Allison W. Good

Eight months in, one month left.  What happened?  I was going through old blog posts yesterday, starting with the pre-Israel ones, and I relived some of my favorite experiences and realized that I really have grown as a person.  In terms of what’s on my mind now, I’ve accomplished some pretty fantastic feats: I learned how to cook (and became a master of stir-fry), got up close and personal with Israel’s top brass, and braved the European winter by myself for six weeks.  Even though I’m overseas and away from Vassar, I’ve also begun to deal with the reality that I only have one more year to figure things out.  On Wednesday, my classmates will ring the bell on top of Main to officially begin our senior year, a tradition I’ll have to wait to participate in until August.  In my free time, i.e. when I’m in my International Relations class and not paying attention, I research graduate schools and then end up wanting to throw my computer out the nearest window because they cost just as much as Vassar.  Such is the life.

While I do understand that I have to leave on May 26th, it just doesn’t seem all that real.  My life here has a definite rhythm; I have a routine in Jerusalem.  To make things even more surreal, both Mollie and Ria are coming back to visit in a few weeks, so it will feel like first semester all over again, and by the time May 26th rolls around I won’t know what hit me.  But I will use their trips as an opportunity to really push myself in those final days to go on half-day trips around and outside of Jerusalem.  And it’s a great feeling to find out that goodbye wasn’t really goodbye.

Currently, I am throwing myself completely into researching for my International Relations paper on the Clinton Administration’s role in mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and hoping that it can be a chapter in my thesis.  For this reason, I am spending significantly more time doing research than I would for any other paper because, let’s face it, I couldn’t care less about impressing my professor or doing my personal best.  This one’s all for me so that I can eliminate some of next year’s tidal wave of stress.  Also, I really want to get this paper out of the way before my friends get here.

I did, however, do something mildly interesting on Saturday.  Stuck in Jerusalem for Shabbat because I really needed to work on this paper, I needed to get out of the k’far.  My friend Shawna had the idea of walking to Emek Refaim and seeing a movie at the small theater there.  The walk took about an hour and fifteen minutes, but it was so cool because I had never really walked anywhere before, and it was Shabbat so the roads weren’t so busy for the most part.  Lev Smadar, the theater, also has a cafe, which is open on Shabbat, so we ate there.  Deciding to sit at the bar was the best idea, because the bartender would give us the leftovers of whatever smoothies he made.  It was so refreshing to discover a part of Jerusalem that’s actually alive on Shabbat, and I felt like I was in Tel Aviv.  We saw “Greenberg,” an American indie film starring Ben Stiller that was actually written and directed by a Vassar grad.  I’m usually a fan of this genre, and I think the movie won an award at the film festival in Berlin, but it was actually awful and there was no ending.  There’s no denying that “Zoolander” is Ben Stiller at his best and that he doesn’t belong in hipster dramas.  Still, it was all about the experience, and I really enjoyed our field trip.

Ok, enough procrastinating, but a few pictures first.  On the left is tonight’s dinner, my version of shakshuka (which isn’t really shakshuka) plus some roasted asparagus; and on the right, the view from my window at approximately 7:30 p.m.:

On Thursday, I had the “pleasure” of hearing Minister Benny Begin speak at the JCPA.  The son of former Prime Minister (and peace broker) Menachem Begin, he has a doctorate in geology and was first elected to the Knesset in 1988.  From 1996 to 1997 he served as Minister of Science, but resigned in protest of the Hebron Agreement when Israel effectively withdrew from most of Hebron.  In February 1999, he departed from Likud and headed the effort to join other right-wing parties to form an alliance opposing the Oslo Accords: the National Union.  Then there were elections in May, and the National Union didn’t do so well, so Begin quit politics altogether.

That is, until he announced his return to politics and the Likud party.  He won a seat in the 2009 elections, and Netanyahu had promised him a ministerial position if Likud was victorious.  Begin is completely against any idea of a Palestinian state, preferring instead an Arab autonomy under Israeli control.  In his point of view, the Palestinians shamefully hate Israelis, but everyone still has to live together.

While the JCPA is certainly Likud-oriented and hawkish, I was surprised that they would bring in Benny Begin.  For one, he was coughing most of the time and it was hard to hear him.  Also, most of the time it seemed like he was shouting at everyone and not really orating.  And just like his father, he’s a rogue who tells it like it is.  Perhaps you’ve guessed by now that I didn’t like him, so you can also imagine how uncomfortable I felt when a fellow intern who was sitting next to me leaned in and whispered, “He’s my hero.”

Though the event was titled “Jerusalem as a Flashpoint in Palestinian-Israeli Diplomacy,” it was really just a rant against the PLO and its reluctance to be a partner for peace.  Sure, there were sound bytes here and there, but listening to him was a painful experience.  Let’s begin with his list of grievances.

First, Begin said the PLO will only accept Arab Muslim sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and that shared sovereignty will never be an option in their eyes:

The assertion was that…it must become under Arab Muslim sovereignty.  And the reason for that was well explained by PLO leadership.  The reason is that…they think the unthinkable…they actually deny the undeniable.  They say there is no historical connection between Jewish people and that site.

He also declared the Temple Mount to be the “crux of the issue.”  But the scope isn’t limited to Jerusalem, because if the Jews have no connection to that site, then what claim do they have to Judea and Samaria, the Negev, etc.?  The PLO’s “adamant refusal” to accept the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, on the other hand, is based on the fact that to them, Judaism is just a religion and not an ethnicity, and religions can’t have their own states.

Second, the PLO is just a bunch of terrorists, even if they say they’re not.  He went on and on about the conference that took place in Bethlehem last August:

I will urge you to take very serious the recently reaffirmed platform of Fatah…Fatah after ten days of deliberations had several options.  It could totally disregard its charter, adapt it, amend it, but they preferred…to reaffirm their platform, their charter.

He read Chapter 1 Article 19 from said document: “Armed struggle is a strategy, not a tactic,” and is a crucial element in the “elimination of the Zionist presence.”  Begin then made a big point of reassuring everyone that Fatah will only fold under international pressure.

Third, the PLO needs to “come to terms with reality.”  While Abbas will say that Olmert offered him too little in 2008, Tzipi Livni will say that he offered too much.  The Jews aren’t going anywhere, and Israel won’t relinquish the Temple Mount anytime soon.  And, of course:

Let us also remind ourselves that we know now that in the Annapolis process, when the PLO was asked if…it would agree to include that this agreement means the end to conflict…that question was answered negatively.

Therefore, “As long as there is no substantial change on the part of the PLO leadership, unless they are ready to abolish the abominable document, very little can be expected” in way of negotiations and proposals.

He also went on a tirade of nationalist fervor and said that it’s not all about security:

It is not a security issue.  The Temple Mount is a basic issue that has to do with the feelings of people that must be respected…Please do not belittle those values.

And also:

The Jews are entitled to live in Samaria and Judea and to construct homes…Because you would never accept limitations on Jews anywhere else in the world.

After that, it was time for questions.  The first one came from Reuters: George Mitchell (Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East) is expected back today, so what can Israel be expected to offer?  Naturally, Begin had a lot to say on the subject:

We have offered quite a lot.  Previous Israeli governments actually stripped themselves of parts of Samaria and Judea and Jerusalem to no avail…Everything now hinges on something further that Israel has to offer.

The PLO always wants more, he said.  They’re not satisfied with how the talks with Olmert ended in 2008, and just want to use that endpoint as a starting point, so the international community must impress upon the PLO that there is no substitute for direct negotiations without preconditions, or what he called the “receding horizon.”

And then he lit into the fact that the Palestinians, like the rest of the Arab world, just want to push us all into the sea by way of a “two-phase solution,” first pushing Israel back to the 1948 lines and then, through an insurgence of refugees returning to Israel from within, liberating Palestine.  Talk the talk as they may, they certainly don’t believe in a two-state solution:

There is no other rational explanation for their total vehement rejection of proposals from two previous cabinets.

The Associated Press asked Begin to comment on the “performance” of Salam Fayyad, the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, who stated a few months ago his intention to declare a Palestinian state in 2011.  Begin acknowledged that people have applauded him for his efforts to revive the Palestinian economy, but that he can’t claim to be able to deliver Gaza in the foreseeable future because “they’re not going to give it up too easily,” “they” meaning Hamas.  Of course, if he only had mild complaints about Fayyad, he wouldn’t be a true Likudnik, so he also lambasted him for not voicing “reservations” about the PLO platform and the fact that the PLO names streets and squares after terrorists and jihad heroes.

After that, the UK Daily Mail asked about Israel’s attitude towards Obama, to which Begin replied:

As for some differences…They have been described as differences between friends.  I think that’s the right and correct statement of affairs.

But as for the United States’ role of advising and pressuring Israel to do things like, say, allowing Hamas to participate in the January 2006 elections, “no one has a realistic prediction of the future”:

Sometimes governments of Israel make mistakes…When we make mistakes, we bear the consequences.  When we accept mistaken advice from others, they do not bear the consequences.

Pulling out of Jericho in 1994 and Gaza in 2005 only brought the Second Intifada and a barrage of rockets, respectively.  “Relinquishing” land never did anyone good, Begin claimed.  His two “pillars” are the natural historic right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel that extends beyond the 1949 demarcation line and the right of Israeli citizens to national security, and “If you try to sever these two basic rights, the result is loss of life.”

Begin dodged the last question, which came from the Jordanian Embassy, but I thought this guy was really brave to ask this blunt, point-blank question at such a small and intimate gathering where he was clearly the only Arab in the room: How can he ask the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state but not respect the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and the right of return?  Begin replied with, “You describe a chasm between extremists on both sides,” and then chuckled as he continued, “I assume I’ve been classified by you as an extremist.”  After reemphasizing that “Even when the soft ones were at the helm, the proposals were rejected” (“soft ones” meaning Barak and Olmert), Begin concluded with, “”I wish I had better news for you guys, but we didn’t even discuss Lebanon.”

Benny Begin is just the type of person who’s going to be the devil on Netanyahu’s shoulder when it comes down to the wire of direct negotiations should they happen during this government.  He obviously has to put on a face and not say anything too bad about the U.S., but he’s a loose cannon.  Judging from his poise, demeanor, and mannerisms, I’m guessing anyone to the left of Likud does not like this guy as either a politician or a person.  Minister Without Portfolio is a powerful position, and Netanyahu obviously holds Begin in high esteem, which scares me.  Also, he could never be his father.  Hopefully this won’t be the last briefing before I leave, because it left a bad taste in my mouth and certainly disenchanted some of the other interns as well.

There’s no place quite like Jerusalem, and that statement became even more evident to me after experiencing Israel’s two most important secular holidays here.  The secular holiday season begins right after the end of Passover, starting with Yom Ha’Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).  There are all sorts of interpretations as to why the holidays are ordered as they are, but exactly a week after mourning the 6 million, the country mourns its soldiers killed in action and citizens murdered in terrorist attacks.  The day after is the biggest party of the year: Independence Day.

When I was on EIE they took us to the annual Yom Ha’Zikaron ceremony at the Kotel that the IDF puts on every year at night (all holidays, even the secular ones, begin in the evening when the sun goes down).  I knew that it was the place to be and that I wanted to go there again.  The ceremony began at 8 p.m., but we got there early because we knew there would be long lines at security.  On our walk through the Cardo, I spotted the newly-renovated Hurva Synagogue (the one that’s supposed to help bring the Messiah):

I immediately tried to get into the press section, but it turns out that IDF events are much harder to weasel one’s way into.  I hadn’t come up with a good story for myself, it had holes, and I knew that when I overheard an IDF official telling the IDF official in charge of American press something about the story I was telling them.  They were very nice about it, but told me that next time I should get in touch with the Government Press Office ahead of time.  In spite of my failure, I still snagged a great spot almost against the barrier because my friends and I had arrived so early.  On the other hand, two very tall men were standing in front of us, so I couldn’t get good pictures.  The scene before the ceremony:

Yom Ha’Zikaron memorial services are mostly silent, but this one began with a siren that sounded all over Jerusalem at 8 p.m. on the dot.  It was very powerful and moving, hearing that siren while standing in front of the Kotel.  I can only imagine what it was like when the paratroopers reached the Old City and captured the Kotel, reuniting the city and reclaiming something that is so central to Judaism.  Shimon Peres spoke, the memorial flame was lit, El Maleh Rachamim (a prayer for the departed), and everyone joined in for the Mourner’s Kaddish.  We ended with the singing of Ha’Tikvah, the national anthem.  During the ceremony:

We were all about to go home when someone reminded us that Jeff Seidel was having an event at Aish Ha’Torah, a yeshiva for mainly ba’alei teshuva (people who are Jewish but want to become more observant and be “real” Jews and “return” to Judaism), which is set back from the Kotel.  The flyer had advertised that a solider was going to speak about his experience in the Second Lebanon War, and I figured why not, it would definitely be interesting and a sort of Yom Ha’Zikaron mitzvah, per se.  I should have known that with Jeff Seidel, it’s never that simple.

So most of us made our way through the maze that is the Jewish Quarter to Aish.  First, we went into the older building, and young men who were exiting told us girls that we “probably weren’t allowed in there,” and we eventually figured out that the event was in the newer building, which had just been finished in December.  This new building, the World Center, looks like a 5-star hotel on the inside.  I couldn’t help but notice a blown-glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling:

I wondered aloud to a friend if it was indeed a Chihuly.  She told me she had seen an exhibit of his and that it looked like his work.  It had to be Chihuly, but who really had enough money to buy a really big one for a yeshiva in Jerusalem?  What business did it have hanging there?  After the talk, I went up to one of the guys who seemed to run the place and asked him about it, and he said it was a Chihuly.  Sure, the event itself sucked (details below), but it was worth attending just to see that chandelier.

I said before that things are never simple at a Jeff Seidel event.  Our speaker, I forgot his name already, looked young enough, maybe 30 or so and, of course, a secular American Jew by birth.  The fast and easy version of his story is that he was a bad kid who got into a lot of trouble, dropped out of college to become a Phish groupie, made aliyah when Phish broke up because there was nothing left to live for in the States, worked at a bar in Tel Aviv for a while, joined the army after a terrorist attack at said bar during the height of the Second Intifada, served in the Second Lebanon War, and after a near-death experience decided it was time to learn Torah, which is how he arrived at Aish.  He’s actually only been studying there for 2 years or so, meaning he’s still undergoing the process.  However, he’s also obviously far enough along because he couldn’t end his speech without indoctrinating us, encouraging us to find ourselves during our last months in Israel, and saying that we should find that life has more meaning with Torah and we should take advantage of all Jeff Seidel has to offer us and of the classes at Aish.  You can imagine I was squirming in my seat.

Aish/Jeff Seidel did a great job in terms of showing us a good time.  There were bagels and cream cheese from the States, and when the guy was done speaking they took us up to the roof for the most spectacular view of the Kotel I have ever seen:

But I was ready to get out of there, and I needed a good night’s sleep because a group of us left the k’far at 8:15 the next morning to go to the memorial service at Mt. Herzl, the military cemetery.  Though it didn’t start until 11 a.m., we went because apparently the director of the Hebrew U/Rothberg musical told people in the play that he could get seats for them and their friends if we got there really early.  Even at 9 a.m. I could tell it was going to be crowded:

After going through security, which included having my hands scanned for any of the chemicals present in gunpowder, our group snagged seats close to the front of the non-VIP section.  Though we sat there for an hour before the ceremony began, all because we wanted to snag these seats, about 5 minutes before everything started it became a free for all and people moved their chairs forward, stood up on them, sat on the ground.  I personally braved an especially thorny rosebush to stand on a ledge so I could get as close as possible:

First, there was a 2-minute siren, and after that Benjamin Netanyahu spoke.  It was the first time I had ever seen him, which was pretty cool, and now I can add that experience to my collection.  Here he is:

I think someone else spoke as well, but after the speeches a lot of important people like Bibi, Peres, and Supreme Court president Dorit Beinisch put up these wreaths:

Following that was the 21-gun salute.  If the play director hadn’t warned me about it beforehand, I would have probably ducked and covered:

It ended just like the night before, with El Maleh Rachamim, the Mourner’s Kaddish, and Ha’Tikvah.  We walked a bit through the cemetery because at the entrance to Mt. Herzl, volunteers had been handing out free bouquets to put on graves, and we wanted to participate.  But walking around there was painful, because I saw a lot of people crying or looking like they had been crying, and you truly realize that the people buried there are sons, brothers, aunts, cousins, and friends.  By that time it was really crowded and hard to move, but here are some photos:

I spent the rest of the day hanging out back at the k’far, resting up for that night’s festivities that would kick off Independence Day.  We headed out at around 9 to Kikar Safra, the square behind the Jerusalem Municipality, for some shira ba’tzibur, or “singing in public.”  It was cute, but we left because we didn’t know any of the songs, and so we walked up Yaffo to Ben Yehuda, which was definitely a more rambunctious and spirited scene.  The street was the most crowded I had ever seen it, and teenagers ran around spraying silly string at each other and whatever passers-by got caught in the cross-hairs, including yours truly:

People were selling all sorts of food, light-up toys, and other carnival-esque fare.  I bought a headband that sported a pair of light-up Israeli flags, but all of the kids had these inflatable hammers and mallets:

Once we’d had enough of Ben Yehuda, we walked to the shuk for a huge party that was happening there:

I’ve noticed that Israel has a penchant for gigantic dance parties in busy public places, and I like it.  There were so many people there that I couldn’t move, and the only thing missing was the actual food itself.  Some of the falafel stands were open, but I’m more of a dried-fruit-and-nuts kind of girl.  I probably left around 1 a.m., but I thought the music was really good and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

But wait, there’s more!  Israelis love nothing more than a good barbecue, especially on Independence Day, so barbecuing was what we were going to do (even though we knew nothing about it).  We bought a dinky portable grill at the grocery store, charcoal, chicken hot dogs, buns, and we thought we would just wing it once we got to Gan Sacker, a huge park by the Central Bus Station and other Hebrew U campus that’s always been the place to be for the biggest grilling and picnicking holiday of the year.

We got there at around 1 p.m., which is still pretty early to have lunch by European/Israeli standards, but it was already packed and we had trouble finding shade:

Upon loading up the grill with the charcoal, we realized that we didn’t actually know how to light them on fire, even though we had some ideas.  Someone was watching out for us, though, because the people next to us offered to let us use their grill which they were finished with, and it was still hot.  They even offered us spices to put on our chicken dogs!  A thing about the chicken dogs: It’s not like they were raw, so all we had to do was put them on the grill until we were satisfied.  I volunteered to do the “grilling,” and even though it wasn’t like grilling raw meat or chicken, I still felt pretty accomplished because I remembered having been so afraid of the grill back when I was at Kutz and it was the staff’s responsibility to man the Saturday night cookouts.  Me in action:

Our picnic spread:

Jeff Seidel did his own barbecue with $600 worth of beer (at least that was the rumor), so I also went over there to steal some of his food.  By the late afternoon the sky was clouding up and it was windy, very unusual weather for spring in Jerusalem, so we left.  Just sitting around, talking, eating, and soaking up some dangerous UVB rays just like normal Israelis was the perfect way to spend the day.  As usual, it was difficult to comprehend the fact that I actually had class the next day, but our next holiday is only 3 weeks from now, and then a week after that is Shavuot.  Time really is flying, but don’t get me started on that topic because I don’t want to think about it.

This weekend, I finally crossed off another item on the Israel bucket list.  Jordan was amazing despite the fact that I spent equal amounts of time traveling and sightseeing, but I sure was happy to get back to Israel.  There’s really nothing like that feeling you get when you cross the border.  But this trip was cheap, quick, and beyond worth it.

Our journey began at 10 p.m. Thursday night when we left the k’far to take a bus to Tel Aviv, where we got on a midnight bus to Eilat.  I never sleep well on long nighttime bus rides, and I knew I would be just as exhausted as I had been in Strasbourg, but sometimes you have to do what it takes.  Upon arriving in Eilat at 4:30 a.m. Friday, we slept in the bus station for a few hours because the border crossing didn’t open until 8 a.m.  By the time we got there, a ton of people had already lined up, so it took a good hour and a half or so to change money and go through customs and get everything stamped.  It didn’t help that a group of Russian tourists kept cutting us in line.  Some border snapshots:

We finally crossed from Eilat into Aqaba, a Jordanian resort town on the Red Sea much like Eilat.  After a cab to the “bus station,” we took a “bus” (more like a banged-up sheirut) to Wadi Musa, the village where Petra is located.  Another cab ride later and we were finally at Petra by noon, and it had taken us 14 hours total to get there.  Entry to Petra was 33 dinars, more or less equivalent to 33 Euro, so it was definitely one of the more expensive sites I’ve been to.  But when you’re on a short trip like this and you never know when you’re getting back, you just have to shell out the green, especially since it was just declared one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007.

Jordan’s most visited tourist attraction, Petra was once the capital city of the Nabataeans, who established it sometime around the 6th century BC.  All of the architecture is cut into the rock, and today it is maintained as an archaeological park.  What’s even more interesting is that the site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812.  The Nabataeans were an ancient Semitic people who lived in southern Jordan, and their economy was based on the caravan trade.  They spoke Aramaic, and no one is sure how big their empire was at its peak.  Originally nomads, they eventually settled down.

We began with a short horse ride that was included with our ticket.  The guy leading my horse was nice enough, but when I dismounted at the end he demanded a tip, and when I proceeded to give him a dinar, he said it wasn’t enough and that people usually tipped three.  I don’t go for that kind of stuff, so I said I was a student and walked away.  I’d seen pictures of Petra, mostly from people who had already been there this year, but nothing could have prepared me for the real experience.  The first thing to walk through was the Siq, a 2-kilometer natural sandstone gorge that leads to the ancient city of Petra:

The first remnants of human activity we ran into were a set of sacred stone blocks with niches carved by a person named Sabinos, who was the master of religious ceremonies to honor the deity Dusares in Syria.  He made these when he visited Petra sometime during the 2nd or 3rd century AD:

Right next to the niches was a monumental relief, “about a third larger than life,” that depicts an actual caravan in procession, including a group of camels and a driver.  Dating from 100 to 50 BC, the relief has unfortunately eroded since then, but you can still see the camels’ feet and the lower part of the driver:

Finally, we got to Al-Khazna, the Treasury, which is by far the most spectacular monument carved by the Nabataeans, and dates back to 60 BC to 50 AD.  It’s 39.5 meters high and is impressively carved out of a single block.  The monument’s name comes from a local Bedouin legend that pharaoh hid a treasure in the urn at the top.  In reality it is a mausoleum, and the Hellenistic influence is obvious in the Corinthian capitals, which are topped by a frieze of winged griffins and the goddess Isis.  Also, if you’ve ever seen advertisements for Pera, it’s pobably somewhere in the picture:

Then we came to Tomb 67, built between 200 BC and 200 AD, which has an upper doorway decorated with a Hellenistic pediment:

Turning the corner, we reached the Street of Facades (50 BC to 50 AD), which is named for its rock-cut tombs that are neatly arranged in ascending street-like rows along the cliff face.  The tombs look pretty much the same, but the design style is said to be Assyrian and based on Mesopotamian architecture:

And no trip to any ancient city would be complete without a Graeco-Roman amphitheater.  It was hewn directly from the rock sometime during the 1st century AD:

Across from that was the Urn Tomb, which dates from the first century AD and probably belonged to a Nabataean king:

The Romans built this Colonnaded Street during the 2nd century AD.  It looks a lot like the one at Beit Shehan in the north:

The last thing to see was the Petra Great Temple, recently uncovered by archaeologists from Brown University in 1992 and still under restoration.  Founded over two thousand years ago, it is the largest freestanding building yet excavated in the city:

It was still super hot and the sun was still straight over our heads, so we decided to sit down in one of those touristy snack shops for a while and chill out:

In terms of tourism, Petra wasn’t too busy when we were there, but it is the most visited site in Jordan.  What was really sad were the kids hawking postcard albums for 1 dinar each, and the old women holding out their tin cans and asking for money.  Jordan is modernized and has a relatively stable economy from what I can gather, but the majority of Arab countries’ populations are either in the lowest class or live in poverty.

We left Petra at around 5 p.m., completely and utterly exhausted.  The cab brought us to the Shara Mountains Hostel, which was quite nice for a hostel:

The owner, Mahmoud, insisted on treating us to complimentary tea and coffee as soon as we walked in the door, and told us to not worry about paying until we checked out.  That afternoon, he also set us up with a driver for the next day’s excursion.  Even though most of the people we interacted with in Jordan (all men) had decent manners and kept telling us that Americans are so nice, we still took precautions.  If we wanted to talk about Israel in a cab, we called it “Ireland.”  When one of us had to say the word “Bar Mitzvah” in order to tell a story, she substituted it with “Quinceanera” (Latin American version of a debut).  At the hostel, we had to fill out forms that asked for our passport numbers and where we had come from and what our next destination would be.  We had obviously come from Israel, but we all wrote in Aqaba for both answers.  I heard some Hebrew at the hostel from a Spanish-speaking family, but they definitely kept it in check.

After relaxing with our libations, we napped for a bit and then walked a few blocks to get something to eat, and we hadn’t had a substantial meal since the night before.  I’m not sure if Jordanian cuisine exists, but the food in south Jordan is based on the Bedouin presence.  There were a few Jordanian “specialties” on the menu at our restaurant, but I chose to play it safe with tabouleh and lentil soup.  We all passed out as soon as we got back to the hostel.

On Saturday morning, we had a light breakfast (included but not substantial) before our driver picked us up at 10.  Our destination was Wadi Rum, a nature reserve about 2 hours east of Petra.  Covering 720 square kilometers, the “park” has the most amazing landscapes I have ever seen in my life.  It’s also the largest valley in Jordan.  The sandstone formations there reach heights of over 1700 meters, and there are plenty of natural canyons and ancient rock drawings.  The Bedouins have long inhabited the Rum mountains, and most of them now earn their living from tourism even though they retain their traditional ways of life.  Lawrence of Arabia based his operations there during the Arab Revolt of 1917-1918.

On our way there, our driver stopped at this lookout point that was all desert scape:

When we arrived at Wadi Rum, we were immediately approached by a Bedouin in kitschy traditional Bedouin dress who offered to take us around in his jeep for a cheaper price than what the park’s jeep drivers were charging.  After buying our entry tickets and looking at the prices, we decided his was a better deal and paid 45 dinar for a 3-hour jeep tour of Wadi Rum.  Naturally, we couldn’t see everything, but I felt he chose the best sites and made very good use of our time.

As we left the visitor’s center, we saw the village of Wadi Rum as well as some Bedouin campsites:

Our first stop was Lawrence’s spring, where Lawrence of Arabia supposedly washed during the Arab Revolt.  We didn’t climb it because there wasn’t enough time and no well-defined path, but there were some nice rock inscriptions:

Next up was the Khazali canyon, a deep, narrow fissure in the mountainside that also has some rock inscriptions:

The Burdah and Um Frouth rock bridges weren’t too far away.  While we only looked at the smaller bridge, we actually climbed on the other one.  The way up was a relatively flat rock on a slant with some footholds and crevices here and there, and I was loving it even though some of the other people in my group were hesitant.  I must admit that standing on the edge was quite exhilarating:

After the bridges, we stopped to look at more rock inscriptions, but I don’t think I need to waste space with those pictures.  However, our guide (that’s him in the picture above) definitely knew what he was doing because he saved the sand dunes for last:

No words or pictures can accurately describe and capture these natural formations of red sand.  Originally, I had no plans to climb to the top because it was steep, I was really hot, and trudging through sand does a number on your calves.  But before I knew it I was half-way there, so I didn’t see any point in not going all the way:

Our tour over, we were once again exhausted, and after a 45-minute ride to the border we were so happy to cross back into Israel.  It’s nice to visit a place like Jordan for 2 days, but being in an Arab country kind of made me fidgety in a metaphorical sense of the word, even though Jordan is Israel’s friendliest ally in the Middle East.  This trip was necessary, and I will never forget Wadi Rum.  If you’re planning a trip to Israel, make sure to include at least a day of seeing the sites in Jordan.  The secular holiday extravaganza post is up next!

I love Israel, I really do, I promise, but I just had to share this tidbit because it resonates so deeply with my own experiences of having no faith in local leadership.  Ray was never quite right after Katrina, and he neglected his Chocolate City to the point that Mitch Landrieu, a career politico, was elected and will soon become our first white mayor in 32 years.  And that Danziger Bridge case, when those police officers gunned down innocent civilians in the name of self-defense and then tried to cover it up, that’s the icing on the cake.  The last time I talked to my parents, they told me that you just can’t trust the police anymore.  Don’t even get me started on Dollar Bill.  New Orleans is a hotbed of bribery, fraud, blackmail, and all-around corruption; surely it takes first place in that category?

Perhaps not.  There’s a bribery scandal surrounding the Holyland complex, a cluster of high-rise luxury apartment buildings towering over Begin Highway that look out onto Malcha Mall.  Each unit has a panoramic view and sells for around NIS 6 million, or $1.62 million.  Unlike most of city’s architectural landscape, they don’t blend in with their surroundings and Jerusalmites call them “The Monsters,” and I personally have to agree with this moniker because they don’t fit in with the landscape, and every time I take the bus to the mall they give me a weird feeling:

As the Jerusalem Post puts it lightly, it recently came out that “Malha neighborhood was allegedly built with the help of graft, bribery and local government corruption.”  The project was first approved in 1999 back when Ehud Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem, and the original plans called for the construction of one residential tower plus two hotels and a model of Ancient Jerusalem.  But then the Second Intifada came and ravaged the tourism industry, which rendered the hotel business unprofitable, so in 2003 “businessmen behind the scheme requested and received permission to build four residential towers.”  Popular sentiment towards the project was negative, and “residents filed more than 300 objections, arguing in part that it would cause traffic and parking problems and monstrously scar the landscape.”

Where there’s a will, there’s an illegal way.  Apparently, a group of businessmen including Hillel Charni, who headed the Holyland initiative, “bribed their way through the opposition.”  The bribes are estimated at NIS tens of millions, and “Olmert’s then-confidant Uri Messer allegedly facilitated the transfer of bribes to key members of the Jerusalem Municipality such as Uri Sheetrit, who served as city engineer at the time. Police have raided the offices of Polar Investments, which is headed by Uri Shani, former head of the Prime Minister’s Office under Ariel Sharon.”  Last Thursday, the police’s National Fraud Unit arrested a former manager of Polar Investments, Avigdor Kelner (who resigned from that post in 2007 after being charged with allegations of insider trading), who paid off officials via companies he owned.  The previous day, former ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski (2003-2008), was arrested  “on suspicion of accepting more than $750,000 in bribes, the most senior official caught up so far,” in exchange for “changing planning laws to allow the construction.”  Now, former prime minister and mayor of Jerusalem (1993-2003) Ehud Olmert is expected to land in Israel today, cutting his trip to Europe short amid suspicions of his involvement in the scandal.  Olmert, of course, has denied any involvement in connection with the affair.  But let us not forget that Olmert stepped down from the premiership and forced early elections last year because he faces other charges of corruption.  Something tells me I shouldn’t underestimate the man.

UPDATE (3 hours after I posted this): “Former prime minister Ehud Olmert is the chief suspect in the Holyland real estate scandal, police announced Thursday.”

Did you know that Israel ranked 93rd on Reporters Sans Frontière’s 2009 Press Freedom Index?  The United States came in at 22, but Israel lagged behind both Lebanon (61) and the United Arab Emirates (87).  For those of you out there who have never attempted to name all the countries of the world on Sporcle.com, there are only 195 of them.  Although Israel is a country built upon democratic principles, journalism is where the democratic tradition and the state’s security concerns ultimately clash.  The United Nation’s High Commissioner for Refugees reported in 2009 that “Freedom of the press is generally respected in Israel. The country’s basic law does not specifically address the issue, but the Supreme Court has affirmed that freedom of expression is an essential component of human dignity.”  It also claims that Arab journalists are sometimes targeted and harassed by Israeli policemen, but that the only rift with Israeli journalists was during the Gaza War and its aftermath when some of them were trying to get into the territory.

That is, until now.  I understand, value, and treasure my First Amendment right to Freedom of the Press, and I definitely have a greater appreciation for it after having delved into some investigative journalism of my own.  Israeli journalists, however, don’t necessarily enjoy that which I am guaranteed:

All Israeli press reports are subject to military censorship to ensure that national security is not being compromised. The role and jurisdiction of the military censor are defined in the most recent Censorship Agreement between the media and the military, signed in 1996. Under the agreement, the censor is granted the power to penalize, shut down, or stop the printing of a newspaper, or to confiscate the printing machines that belong to the newspaper, if it is believed to be endangering national security.

Yes, National Security indeed trumps all, and Ha’aretz seems to have gotten itself into some trouble by way of 23-year-old Anat Kamm, a journalist who, during her mandatory military service (which ended in June 2007), obtained and “copied a vast number of secret documents without authorization…while working as a clerk in the office of the IDF’s Central Command” and leaked a great deal of them to Ha’aretz journalist Uri Blau.  In November 2008, Blau published an article alleging that the IDF had violated Israeli law and a recent Supreme Court ruling when it assassinated a member of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank in 2007.  Just 6 months earlier, the Israeli Supreme Court had outlawed such assassinations if peaceful detainment was possible.  In his article, Blau “cited a confidential defense ministry document from March 2007 which included an order from Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, then Israel’s senior commander in the West Bank, permitting the IDF to shoot three top Islamic Jihad members even if they did not pose a clear and present danger.”

Though Blau never revealed his source, the IDF’s embarrassment prompted an investigation, eventually leading it to Kamm, who was secretly placed under house arrest in December 2009.  She was “accused of stealing more than 2,000 military documents,” and charged with “passing information with the intent of harming the country’s security.”  Her trial is set to begin in a few days, and if found guilty she could face a 15-year prison sentence.  There was a gag order on the issue (during which Israeli officials weren’t even allowed to say that they had placed her under house arrest), which was only lifted on Friday, but Israeli journalists got around this issue by leaking to the foreign press.

Uri Blau, however, got lucky.  As per his post-gag order column, he was in Bangkok when he got the call that his Tel Aviv apartment had been broken into.  He fled to London, where is now “on the run,” and authorities told him that if he returned to Israel, he “could be silenced for ever” and “charged for crimes related to espionage” (read his article here).  Ha’aretz has been negotiating the terms of his return to the country with Israeli prosecutors, but “A deal between Blau and Israeli intelligence, whereby he would hand over the documents for immunity and a guarantee that his sources would be protected, broke down last week. Each side accused the other of breaking terms of the agreement and Blau is now wanted for questioning by the Israeli police and security services.”

First, I agree 100% with Kamm’s defense team, who says that in no way did her actions endanger Israel’s national security.  The IDF did something illegal, and it needs to own up to it.  None of this is going to start a war, and Islamic Jihad isn’t going to declare a third Intifada.  I do think that Kamm should be charged with a crime because she did, after all, obtain those documents illegally, but I think endangering national security goes too far. She was obviously motivated by ideological underpinnings and a question of conscience.

Second, I think Blau shouldn’t face any charges.  As he writes, “It is clear to me that these reports were not always pleasant to read – neither to their subjects nor to the reader. But it doesn’t matter, because the journalist’s job is not to please his reader, employer or leaders. It is to provide people with the best tools to judge and understand the goings-on around them.”  Unless he is somehow guaranteed immunity, however, he will have his day in court.  Just imagine if Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists who broke the Watergate story, had been carted off to prison.  You would have been outraged.  As Blau says, he is fighting a war for Israel’s image.  How a democracy handles freedom of the press is a reflection of the degree to which its government embraces democratic principles.  Not to mention, of course, that the issue is only fodder for anti-Israel groups.

And so it goes.  Us pro-Israel Jews can glorify the only democracy in the Middle East as much as we want to, but reality says otherwise.  Israel’s ranking in the 2010 Press Freedom Index is sure to plummet in light of this incident.  As a journalist, I will now have to reexamine my own romanticized image of Israel.  In the meantime, I am thankful for my Constitutional rights.

UPDATE: Ha’aretz sets the record straight.

Yam l’Yam was also poorly planned in the way that we were scheduled to return to Jerusalem the night before Passover started, meaning that we had a very small window of time in which to get ourselves out of Jerusalem before the buses stopped running.  I departed for Be’er Sheva the next day to spend the seder and chag with the Shukers.  Be’er Sheva is the “Capital of the Negev” and one of the largest cities in Israel.  Also home to Ben Gurion University,a large portion of its population is made up of Jews who immigrated from Arab countries after 1948, and a lot immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia settled there during the 1990s.

The Shukers actually live in Meitar, a suburb of Be’er Sheva about 20 minutes driving distance from the city.  It’s an absolutely gorgeous area, and they have a lovely house with a porch that looks out onto an idyllic Negev landscape.  After a much-needed nap, we got ready to go to seder at Yossi’s mother’s house in Be’er Sheva.  Yossi’s family is from Yemen and was a part of that post-1948 wave of immigration.  There were about 30 people at the seder, since Yossi has a lot of siblings who each have their own children, so I’m pretty sure that not everyone was there.  I definitely felt more comfortable this time because I understood Hebrew enough to be able to follow along in the Haggadah and decipher conversations.

The seder wasn’t the main focus of the evening, but I noticed some key differences, mostly food-related. For example, the charoset was not made with apples, but with figs and dates.  Barbie brought her own Ashkenazi version, but I must say that the Yemenite tradition was quite tasty.  Also, no one ate much matzoh during the seder because the main part of the festive meal was a concoction of crushed matzoh, broth, veggies, and lamb.  Speaking of matzoh, I had never had wet matzoh until this trip.  I guess you just let it soak for a bit and it becomes less breakable, so you can put stuff in it and roll it up like a wrap.  I opted out of this particular Yemenite custom and had matzoh ball soup instead, but it definitely looked delicious.  The rest of the meal was also indicative of the setting, chicken and rice taking center stage.  Dessert was fresh fruit, dates, and nuts.  The other key difference was that Karen, one of Barbie’s daughters, insisted on setting aside a chair and a cup of wine for Gilad Shalit.  At the end of March, Israel’s Chief Rabbi had called upon Israeli citizens to leave a chair at the seder table empty for Shalit.  We rushed through the second half of the seder, sang for a while, and left at around midnight.  It was a great seder, and a great window into Jewish cultures different from my own.

The first day of Passover is a chag, meaning that the restrictions on certain activities are similar to those of Shabbat.  When everything is closed, the Israeli thing to do is go on a tiyul, or field trip, to one of the national parks or nature reserves.  We took a drive to the Eshkol National Park, named for that oft-looked over prime minister, which is located in the western Negev between Be’er Sheva and Sderot.  Once inside the park, we parked at a rope bridge and walked across to take in the wildflowers and greenery (highly unusual for the desert) and see some pretty cool desert landscapes.  I really regret not having brought along my camera, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  After that, we took a very scenic drive through the park and eventually settled on a picnic spot.  Of course, it was all quite scrumptious and I felt so quintessentially Israeli, eating my kosher for Passover picnic lunch on a tiyul in the desert.

A few hours later, we were back in Meitar and my only responsibility was to relax and take a load off until we had an early dinner, after which we had dessert on the porch at that pre-twilight point in the late afternoon when the light is perfect.  I left for Jerusalem soon after.

I talked a lot about Boombamelah, and I did end up going, but only for a few hours.  There was only one full day between my return to Jerusalem and the start of the festival, and that day didn’t bode well for my stomach.  Still, I was stubborn and thought that it would pass and I would be fine, so I trekked all the way to Ashdod, where we cabbed to the festival and set up our tent on the gorgeous beach.  A few hours in, however, I realized that I was far from o.k. and really needed to see a doctor.  The next day was Friday, meaning Shabbat was coming up and I had to move fast, so I left the festival that evening and bused back to Jerusalem.  I was disappointed, of course, but I was able to spend a few hours tanning on the beach.  And that was that.

Backtracking to that Wednesday, the day before Boombamelah, I was paid a visit by Dan, a friend of mine from Vassar who left after his freshman year to make aliyah this past summer.  After spending time on a kibbutz in the north, he recently started his three years of service in the army, and it was so interesting to hear about army life and the experience of an oleh chadash (new immigrant).  It was also nice to talk to someone about Vassar, because I’m missing it bad.  I love Israel, I really do, but nothing beats Founder’s Day, the big ViCE concert, and lounging on the quad.  Therefore, it was only fitting that I hang out with another Vassar friend after Shabbat.  Lucy is at the University of Haifa this semester.  She was in Jerusalem for a few days, so we grabbed some Aroma at Mamilla and talked about Vassar.

Does it seem to you like my break never ended?  Well, that’s how I felt, because I didn’t go back to school until just yesterday.  Monday was the last day of Passover and also a chag, but on Tuesday I was productive and went to Tel Aviv.  Instead of heading straight to the beach, though, we took a bus to Old Jaffa and walked around there for a while, which was awesome for me because that’s a place I’ve never been to.  It wasn’t anything particularly special, just a lot of art galleries, a flea market, and the beach, but it’s still one of those things you have to do.  From there, we walked to Neve Tzedek, established in 1887 as the first Jewish neighborhood built outside the walls of the ancient port of Jaffa.  It has undergone a radical gentrification in recent years, and its streets are lined with posh boutiques, artists’ studios and galleries, and the cutest cafes.  It was such a breath of fresh air to explore a part of Tel Aviv that wasn’t Allenby/Rothschild/Dizengoff.  Naturally, we ended up at the beach, but I only spent an hour there before I was ready to head back to Jerusalem.  I wanted to rest up and mentally prepare myself for the next day’s three hours of Hebrew.

I couldn’t have asked for a better Passover/Spring Break; I got to go to the north, the south, and the beach.  I also had the rare privilege of spending time in an actual house instead of in my apartment and hostels.  School may have started, but it’s the weekend again, so I’m still in a vacation frame of mind.  So Shabbat Shalom, and I’ll be back with updates!

So.  Yam l’Yam.  You should read my pre-break post before perusing this tractate.  We left at 6:15 on Thursday morning for a Mediterranean beach way up north, but of course we couldn’t get there without a snafu.  I slept through all of this (thanks Glee playlist), but apparently at some point the bus driver “got lost” (even though we were on a highway, and Israel’s highways are usually straight shots in one direction), someone (either the driver or a security guard) wanted a smoking break, and we stopped for 20 minutes.  When we got back on the road, the door to the cargo compartment was still open and it took a few minutes for anyone to realize that we had driven away with our luggage and valuables exposed to the unpredictable and volatile nature of Israeli motoring culture.  About 3 hours after we had left the k’far, we reached the beach where we would have our opening ceremony and “begin” our hike.  I knew we were really far north because Rosh ha’Nikra was within my range of vision.  Everyone took photos, and then the madrichim performed a skit in the spirit of Passover:

Because there were 80 of us on the trip, we had to split up into 3 groups.  All of the first semester people stuck together and we managed to have a whole group to ourselves, minus maybe 5 or 6 new kids.  That was definitely a plus, because most of us didn’t know every first semester leftover very well, so the trip was really good for solidarity and bonding.  To officially start the trek across the country, one person from each group took an empty water bottle and filled it with Mediterranean salt water.  Then (surprise surprise), we got back on the buses to drive to our first hiking location.

Eli and Rotem, the madrichim assigned to my group, thought it would be “funny” to pretend that we were in basic training in the army.  Most people were too tired and groggy to think much of it, but I and the few others who had done Gadna thought it was hilarious.  Eli and Rotem in uniform:

Each group was also assigned a guide, which brings me to Epic Fail #1.  Guides are, in theory, supposed to know the trails they guide, meaning they should have had a lot of experience hiking them themselves before leading other people.  Israeli guides in particular are also supposed to be proficient in English, because Americans really like to tour Israel.  These are basic requirements, and I’m sure that most people would agree with me.  Desirable qualities in a guide that aren’t necessarily essential to completing a hike are charisma, the ability to engage the group, and a thorough knowledge of relevant historical events.  We were lucky enough to be “blessed” with Noa, a middle-aged woman who exhibited none of these traits, and I’m pretty sure that she would have failed Chaim’s course.

Word eventually got around that Noa had never done Yam l’Yam, much less led a group on it.  Her English wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t what it should have been.  She didn’t know the names of a lot of plants and animals, so when she stopped to explain natural phenomena such as a hole burrowed by a warthog or the legend behind a certain tree’s red coloring, she was at a loss for words and it took a lot of guesswork on our part to decipher her thoughts.  She was also quite “blah.”  Lacking enthusiasm, Noa just droned on about things we weren’t interested in.  There was nothing to get excited about.  As for history, I was shocked when she couldn’t recall the name of the defense minister who instigated the First Lebanon War in 1982 (Ariel Sharon).  The madrichim decided to take the reins when it came to the conversations we had whenever we stopped, and we actually had some good discussions about politics and military tactics, since the Lebanon issue was relevant in terms of our proximity.

On that first day, we came into very close contact with the local fauna and spotted an ancient fortress:

Noa “leads” the group:

We also ran into a bit of a water problem, hence Epic Fail #2.  The madrichim sent out a packing list a few days before the trip, but it made no mention of water shoes.  The first stream we crossed wasn’t so bad, since there were enough stepping stones, but as we encountered more water and stones became less and less frequent, we got mad.  Apparently, the company that organized the trip had not told the madrichim that this would be the case, and so no one ended the hike with dry shoes:

In the end, though, it was worth it for the view:

Also, Gilad Shalit’s family lives in one of these houses:

As soon as we got to the hostel it was time for dinner, and as soon as dinner was over I was ready to go to bed.  We didn’t have to wake up as early the next day, but everyone was still tired.  After breakfast, we packed lunches and boarded the buses, which brought us to the top of Mt. Meron.  Our task that day was to hike down the mountain, and hopefully we would finish in time to be at the hostel for Shabbat.  I definitely remember doing this hike 4 years ago.  During the hike, we passed by one of the army’s satellite stations, and also ran into an ancient wine press.  I was very proud of myself because when Noa asked us what it was, I was the first person to get it right:

Goats and scenery:

We ended up making it to Tzfat in time for Shabbat, but I was disappointed that the madrichim didn’t arrange for anyone to lead a walking trip down to the Old City so that we would at least have the option of going to shul there.  Tzfat is the birthplace of Kabbalah, and it has some really beautiful synagogues.  In terms of altitude, it’s also the highest city in the country.  I will take this time to digress, because I actually went to Tzfat back in October with Ria but forgot to post the pictures.

The most surprising thing to me when I went in October was that I didn’t feel welcome.  When I went during EIE, everything was open to us and I felt warm and fuzzy.  Also, we had a guide so we never got lost, and Tzfat is a very confusing place.  Tzfat is one of the four holy cities in the Land of Israel, and it’s also known for its blue roofs and candle-making.  The obvious thing for a tourist to do is walk down this covered street, which is lined with shops that sell all sorts of jewelry and Judaica:

Next to the Old City there’s a small Artists’ Colony, and at some point we happened upon this weaver of tallit:

Hasidism embraced Kabbalah under the leadership of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the great grandson of the Baal Shem Tov (who founded Hasidism) and in Tzfat, he is always watching you.  Another sign reminds everyone to keep the Sabbath:

The quaint streets of the Old City (notice the blue):

Of course, we went inside a few synagogues.  First, we tried to get in to see the Rabbi Joseph Caro Synagogue, but whoever was in charge of opening it up to tourists said he was taking a break for a while and that we couldn’t see it.  We ended up coming back, and although this guy was reluctant to let us take a peek, he let us in.  That was definitely the most disconcerting experience, feeling like I was a hassle and a stupid tourist instead of a fellow Jew.  Rabbi Joseph Caro wrote the Shulchan Aruch, the last great codification of Jewish law.  He fled Spain during the Inquisition and ended up in Tzfat, and the synagogue was built in the 16th century.  There’s a cabinet in the sanctuary with tons of old books:

After that, we passed by the Lemberg Synagogue, founded in the 19th century, which was deserted and then eventually collapsed after World War I.  All that remains is its western wall, but you can still see engraved decorations depicting a lion and hands in the Birkat Cohanim (the Priestly Blessing) position, and some other inscriptions in Hebrew:

The last (and best) synagogue we ventured into was the Abuhav Synagogue, a 16th century synagogue named after the 15th century Spanish scholar Rabbi Yitzhak Abuhav.  It has an opulent dome painted with all sorts of images, and one of the Torah scrolls in the Ark was supposedly scribed by Rabbi Abuhav himself:

The last thing we did in Tzfat was hike up the citadel to the war memorial.  During the War of Independence in 1948, Tzfat was a strategic location that neither the Arabs nor the Jews could afford to lose.  It also had a sizable Arab population, but one night in late April, the entire community fled the city.  There are numerous rumors and stories about this event, but the Tzfat website says that it all started when an artillery piece nicknamed “The Davidka” was delivered to the Jews, who shot it off several times.  Though they failed to do much damage, the weapon made considerable noise.  The rumor spread quickly that the Jews had acquired the atomic bomb, and so the Arab community left.  Citadel and memorial:

End of Tzfat, back to Yam l’Yam.  Friday night we had a nice Shabbat dinner and the madrichim had some activities planned, but most of us decided to just hang out.  Saturday was also a lazy day, and a group of us tried to walk to the Old City on our own.  We got there, but it was confusing and no one had a map and it was Shabbat, so we wouldn’t have been able to see the synagogues anyway.  The uneventful Shabbat was just what I needed to prepare myself for the last leg of the hike.

On Sunday, we left Tzfat to do the hike that would bring us to the shore of the Kinneret.  It wasn’t so pleasant at the beginning, since we basically waded through thorny bushes for a few hours.  Soon enough, though, we happened upon this site to our left:

I wasn’t listening to Noa because I was famished and concentrating intently on my sandwich, but this staircase has something to do with Israel’s National Water Carrier, a system of giant pipes/open canals/tunnels/reservoirs that transfers water from the Kinneret to the rest of the country.

Finally, we ended up in these banana fields, which were supposed to lead us to the shores of the Kinneret:

…But we got lost, and so we had to get on the bus  Five minutes later, we arrived at our destination:

Once all of the groups had arrived (we were the last, obviously), we did a toast to the end of our journey and were treated to a catered feast while we lounged on the beach and relaxed until it was time to go home to Jerusalem.

In spite of Noa, I had a great time on the trip.  As I mentioned earlier, the first semester girls got much closer.  Since the trip, we’ve done some potlucks together and hung out more.  I’ve finally made new friends.  Yam l’Yam was much different this time, and it was definitely better.  Passover post to come soon!