Allison W. Good

Today in Hebrew class our teacher handed out photocopied sheets of headlines from Israeli newspapers, which is always my favorite exercise.  A few of them were about political issues, and we ended up talking about Iran and Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for a good chunk of time, so I was inspired to comment on some recent issues.

Last Thursday my Negotiating Middle East Peace professor notified us of an article in the upcoming issue of the Ha’aretz weekend magazine, an interview with Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor.  Meridor is known as one of the more dovish members of the Knesset, even though he rejoined Likud after his Centre Party, which he co-founded in the late 1990s as a moderate group to challenge Netanyahu on the right and the Labor Party’s Ehud Barak (the current Minister of Defense and past Prime Minister) on the left.

The interview is quite long, so I’ve picked out the good parts.  This first quote really illustrates the different positions and opinions within Likud before Ariel Sharon split from the party to form the center-left Kadima:

“Likud is supposed to be a liberal national movement that is also concerned with equality among individuals, with human rights. I’ll tell you something: In late 2002, then prime minister Ariel Sharon appointed me to prepare a peace plan along with senior aides Dov Weissglas, Amos Gilad and Ephraim Halevy. I sat down with him to understand what he had in mind, and we came to the issue of the Arabs voting. And then he said: ‘Maybe they’ll vote in Amman?’ And I told him: ‘Sure, and you’ll vote in Jamaica.’ He asked: ‘Why Jamaica?’ And I said: ‘Why Amman? They live here. Voting is not a ceremonial thing. A person is entitled to shape the laws that govern his life in the place where he lives.’”

The interviewer also asked Meridor about the possibility of a binational state:

“I don’t want to reach the day when the two-state paradigm is replaced by a one-state paradigm.”

On what he thinks should be the next step:

“I’ve come to a very painful conclusion, that a decision must be made. If we hold onto the entire land, we will not be able to remain a democracy, we will not be able to preserve human rights, equality, because the result will be a binational state. Even if we’re not a minority, even if we comprise up 55 percent. That’s no longer a Jewish state with an Arab minority, that’s a state of two peoples who share the government. If we then want to maintain a situation in which only we have rights and they don’t, that’s what Begin meant by ‘Rhodesia’ [apartheid].”

This brings me to the State of Israel’s most significant paradigm, that of the three incompatible goals.  Israel wants 1) a Jewish state, 2) a democracy, and 3) the entire Land of Israel, but it is only possible to have 2 out of the 3 simultaneously.  For example, you can have a Jewish state and a democracy, but you can’t also have the entire Land of Israel because of the sizable and exponentially-growing Arab population within the borders.  In a democracy the Arabs would be able to vote in elections, and if all of the Biblical land of Israel were incorporated into the State of Israel, Arabs would constitute the majority of the government and thus Israel would lose its Jewish character.  If Israel “holds on to the entire land,” as Meridor says, it will have to become a binational state.

“One thing that worries me is that if Abu Mazen said no even to Olmert’s supposedly very far-reaching offers, when Olmert really wanted an agreement, then how will we reach an agreement? Does anyone think that we’ll give more than Olmert gave? It’s inconceivable. Therefore, on the other side I don’t see the leadership, the leadership ability, and the leadership’s ability to impose an agreement. If the Palestinians accept our conditions for a final status accord, I’m ready to sign it tonight. I have no reason to drag things out. I have nothing to gain from that. But what’s the problem? Looking at it realistically, that’s not how it is. Because there are the tough questions, and Jerusalem is the toughest of them all, because we are not prepared – I am not prepared – to view Jaffa Gate as being abroad. Absolutely not.”

In September 2008 Olmert offered Abu Mazen (a.k.a. Abbas) 94 percent of the West Bank and would compensate the last 6 percent by adding a piece of territory close to Gaza in the Negev.  This is the most generous known offer an Israeli Prime Minister has ever made, and as Meridor says it’s the maximum.  He also calls Jerusalem “the toughest question” that would keep him from signing a “fnal status accord” if the Palestinians accepted Israel’s conditions.  I think he puts it really well when he says that he is not prepared “to view Jaffa Gate as being abroad.”  Neither am I; he says it with so much sentiment, and I think that attests to the fact that Jerusalem is the most emotional issue of the Conflict.  Emotional attachments are not easily broken, and the Jews’ affinity for Jerusalem is more than just a millenia-old love affair.  It’s hard to say the same about the West Bank settlements or the refugee problem.  At least someone important agrees with me that Jerusalem is the most significant obstacle of the game.

Meridor also says that the price of an accord with Syria would be withdrawal from the Golan Heights.  He doesn’t say outright whether or not he supports such a political move, but he emphasizes that back in the early 2000s he thought Israel should talk to Syria when most other Israelis and America “thought otherwise.”  An agreement with Syria, he continues, would make it possible to “simultaneously conclude a peace with Lebanon,” which could weaken Hezbollah.  On the subject of Gaza, he does not support withdrawal because “we saw the catastrophic result…after disengagement.”

No matter how much I don’t want to believe it, I think that Israel eventually will give up the Golan Heights in exchange for an accord with Syria, and Meridor is right to link that with a possible peace with Lebanon.

As I said before, the interview is super long, but definitely worth reading for a good window into the current Israeli government.

Now for a few important dates.  Fifteen years ago yesterday Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty.  President Obama released a nice statement about this, and I’ve boiled it down to a nice excerpt:

“The courage of King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin demonstrated that a commitment to communication, cooperation, and genuine reconciliation can help change the course of history…As we work with Arabs and Israelis to expand the circle of peace, we take inspiration from what Jordan and Israel achieved fifteen years ago, knowing that the destination is worthy of the struggle.”

Speaking of Yitzhak Rabin, tomorrow is the anniversary of his assassination.  Weird to think that I was just at Rabin Square, where he was shot, just last Saturday night.  He was killed by a right-wing radical Israeli.  A lot of Israelis and people all over the world think that he was Israel’s best shot at peace with the Palestinians; he won a the Nobel Prize for his role in the Oslo Accords, and he formally recognized the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization).

I forgot that I also have a really “fun” fact to share, something I learned in my Foreign Policy of Israel class yesterday: Israel and Iraq are still technically at war with each other because they never signed an armistice during the War of Independence which began May 15, 1948 and ended in 1949.  Iraq withdrew its military presence from Israel, but they never signed an official armistice.

I got an email that Jonathan Kessler, AIPAC’s Leadership and Development Coordinator, was coming to Rothberg Monday evening to give students an “update” (Remember: AIPAC = American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the 2nd largest lobbying group in the U.S. after the National Rifle Association).  Naturally, I thought this meant an update on the Obama administration’s policies towards and relationship with Israel, something along the lines of a lecture.  I tend to enjoy these sorts of things, and I knew it would be a small group of people who really care about politics because no one wants to stay on campus for a 6:30 p.m. meeting when all they want is to eat dinner and make attempts at their gigantic course readers before relaxing with friends and a few beers.

I guess I should have known that it was actually a recruitment meeting, and the gist of Kessler’s visit can be summed up thus:

“You know what I’m thinking?  Iran’s getting a bomb, America is trying to stop them, and I’m going to need people from a lot of states.”

Out of the eight Americans there, we were all from different state.  He wanted us to “think about the clout of writing to your member of Congress from Jerusalem” because “there’s not a chance in the world they won’t respond to your email.”

He really did sound desperate; Kessler told us that AIPAC usually sends people to the international schools on Israel’s university campuses at the end of the semester to talk to students about getting involved once they return to the States, but right now AIPAC doesn’t “have the luxury of taking the semester off,” because so many issues are coming to a head before the end of the year, like Iran, renewing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and the Goldstone Report.

Of course, as with groups that lean towards the neoconservative-esque, he expressed major concerns about President Obama:

The one thing we know about Obama is that he’s neither Bill Clinton nor George W. Bush.  He was elected to undo the legacy of Bush, but part of that legacy was a strong U.S.-Israel alliance.

Kessler stressed the “intimate,” “meaningful,” and “enduring” nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship; in fact, he told us, the great seal of the U.S. was originally supposed to depict the exodus from Egypt.  Something really cool I learned tonight was that “right now the U.S. and Israel are holding the largest joint missile defense exercise in history,” testing everything in land, air, and sea for 3o days.

To illustrate how values hold up the U.S.-Israel relationship, he told us a really weird story about Neil Armstrong, as in the Neil Armstrong that went to the moon.  He visited Jerusalem way back in the day, and at the Temple Mount he asked his tour guide if it was possible that Jesus had walked in that vicinity.  The guide pondered for a bit and then said yes, he must have because the steps nearby were the only ones that had existed during the time of Jesus, so of course he walked on them.  Apparently, this was very meaningful for Armstrong, and hence the strong influence of Christian Zionism on American politics and the weird partnership between that bloc and American Jews/Israel.

Now back to Iran:

We are excited President Obama is finally speaking to Iranians about their nuclear weapons program.  We hope they do cost-benefit analysis to discover that the costs outweigh the benefits.

Kessler emphasized that AIPAC will accept nothing less than a “freeze of all enriched uranium” on the part of Iran, which is apparently in violation of 3 U.N. Security Council resolutions.  There’s also some new legislation up for a vote in the House of Representatives that would sanction U.S. companies that do business with Iran if Iran doesn’t stop the process of uranium enrichment, effectively making it ridiculously expensive for Iran to fuel its economy.  The House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Banking Committee are marking that bill up this week, so I’ll definitely be following those developments.

In the end, all he wanted from us was to join his mobilization efforts.  He asked us to run around Rothberg with a sheet of paper getting names and emails who might want to get involved in sending letters and emails to their Congresspeople from Israel, who would want to try to establish connections between Hebrew University and their home college/university, and who would be perfectly happy getting caught up in AIPAC’s mission and methods.

I have always been quite weary of AIPAC.  I do believe that it plays a crucial role in maintaining and strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship and that it is a big factor in Israel’s continued survival, but as a lobbying group its goal is to leave Israel’s faults on the sidelines, which in my opinion is ignoring reality.  This is, of course, the purpose of a lobbying group, but I am a realist.

I agree with most of AIPAC’s positions, for example, that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that the U.N. is a hostile entity.  I also agree with its summary of Hamas as a terrorist organization whose aim is to destroy Israel, but AIPAC is clearly opposed to negotiating with them, which is completely unrealistic seeing as Hamas rules Gaza and has a lot of international Arab support.

Perhaps I was ambivalent also because I don’t like being recruited for things.  I’m a very well-informed, independent person with concrete opinions and I know a “let’s get all of you to eventually work for AIPAC ” pep talk when I hear one.  For the moment I’m perfectly fine with where I stand on Israel, and so I have no desire to promote the ideas and positions of an organization that I support, but with which I do not wholeheartedly agree with.  My journalistic instinct to get to the facts comes into play here, I believe.

And so I felt duped by this “update.”  I want facts about what’s happening in Washington in terms of the U.S.-Israel rapport, not sign-up sheets and passing around campus advocacy guides, which don’t apply to me anyway because Vassar is the bastion of hipsters who don’t care about Israel and super liberal left-wingers who are all humanitarian and pro-Palestinian.  Still, it was interesting to see how some of the other attendees ate up everything Kessler was saying.  It’s great that they want to do stuff for AIPAC, but I think that they’re going in blind (sorry if any of you reading this were at that meeting, but I must opine).

As a lobbying group, AIPAC’s job is to make things clear-cut, as close to black-and-white as possible so that Congresspeople have an easy time understanding seemingly logical positions on the issues surrounding the U.S.-Israel relationship and the Arab-Israeli conflict, because most of them know virtually nothing about either.  As Kessler said, Congresspeople aren’t given pamphlets on all the big issues when they get elected, rather they find these things out from their constituents.

In related news, J Street is having its national conference in D.C. this week, and it’s getting support from the likes of Tzipi Livini and the Union for Reform Judaism.  Looks like AIPAC is really going to have to muster those forces.

I really love Idan Raichel.  A lot.  The Idan Raichel playlist on my iPod is my go-to mix.  This dreadlocked Israeli musician just has a way with words and music that’s really hard to put into writing.  I’d been really excited about having the chance to see him live in Israel and, some weeks back, after a harrowing experience of trying to figure out the Israeli version of Ticketmaster, I bought tickets to see him in Tel Aviv.  The concert was Thursday night, and it was ABSOLUTELY THE BEST CONCERT I’VE EVER BEEN TO (Guster comes in at a close second, though).

But before I get to the main event, I must digress.  I went to the concert with Sam and a few of her friends from the Haifa program, and we needed somewhere to eat dinner.  One of her madrichim recommended Max Brenner, an Israeli chocolate chain that also has a few stores in the United States.  Each store also has a restaurant.  Although I was tempted, I didn’t get dessert because I was attempting a healthy lifestyle in anticipation of the Nike run, but this place had everything chocolate on the menu: fondue, waffles, crepes, cocktails, cakes, you name it.  The very definition of heaven.  And this is what heaven looks like (yes, that thing in the first picture is a chocolate bar):

From Max Brenner we headed to Mishkan Tel Aviv for the concert.  Mishkan Tel Aviv is a gorgeous performing arts center, and the concert was in the opera house, which reminded me of the Gershwin on Broadway.  Sam and I were in the last row of the nosebleed section, but I thought they turned out to be great seats.

The description for the Tel Aviv concert as advertised on the internet said there would also be special guests and a 16-piece symphony.  These special guests are part of The Idan Raichel Project, a collective formed by Raichel in 2002 after his brief solo career that includes artists from all over the world.  He writes, arranges, and produces all of the songs, but doesn’t perform in all of them.  The idea is that all of the members are equal.  The Idan Raichel Project falls into the “world music” genre and is clearly influenced by African music.  In addition to Hebrew, a lot of the songs are partly sung in Amharic, a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia.  There’s also a woman who sings in Spanish.  This is my favorite Idan Idan “>Raichel/The Idan Raichel Project song, “Mi’Ma’amakim (Out of the Depths)” (the guy with dreads is Idan Raichel):

It was really cool to see both Idan Raichel and all of the artists that work on the Project.  There were always over 20 people on the stage at the same time, and there was always dancing and great drum beats.  Some people played interesting-looking instruments I had never seen before.  Idan played the keyboard, which was in a corner on the stage, an homage to that idea that he’s not the frontman of the group.  You could tell they were having fun doing what they love to do.  What was nice about sitting in the last row of the nosebleed section was that I could see the whole stage, and when I wanted to stand up to dance I didn’t have to worry about anyone sitting behind me.  And I did dance.  Here’s the crew with Idan on the far left:

After a program that included several songs that I know and understand (and that I could sing along to) the Project took a bow and left the stage, but after much clapping and cheering everyone came out again for an encore.  This “encore,” however, lasted for about 6 songs.  I loved it.

Rewind to maybe two weeks ago.  Rothberg puts out the new activity booklet for the semester, and it turns out that there’s an Idan Raichel concert sponsored by MASA (an umbrella organization for a lot of Israel programs, including mine) in Jerusalem coming up.  Heavily subsidized, it only costs 1 point out of the 12 activity points we’re given for the whole semester.  At first I felt really stupid for buying a kinda-sorta-expensive ticket for the one in Tel Aviv, but I decided to go to this one too because a) it’s “free, b) I love him, and c) I wanted to go with my friends.

As it turns out, I’m really glad I splurged on that ticket.  It’s not that the second concert wasn’t great, it was just too many kids on MASA gap year programs who pushed and shoved and had no concept of personal space.  It also wasn’t as long, and there definitely wasn’t a symphony.  We had assigned seats, but 10 minutes in everyone was in the aisles.  Tel Aviv was nice because it was a real Israeli cultural event, but everyone at this concert spoke English and I didn’t feel like I was in Israel.  However, I did make my way to the front and prostrated myself against the stage, and so I got some great close-ups:

On an entirely different note, I ran/jogged/walked a 10k (6.2 miles) in Tel Aviv Saturday Night.  The Human Race is an event sponsored by Nike in big cities all over the world, and each year it comes to Tel Aviv.  This year, it was a part of the 100-year anniversary of Tel Aviv-Yafo.

So how did I get involved in this?  As I said about swimming in my earlier post about Rhodes, I am not a runner.  I’ve been known to take light jogs/walks around Bayou St. John, but the elliptical at the gym is my mainstay.  I’m not a 10k kind of girl.  One of my madrichim was trying to get people to go to this event because if 10 of us from Rothberg had signed up he could have gotten free registration for himself as well as a bus to take us there and back.

As it turned out only 3 (including me) actually registered.  I’d been wanting to test myself in terms of participating in a race, and I thought it would be really cool to be able to say that I did a 10k in Tel Aviv.  Signing up for random things that turn out well in the end seems to be a recurring theme here for me in Israel.

On Thursday before the Idan Raichel concert I went to the Nike store in Dizingoff Square to pick up my package, which included a really nice running shirt, my wristband, and a chip to tie onto my shoelace that would track my start and end times.  The shirt was really nice, and something like that costs about as much as the registration fee itself, so I thought I got a pretty good deal.  However, it didn’t really hit me until about an hour before the race that I was doing it.  The scene at Rabin Square, where the race began, was ridiculous:

Even though the race technically started at 8:45 p.m., I didn’t actually begin until around 9:05-ish because I had a yellow wristband, meaning that when I signed up I said it would take me more than 50 minutes to do path, the slowest bracket.  The purpose of this was so that people like me wouldn’t get trampled.  An adrenaline rush enabled me to run at a steady pace for the first 2 kilometers, but after that I alternated between running, jogging, and walking.  I’m not quite sure how many people were behind me, but I was definitely towards the end of the “procession.”

The path took us on a highway and into a beautiful park, which was really nice because big, grassy, and nicely-manicured areas like that don’t really exist in Jerusalem.  At each kilometer mark a DJ was playing a different type of music, and there were 2 stations along the way with volunteers handing out water bottles.  There were literally thousands and thousands of water bottles littering the streets.  Photographers on motorcycles weaved in and out of the crowd, trying to get good pictures.  Tons of people cheered on friends and family from the sidelines.  An IDF unit that ran the race together passed me up pretty early on, but I passed up a guy doing the race who was just walking his dog.

I crossed the finish line at around 10:30 p.m., which meant that I more than reached my “goal” of finishing before 11 p.m.  The race ended at some sort of sports complex/park with more DJ’s playing techno music.  Volunteers handed out granola bars, yogurt, and Nike-brand popsicles that I guess they give out at all of their races.  Everyone got a medal.  Here are the before and after pictures:

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my weekend!

I started the fall semester on Sunday, just as all of my Vassar friends were leaving for their mid-semester break.  It was quite surreal beginning the normal school week at 4:30 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon.  I got used to it with ulpan, but real school starting on Sunday?  I mean, the sun was setting by the time I got to the classroom.

Speaking of classrooms, let’s talk about where I actually go to school.  Because the summer ulpan had so many people, an overflow that included my level had class in the Humanities building on the regular Hebrew University campus.  It was confusing at first because the building itself is part of a complex in the shape of a donut and the paths in the courtyard that is the donut hole always got me mixed up and going in the wrong direction for the first few weeks.  Now that I finally know my way around, though, I don’t have class there anymore, but it’s still the hub of activity.

This is the entrance via the Social Sciences building where the security guards check my ID and search through my backpack while I walk through a scanner:

Now that we’re inside the gates, first up is the Forum, the equivalent of the College Center atrium at Vassar:

There’s a little coffee shop, a dairy cafeteria off to the side, an ATM, a bus station in the basement (AWESOME), etc.  During the first few days of the semester it was jam-packed with Bezeq, credit card companies, retail representatives handing out promotions, and all sorts of semi-intimidating Israeli back-to-school stuff.

The Forum is also where I went to get my course readers.  Apparently they have these things at schools in the States, but they don’t exist at Vassar.  Basically, they’re bound copies of all the readings for a particular class and come out to be the size of telephone books.  One of my classes has two.  What was even weirder than having the new experience of going to the copy store to get these things was running into one of my Israeli Kutz Camp co-workers from way back in the day (2 years ago) when I was in line to pick them up.  But that’s just how things happen in Jerusalem.

The library in the Social Sciences building is the main one.  I tried to take pictures but they wouldn’t let me, and the ones I found on the internet cannot be downloaded.  It’s a modern complex that looks nice, but one thing’s for sure: it ain’t no Frederick Thompson Memorial.  Dear Vassar, thank you for spoiling me and causing me to have unrealistic expectations about libraries abroad.

This brings our tour outside, which is generally a nice place to chill:

Okay, so the food on campus is amazing, and it costs about the same as a meal at ACDC no matter where you go.  There are dairy and meat cafeterias and lots of little coffee places that make the yummiest salads.  When I get a salad, which is usually every day, I always learn a new word for some vegetable or other from whoever’s working there.  I’ll say it in English and they just smile with that knowing smile and repeat the word in Hebrew.  It’s quite nice, actually.  Some places I like to eat:

There’s also the infamous Frank Sinatra Cafeteria, technically in the Frank Sinatra International Student Center, established by the one and only Frank Sinatra who gave over a million dollars to the American Friends of Hebrew University in the 1970′s, which surrounds the Frank Sinatra courtyard:

But it’s not just the name that makes it famous.  On July 31, 2002, a Palestinian construction worker exploded a bomb in the crowded cafeteria during lunch time.  Nine were killed, 3 of them American citizens, and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

I almost forgot the best part about the non-Rothberg campus: Mentos dispensers!  For one shekel I can get 3 delicious, sugary Mentos of either the strawberry, orange, or lemon varieties.  Although the machine promises 3, sometimes it gives me 2 and other times I get 4.  Either way, a trip to one of the many Mentos machines is a great way to start, interrupt, or end a day on campus:

That’s it for the real Hebrew University Mt. Scopus campus.  Now on to the Rothberg International School, a 5-floor complex where I have all my classes and which looks like a fancy-shmancy Jewish day school:

The inside isn’t anything special, but this is the courtyard where everyone hangs out in between classes:

I know you’re all just dying to hear about my classes, and if you aren’t I’m going to talk about them anyway.  Three days a week at 8:15 a.m. I have Hebrew, and I’m not clear on if it’s ulpan-style or not, but I did elect the intensive track with I think gets me 2 extra hours per week.  The gap between my summer ulpan level (bet) and my current level (gimmel) is definitely bigger than i thought it would be.  In this level I have a real textbook that doesn’t have so many funny drawings and silly songs, and I just know it’s going to be hard work already.  Still, I’m up to the challenge, because how else can I become fluent?

I’m taking 2 Political Science-oriented classes this semester as well.  Foreign Policy of Israel is taught by Dr. Meron Medzini.  All I know about him so far is that a) He’s written a lot of books and articles about the issue, b) He served in Lebanon in the 1980s, and c) When he was young his parents took him to the La Regence restaurant in the King David Hotel.  So far, this class has been mostly an overview of 1945-1948, critical years in terms of the establishment of the State of Israel.  I already knew most of this stuff, but I’m sure it’s about to get interesting.

Negotiating Middle East Peace, what to say?  On the first day Dr. Arie Kacowicz had us go around the room and introduce ourselves.  But this wasn’t just any introduction, because he made us answer the hard questions, like do we think negotiations can restart and what kind of solution we envision.  It was a great way to get a feel for my classmates’ various political leanings on the subject.  This is also the class with the 2 course readers, and the term paper is 25 pages.  It’s going to be tough with my parents coming at the end of December once things are wrapping up and I’m down to the wire with this paper, but I’ve heard it’s not terribly hard.

And there’s my renegade Jewish Studies class: Holy Life and Holy Death, about Jews in Medieval Europe.  I was so excited for a challenging (3000-level out of 4000) history/Jewish studies class, but I was astounded to read on the syllabus that we are required to submit four 2-3 page papers throughout the semester and that we can redo them as many times as we want until we get perfect grades.  I got so worried during class that it wasn’t 3000-level, which I need for the Honors Track, and so I asked the professor (Dr. Alick Isaacs) after class if it was a 3000-level course.  He said yes and asked if there was a problem.  Isaacs seems nice and smart enough, but I cannot help but pine for the one and only James H. Merrell.  Oh, and another thing is that there are a bunch of kids doing a gap year program for Conservative Jewish kids called Nativ, and they are all really annoying.  I’ve already done some of the readings for this class, and while it promises to intrigue me, it will also be a most-welcome piece of cake.

I made a big deal of telling everyone I would be taking Arabic this year.  Turns out I’m not, for a variety of reasons.  First, the teacher isn’t good.  I feel like when you’re starting a language you need a really charismatic teacher who is trained to teach that kind of class, like the ulpan teachers.  Second, it’s Colloquial Arabic, meaning all I would learn is how to speak the Jerusalem dialect; no learning the alphabet and no learning how to actually read Arabic.  I was already confused on the first day by the symbols he used to transliterate Arabic words and phrases, and thus quickly ascertained that this course would be a waste of my valuable time.  I’ve decided to try to pursue an internship instead.

I think that’s it for now.  On the docket for me this weekend is the Idan Raichel concert Thursday night in Tel Aviv, back to Jerusalem on Friday for Erev Shabbat, and then again to Tel Aviv on Saturday afternoon for The Human Race 10k, sponsored by Nike.  Yes, Allison is jogging/walking a 10k.  I’m guaranteed great stories and photos from the upcoming weekend, so check back in a few days for an update!

This is the last of my Greece posts, even though this one’s technically about Turkey.  Our second stop on the cruise was Kusadasi, a Turkish resort island that doesn’t have much to do besides shopping.  We docked there, however, because it’s an access point for Ephesus, an ancient Greek city on Turkey’s west coast.  As of right now, only 15 percent of the ruins have been excavated, but Sam and I were told that it was something to see.

Even though archaeologists have unearthed evidence that the are around Ephesus was already inhabited by 6,000 B.C.E., what we saw was the 3rd location of Ephesus because floods and other natural disasters forced the people to relocate a few times.  The Ephesians established the site we visited around 290 B.C.E., but most of the ruins that have been uncovered are from the Roman period (which started somewhere in the 1st or 2nd century), when the city was at its peak as the capital of Asia Minor.  Everything was built with marble.

Ancient Ephesus is also important to Christianity because it’s mentioned in the Book of Revelations and may be where the Gospel of John was written.  A lot of people also believe that Ephesus is the location of the cave of the Seven Sleepers.  According to this legend, a group of men accused of Christianity around 250 C.E. (everyone was still pagan for the most part) hid in a cave, which was sealed by the Roman emperor, and slept there for a few centuries.  These guys Paul also visited back in the day, but more on that later.

In order from left to right going clockwise: Roman bath, the Odeon, Street of the Curetes (which ends at the Library of Celsus), one of the pillars of the Gate of Hercules (where Street of the Curetes begins):

Sorry for the awkward layout there.  This relief of the goddess Nike used to be closer to the gate, but is now on displayed further on down the street, and it’s kind of like the “logo” so to speak of Kusadasi:

Left to right clockwise: Temple of Hadrian, Library of Celsus, and the theatre.  The theatre has an interesting back story because the good citizens of Ephesus put Paul in jail when he used the venue to preach and try to convert them.  They also tortured Christians there, and of course there were gladiators.

We had about an hour of free time in Kusadasi after the tour, so I bought a supply of apple tea and poked around the harbor for a bit.  Nothing special, but I was really glad I was able to see Ephesus.

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed my Greece posts.  It was a great trip for a great price, and I would highly recommend going.  My advice?  You only need a day and a half in Athens at the most, and don’t stay just anywhere; someone who went at the same time I did told me her hotel had bedbugs.  I also wish I had had more time in Santorini, which I think is worth at least one day.  Rhodes is also definitely a day trip if you want to see Lindos, but otherwise a few hours should suffice.  Patmos you can skip altogether.

In other news, I start school tomorrow (finally!) at 4:30 p.m., so I’ll be posting about that later in the week.

Every Vassar student knows and loves The Acrop (short for Acropolis), the best and greasiest 24/7 diner known to man that’s right up the street from campus.  The signage has a neon outline of the Parthenon (which is on top of the Acropolis) and they make some mean disco fries, but it never occurred to me until I was in Athens that I would actually get some satisfaction out of being able to say that I went to the real Acropolis.

Sam and I woke up on the early side so it wouldn’t be too hot for our climb.  The Acropolis, which we could see from our vantage point at the Temple of Zeus the day before, was only a 15-minute walk from our hostel.  It was a weird walk because we had to pass through actual neighborhoods with narrow streets and prickly shrubs, but we made it there intact.  It was so steep and uphill that the worst part of the climb was over by the time we actually got to the Acropolis visitors’ entrance.

So, what’s an acropolis?  In a nutshell, it’s a fortress on a hill.  The one in Athens is “the Acropolis” with a capital “A” because it’s the most famous and because there’s a lot in it.  Our first major site was the Odeon of Herodes Atticus (on the left), built in 161 C.E., but we didn’t actually enter the Acropolis until we passed through the Propylaea, the monumental gateway built around 430 B.C.E that was never finished:

The Temple of Nike is adjacent to the Propylaea, but it was impossible to get a good picture of it because there was so much scaffolding.  Still, I did take one, and all of my Greece photos are now on my Photobucket account (link on the right side of the page).

Upon coming out the other side of the Propylaea, we saw the main attraction: The Parthenon!

It’s the general opinion that the Parthenon, which was a temple of Athena, is the most important surviving building from Classical Greece.  The initial Athena Parthenos was “razed” by the Persians in 480 B.C.E. while it was still under construction, but Pericles rebuilt it during the mid-5th century B.C.E.  Adorned with the most elaborate and detailed of metopes, friezes, and pediments depicting scenes from Greek mythology, the Parthenon also housed a massive statue of Athena.  Historians say the statue was probably destroyed in a fire some 1,000 years later (5th century C.E.), which was also when the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church.

First a Byzantine church and later a Roman Catholic one, the Parthenon was always a Church of the Virgin Mary.  One of our guides told us that the Christians replaced the Greek gods and goddesses with saints, and that Athena was always replaced with Mary.  In 1456 when Athens fell to the Ottomans, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque.  The Ottomans kept things intact for the most part, but when the Venetians attacked Athens in 1687 a mortar partly destroyed the building.  In an attempt to loot the sculptures, the Venetians demolished the inside, decapitated some of the pillars, and the rest of the roof collapsed.  The Parthenon’s Ottoman and medieval structures were razed when independent Greece gained control of Athens in 1832, but the government didn’t begin its restoration efforts until the 1970s.  But this is how it used to be, and what the statue of Athena probably looked like:

Here’s the breathtaking view of Athens from the top of the Acropolis:

The last big thing we saw on top of the Acropolis was the Erechtheum, an ancient Greek temple built between 421 and 407 B.C.E. probably in honor of “legendary king Erechtheus” from Greek mythology.  It’s famous Porch of the Caryatids features “six draped female figures as supporting columns, each sculpted in a manner different from the rest and engineered in such a way that their slenderest part, the neck, is capable of supporting the weight of the porch roof.”  Wikipedia also tells me that these columns are actually replicas and that the real ones are on display at the New Acropolis Museum, but I would never have been able to tell:

We actually ran into the New Acropolis Museum on our way back, so we went in for a bit.  It just opened a few months ago, and it’s absolutely gorgeous.  The walkway is clear so you can see the ruins underneath:

And that was the Acropolis!

I have a problem.  Ever since I started getting into “The West Wing,” I’ve had unreasonable expectations of the American Presidency.  Take, for example, episode 6 from season 5.  In “Disaster Relief,” a killer tornado has just wreaked havoc in Oklahoma, and President Jed Bartlet zips down there in Air Force One immediately, no questions asked.  He follows around the Red Cross, helps out with the dishes at a makeshift shelter in a school gymnasium, and he is literally changed by what he sees.

Meanwhile, Leo (Chief of Staff) is trying to handle multiple political crises in the absence of the President, who stays in Oklahoma longer than he’s supposed to.  By the next day, C.J. (Press Secretary) is very anxious about the fact that he’s still there while the White House is falling apart at the seams.  This is the exchange from when they’re about to walk into a memorial service for the tornado victims:

I’m sorry, sir.  We need to go back to Washington.

We’ll leave after the service.

No, sir.  We need to go back now.  I told Leo we’d only be here a few hours.  He needs you to meet with Singer and the Blue Dogs.  The Chancellor is waiting, and there’s something about a war between ancient civilizations.

These people need me.

No, sir, they don’t.  Maybe they did yesterday, but now they need their town back.  They need their police officers working, not clearing intersections for your motorcade.  They need the 50 motel rooms we took last night for people who lost their homes.  And they need you back in Washington running the country, and creating the jobs that are going to help to pay the taxes to help support disaster relief and rebuilding.  What are we doing here, sir?

C.J. obviously has a point, but I painstakingly searched the fan websites for this bit of dialogue because it illustrates a leader’s compassion for the victims of a stateside natural disaster.  President Bartlet really feels for these people in Oklahoma, quite unlike Bush right after Katrina.  I won’t even get into FEMA and Brownie because that’s a whole other can of worms, but everyone in New Orleans was appalled by Bush’s behavior.  For starters, he didn’t even survey the damage until Wednesday, August 31, 2 days after the levees broke.  And all he did that day was fly around in Air Force One for 35 minutes.  He actually saw the situation for real on September 2 (the day he also said, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”), but his visit was just a bunch of photo-ops with firefighters, coast guard troops who should have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

On September 15, he finally gave a lengthy statement about the suffering, disaster recovery, the government’s committment to rebuilding the Gulf Coast, blah blah blah.  It ended with a metaphor about second line funerals that I thought was insulting coming from the most inept president America has ever seen.  This speech was made in Jackson Square, just 18 days after Katrina’s landfall and the levee breaches.  At 18 days, the police and the coast guard still weren’t letting victims into their damaged, flooded homes.  My own parents had to pretend to be contractors in order to be let into our old neighborhood to recover whatever wasn’t covered in mold.  At this point, the looters were still at large and the number of homeless increased daily.

I don’t think it needs mentioning that on September 15 city was still for the most part without gas and electricity, but it obviously does.  You see, Bush made this speech in front of the St. Louis Cathedral, which was especially lit up by generators for the occasion.  After the speech, the lights went out.  If I remember correctly, The Times-Picayune made a point of this.  Bush was no Bartlet.  Is it so wrong to expect the President to measure up to a fictitious version of him- or herself?  These days, most agree that Bush’s Katrina response was a disaster to say the least, and the little he did, he did from the Oval Office and the press room.  I remember feeling so frustrated in those early days: Why wasn’t the government doing anything productive in my city?

Years have passed, and people are starting to forget.  The government started to forget around 2007, in my opinion.  But now we have a new-ish president.  He’s been in office for about 9 months, and he is finally making his way down to the greatest city in America (campaign stops don’t count).  On Thursday, Air Force One will land in New Orleans.  It took him this long.

I thought just maybe, instead of downing a bowl of gumbo at Dooky Chase and talking to a bunch of privileged Tulane students, maybe he’ll see the city for real, but one look at his itinerary and I was disappointed: He’ll visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School in the Lower Ninth Ward and then make his way to UNO’s Lakefront Campus to hold a town hall meeting.  To me, that’s not much in the way of acting the President.  And public access to the town hall is restricted.

I know Obama’s been down there 5 times before he was elected President, but with a new office comes new responsibilities and a new public face.  A town hall and a visit to the Lower Ninth just aren’t enough.  Obama needs to see where progress has been made and what’s on the horizon.

A Times-Picayune staff editorial, which said that his itinerary “seems to be lacking in substance and fun,” made some great recommendations.  In this imagined itinerary, for example, they have him touring private rebuilding projects like Brad Pitt’s Make it Right as well as Wendell Pierce and Terence Blanchard’s project in Pontchatrain Park.  Then he heads downtown to see the construction site of the new LSU/Tulane cancer research center “for a glimpse of what will be a biomedical corridor.”  One of his last stops is the Lakefront to see “neighborhoods re-emerging from the flooded landscape.”

I imagine this is the type of thing President Bartlet would do, but Obama is not Jed Bartlet.  However, he is the undisputed leader of the country, and it says a lot about the White House if Obama only spends a few hours in New Orleans at a school and then at a university for a brief town hall.  It will project the image that Obama is visiting New Orleans only because it’s in the post-Katrina president’s job description, not because he wants to see for himself how the city is redeveloping, recovering, and rebuilding.  For some reason, I don’t get the feeling this visit of his is genuine.

I thoroughly despise David Vitter, but I must say that I agree with him on one thing: Obama needs to stay longer and see more.  It’s not just his duty as President, but also as a decent human being.

Our first cruise destination was Mykonos, one of the islands in the Cyclades.  Like most of its colleagues, its 10,000 inhabitants rely heavily on tourism.  While Mykonos has managed to retain a certain character despite this, I still saw too many Lacoste, Cartier, and Diesel storefronts for my liking.

After docking in Mykonos we had to take a shuttle bus into the actual city:

We arrived just in time to see the sunset:

Then it was time to explore.  Valerie had told us on the ship that we would definitely get lost in Mykonos, which had been built that way to thwart the pirates that infested the Aegean Sea.  We did get a little lost, but all we had to do was follow the big tour groups and look for the sea, and everything was fine.  This was a major feat for someone who uses a Garmin GPS to get around New Orleans.

One of the first landmarks we could see from the shore were the windmills.  No longer in operation, they are still one of the most famous sites on the island, but after some Google-ing I still don’t understand what makes them so famous.  However, they were still nice to look at:

The surrounding neighborhoods have an architectural style that is particular to both the Cycladic Islands and to Mykonos.  The houses have “flat roofs and cube shapes” as protection against the strong winds, and everything is whitewashed to combat the high summertime temperatures.  Special to Mykonos is the fact that everything is densely clustered on narrow streets, a layout that was intended to help fight the pirate threat.  Also, all of the buildings on the island have a “smooth asymmetrical shape on the corners.”  There are a grand total of 250 churches on the island, but Panagia Paraportiani (the Church of the Virgin Mary), which dates from the 15th century, is the most famous:

There’s also a neighborhood in Mykonos called Little Venice, which doesn’t adhere to the above characteristics.  Those houses, built in the Venetian style, are famous for their wooden painted balconies:

That was Mykonos.  We stopped in Patmos (in the Dodecanese like Rhodes) the next afternoon.   However, unless you’re on a Christian pilgrimage and you actually believe St. John received a Revelation in the island’s Cave of the Apocalypse (which archaeologists don’t), there’s really nothing to do there except sit on a dock and soak up the sun and the view, which is exactly what Sam and I did for a few hours.  Got some nice pictures, though:

Our last stop on our cruise was Santorini. Sam and I had been looking forward to this excursion in particular because of a book and a movie called “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” in which the young Lena Kaligaris is forced to spend a summer with her Greek grandparents in Santorini, presumably in the traditional village of Oia.  The uptight Lena is swept off her feet by Kostos, a nice Greek boy who’s also the grandson of her grandparents’ arch enemies.  Kostos always picks her up on his Vespa and they ride into the twilight to some beach or cute-sy authentic bar.  As a pre-teen, I was mesmerized by this plot-line.  In fact, it still fascinates me, and I’d love nothing more than to end up on the back of a Greek boy’s motor scooter.  I’ll stop blabbering about a fictitious and unrealistic tale of girl-finds-true-love-in-Greece now.

Also in the Cyclades, Santorini was formed by a series of 15 known volcanic eruptions, and all of its towns and villages are situated on cliffs.  “Santorini” comes from the name of one of the island’s 400-plus churches, St. Irene.  “Irene” also means “peace.”

The story of these churches is interesting.  In the 13th century, the Venetians conquered the island because its coasts were strategic for commerce.  Besides renaming the island “Santorini,” they tried to force Catholicism on the Greeks.  The Greeks were able to solve this problem and save their land by constructing churches in their backyards, which meant that their properties were no longer for sale.  This is why most of the churches on the island are still private and family-owned.

We took a tender boat to the harbor and then the tour bus took us to Oia (pronounced “ee-yah”), that famous town with the blue roofs which is supposedly the most romantic place in Greece.  A lot of houses in Oia are actually carved into the cliff:

And one of the signature blue roofs on top of a private church:

Sam and I left Santorini and Oia in particular quite ecstatic that we had walked where “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” was shot.  Oia is a gorgeous treasure, despite all of the souvenir shops and roof-top tavernas (think your typical cafe but with an emphasis on fish, lots and lots of fish) filled with tourists.  It’s mucho expensive, too.  We shared a cab ride with a couple from Alabama on our way back to Syntagma Square from the cruise ship terminal who told us that someone in Santorini had told them about a $3,800 per week apartment in Oia.  I won’t be living there anytime soon, but next time I’ll definitely have to stay for longer.

The cruise experience and the ship itself deserves its own little post.  It all started back in the summer (seems so long ago, sigh) when Sam and I thought a cruise to the Greek islands would be fun. This idea quickly turned into a legitimate possibility, seeing as we would both be celebrating birthdays around the time of our big October breaks.

Sam found easyCruise.com and our 4-night Greek Islands and Turkey extravaganza, the parental units gave the o.k. go-ahead, and before we knew we had booked the cruise, flights, and a hostel in Athens.  There were pictures up on the website so we thought we knew what to expect in terms of the ship, and we also thought that because we got such a decent and reasonable deal we would be surrounded by people our age.  I present to you Her Royal Highness easyCruise Life, as photographed by moi:

For starters, the cruise ship was much smaller than I had thought it would be.  There was a restaurant, a few lounges, three levels of outside decks with chairs/jaczuzis/pool, a tiny gym, and a spa, but physically it didn’t compare to something like Royal Caribbean or Carnival.  Still, it was definitely big and comfortable enough:

Also, there were only 250 people at the most on our ship.  It was getting towards the end of the season, so the ship may not have been filled to capacity, but it was still a relatively small number of passengers.

Sam and I were the only passengers in our age range traveling alone.  There were some older teenagers with their families, but it was mostly middle-aged and older couples, with a few younger Asian tourists and a random yoga tour group in between.  Being in Israel, I guess we forgot that most students are in school right now.  We’re only on a long break right now because of the proximity of Yom Kippur and Sukkot.

Nevertheless, we couldn’t have been happier because the people-watching on board was fabulous.  Sam and I used our half-arsed Hebrew to talk about the boisterous redheaded dame in the bright orange and pink taffeta dress (which had matching shoes) and the chain smoking 14-year-old boy, among other characters.

The best part of everyday on the ship was tea time, held at promptly 4 p.m.  Sam and I always made a point to break out the English accents for this event:

Meals were a big deal, too.  Everything was all-you-could-eat buffet, so we went bananas (sorry for the awful pun).  After having been in Israel for an extended period of time, we were naturally astounded to see pork in some shape or form at every meal.  The cheese was always next to the cold cuts, also pork.  Sometimes, there was cheese and meat in the same dish.  One night they had American-style pork ribs.  Though I do not eat pork or red meat, I basked in the gloriosity (not a real word, I know) of the abundance of shellfish.  I think a lot of people in line got annoyed with me when I made a point to take all the mussels out of the bland-rice-with-mussels, or when I tried to extract every single shrimp from the seafood salad, but what can I say?  I’ve been so deprived!

All of this, of course, is just a lead-up to the dedication of this post to Valerie, our cruise director!  “Val-Pal,” as I nicknamed her, was the coolest gal around.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of her.

Every single time something came over the announcement system, it was Valerie.  She informed us every time we were approaching a port, every time we docked, always beginning with her “ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen.”  Or whenever a specific passenger was needed at reception, it was always Val-Pal who requested their presence.  I really do feel lost without her mellifluous voice.

Valerie could also be funny.  Right after we left Athens on the first day, all the English speakers had to go to a meeting about initial procedures like setting up accounts on board, registering for excursions, etc.  Val-Pal, in her cute Greek-accented English, told us about each excursion.  One of them was a wine tasting.  At 9 a.m.  And she told us to keep in mind that it one was in the morning, so “eh, you will come back to the ship very happy.”  For our disembarkation procedure meeting on Friday before we reached Santorini, Valerie told us about the different ways to get up and down the cliff.  She advised us against taking donkeys downhill because “they can go so fast, you may get there before your donkey does.”  We were also cautioned against walking because we would have to share the pathway with the donkeys, and “they, eh, like to leave little presents.”

Sam and I disembarked completely satisfied with our cruising experience.  It’s definitely one of the best ways to see a lot of islands in a shorter period of time.  All of that said, I still feel like I’m on the boat.

The most interesting part of my day trip to Rhodes was pure happenstance.  Our tour guide casually mentioned that the oldest synagogue in Greece was in the Old City, a mere few minutes from our cruise ship.  After lunch on the ship, Sam and I headed back into the Old City to find it.  What we found was Kahal Shalom Synagogue, a Sephardic institution built in 1577, and a museum inside told the all too familiar story of a once-vibrant local Jewish community nearing extinction.  This is the mezuzah on the doorpost of the entrance.  Thought it was really cool and old-looking:

Rhodes had Jews as far back as the 2nd century, which we know from an account in the Book of Maccabees.  These Romaniote Jews had assimilated to a point by Hellenizing their names and taking up Greek, but they still retained their Jewish identity and worshipped in Hebrew.  Centuries later during the reign of the Knights of St. John, the Jews were “designated” to live in the southeast section of the Old City.  However, relations between the two deteriorated between 1480 and 1500, when the knights issued decrees obliging Jews to either embrace Christianity or leave the island.  The repercussions of the 1492 Spanish Inquisition also reached the island, and many of Rhodes’ Jews left.

In 1522 Suleiman the Great conquered Rhodes and the few Jews left welcomed the Ottomans with open arms.  Under the millet system, the Jews did quite well for themselves in the Ottoman Empire.  In 1840, however, the blood libel hysteria of Damascus reached Rhodes, when the island’s Jews were accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy.  At the turn of the 20th century with the Ottoman Empire in decline, a hefty chunk of the community’s remaining Jews left to seek economic opportunities in the United States and Africa.

Modern anti-Semitism reached Rhodes when the Italian governor implemented anti-Jewish laws in 1938.  At that point, about 2,000 of the remaining 4,000 Jews left the island.  In July 1944 the last 1,673 Jews were ordered to board boats that eventually ended up at Auschwitz.  150 of them survived.  A tasteful Holocaust memorial stands in a small public grassy area close to the synagogue:

Today, there are only 37 Jews left in Rhodes.  Kahal Shalom only opens in the summer months for the tourists, and it is still used for Shabbat and High Holiday services.

The museum itself had some pretty cool Judaica.  Glass cases were filled with ketubot (marriage conracts), talitot katanot, siddurim (prayer books), Ladino (Sephardic language = Spanish + Hebrew) sheet music, candle sticks, and even a ner tamid (“eternal light).  There was a burial stone from 1523, a Sefer Torah from the same century, and also a mikveh, the Jewish tradition’s ritual purification bath for women:

We ended up in the synagogue’s ornate sanctuary, built in the traditional Sephardic style with the tevah (prayer reading table) in the middle of the room:

I never knew there had been any Jews at all in the Greek islands.  Our tour guides repeatedly told us that the 2-3 percent of Greeks that weren’t Greek Orthodox Christians were mostly either Catholic or Jewish, but most of the islands never had terribly large populations.  Now it makes sense to me because Rhodes was a major commercial port.  Soon the Rhodesian Jewish community will cease to exist, but I was glad to have the opportunity to discover the history and culture of this enclave.