Last Week (Part II)

I have some free time to write now that I sprained my ankle. At least I hope it is only sprained.

I left off when I met the 3 kids (Daniel, the Austrailian; Brad, the UPenn kid; and Elana, Daniel's friend) in front of the Jaffa Gate, along with my friend Matt Cons. We walked from the Old City to "Machane Yehuda" (also known as "the Shuk", or market), which is a huge, sprawling market with fresh vegtables, fish, baked goods, sweets, clothing....you name it. It is a series of kiosks situated on two sides of a walkway, with many parallel walkways, and lots of twists and turns. It is always crowded with people from every walk of Jerusalem life: Chasidic Jews, Fransican Monks, Right-Wing Settler Jews, tourists....everyone yelling, shoving, haggling over anything and everything. Since the market is near the Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem, most of the stuff is kosher. Including the Indian Restraunt ("Chadra") that is hidden in a tiny nook in the middle of the market.

This place was amazing. It is run by about 5 people who are all the same (Israelis who look like they spent at least 3 years in India on serious drugs---complete with dreadlocks and spaced-out gazes), and the food is all vegetarian, and cooked from things that they buy in the market that surrounds the restaurant. Basically, for lunch we payed 25 shekels ($5.25), and we got a huge tray of sauses, naan bread, vegetable curries.....and it was all-you-can-eat, so if you finish the tray, they fill it back up.

The best part of it is, they set up the tables outside the little hole in the wall they call the restaurant, and so we get to "people watch" around the Shuk while enjoying our (amazing) Indian food. This place has apparently become a weekly tradition for my friend Daniel, who not only brought the four of us along, but was met up by 5 other Austrailian friends of his who were in Jerusalem (probably a good percentage of the Aussie expatriot community in Israel). The whole experience was hilarious---I could barely understand what these Austrailians were saying, the spaced-out hippie waitress kept messing up our order, crazy Jews were arguing over the funniest things at the different booths around us, and I was (as usual) making a huge mess with all of the food.

Eventually, as most meals end with me, I decided to get a haircut (alright---that's NOT normal, but it really had gotten out of control). The actual inspiration was that the kiosk to the immediate right of the Indian restaurant was a barber. When I was (finally) done with my food, I walked over, and, in the worst Hebrew ever, asked if if could get a trim. The guy gave me a funny look, and then looked around, and---realizing I wasn't a native Hebrew speaker---decided he would pantomime to me that he was CLOSED (note: even though my Hebrew was bad, he could have just said in Hebrew, "No. We are closed." But, as is the normal Israeli attitude toward Americans, he decided he would treat me like a child). Still feeling confident after 3 trays of delicious Indian food, I convinced myself that, if there is one barbershop in this market, there must be at least one more that isn't closing right now.

After about a 3 minute walk, I did, indeed, find an open barbershop. For 35 shekels ($7.30), the guy pretty much shaved my head. It actually looked pretty good, besides the fact that he didn't even wipe all the hair off of my face before he threw me out of his chair for the next customer. Satisfied, I met up with the group once more (which had dwindled down to Daniel and Brad, since everyone else was off to their respective Shabbat destinations), and we headed for the Central Bus Station, where Daniel was taking me to some family's house for Shabbat, and Brad was catching a ride back to the Yeshiva.

Let me remind you of what was going on in Gaza, as well as the fact that the Rabbi at our Yeshiva had spent 12 minutes lecturing us the day before about NOT TAKING RIDES WITH PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW. Now, to an American, this seems logical: hitchhiking is just plain stupid in America, land of crazies and lord-knows what else. But to an Australian Oleh, who had spent the last year in Israel, you might as well have told him to stop breathing---that is HOW he travels.

That said, I convinced him that we should take the bus to Elkanah, our destination for the Sabbath. After a lot of back and forth, he finally relented, and we got the bus that I thought would take us there. After making my ritual call home (as I do every Friday), I quickly fell asleep. About 20 minutes later, Danial wakes me up and tells me this is our stop. We get off....at a highway junction in the middle of nowhere. I ask him, "Where is their house?" half joking, half wondering how long I am going to need to shlep the huge backpack I am carrying. He says (with his Aussie twang), "Oh, you know! We-ah jus walkin' over to theh tremping (Isreali word for hitchhike) spot." I politely reminded him of my desire to NOT "tremp", and his response was, "Oh. No worries. The dividin' fence cuts the highway off a few miles down, so no A-rabs can get here anyway."

I should first of all note that I was told Elkanah (our destination) was a "suburb of Petach Tikvah" (which is a suburb of Tel Aviv). Though this was not a lie, I had no idea of tiny the distance from the West Bank to Tel Aviv was, and, although on a clear day you can see the Mediterranean from the hilltops of Elkanah, it is squarely behind the "Green Line," though (thankfully) on the "right" side of the new security fence.

Anyway, completely furious at this kid for dragging me into some awful situcation, we very quickly got a ride from a very polite Israeli couple going to Elkana for Shabbat as well, bought some flowers at the point we were dropped off in front of the city (where we became very impressed at ourselves for figuring out that if we bought two bunches of the monochromatic flower bunches, we could mix them up to make a much nicer array of flowers. We chose red and yellow, and very quickly pointed this out to the family when we arrived at their house, ie that we had mixed them up ourselves...).

Still a bit mad at this kid, we showed up at the house (the name on the door said "Ashoel's" in Hebrew, but I later found out it was pronouned with Yeminite pronunciation, which sounded something like "Ashwa'al's"). The family was an amazingly welcoming group of Yemini Jews, of the more rightwing, religious bent. Daniel knew the family because the oldest daughter, Shimrit, had done her Israeli Civil Service as a "messenger" for Israel in Austrailia, where she had helped set up Zionist Youth groups. She apparently also served some time in Atlanta, but he English was a very silly mix of Australian and Israeli accents. It actually sounded a little like the way Indian people sound when they are from India and talk with a (sort of) English accent. Her younger sister, Sharon (pronouned like the Prime Minister, not the American way), had done her time in Toronto, so she, too, knew English (sort of). The rest of the family included their father, mother, the oldest (and only) brother, who was married, and two younter sisters, ALL of whom live in the same house, and NONE of whom spoke more than two words of English.

Which should have been alright, except understanding Hebrew, and understanding the way that native Israelis speak in their house are completely different things. So basically Danial, Shimrit, and Sharon acted as translators for bulk of the weekend. Which was absolutely amazing. This family was a very stereotypical (at least in my mind) Israeli family, complete with hilarious political arguments over the dinner and lunch table that I understood about 1/10th of. I could go on....but I will try to just sum up the weekend as best I can.

Friday night dinner lasted until about midnight (note: I was still very, very tired from not sleeping the night before, so....this was a bit difficult). I could go on talking about how amazing this Yemini food was (and the amazing amounts of it), but it would just make all of you so jealous. So I will just refrain.

I was all ready to go to bed, when Shimrit proposed we go for a walk around town (pretty much what all Israelis do on Shabbat), and we make the grueling hike up and down the town's hills. When we were getting back to their house at around 1:15 in the morning, half of the town must have still been outside: the older men and women shuffling around, the younger married couples shmoozing about the latest town gossip, and all of the kids forming little circles at different strategic points, close-to or far-away from the appropriate cliques.

I was woken up at 7 AM for the early minyan (oh sleep!), which I sat zombie-eyed through, and then went back to the house to wait around until lunch was ready to be served. Lunch lasted three hours, was even more delicious than the night before, and included a hilarious episode of the family yelling at each other in frantic Hebrew over the LEVEL of Olmert's (the Israeli Prime Minister) incompetance, as well as complaints regarding the fact that, if Israel were allowed to behave like the US (viz. Iraq), that there would be no Palestinian issue. The best part of the entire thing was when Sharon remarked, "I wish George Bush was our President." At which point I spit out the food that was in my mouth, and Daniel's mouth fell open (in case you didn't realize, Aussies apparently all dislike their own Prime Minister (Howard) almost as much as they hate Bush). With the both of us looking at her, she said, "If Bush were president, we wouldn't listen to what other countries said." I nearly fell over in my chair, and Daniel, laughing, remarked, "That's probably true, but he wouldn't listen to his own people, either."

I got a kick out of this.

Finally, falling into the deepest food-and-sleep-deprived coma of my life, I slept until about 6 PM, was immediately forced to take another walk around the beautiful city. Not only that, but I got a first-hand tour of the "security fence" separating the town of Elkanah with the neighboring Palestinian village. I should note that by "neighboring", I mean that there is one point in the "fence" that they had to resort to using the huge, 25 foot tall concrete barriers, to separate the two towns, because, if they weren't there, you could literally reach out the window of the Israeli house and touch the Palestinian house. This was the REAL barrier, too---not like the puny fence near the family I stayed with in Jerusalem---it had barbed wire on top, a huge ditch on the Palestinian side (to prevent a car from ramming through the fence), and a dirt road on the Israeli side for partrols, along with the huge concrete blocks where necessary. When I asked about the possiblity of tunneling (like in the Gaza incident) they noted that the hills were made out of a very stiff rock, that would be nearly impossible to tunnel through without serious dynamite, which would not be too useful for any type of secrecy.

Anyway, as Shabbat ended, we ate the traditional 3rd Meal (I gained like 40 pounds, by the way), and then Shabbat was over. After a lot of haggling, Shimrit convinced Daniel that we should all go play billiards. Since Daniel and I needed to get back to the Yeshiva that night (since we had classes in the morning), he found a friend who was driving from Jerusalem to Efrat, so that we could stay out a bit later than the usual last bus (midnight). We thought she was taking us to a billiards place in Jerusalem, but, instead, she took us to Tel Aviv. Which was fine. We played some pool, and watched the Brazil vs. France World Cup game (a freaking steal by France, who upset the very, very heavily favored Brazilian team). We took the last bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (and watched an episode of "American Dad", which, along with "The Daily Show", Daniel has developed a taste for).

We got to Jerusalem, ate some pizza, and then wandered around trying to kill time before Daniel's friend was suppossed to meet us. We ran into a friend of Daniel's (some British kid who had broken glasses, no shoes, skraggly hair, and a beard coming off of his chin that must have been about 8 inches long). I forgot his name, but he was wandering around with some other British guy, some Jewish guy from Dallas who was wasted, and a kid from Duke who later revealed that he had sued his father in the state of North Carolina for the right to be Jewish.

I am just going to wrap it up here. Our ride finally came, and we got back to Efrat around 4 in the morning. I need to go to sleep now, too. Anyway, I was suppossed to be going to Ben Gurion International Airport tomorrow morning to welcome my good friend Sam Korb as a new "oleh" (someone becoming a citizen of Israel) to the country, but, because my foot is messed up, it appears that I am going to need to miss out on the fun.

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July, and that the weather is half as good there as it is here.

Best,

Michael