday for Hanukkah!

Pictures from the Judean Desert!

חולניקים!! Americans! Roy, Ari, Yoella, Brad, me!, Roy, Jonathan

A mountain that we climbed in the middle! I don't know how much you can see in this picture, but it was realllllly steep!

Me and ma pack

Doesn't it look like The Lion King? At some points there were actually the trees that they have in The Lion King!

נודד מדבר יהודה!! (Our trip in the Judean Desert!)

I just got back from a 3-day backpacking trip in Midbar Yehuda, the Judean Desert, which is in the Jerusalem-ish area, next to Massada and the Dead Sea. I was the logistican for the trip (along with Yoella, another American here), which basically means that we were in charge of all the food and equipment for the trip. It also means that this post may include many descriptions of the food we ate, since that was one of my main time-consumers during the trip.

We started on Sunday morning; we left the mechina at 7:30, got to Midbar Yehuda by 9:30, and started hiking! It was a medium-level day, with some uphill, some downhill, and everything in between. We had an optional "summit" in the beginning of the day, where about half of us left our bags at the bottom of a hill and ran up. It was very steep, but the view was totally worth it. I have many pictures; I'll probably put them up later. Anyway, we got to camp by 4 pm, did some stretching, and then Yoella and I (along with the "toranim"-basically food-helpers) started making dinner. It was stir-fry. We were dissapointed because they didn't give us all the ingredients we asked for, but it ended up still being great! It was kind of funny because we spent all the time preparing dinner complaining about how there was no soy sauce and how we didn't have enough spices to make the stir-fry how we wanted, and then when we were cleaning up, we found the soy sauce. Oh well.

Monday was harder. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to start making breakfast for everyone because we had decided that we would do something nice and make pancakes, even though they take longer. It was pretty much a huge fail. The person that made the pancake mix put way too much water in it, and that combined with the fact that we had no spatula and were cooking on a small hill basically made it impossible to make regular pancakes. Therefore, I had the great idea of making scrambled pancakes. So we poured a lot of the mix in and started scrambling it. It did not turn out the way we planned at all-the oil mixed with the pancakes and it turned into a disgusting mush that didn't cook at all. At this point, it was already 5:20, and everyone else was up and ready for breakfast. There were about 20 people crowding around us, watching us make the pancakes, and screaming unhelpful advice, criticism, and questions. An example of a question I got probably three times: Person: "Why do the pancakes look disgusting?" Me: "Because the mix is too watery." Person: "Why is the mix too watery?" Me: "Because someone put too much water in the mix." Yeah, so I probably wasted about 5 minutes of my life on that pointless conversation. After we were finished with that whole disaster and we had finished washing the dishes, we only had 5 minutes left before we had to leave, and I hadn't even stuffed my sleeping bag, let alone changed into my hiking clothes, brushed my teeth, etc. So I was pretty much a mess when we left that morning.

The whole day had a very stressful undertone for everyone. We were rushing to get where we needed to go, and our breaks were all very short, with the boys always counting down the last 30 seconds, as if they were trying to find the way to stress everyone out the most they possibly could. There was a huge gap between the first and last people; at least 20 minutes I would say. Near the end of the day, we had a discussion about this gap, and I think that most people took it to heart and tried to help the people in the back as opposed to rushing in front. Also, in our "sicum yom" (day conclusion? basically a discussion we have every night about how the day went), many people voiced their opinions that the day was not fun for them and very hard and they felt that people did not help them a lot. Therefore, "Chulyat Tiyulim" (my committee that helps plan the trips) decided that we would shorten Tuesday and make more breaks and "hadrachot" (short lessons about where we are). For dinner on Monday we had pasta with tomato sauce, hot dogs, and a delicious salad, if anyone was wondering.

Tuesday was really fun! We walked pretty slowly and saw amazing views the entire time; it really looked like a scene from The Lion King. I played many word games, such as Ghost, Contact (family members reading this: it's that complicated game that we played one time in a car ride somewhere), and 20 questions. The hardest 20 questions things that I guessed were the trident in The Little Mermaid and a check mark on a sheet of paper. Pretty intense.

A question to think about: What is the best way to get your plate clean without wasting too much water? In my opinion, you should lick it. This hasn't caught on yet to anybody else, but I'm pretty sure people will start to follow my example at some point. Some people prefer to rub dirt into the plate to get the oil out and then either just bang it all out or use a little bit of water to clean the dirt out. Others just wash it out with water. All three work, but I invite you to think: What is the best way to get your plate clean?

Sorry this is so long.

"Madasim" (Exercise classes) and the Army

So we have exercise classes here usually 3 times a week, which is good because we eat SO MUCH and then sit in class all day, so without these classes we would gain a lot more weight than we are already gaining. Which I guess would be not-so-great in a program that is preparing people for the army.

Anyway, a few interesting things about these classes. A few weeks ago, we had a class where we had to run around in zig-zags (we don't have any exercise facilities, so we have to be creative) and then our counselor would yell things and we had to stop and do them. It started with pretending to shoot a basketball, hit a tennis ball, do a kickboxing kick, and things like that. It moved on to doing push-ups, sit-ups, etc. Finally, we had to crouch and pretend to shoot a gun, and then crawl on the floor and shoot a gun, and then hide behind a bush and shoot a gun. I just remember thinking to myself-if somebody who didn't live here had a movie of us doing this, they would think it was the weirdest and most terrible thing ever. It's really something that could be used against Israel-the whole idea that society thinks about the army so much. There are soldiers everywhere you go in Israel-it's a normal occurence to see them everywhere (very unlike how it is in America).

Today we had a really hard class, composed of basically sprinting for 40 minutes. Another thing that would never have happened in my gym class at home (we wouldn't have done sprinting anyway, but in case we did...)-people started to get really tired and their heads and chests were hurting, and our counselor was just like, "don't worry, a little headache is fine, don't drink any water, work through it, you can all do it!" It just seems like everyone is usually obssessed with hydration (which is a good thing) and it was weird to feel like they already think of us as people who can deal with the pain and work through it, just like these Israelis are going to have to do in the army.