the page between chapter 2 and chapter 3

these letters are becoming harder and harder to write, as the nature of my adventures has turned inwards; there has been less of the go-go-go travelling, and more of a laid-back absorption of the everyday “mundane” (which, by the way, is not a word that exists in israel)…which, needless to say, makes it slightly more difficult to relate to all of you curious readers.

 

but here we go anyway.

 

the thread i last left unsewn had me right after rosh hashana, i believe; after the chag (holiday—yes, my letters are now going to be an introduction to hebrew as well), i escaped jerusalem for a while and stayed at the shemesh family caravan, which i think i have mentioned before, but which i will describe again as being on a jaw-dropping mountaintop surrounded by desert. yossi came up with me for the day, and we helped build the sukka (for those of you as oblivious as i was a mere year ago: sukkot is the festival of booths that comes at harvest-time, and though i won’t get into all the background of the week-long holiday, it’s a time when people build these temporary dwellings outside their homes—there are many guidelines to follow—and eat/sleep in them all week. it’s a really fun chag, they have sukka-decorating parties for the kids (which more than makes up for not having christmas tree decorating), lots of yummy food to partake of (what jewish holiday doesn’t, really??), and an all around good time for everyone). we also babysat the 4 kids that night, a mission whose worst i had prepared myself for, but someone was watching over us because it was the smoothest babysitting i could ever have imagined, and we’re talking 4 wild children here. after my brief but satisfying visit, i came back to jerusalem to pack my bags yet again, gearing up for the 5-day trip our program was taking together for sukkot.

 

 we loaded onto a bus and embarked on a 4 hour journey which brought us up to the golan, a mountainous region in the north; we stayed on a moshav (a settlement) from which we could see the syrian border. it was in the middle of nowhere, and as is somewhat standard for israel’s middle of nowhere, absolutely beautiful. we had our own separate houses (girls together, boys together, and families together)—so thank God in high heaven that i did not have to eat, sleep, AND breathe children screaming and freaking out for 5 days straight. my nights were children free. the highlight of the place was a shady “park” with eucalyptus trees, tall and strong and beautiful things that they are; it overlooked a lake-pond that was frequented by the moshav’s pack of docile cows, and beyond that, desert again, and mountains, and syria in the distance. a sidenote about eucalyptus trees: back in one of the wars/conflicts (forgive me, my political detail is fuzzy at best—it just goes in one ear and out the other, and i’m trying, i really am), this man (again, lost the name in the blurry depths of my mind—i’d know it if i heard it), i think he was an israeli spy, but either way he was on israel’s side, but somehow had benign contact with the syrian forces, and they were building bunkers and bases all around and he casually told them, “oh, you know, you should plant eucalyptus trees, they grow real fast and they provide lots of shade”—so the brilliant syrians planted them on every base and bunker, literally turning themselves into dead give-aways. i think the syrians eventually caught on, and ended up capturing and torturing our hero to death…there are a bunch of streets named after him. tragic, really, but his name lives on (for those not too dense to remember it) in the eucalyptus trees.  

 

so. we went up to tzfat for a day-tiyul (trip), and it was so good to be back there—i really do love that place. i ditched the group and went to wander down trails i had already broken for myself; they brought me to a little cafe/artisan store run by a couple who are weavers; i had met their son the last time, and he is my age, and an artist, and we hit it off immediately, so i went back to see if he was still hanging around. i ended up sitting with him while he smoked cigarette after cigarette; i think one of my favorite things about travelling is meeting people with whom you share absolutely nothing with in terms of background and culture, and yet you can sit down with them and launch into a diatribe about the various levels of reality, and what is God, and what are we doing here, and on and on ad infinitum, ad nauseum. this person embodies that precious gem of random connection, and after an hour of probing the depths of metaphysical inquiry, we made a date for 6 weeks from now, when i plan to return to tzfat, and where we will pick up where we left off. oh, wonder of wonders.

 

alright, so, that said, we returned to J-town, where i unpacked and repacked, and hopped on a bus the next morning to tel aviv (ok, i have to revise what i claimed in the intro—i am moving around a lot. just doesn’t feel like it i guess). i had been to the central bus station (tachana merkazit) before, and i must have lucked out on a quiet day, because this was NOT the same place. to sum it up in one word: BALAGAN (complete and utter chaos). in israel, you have to wait in line for everything, however people’s concept of a “line” really translates into everyone mashing together in a moshpit of pushing and shoving to get to the front. *sigh* so after going through that to get my ticket, i had to go through it again to get ON the bus. it’s a good thing my dad taught me how to be a pushy european (i remember an incident in an airport once, where he was dafka—actually and specifically—training me on this very valuable technique), because i had to suck up my courtesy and wrestle an old lady to get onto the bus. seriously. she was out for blood. it’s the heat here, i’m convinced. actually if you ever want to get a taste of the crazies in israel, the buses are the best place for it (and ok i don’t mean the suicide-bomber crazies, i’m talking the people who think that a split-second of eye contact means they can scream at you from across the bus to tell you their mother is stupid. this happened to me. i am not kidding. i take everything and everyone here with a giant grain of salt). so i made it to tel aviv relatively unscathed (albeit somewhat traumatized), and am now in the safe and warm care of my cousins. yoni has yet to start school (they have weird schedules here), so it’s just my luck that he spends his days bumming around, and is more than happy to have me join him in said bumming. we went to the beach, we ate yummy thai food, we talked about everything and nothing; all the good things, really. tamar is busier, she has rehearsals all week for a play she is putting on, but these people never sleep because she comes home from a long day of work and manages to stay up almost all night, chatting and hanging out like it’s vacation or something. yossi and his sister, shiri (who i love, and with whom i’ve gone on dates in jerusalem where we sit and talk talk talk for hours on end), both came to visit, and we hung out on the beach smoking nargileh (in the same spot i came with the girls over a month ago). yos bailed early to go back to jerusalem, serious yeshiva boy that he is, and the rest of us ended up on tamar’s roof (which is equipped with outdoor speakers, comfy couches, a bar area, and the ever-important hammock)…by 3am, shiri decided to stay the night. that’s what happens here. it’s not that you get sucked in, it’s just that despite the heat and the balagan and everything else, you can’t help but love it.

 

so this is where i am at right now. shiri has been patiently waiting for me to wrap up so that we can hit the street and see what shopping we can indulge in—my grandmother just called me yesterday to inform me that she deposited some money into my account, and “not to make economy”; so, cha-ching, thank you! she twisted my arm. i am here until sunday, and then i will zip back to jerusalem, unpack, and re-pack AGAIN, this time my whole life, because i am moving into a new place (grudgingly—i love my apartment, and my roomies…i don’t want to leave it!)—but such is life, i am committed to this new program, so i have to be there. hence the title of this email: i am really in the pause of breath between the last chapter, and a new one. i am really loving every step of the way.

 

so one last funny story i wanted to relate to you before i leave you on your merry way: there are fruit trees growing everywhere here, in people’s backyards, on the streets, wherever. anyway, this year is called “shmittah” year, which is sort of like shabbat for the land; it is a whole complicated issue, but basically you are not allowed to profit from and work the land, because it is at rest, and the fruits that grow are everyone’s. this doesn’t mean you can sneak into someone’s field and pilfer their crops, but if you see a fruit that you would like to consume on your way, you are permitted to it, regardless if it is on someone’s front lawn. so i have mapped out all the fruit trees on my route to class (so far i have found lemons, pomegranates, and grapes), but the one that really caught my eye was a juicy-looking sabra. what is a sabra, you ask? it is an orangey-reddishy-pink thing, a bit bigger than a lemon, but what makes it so special is that it grows on a scary-looking cactus. now my experience with cactii has taught me to watch out for the prickly bits that stick out all over the green (this experience comes direct, in large part, from the misadventures of wiley coyote)—but nothing in my cognitive thought process knew to apply the same principle to the succulently enticing fruit of the beast. so here i am, making a very concerted effort not to touch the big green spikes in my attempt to pluck the sabra from the highest “leaf”, and just as i wrap my hand around the prize, it dawns on me that the sudden fire in my fingers is an indication that i’m not as bright or stealthy as i thought. from far, the sabra looks smooth, with dark dots across the surface. upon closer inspection (why do i always have to learn the hard way??), these dots are little nests of tiny cactus splinters, that upon contact lodge themselves into your skin with one-way grit, which makes pulling them out an excruciatingly annoying task. it took me the whole walk home, and then some, to rid my hand of them—and then i itched for an hour afterwards. all that for a spoonful of juicyness on the inside, which, quite frankly, was damn worth it. so what is the point of my story? ah yes. all in all, it is interesting to note that the common name for a native israeli is…sabra.

while you think about that one, i am off to rejoin my beloved, pushy, chain-smoking sabras on the streets of tel aviv for another day of fun in the sun.