This Other Country

More Hermans

2007-06-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

Once again I would like to remind all readers that I am now in England and so the events narrated her happened a number of weeks ago.

My last few days on Kibbutz went by without much incident. I spent my last day of work taking copious amounts amounts of photos, and during our break we shared a few bottles of wine, which didn't exactly help our productivity, but I did achieve one of my life's ambitions, which was to slap someone with a fish (the moment has been photographed and is on facebook). Our final day on Kibbutz was the Jewish festival of Shavuos and so we had the day off, which meant we could pack without much rush. In the evening was the Champions League Final so we all enjoyed the Scousers loosing, well I did anyway.

The next day I left early with Richard and Annabel, Nick was getting a later bus, as we were going all the way up North to Shantipi. If you can remember all the way back to October I talked about a music festival on the beaches of the Galilee, well Shantipi was very similar.

On our way up we had to go to the MDA flat in Tel Aviv to drop some stuff up, as we were not going to take all our possessions up to the festival with us. Getting out of the bus station is not the easiest thing in the world especially when you have several large bags, as to get out you mass through small turnstiles. To combat this problem I passed all my bags over the small low lying metal fence on to the other side. As I was trying to lug my big suitcase over, Richard noticed that my small rucksack was leaking, I thought this was rather strange as I didn't remember any liquids in there. Then I suddenly remembered I had two bottles of beer in my bag, I dashed through the turnstile and ran straight to my bag. Ignoring Annabel and Richard's warnings of broken glass I ripped my bag open and took everything out to try and salvage my stuff from the wrecking nature of beer and broken glass. Once I had saved everything, no real damage thank God, I realised that my hands had been cut in several places, and that I had left behind a small puddle of beer and blood. I cleaned up in a local shop, and we made our way to the flat where I spent an hour, with a head torch on taking pieces of glass out of my bag. I must have looked very strange especially to a few FZY girls who came into the flat during my operations.

We finally returned to the bus station, the mess had been cleaned up, and got on the bus to Tiberias. The traffic made the journey about twice as long as we should have been, and we were really running late, this was compounded by a half hour wait at the bus station for a sheroot to the other side of the lake where the festival was. We finally arrived there, slightly despondent as a couple of Israelis that we had met at the bus station, had told us that that Shotei Hanevua the band we were all desperate to see had played the day before. We were therefore delighted by the news that not only had they not played, but that they would be playing in a couple of hours time, and so we hurriedly put up our tent, so that we would not missed them. We needn't have worried as they appeared an hour late. They were very good but not quite as good as the last time we saw them at the beginning of the year.

I think Israeli music festivals must be the only place in the world where you can given directions to your tent by saying, go left at the Scientologists, rick at the Chabad and look directly behind Jew for Jesus, for that was where our tent could be found. You could also go to one of these festivals and not bring any food and be able to have three square meals a day without paying a penny. For all these organisations, except the Scientologists the stingy bastards, would give you free food, so long as you were prepared to listen to them preach to you for a few minutes. We put this theory to the test when we went to Jews for Jesus for breakfast, and I had a small theological discussion with some guy from Luton.

As part of the ticket price, there was entry to a neighbouring water park, and so the three of us spent most of our day in the pools, annoyingly for a festival that was on the beach, the sea was cordoned off, but as the water park had showers as well we weren't complaining. Dinner was an interesting experience, as once again we found ourselves having a free dinner. Richard had gone to the prayer tent for Friday night prayers, and I said I would join him if there was going to be free food, its the way I work. Anyway I went down later to the prayer tent to look for him to discover he was not there. I called them up to discover that they were with a group of Messianic Jews. The group he had found, were a group of people who kept Jewish practices but believed that Jesus was the Messiah, i.e. they followed Christianity in its earliest form. They had a rather alternative Friday night service, which was interesting to witness and then we had dinner with them. The food unfortunately was rather plain, but they were very interesting to talk to, and before we left they even invited us back to where they lived in Isfiyah, in the hills above Haifa.That evening the headliner was Aviv Geffen, one of the biggest names in Israeli music. I knew very little of his work, but his music a sort of classic rock was very accessible and his performance, even for a complete newcomer to his work was excellent.

Saturday was also spent largely in the water park. In the afternoon we relaxed to the sounds of a very chilled out world band, and then we plucked up our courage and stifled our laughs as we went to the big yellow tent that belonged to the Scientologists. We were first asked to fill in forms so that we could be contacted and then we were taken individually to have some tests done on us. The test consisted of being asked questions while holding metal rods, there was also a dial and without answering the questions the interrogator could deduce the way you felt on certain subjects by looking at a dial. I realised almost at once that the metal rods were pressure sensors and so I just held it in my open palm and then squeezed at random points. The guy asking me the questions failed to realise, but still managed to conclude that I had problems relating to others, and that my problems could be solved if I brought the book. He regretted to inform me that unfortunately he did not currently have any copies in English, but told me to go along to the Tel Aviv office, where I could buy the book and see a film, wait for it , for free. I had to go round the back of the tent before I permitted myself to break out into a fit of hysterics.

And then it was time to go, a speedy ride back to Tiberius, and then back to Jerusalem for the first of two parts, of the the end.

Crackheads and Hermans

2007-06-15T02:34:00.000-07:00

From now on the following articles are being written not in Israel but in the comfort of my own home, this means that I am writing about events that may have happened a couple of weeks ago, and so not all that I describe is fresh in the mind.

Kibbutz volunteers are an odd breed, and in this space I would like to pay tribute to some of my fellow volunteers at Kibbutz Ketorah. The title refers to two of the terms used to describe such weird specimens as were found on Ketorah. I already knew how strange my fellow Noamnics were and so I will not describe them here, they are a special breed of abnormal. As I have already said we came down on a bus with six girls from a group called Israel Journey. Now they were weird, especially on first appearances, but they were nothing compared to who was already there.

There were about thirty kibbutz volunters although the numbers were constantly changing as people came and went. We arrived on the same day as the Garin, a group of boys from Noam Israel who went into the army together and framed their service spending time together on Kibbutz. On the whole they were a group of really lovely guys and we frequently hung out with them, especially since outside one of their rooms there was a really nice canopies and with sofas. On the whole they all spoke excellent English, the one exception was Uri, a character in his native language, and this was magnified as he nobly tried to navigate the confusing paths of English, at the end of Passover he declared 'lets go eat flavor', as opposed to flour. He stood out as the only slightly member of the group, well off the dance floor anyway. On the dance floor they performed some sort of drunken Capoeira, the Brazillian martial art dance, and on one occasion I was once payed the flattering compliment of dancing as weirdly as the Garin.

Ed and Emma were two members of Netzer who had dropped off the program because they loved Kibbutz life so much and wanted to stay. I knew Edd well as he was on the Machon, I knew who Emma was but I never really got to know her before Kibbutz as she was on the Netzer alternative to Machon called Etgar, and our paths never really crossed. There was a general rule with Edd, that from when he woke up to when he finished work he was a perfectly normal human being (despite his height of 6'9) who worked in the kitchen. After work was a different story, he would tend to disappear into his room and wouldn't be seen until around eleven. Lets just say that after this time period normal conversation with him wasn't exactly possible. All his stories he told usually ended with the phrase 'I dont remember it that well because I was so fucked'. My first impressions of Emma were not particularly good, although they were quickly eradicated as soon as I got to know her. Her vice was alcohol and she drank a lot of it, occasionally I tried to drink with her and I was gone within about five minutes, (I because a bit of a light weight in Israel, I blame the heat).

Also on the Kibbutz were a group of four post-grad American girls, who on first look seemed quite normal and indeed they were. The one exception would probably be Sheri who came to work in the dining room for a week. I didn't think you could get more American until Matt came. Matt just out of his first year of college, struck us as being the world's biggest Herman, he also joined us in the dining room and he was actually one of the nicest volunteers, and he quickly fell into kibbutz life, particularly dancing, and he frequently told me how it was the total opposite to college. He and Sheri would frequently conversations in the dining room and us Brits would look at them thinking what on earth are they talking about.

Other volunteers included Ron, a gym manager from California who arrived around the same time as us. He spent the entire time he was there (a week, he was fired because he didn't work) telling us about how America was taking over the world. Ben, another Yank was far more normal apart from when he would sit outside and play his guitar and sing on the spot lyrics, which could only be inspired by serious drug use, which I am pretty sure they were. Run (said with heavy Israeli accent) was just out the army and he was rather normal, except when he greeted you he would hit you in a friendly manner on the chest, and it hurt. David from New York used to manage Fridays, and was probably the coolest person on Kibbutz (not hard) and I managed to con him into taking over the pool for me. Marissa from Ottawa walked walked and danced in a manner which wouldn't seem foreign to a zombie. Volunteers don't usually stay for more than a few months but David from Montreal had arrived in November and doesn't look like he was ever going to go.

There are four volunteers who I think deserve slightly more space they are JD, Teague, Arielle and Will. They have all now left Ketora JD, Teague and Will all left within about three days of each other about a week after I left. Arielle left after about my third week. They had all come at the end of last year, or the beginning of this year.

I spent my first few days of work with Teague painting houses. During this time he asked my name about three times a day, after a while he just called me English kid. Teague had spent time on Ketora before, he had met a girl and they moved to Eilat together, when they broke up he moved back. He came from a very well-off family from Seattle but he had turned his back on the lifestyle for a more calm life. He was psychotic, usually stoned and a real character. I'm not really sure I can describe him properly as I never really got to know him that well, although on my second or third day of Kibbutz, Nick and I were chatting to him and he told us of his two year plan to go to India with Will and sort of stumble back home, during this whole conversation he was itching his bulls, and only changed his hand position to show us his new jacket.

The average age of a kibbutz volunteers is somewhere between 18-24 JD was 38. The first thing that you would notice about JD was his size. He was big, not fat, but very tall and very built. I believe at some points during his life he was a marine as well as a bouncer. I think he was also a nutrionist, accountant and a lot of other stuff besides, however, I was never really sure as his accent was utterly impenetrable, and I spent my first few weeks trying to work out where on earth he came from. He told me he was born in Arkansas, USA, raised in South Africa somewhere in the country side, his father was Scottish and his mother was Dutch (or it could be the other way around). When I talked about him I described him as the font of all knowledge as there was no subject upon which he did not consider himself a world expert. In the beginning it was a bit weird having this old man hanging around with us, but after a wall we got used to it. I was very happy to learn that he decided not to leave at the beginning of May when he had originally planned but to extend his time to after I left, I could not imagine Kibbutz without him, and his advice, stories and death threats, of which there were many.

What I am about to tell you of Arielle is mainly of what I have heard from others. She left pretty early on of my time of Kibbutz and I tried to avoid her as much as possible. For two reasons she was a) annoying and b) grotesque. She was a nineteen year old from the states, and her stories are actually legendary, if a survey was done of most talked about subjects on Kibbutz she would occupy pole position. She was really rather, well fat. She was always first into meals, and used to come back for thirds when we were closing up. She was also a compulsive liar at one stage she was a virgin whose boyfriend had left her pregnant before committing suicide. I cant go into the stories of her adventures on kibbutz there are just too many of them, and I am only a second hand source. Suffice to know that stories about her caused much laughter.

Will was famous, as was his story. He had been travelling to India with his female friend, their journey included a stop over in Israel. During the stop over she declared her undying love for him, he was however unable to return it. So in the spirit calm collected rational thinking she tore up his passport and tickets and ran off. Not wanting to go home, but without a passport he was unable to leave Israel. He called a friend in England, and his friend told him about Kibbutz, and so he found himself on Ketora. Although his passport came about three months later he stayed for six months. Will was from Mill Hill, he was not Jewish. He frequently had to reassure himself of this by shouting "I'M NOT A JEW" at random points during the day or night. But he was scared he was becoming a nice Jewish boy, and was even about to let Teague circumcise him (Teague had gone to get a knife) when he had second thoughts saying that he had become attached to his foreskin. Working with the electrician he sort of became the Kibbutz bitch and everyone knew and loved him. Will also comes with his own hilarious stories, including waking up my former roommate Danny with a machete, and the time he flew to Australia and was so scared of not being able to smoke for twenty-four hours, he put fifteen patches on himself and fainted fifteen minutes into the flight. When I last spoke to him he said he was either going to go and on an oil rig or go crab fishing in Alaska.

I'm sure there are people I have forgotten, but I can not talk about everyone. Everyone was at least slightly quirky, but those mentioned really stick out in my mind. Nick has gone back to volunteer on kibbutz for a few weeks and he says its just not the same, everyone is just too normal.

Celebrations

2007-05-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

The ever changing nature of time is a very noticeable thing on kibbutz. Matt a Yank who works in the dining room with me, says that when he knows he is going to finish at three he is far happier and time goes much faster then when he is finishing at four. For me time goes a lot faster when I am cleaning the toilets and it practically grinds to a halt when I am on the machine (a big industrial dishwasher from which all sorts of items must be removed and placed in the proper position.) On Kibbutz we measure time by when we drink, although drinking is not limited to any particular day there are certain nights when alcohol consumption is more common than others, these are generally pub nights. Pub is usually Thursday night and Saturday night on Ketura and Friday night somewhere else, as we work a six day week this time frame is optimistically seen as the weekend.

So last week the weekend came early. Pub night befell on Wednesday and I dont think many people were aware of the change and so it was pretty empty but we still managed to knock back a few. The reason why pub was on Wednesday was because on Thursday there was a wedding. A wedding is understandably a big thing on kibbutz. I had never seen the bride and groom around before but apparently the bride was a child of the kibbutz, and the groom had met her while he was on the garin, oddly enough staying in our appartment, this explained why on the dedication presentation they had to the happy couple there was a picture of our room. As wedding preparations were going on around us the dining room were trying to do their job as quickly as possible without being burdened with any unwanted tasks.

The entire kibbutz was invited to the wedding which was scheduled to arrive around five. So us British volunteers donned smart casual attire and made our way to the chuppa (canopy where the wedding takes place). We were unsurprsingly overdressed, some people were very smart they were either getting married, or were guests of those getting married. Most of the kibbutznics had turned up in their workclothes, this was a typical Israeli wedding. Of course the service didnt actually start at five, but no-one really minded as there was nice music and free Sangria to keep everyone entertained. The wedding was a lovely affair, they usually are. Dinner for all non-guests was served outside but the food was great and the free wine kept flowing. For desert there was a giant cake bar which kept me occupied for some time. After dinner there was a play but as it was in Hebrew I didnt bother with it. But from then until the small hours in the morning there was a big disco with a free bar.

The next day we had to wake up at six, and spent the first few hours at work in a zombie like state. It took three coffees to wake me up, and so I went from utterly exhausted to somewhat hyper which culminated in me throwing milk all over Annabel and then rolling on the floor in hysterics for five minutes. After work I tried to go to sleep, which I failed to manage, and then I tried to go to sleep after dinner but I failed at that as well.

Unfortunately my attempts at sleep were abruptly finished at midnight when a chorus of happy birthday rang out across the appartment. That birthday was mine. All who know me know that I am not the worlds biggest fans of birthdays, especially when they are my own, so I try to keep it relatively low key. I failed. I was nagged out of bed and into some clothes and then down to the mini-bus where we took a cab to Kibbutz Grofit, for the pub night. On arrival I was offered drinks by several of my friends, and I was managing to keep relatively sober until Oli from Hanoar forced me to down two double Jaggermeister shots (a sort of liquorice drink) and the next thing I remember was waking up with a splitting headache. This continued untill about Saturday lunch time when I found Annabel's Ibuprofen. The rest of Satursday was spent by the pool until the evening. In the evening I spent most of my time writing my blog but as I tried to leave the room Richard shouted at me to get back inside. Admittedly my suspiscions had been aroused for some time but this completely gave away, nevertheless I went back inside and feigned ignorance.

Finally I was lead outside where I was greeted by a large group of people gathered around looking rather civilised. It had turned out this was a smores party (a smore is an American sandwich which invovles biscuits, chocolate and marshmallows) and everyone was sitting around eating smores and drinking punch. What was really lovely was that they had taken a bedsheet and everyone written birthday wishes on it. Eventually I went to sleep rather early, but it had been one of the most enjoyable birthdays in a long time.

P.S. This post had been written along time ago, but it got deleted when it was meant to be published, so this is a watered down and belated version. For that I apologise. I'm not sure when I will next be able to write and it may not be until I get back home.

A weekend away

2007-05-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

Last weekend had always had a big mark on the calendar as the one weekend where I was always going to get away from the Kibbutz. This was down to a triple birthday occuring of the weekend as over a space of two days Richard, Ruthie and Sara (from AJ6) all had their birthdays. The general plan had always been to try and get off work early on Friday and go up to Tel Aviv until Saturday night, an incredibly short space of time. However, as good fortune would have it we were to have more of a break than we thought. For on Thursday there was to be a MASA event and we were all being sent up to Jerusalem for the day.

If you cast you minds back to October time, I mentioned being sent to a MASA event and this one was not very different. MASA was a fund established by Ariel Sharon to subsidies and support foreigners in Israel on long term programs, because of this MASA is a very good and worthwhile organisation (Iwould say that being one of the people it benefits), its events however are a total and utter waste of time. They must spend thousands of dollars on these events and the money in the opinion of everyone there is totally wasted. It would be far better spent on providing more financial support to those who need it. Before the actual event there was entertainment from moving statues, a circus etc. and a chance to see friends from other movements.

I was very surprised to see an old friend there, Ben is at Yeshiva in Jerusalem and I have seen him very few times throughout the year, the last time was Pesach and as he had not been at the previous MASA event I had not expected to see him there. He told me that he was here with his Yeshiva but if there was anything that they found against Orthodox Religious ruling the head of their Yeshiva would have everyone leave. When asked what this included he said mixed dancing and women singing, I told him he might as well leave now.

The event itself was to take place in the Sultan's pool an open air theatre in a valley outside the walls of Jerusalem. Inevitably it took ages to start the reason for this was we were waiting for the main speaker to arrive. The main speaker just so happened to be Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He was greeted with polite applause (the crowd was never exactly enthusiastic) and some booing, but then what do you expect for someone who has a 0% popularity rating. The show consisted of several speakers including the head of the Jewish Agency (this was I think the third time I had heard him speak), the mayor of Jerusalem and Olmert. Olmert spoke in very good English cracked a few jokes (some were almost funny) and told everyone to move to Israel. Other than the speeches there were several musical acts which included rather unsurprisingly mixed dancing and women singing, Ben left (of his own accord most people from his Yeshiva stayed) but then so did many other people. To be honest good taste was a better excuse to leave and I was seriously considering leaving myself. The event finished (thank God) with a fireworks display.

After the event we wandered up to Zion Square in the centre of Jerusalem an assigned meeting place where we were meant to meet lots of other people before we were to all go out drinking together. However, more important things were afoot as blocking up Jaffa Street a main road that runs along side Zion Square was a mass student demonstration. The Israeli student body has been on strike for about six weeks now, because of increases in tuition fees, and so this protest was part of the general disruption caused. It seemed relatively peaceful, even though an entire road was blocked, and then the police and army arrived. They seemed cheerful until they drew ranks and went right into the heart of the protesets. I was among the throngs of spectators on the sidelines, baying for blood in the collisions between the authorities and the people. A few people were dragged out and some were even carried out and although fists were thrown the violence never really escalated. With that excitment over we wondered down to a bar named Sol where we had a few drinks, and then moved on to a club called Underground. Whilst it has a reputation for being one of the seediest clubs in Israel it is one of the favourite haunts of many people in our group. I left there at about three and I went with Richard in a sheroot to Tel Aviv, as we had decided to stay in the MDA flat.

I had assumed that I would be sleeping on the floor, however I was very happy to see that Nir's bed was vacant, and although I felt very bad about sleeping there without his permission I assumed he wouldn't mind and I quickly fell asleep. Nir did arrive at about 7:30 but he left immeadiatley and happily didnt seemed to mind seeing me in his bed. I woke around 11:30 and then did nothing for a couple of hours even though I was meant to be at Reg's flat in Jaffa at about 1. Finally Richard, Yoav and I decided to leave and we were made even later by the bus which of course took ages to come back. Lunch was very pleasant and afterwards I had a relaxing walk back with Yoav. This included going through Nachlamat Binyamin a lovely market very much the Covent Garden of Tel Aviv. Back at the flat we watched High School Musical "Oh the pain the pain, why do I do these things to myself", and then did nothing for a few hours until dinner.

Finally a group of us went out for a burger before meeting lots of others in a bar down the road. Here we stayed for many hours drinking, talking and catching up. Eventually we decided to move on, unfortuneatly on Friday nights most bars and clubs have a habit of being over 25, and so we spent much of the time wandering aimlessly around Tel Aviv in the small hours of the morning looking for something to do, thus it was just like any other night in Tel Aviv. Finally around three I went back with Richard to the Jaffa Hostel (rated 15th in the Best Budget Places to stay in the world by the Independent). The Hostel is a lovely quaint place to stay, and even though I was on a very shaky and rather uncomfortable top bunk I still had a very nice nights sleep. I woke the next morning and after visiting the famous Jaffa bakery I walked to the old port, a sight I had not visited since Tour, and then I walked leisurely back to the appartment.

After lunch, a bagel one of the few I have had in Israel, I went with a group of about 7 or 8 to see Spiderman 3, dont bother. After the movie I had a quick dinner with Annabel and Richard and then it was time to say goodbye to everyone as we had to catch 8 o'clock bus back. The bus journey was uneventful excpet for the fact that I almost got left behind at a stop as I was on the loo, and everyone had dozed off and so had failed to notice that I was not there. I sprinted out just as the bus was leaving, and sat down rather disgruntled.

Petra

2007-05-09T07:30:00.000-07:00

Something that had always been on my to-do list since I had come to Israel, was to visit the Ancient City of Petra. However, due to the fact that it is Jordan and thus not in Israel, I had never really expected to be able to do it. Even though Israel and Jordan are on friendly terms and it is with ease that one may cross the border between the two crossings, I thought that for someone who was on an organised program in Israel there would be several difficulties. I never envisaged the relative ease of signing off the program, and thus being allowed to leave the country for a day. All that was needed was for my parents to fax written permission saying I was allowed to be signed off the program for today, and that was it. A surprisingly total lack of annoying beauracracy. All that was left was for us to book a tour with a reputable tour company and we were out of the country.

And so on Saturday 5th May I went down to the entrance of the kibbutz at 7am where I waited for the taxi that had been ordered the previous day, and I waited and waited and waited. Waiting with me were Annabel, Richard and Rachel a fellow volunteer from the Kibbutz. The taxi finally arrived at 7:30, given that we were meant to be at the border at 7:45 and the border was about half an hour away we were all rather peeved. Our driver spent the journey telling us in all the years he had been collecting people from the Kibbutz he had never once been late. I wasn't sure if this was boasting or an attempt to annoy us even further.

We arrived at the border at eight, where we were much to my relief greeted by our tour guirde, who told us that that the rest of the group was waiting for us having completed their stint at passport control. One long line and cancelled visa later, we joined the group but not before one woman on our group came to find us and tell us just how long she had been waiting for. And so to the border crossing. As we walked the no-mans land, with the Thankyou for Visiting Israel sign behind us and the Welcome to Jordan sign ahead of us, Richard and Annabel discussed what the insurance company would say if something happened to us there, whilst I tried to guess how many sniper rifles were trained on me at that precise moment in time.

The Jordanian guards welcomed us with big smiley grins and couldnt have seemed happier to have us visit their country, and it was such a pleasant contrast us from the sour faced Israeli guard who saw us off at the other side. On the Jordanian side we met with the tour compay representative on that side, who spent a considerable time sorting out visas. Once that was done it was onto the tour bus and off we went. We found ourselves in a group of fifteen, the others were from Russia, America and Israel. The tour was however conducted in English as the Jordanian Tour Guide spoke fluent English but probably not much of anything else. His name was Abdul and he told us on the journey to Petra, about Jordanian life, politics. etc.

After a two hour journey we arrived at the entrance to Petra. Petra was a city built by the Nabattians in the 2nd-1st centrury BC, the exact origins of the city are unclear, although it is known that it was first built as a city of tombs, and was thus a holy place. The Nabattians who were pagans, would bring their dead to rest there. It was later captured by the Romans who saw it as one of the most beautiful places in their empire and they continued the expansion and building of the city there. Following the fall of the Roman Empire the city was essentially lost, known about only by the local Bedouin population. It was rediscovered and revealled to the rest of the world by a Swiss explorer called Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. In more recent history it was used as the hiding place for the holy grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

At the entrance to the site there is a visitiors center where tickets can be purchased and many stalls selling odds and ends. These included the Indiana Jones which quite clearly was trying to cash in on the film, and the tottally out of place Titanic Coffee Shop. Finally we made our way towards the city, which remains hidden from view for a long time as it is hidden between two huge cliffs. We started our journey walking down towards the Siq (shaft), the Siq is a narrow passage between the two mountains and it is the road that leads into Petra. Towards the end of the Siq our guide told us to look back the way we had come to see if we could see an animal in the rock, he told us that if we stepped back we could see it clearer, and as the group was getting more and confused as no-one could see anything he told us to turn around, and lo and behold through a crack in the Siq we could see the large red collonades of the Khazneh.

We walked towards it in awe, and as we emerged out of the Siq the huge red building carved out into the rock towered above us, taking our collective breath away. When you see pictures of Petra that is the building you see. Khazneh means treasury, but this is the name given to it by the local Bedouins who believed that that was where the treasure was kept. Historically however, this building was never the treasury but a temple. After we had spent tiime wondering around and taking photos our guide told us all about it, and then we moved on towards the rest of the city.

The city is littered with tombs, and there are many other interesting structures some built by the Nabbatians and others by the Romans. At one stage took us off the beaten track and after a short climb he revealed to us the ampitheatre from above, a wondeful way of viewing it. At one stage our guide asked if anyone needed the toilet, and that if we did to take our cameras with us as it is the most beautiful toilet in the world. Fearing the recreation of a moment from Trainspotting I held my breath as I went in search for it. Luckily our guide was being deadly serious as the toilet was carved into the rock, and I spent five minutes trying to take a photo of a cubicle and the rock at the sametime.

The tour lasted two hours during which we were taken through the main city of Petra. This was only the main attraction and unfortuneatly our tour was only a day and we would not be able to visit any of the other sites, usually only reachable after long arduous hikes. The tour ended at the other end of the city where we had lunch and we were given a couple of hours to wander back in our own time.

The way was littered with stalls with people selling bric-a-brac usually in an English accent not too far removed from cockney. There were also people offering donkey and camel rides up and and down the track. We were all very amused by one man who upon a small horse was offering a 'taxi, ferrari, air-conditioning' although ot wasnt as funny the second and third time. What wasnt so nice to see was parents hiding in the bushes as they sent their children to sell rocks taken from the city. Also on the way back I went into the Khazeh again where I listened to the the Indiana Jones theme music, sad I know but still utterly neccessary.

I think I slept through most of the drive back, at the end of the drive we had a detour into Aquaba which in my opinion is a far nicer city than Eilat. We experienced no problems leaving Jordan but on the way into Israel I was held up twice once at security and once at passport control, and despite reassuring remarks but Israel customs officials I was wandering what the hell was so suspicious about me. Unfortuneatly we missed our groups bus back into Jerusalem, and so the man from the tour company gave us a lift back to Eilat in his open air jeep. All in all it was an amazing experience and I was delighted I did it.

Kibbutz Misc

2007-05-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

There is one big problem about kibbutz life, its makes you unfathomably lazy. Oh dont get me wrong I know I was lazy before hand but life on Kibbutz just takes the biscuit. Daily schedule would go something like this, wake up, go to work, break for breakfast and then later on lunch, finish work, and then either sunbathe or enjoy air-conditioning depending on your temperament (I am clearly one of those who prefers the latter), have dinner, chill out (or go to pub from Thursday-Saturday) sleep. You work hard at work but vegetate the rest of the time. I think many volunteers come to kibbutz with big ideas of what they want to acheive but on the whole I imagine towards the end of their week these have probably been thrown out the window. A typical thought process might go something like this 'I think maybe we should perhaps think about starting to doing something, but maybe not.' This is why I have been rather poor at updating this blog over the past few weeks, because I know I should but to be honest I just cant be bothered. Anyway I finally realised that I have so much to catch up on that I really should, and I know by loving and devoted readers cant wait to hear about my adventures, or total lack of them.

So I ended last time saying that I had just moved into my new job in the dining room, and there for a change I was to remain. The dining room to me had two carrots, it was indoors, and sociable. Unfortuneatly the hours sucked and it doesnt matter how quickly you finish everything you have to do you still have to come back to work during and after lunch. So the earliest one might hope to finish in the dining room is about 2:30. I joined the dining room team in a time of turmoil, the previous boss had just quit and a new boss had come in introduced longer hours, more jobs and has yet to introduce himself to us (about two weeks on). And so into this vacuum Edan stepped in. Edan is a member of the Noam Garin, a group of boys who had spent their army service together and who had started and were now finishing their time on Kibbutz. As he had thus worked on the Kibbutz before Edan saw himself as a the perfect person to take command, unfortunately no-one was quite sure if this was the case, and Edan wasnt quite sure what being boss meant, and so many arguements, meetings, bitchings ensued. I had always thought before I came to the kitchen that he was a lovely guy, he was just the sort of person that turns from lovely guy socially to a total meglomaniac in the work place.

Anyway working in the dining room involves amongst other things; cleaning tables, cleaning floors, cleaning bathrooms, taking things off a big industrial conveyor belt washing machine, and cleaning up and koshering after all meals (except dinner). Of course when we think we have finished and we are about to go for our break or leave for the day, Edan finds more things to do. To be honest I rather enjoy working in the dining room, yes the hours suck, but I wouldnt do anything else for the rest of the day so it doesnt really matter. The work is varied and not too hard and best of all there is air conditioning so it is actually bearable to work. I should state that it is currently around 35 degrees and absolutely stiffling. The only time the dining room really sucks in on Fridays as we have to prepare for shabbat, so we have to come in at six and dont tend to leave till about four of five at the earliest. This was particularlay annoying last weekend as the Noam group had come down to visit.

The reason for this was our last shabbat byachad, and this time it was really was a special occassion as we had not been together as a group for several weeks. People started to come down on Thursday night in time for the pub, which was fun as usual. Benefits of the rest of the group being down here, apart of course form seeing them which was a sheer joy in itself and we would not request any other benefits (just covering my back in case any of them are reading this), was that they were staying in the guest house and this meant that as they had free beds we could go and sleep in their rooms with comfortable beds, and then have the breakfast specially reserved for the guest house in the morning. Richard, Nick and Annabel seized the chance of comfort, I unsurprisingly could not be bothered to move, my excuse being that if I switch beds my back will hurt again, however I did relish the chance of a decent breakfast.

On Friday morning we had a talk on a five day hike we are having after the options period finishes, in the afternoon however I had to work to help set up for shabbat. I was working till around 5:30 which meant that our pre-shabbat program had started before I arrived showered yet shattered to join the group. We had a kabbalat service interspersed with demonstrations by everyone of what they had learnt during their time on options. The MDA people illustrated how to put on a bandaged, the Marva people showed us a very tough excercise routine which Nick and I then copied, and us Kibbutznics showed everyone how to dance around like a Kibbutznic, ie. in a way that would probably get you chucked out of most London clubs.

After the service we went to have dinner, and following this we ran an onegg, of which the central part was a game I lead in which groups had to reenact what they thought other groups had been getting up to over the last couple of weeks. This was made somewhat harder by me shouting different styles in which they had to show this such as: BBC News at 10, an episode of Eastenders, Film Noir and many more. Then each group showed what they had actually been up to over the last few weeks, and for some reasons I was convinced to do my Bohemiam Rhapsody dance again, sober.

The next day is usually a lie-in day on Kibbutz, however we rather inevitably had to get up for a morning service followed by a program. After lunch we had a break in which I of course did nothing, and then another program of a reflective nature. After dinner the Marva group ran a program in which they attempted to show us what life in a mock army program is like. They thus shouted at us a lot and made us do press ups. Given the order to march sensible and in silence, it became an excuse to join the Ministry of Silly Walks, thus causing us to stop every five seconds as flustered Marvanics shouted at us, whilst we like little childre utterly failed to control our hysterics. Unfortuneatly that was the last program of the shabbaton and by Sunday lunchtime everyone was gone. It was so nice to see everyone again and it was really amazing to be back together as a group, and it made me realise just how much I had missed them all.

One final thing to report, last night I went down to a beach just outside Eilat, for a drink, concert and football match. Bascially somone had the great idea of putting a big name band at the same time as a big football match, which would be shown on two big screens, and in the process sell a lot of beer. The bands name was Machina, I had only ever heard of them in context of this gig but apparently they were pretty big, however, as the ticket only cost 40 shekels (£5) I thought why not, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good they were. The game was Manchester United versus AC Milan second leg, and a United fan I was rather upset by the result.

I intend to right again soon as I have another big day to report on,

Off to work

2007-04-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in the post before last that I had put myself down for the role of pool cleaner, a position which I duly received. And so on Sunday morning (this is two weeks ago, I know I am rather behind) I went down to the pool at six in the morning, where, I had been told, I would learn to clean the pool. I spent the following hour and a half sitting outside the pool and debating whether to treat myself to breakfast or not. Eventually as I am finally about to decide to go have breakfast someone comes to let me into the pool, and acts very surprised that a) I came at six and b) I haven't eaten. My boss's name was Susie and she proceeded to show me how to clean the pool. This process was by use of a big under water vacuum cleaner, powered by some sort of domed object, which doesn't entirely look unlike a Dalek.

The Ketora swimming pool is rather large, and so the whole cleaning process takes 2-3 hours, it should probably take less but I was slightly retarded at it. There had been a sandstorm the previous night which in no way made my life any easier, especially as I had to go over the same bit a number of times to clean it completely. My other responsibilities around the pool included general tidying up around the pool, clearig the drains and sweeping the paths. I also had to clean the toilets, admittedly not very thoroughly as all I did was put soap and water in a bucket and throw it over as much as possible, and then clear all the water out.

The next day I was to work alone and so Susie gave me a pool to the swimming pool, essentially making me my own boss. Being ones own boss means having to switch on the Dalek, which means a long and ardouos process where getting rather wet is unavoidable, I started wearing swimming trunks pretty quickly. As the week progressed a number of things became apparent to me 1) That I wasnt very good at my job 2)Its just too damn not to work outside 3) My mp3 player is no substitute for human contact, and so I decided to find someone who wanted to switch with me.

Luckily fate was on my side as Aliza (volunteer supervisor) approached Nick and I on the Wednesday and told us that for the next week we would be cleaning pipes in the Algetech. The Algetech is where the kibbutz Algae grows. I should state that not all kibbutzim grow Algae its just this one as its main industry is exporting Algae which is used in several products including salmon (to give it its colour). We arrived there bright and early on Thursday where our new boss Benny gave us a bucket, hose, detergent and green scrubbing things which for some reason our called scotch's and told us to clean all the refuse pipes in the complex. The refuse pipes are found under all the pipes where the algae grows, and the pipes irrigate into the pipes we were cleaning. This meant getting out all the mud and sand and anything that might decide to visit with just the tools we were given.

And so Nick and I spent the following week with our hands in these pipes scrubbing them and cleaning them and getting ourselves rather wet. Actually Nick usually had the hose and I usually my hand in the pipes, which meant back pains (the pipes tended to be around knee height) and very dry hands. Some days it was rather fun, for instance we timed ourselves on a very short series of pipes with our record being about 3:20 a pipe. Other days it was not quite so fun particularly as we were next to the 'refek (cows) and one day a rather strong was blowing in our direction bringing with it the unforgettable stench of those wretched creatures. Finally on the Tuesday we go find our boss to report that we had finished all the pipes, he congragulates us and then says 'You know there was a sandstorm last night, all the pipes are now dirty, so they all need to be cleaned again.' Hoping for some variation we were livid. Thus over the next couple of days Nick and I decided to limit ourselves to the short and easy pipes and refused to do the huge ones again. Unfortuneatly we did the easy pipes far too quickly and so resorted to many long breaks, luckily being surrounded by pipes no-one could really see what we were /were not doing. Nevertheless on our final day when we went to say goodbye to our boss, he thanked us for doing a great job, and said he would tell Aliza how good we were.

On Friday it was back to the pool for my final day of work, as during the week I had found someone to swap with, which means I shall probably spend the rest of my time on kibbutz working in the dining room, and I will tell you all about that when I know more.

Pesach

2007-04-14T03:55:00.000-07:00

On Sunday morning I left the Kibbutz early with Richard as we had decided to travel up North together. We took the bus to Beer Sheva and from there the train to Tel Aviv, this was my first time in Israel and much to my horror it was just as slow as it is in England. I arrived in Tel Aviv at lunch time, Richard had gone to Herzelia, and I made my way towards the center of town, as this was the wonderful location of the flat of those in our group doing Magen David Adom (the ambulance service), their flat is a five minute walk away from Dizengoff Square right at the bustlng heart of Tel Aviv. Having visited the flat, which is very small (two of them sleep in the kitchen) but brand new, I went to the Dizengoff center to do some much needed shopping). In the evening I went out for dinner with Richard and Danny a friend from school, and it was very nice to hear tales of the old country again. After dinner I collected my things and left Tel Aviv for Caesarea.

The train from Tel Aviv to Caesarea was a double decker one, and the journey was only about forty minutes. However, I did not arrive at the train station until about eleven. Now I had assumed that the train station would be relatively close to the area and so the lateness of the hour could be solved by a short walk to the hotel. However, the Caesarea Pardes Hanna station is in the middle of an industrial estate about 10 kilometers outside Caesarea, and of course there were no taxis. I waited for a considerable amount of time, called two taxi companies and even tried cab sharing but to no avail. About half an hour later my aunt Katy whom I was to be stayiny with called to ask where I was. When I informed her of my predicament she immediately asked the hotel to send a taxi, and so after another twenty minute wait a taxi finally arrived. It of course without saying that so did a couple of other taxis, but thats life.

My Pesach (Passover, Jewish holiday with the crap food) was to be spent with my family in the Dan Hotel in Caesarea. Caesarea is one of the most desirable areas in Israel, site of an ancient Roman city and now Israel's only golf course. It is not actually a town but an area with several built up yet unconnected (except by road) blocks. This is why that there is actually nothing to do in the area, except for playing golf, which I dont.

I was staying with my family, by family I mean everyone apart from by parents and siblings. I was sharing a room with my 15 year old cousin Michael, and on my arrival he and his sisters Tammy 13 and Eliana 10 (I'm sure I've got those completely wrong, the ages is that is not the names, I'm fairly certain of those), updated me on all the jokes they had learnt since I had been gone. Following this undeserved torture I had a bath, and went to bed, a comfortable bed (one that was so comfortable when I got back to my bed on Kibbutz my back was hurting all night as it was so hard in comparrison).

The following day was pretty much the same as the rest of the week i.e. time was spent reading, chatting to relativies who I had not the privelege of seeing since my departure, and general sunbathing or lounging around by the pool. That evening was seder night, that long and boring service which begins each and every pesach (see link for fuller explanation http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Seder). We had our own room with several family friends making it about twenty of us who were sat down to dinner. I would like to thank my uncle Maurice for deciding to do most of the meal in English and not forcing upon all that were gathered the same seder in two languages.

It is customary during the course of the seder to drink four cups of wine at designated point in the meal. Michael decided to drink these four cups in earnest and then several others whilst no-one was watching, thus drinking around six or seven glasses of strong red wine during the night. What I found particulalry amusing was that he claimed he was pretending and that he was stone cold sober, and what was even funnier was his sister's saying he was putting it on, right up until he collapsed on the balcony in our room. I was up till two listening to the sounds of druken vomiting as Michael emptied his stomach in and around the toilet. I suppose its a right of passage that all self-respecting teenagers must pass through, but it sort of looses its all coolness when you do it in front of your mother.

I had intended to keep shtum (quiet) about it the following day but as everyone knew by breakfast anyway I thought why bother, and so if you are reading this Michael may this be the final nail in the coffin of the belief that you can with any dignity hold your alcohol. That day was spent like all the others just described and so I shall not bore you with the minutiae of the week. Highlights included smashing Michael at table tennis (and then suffering the same fate at the hands of Maurice), deciding to take part in the big game of football in which the young compete with the middle and old aged men in a battle of pure catharcic testorone competition (oh dear God I've become a feminist), and an awful lot of eating.

On one day I cant remember which, Michael and I cycled down to the old city of Caesarea where an ancient Roman city once stood and where the ruins indeed still stand. Having spent the first half an hour there getting frustrated over what to do with the bikes (we ditched them with a security guard), we went to see one of those films which the Israeli's love so much. After that we went to look at the old city, of particular interest was the ampitheatre and the hippodrome both with parts well preserved. It was around this time that I came down with a cold and so my activities became far more limited, not that I was doing much to start with.

I had prepared for a week of abject boredom but luckily I was able to keep myself entertained for the duration of my week there, thanks in part down to my grandparents who are always wonderful to talk to, and the fact that Michael had brought a portable DVD player with several films and TV series and so the evenings were never dull. I was glad to return to Kibbutz but it was sad to say goodbye especially after such a pleasant and relaxing week.

Kibbutz

2007-04-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

The third and flnal part of the program began on the Sunday morning after the match. This part of the program is the options period where we could choose what we wanted to do. Placements included Magen David Adom (ambulance) in Tel Aviv, Yeshiva and work placements in Jerusalem, Marva a mock army program somewhere in the middle of the desert, and Kibbutz also somewhere in the middle of the desert. I as you might have geussed from the title chose the last option for my final two months in Israel.

On Sunday morning we went to the Bayit Vagan Hostel, Jeruslaem to say goodbye to those who were doing Marva, and once that emotional business had been taken care of we were alone. The we of which I speak refers to Annabel, Nick, Richard Smith and myself, from fifteen to four. But the solitude did not last for long as we were joining the minibus of six girls from Israel Journey on our journey down to Kibbutz. Israel Journey is a new five month program for those who are not in a youth movement, I always thought that was FZY.

The journey lasted four hours as Kibbutz Ketora is in the Negev Desert half an hour away from Eilat. On arrival we were greeted by Aliza the volunteer coordinator noticeable by her remarkable resemblance to a sheep. She showed us to our living quarters which include a sort of small bungalow, with two bedrooms, a bathroom and sort of kitchenette. Its pretty squalid but liveable. I'm in a room with Richard and Nick, and Annabel is next door with Rachel a girl from Israel experience. The rest of the day was given over to unpacking, settling in and meeting other volunteers. All the volunteers live together in rows of small appartments, and thus socialising is done predominantly with other volunteers.

The volunteers come from all over the world includ ing the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel. I will talk in far more details about all the volunteers at a later stage, because it will definitely take a whole blog to talk about the assortment of nutters that volunteer on the Kibbutz.

The next day Aliza did all the paperwork with us, asked us which jobs we wanted and then sent us off to work around the swimming pool, where we were cleaning the area for its opening the following week. This included pulling up roots and clearing, twigs and branches. Later in the afternoon we were assigned our jobs. Nick and Annabel were sent to the dining rooms, Richard to the gardens (which is a code word for hard labour with vegetation) and I am cleaning the swimming pool. This has been my second option gardens were my first but being the only one who put down the pool thats what I got. You see when I put down my options I really wanted to be outside, I completely forgot that I was in the Negev Desert, which meant searing heat during the day.

However, I would not be outside just yet as the swimming had yet to open. Instead I spent the next few days decorating volunteer houses, with a Russian Kibbutz member called Sasha. This was rather interesting as he spoke no English and so I was forced to communicate only in Hebrew, I think I did rather well. However, it was made remarkably easier by the fact that his son spoke perfect English and was always there to put an end to all the weird hand signals, especially when I had no idea what the strip the walls meant in Hebrew.

I did this job until Thursday morning, and I was given all of Thursday afternoon (although afternoon work tends to finish fairly early anyway) as I would be working that night helping to Kosher the kitchen in time for pesach. This was to be done with Richard and several of the children from the kibbutz who were on their holidays, and so I was given a scraper and acid and went from 9-12 cleaning an industrial cooker. Once done I went down to the kibbutz pub, well its a bar in a barn, for pubnight which is on every Thursday and Saturday. Owing to the fact it was almost empty I left pretty soon and went to bed.

I had Friday off, owing to work the previous night, and I took the opportunity to do incredibly little. In fact I cant recall a single thing I did that day until dinner, which is attended by the entire kibbutz and is very nice, and is followed several hours later by a large number of volunteers and young kibbutznics trekking down to Lotan a neighbouring kibbutz, as Friday night is there pubnight. I dont actually remember that much as I might have had too much of the goodstuff, except at the end of the night I do seem to recall being outside (at about 3 in the morning) and doing a full-length interpretative dance to Bohemian Rhapsody which involved, taking my shirt off, climbing up poles and jumping on top of people, as I said too much of the good stuff.

Saturday is shabbas and so the entire kibbutz rests, sunbathes, vegetates and the volunteers were keen to do likewise. I was very pleased that I did not have a hangover and so could enjoy the sun, although on the whole it was a bit too hot for me and I found it far more pleasant in the shade. Saturday night was another stint in the kitchen this time Rich and I were assigned to cleaning trays and such, which basically meant putting them into a big industrial washer, like a carwash for plates, and taking them out the otherside. This incredibly dull activity was made slightly less tedious by trying to get eachother wet.

Well thats all for now folks, next time a week witht the family, dont worry it wasnt that painful

Magic in the air but not on the pitch

2007-03-29T03:49:00.000-07:00

When I left you last I was saying my final goodbye's to Karmiel on Thursday night, and I suggested that the next couple of days would be somewhat magical. Well if this was the case the location of our weekend was far from magical. You see your humble narrator along with four of his fellow participants made the hour long journey to Shlomi. Shlomi for all those who are mildly curious is a tiny town of about 9,000 just by the Lebanese border. Karmiel looks like party central compared to it. So why did we go there of all places. We went because of Magic Moments (and the Hogwarts like allusions become clear). Magic Moments is a program that sends Israeli teenagers from settlements and communities in the North of Israel, to England for a week where the Israeli's show their English hosts how to celebrate Israeli Remembrance and Independence day. They have been preparing for some months now and over the course of the weekend it was up to us to answer any questions, reassure any nerves and to try to explain the differences between England and Israel. We were doing this along with our friend from AJ6 and Hanoar. The reason why Shlomi was chosen is because it has a very nice and spacious youth hostel there.

So we arrived in Shlomi but instead of going to the hostel we went to the AJ6 flat, they do their volunteering in Shlomi. We spent a few hours there just chilling and watching TV, and then we went to the hostel. The next day we woke bright and early for breakfast to meet everyone else and to prepare for the weekend. As the kids were not arriving till two we had ample to finalise our programs, do last minute preparations and blow up a lot of balloons.

Two comes and so do the kids, well not on the dot of two this is Israel, but half an hour later we were ready to begin. We started with an introduction that I would rather not mention and then we divided the group into smaller groups. In these smaller groups we gave them a presentation of people they were likely to meet in England the chav, JP and aristocrat. After this everyone was given the chance to go and prepare for Friday night.

Everyone reconvened for the Friday night service and dinner and in true Israeli style they all looked just as messy as before. The service was poor as no-one was singing (most of these kids go to shul twice a year) and any attempt to start any singing at dinner tended to fail because of the nature of the hall, the noise and the sheer number of kids (around 80). The onegg (which I was in charge of) was also hellish because its just so hard to keep the focus of so many people. However, once all the programs for the day had finished I had a nice time chilling with the kids, many of whom had excellent English.

The next day there was meant to be a main service and an alternative one (ie. no praying) of course the alternative one was packed and I dont actually think anyone meant to the main one. Following this there was another program about different denominations using game shows. I had to make Israeli kids try to describe things like Informed Decision Making (Reform Movement) without using those words. It was hard enough for me to explain it to them and it would be virtually impossible for them to do it in English so I permitted them to do it in Hebrew.

Following this there was lunch, followed by free time where the kids showed just how easy to amuse they are. For example they spent about half an hour watching each other jump over three shoes. After this we each went off with a small group of kids to talk to them about the particular communities they were going. There was a slight problem in that we all came from a very few selected number of communities and these were not the ones they were going to. The group I had will be spending their time in Cockfosters and North Southgate, now I don't even know where that is on the map, but I felt I managed pretty well with no knowledge whatsoever. I did make a disclaimer at the beginning saying I have never been there (well I said I may have been there once) and so everything I say should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Following this we did the most British Shabbat activity there is and left the Shabbaton to go to the football. The drive down to Tel Aviv was about three hours with a thirty minute for the driver to eat MacDonalds. The drive was filled with much debate about who to support and England and Israel chants were screamed shouted at each other as we approached Ramat Gan.

I was sitting with the two Richard's, Annabel and Nick in the Israeli fan section (the rest of the group had got their tickets at a later point and were sitting elsewhere) in the block to the left of the England fans. Although we were all supporting England (well Annabel was a bit confused and she seemed to be supporting both teams) we kept ourselves relatively hidden not knowing our presence would be taken. As we walked into the stands we were given an Israel shirt from Pellophone (an Israeli phone company) and I think they gave these to everyone who entered the stadium even the England fans, and so nearly everyone was wearing Israeli blue, (although I didnt put mine on till after the match to highlight my exasperation with England.

Anyway as I was saying the idea was to keep a very low profile. That was until we spotted a group of your typical England fans a few rows ahead. Loud, tattooed, fat, louts either sporting England shirts or no-shirts, and the Israelis around them were all chatting happily away with the Brits and even taking photos and having photos taken with them. Before the game started one of the Brits got out a megaphone and turned to all the Israelis behind him and said 'Shabbat Shalom' into the microphone to the applause and laughter of all around him. By this time we had realised we were very safe and had no qualms about showing our support for our boys, singing both national anthems with pride but clealy England supporters. This did not me from shouting 'Yisrael Milchama' literally meaning 'Israel War' which might seem to be slightly inappropriate considering the past year, and the cry should be seen as another wonderful example of Israeli humour. The atmosphere was amazing the match was, as I am sure you all aware, pretty poor. So poor infact that after the game when waiting for our friends at a rendesvous outside the away supporters gate I along with many other Brits took great pleasure in jumping up and down in front of the Sky News cameras and wearing our Israel Pellophone shirts and chanting 'Yisrael Ole'.

After the match we met up with our friends from Netzer who I hadn't seen since the end of Machon (in general they were all a lot hairier having spent the past couple of months on Kibbutzim) and went out for a late dinner. After dinner we said our goodbyes and got a taxi to Jerusalem, this took a lot longer than it should as a taxi driver had no idea where the hotel was despite passing it as we entered Jerusalem. The reason we were going to Jerusalem was so we could be nearer the start of the third and final part of the program.

The Last Week in Karmiel

2007-03-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

Oy is there a lot of catching up to do, so I am afraid today is going to be one of those straight narrative accounts that I so hate because they are boring and the sort of thing I tended to write at school which was my grades were always so average. Anyhoo I shall start from the weekend before last and go from there.

The weekend before last (told you I would start from there, dont act surprised you were warned) was our last weekend in the Karmiel house, and so to mark the occassion we had a Noam Shabbaton, i.e. we were all in the house together for the weekend. The weekend consisted of a group meal on Friday night which was delicious, and on Saturday we had a short service in the house before going off to our respective host families for the last time for a lovely lunch. In the afternoon we had a quick program and then havdalah. All in all a very nice chilled out and relaxed last weekend in the house.

Sunday was our penultimate day of school and so Jessie and I started our goodbyes (and participated in two P.E. lessons which was great fun) we also had a final meal at the art cafe (the local restaurant we frequented) and our last ulpan lesson in which our teacher Margalite indulged in her other proffession and gave us some relationship advice. Sunday is clean up day but as we were going to have three days of clean up to come we decided to bum around in filth for a couple of days instead.

Monday was our final day of work and so at the end of each lesson we made a little goodbye speech and handed out sweets and chocolates to all the kids, which was of course greatly appreciated. We also took quite a few photos and then finished up with a final, and rather awkward meeting with the headmaster. In the afternoon Ariel and I (Annabel had other commitments) went for our final time to the absorption center, but as we never did anything there we just wandered around the kibbutz where it is based for half an hour and then came back home. Monday night was also our final group meal prepared by Richard and Ruthie, we all had great fun making our own pizzas and I was surprised to find my one turned out rather well.

Tuesday was the beginning of our three day clean up and of course I ended up with the kitchen, but that was fine because in the afternoon I was told to do Misc. which I of course took to mean absolutely nothing. In the evening was our final kef night, we were all given sheets about our characters at lunch time and we were all to come to dinner as them. I was one of the few people who realised it was a murder mystery (although I only knew because I was discussing it with Ariel the previous day). Ariel was playing the detective who was of course French, and he made Clousseau's accent seem normal and comprehensible. He gave a ten minute round up of all the characters and their motives, and as he was about to reveal the murderer he was of course killed. His speech however was absolutely hilarious. The murdered in case you were wandering was Nick who was not as we thought a Scandanavian Financial Minister but an Australian assassain. I was in case you were wandering a Hungarin magician.

Wednesday saw the continuation of clean up. All good work done by those who were cleaning up was seriously hindered by something that I never thought would actually happen. A few weeks before Yoav had suggested we have a bake sale during our closing days in Karmiel, everyone agreed although no steps were taken. However, a few days before frantic cake baking began and on Wednesday evening the house was opened up to tall those who wished to feast on the Noam kitchen talent. In total 900 shekels was made and we had only sold about 2/3 of the cakes. In truth not that many people came but those who did bought in bulk. All money raised went to Moadonit where many of us had been volunteering. On Wednesday night having tidied up we ventured for our final time to Franklins the local bar. We had decided to reserve a whole section as many others would be joining us throughout the night. On our arrival much to the delight of the boys but the horror to the girls it was discovered that in our reserved area there was a widescreen TV with a playstation rigged up and with none other game than Pro Evo Soccer 6, the game that had divided the house so much towards the beginning. So of course the boys sat down to play and the girls sat down to moan.

Thursday was my final day in the house (some people were staying till Friday), in the morning we finished packing and cleared out the rooms. Then after a final take away burger we cleaned all the floors and sorted all the sutcases out into their destinations. Then Oren returned to us our deposits, and we amazed to discover that we only lost 20 shekels each for the washing machine, which is rather shocking when you considerd all the damage we did around the house. Finally at 8:30 I made my last goodbye to the house and to Karmiel and off I went for a rather magical weekend but that I shall leave for another time.

Filling In The Gaps

2007-03-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

Last time I told you about the planned routine and program, so today I am going to focus my attention on what we do the rest of the time. I suppose the biggest gap is the weekend which begins on Thursday evening and finishes on Saturday evening. On two occasions in the past and on one occasion to come we have had Shabbat Byachad's which means Shabbat as one, and so of course no-one is allowed to go away. On these select weekends its unlikely that on Friday anyone is up before midday, and we spend the next few hours slowly getting ready for synagogue. At around four we leave all smarted up and just about awake, once we went at this time to meet our host families and the another time we went to plant trees because of Tubishvat (the birthday of the trees).

The good thing about our local masorti shul is that it is a two minute walk away, the bad this is that it has to be one of the most tuneless god-awful houses of worship on the planet, and when
the main prayer coming from my nouth is 'dear god may this service be over'. After shul its too our host families. Its two of us to a host family and I go to mine with Ruthie. Our host family are Shlomo and Marion Jeter elderly American ex-pats whose kids have kids of their own. The food is always wonderful and he is the type of guy who you can tell has thousands of stories and he doesn't dissapoint. There is a general feeling among the group that the host family scheme has failed. The scheme is meant to give us another point of contact with the Karmiel community, but we as a group have not become as connected with our host families as we should have. The reason it has been decided is cultural, because you know how difficult it is for a Brit to call and ask himself over. On Saturdays we of course want to lie in and do nothing. This happened the first time and most people spent the entire day reading in their pyjamas. The second time we cruelly had to go to synagogue and stay for lunch.

On other weekends one is free to do as you please, so long as you do not go anywhere which may be unsafe e.g. Gaza. In my weekends off I have been to Haifa which is still a city I have yet to get to grips with despite two weekends there. I did however walk down the beautiful Bahai Gardens (the centre of the Bahai religion), and go to the Haifa zoo where I was lucky enough to witness and record lions mating. My first time in Haifa we found it very difficult to find a room so in the end we had to stay in a guest house run by the Rosary Sisters, who were in case you did not geuss nuns. I have also been to the beautiful and lively Druze village of Dalyat HaCarmel, which has a huge bustling market but no transport in or out of it.

Last weekend I went to Tiberias (deadly boring avoid like plague) which is the main town on the Kinneret (sea of galilee) the reason I was there was to undertake the 56km cycle around the Kinneret. The day before my leg began to get very painful and I was finding it rather hard to even walk, so with this in mind my miserable 25km should seem to be somewhat better than it actually was. I can console myself with the fact that out of the seven who started the excursion only two completed it, as the remaing five all went back together. I was actually one of the fastest cyclists it was just incredibly hard to peddle and I spent most of the ride with gritted teeth.

Unfortuneatly I have not been so adventurous every weekend and I have spent a couple of times in Karmiel. These have been some of the best weekends as I can sleep for as much as I want, watch loads of films, and just really relax, it is after these weekends in that I feel most prepared for the week ahead.

But what about the rest of the week. Karmiel has three or four bars, the one we frequent the most is called Franklins and is in the industrial district. However, we do not go there so much as it is one of the most crowded and smokiest bars I have ever entered. There are few bars nearby, where we go to watch the football. There is a wonderful restaurant called the art-cafe where I have whiled away an afternoon. There is also the basketball court where our Israeli's spend much of their time and I occasionally join them. The library is the only place with internet access, and it is where I have been writing my blogs from. We have all joined the gym which is down the road from the library, and it is one of the greatest enemies of boredom, and as their TV's in front of each treadmill there is no reason not to go.

In the house there are two computers which are used for games like Football Manager, or film watching. There is also a playstation where in the beginning boys would congregate around to play Pro-Evo Soccer, but this was soon outlawed. Now the playstation is only used for communal activities like watching films and TV shows 24 and Friends are big favourites. There is also a new show that recently came out called Heroes. Its about random people with special powers, it may sound lame but its actually bloody good, and has most of the house watching and discusiing it. Other things to do in your spare time including cooking and washing up, oh wait no-one ever does that.

The Weekly Routine

2007-03-01T03:58:00.000-08:00

So lets get down the tachlis (nitty gritty) (probably spelt that wrong (the tachlis that is not the nitty gritty (should probably get out of these damn brackets))), today I want to talk about what my week actually consists of (hence the title).

The weeks starts on Sunday, which still confuses me and I frequently find myself wearing my Monday socks on Sundays (yes I actually have socks for the days of the week and I must wear the right sock on the right day, sad I know). My alarm goes off at 7:00 as the bus comes at 7:30, so it is a rushed breakfast as the bus is usually outside about ten minutes before I am ready to go, so I get on the bus, I say bus its usually a minibus which seats between 10-15, this is ironic as there are only two of us Jessie and myself. The drive to my school in Ein Al Asad lasts about twenty minutes and give a perfect opportunity for a quick nap. We arrive at school around eight, I will not go into a full retelling of a day at school as no two days are ever the same and I am scared of going into too much detail. So I will skip to the end and say that we leave at 1:15 every day.

On sunday afternoon's we have ulpan (Hebrew lessons) with Margalite a relationship and sex therapist, dont ask. For these lessons (the hebrew not the sex ones, we have to go to her house for that, for that joke to take full affect I should state she is in her fifties) we have to write ten sentences in Hebrew about the last few days, so this is what most people do five minutes before the lesson begins. On Sunday evenings we have our big group meeting of the week, which I spoke about in a previous blog, and this is followed by group clean-up. In an attempt to prevent the house looking like a total pig-sty at 9:30 on Sunday evening we as a group clean up the house. The house is divided into three areas, and the group is divided into five groups of three, and each week you and your group have an area of the house to clean.

Monday morning is exactly the same as Sunday, in the evening though at around 5:30 a bus comes to take me Annabel and Ariel to the absorption centre on a Kibbutz half an hour away. Here we are meant to teach young Ethiopian immigrants English, but that is never the case as they are either dont turn up or run amock as we struggle to control them. Last Monday was slightly different because we helped them with their maths homework instead. Monday evening is usually the night upon which kef night falls. Tuesday is enrichment day and as that was last weeks subject I shant say anything about it this week, other that we had a really lovely trip to the Golan Heights which included wine tasting.

Wednesday is just like any other school day except we start at 10:00, and as you know very well by now from reading this blog that I love my lie-ins. Wednesday afternoon is the second ulpan of the week and in the evening we have our group meal. This is the one time a week when we as group sit down together to a home cooked meal, it is usually one of the highlights of the week as the food is always good and the conversation lively. The meal is cooked by two members of the group, and two others are chosen to do the washing up. I had to cook the very first group meal and together with Grace (and a considerable degree of help from Jessie as she can cook) we made shepherds pie.

Thursday is just like any other day in the morning, and in the afternoon I go to the moadon kef-li which is a social group for young people with mental disabilities. On Thursday's we take them to the local gym or park and play games and sports with them, its usually quite fun although communication is rather difficulty. Finally the week ends with a group meeting with Oren where we round off the week. Then there is the weekend the subject for another time.

Enrichment and Kef

2007-02-21T03:38:00.000-08:00

Every week in Karmiel our school week is broken by Enrichment Day. Enrichment day is a an activities group for the fifteen of us, its purpose, as the name suggests, is to engage us in activities which, as the names suggests, we would find enriching. Such days have included from day trips to Acco, the Ghetto Fighters Museum (the worlds first Holocaust Museum), an encouner with a group of local Israeli Arab girls, talks on Jewish Identity, and even going to the cinema and bowling. Enrichment is always great fun, a chance to hang out and do stuff with the group as a whole, and whilst its not always particualrly enriching its always nice to have a break from school, and the icing on the cake is sometimes we even get a lie in.

Yesterday's enrichment was listed as a surprise, and we were kept largely in the dark about it, although Oren telling us to bring swimming costume and towel was a bit of a give away. Nevertheless we had no idea where we were going until we arrived. Our arrival it should be noted was delayed by an hour, because of the blocking off of the road, because of a suspicous package, which we witnessed being exploded, in a controlled fashion. Actually we did guess the Canada Center, which turned out to be correct. We had been to the Canada Center on Northern Tiyul. The Canada Center is a leisure centre with many different facilities including one of two ice rinks in the Middle East (the other is in Saudi Arabia), a bowling alley, swimming pool court, sports hall, gym and lots more besides.

Whilst the majority of the group decided to go to the ice-rink Richard Smith, Annabel and myself could not resist the pull of the posters for the shooting range, and so we made our way down into the bunker to live out our wildest spy fantasies. After twenty minutes of agonising over which gun to choose all three of us settled on a 9mm Richard and I choosing the Jack Baueresque Glock, whilst Annabel settled on the more elegant yet similarly lethal Beretta. Then after a brief talk on what to do, we proceeded to empty our twenty five bullets against the target. Although we were all first timers our results different greatly Richards shots were all very close together although a little low, Annabel was spread out across the board but she did manage a bullseye and a headshot, I of course was lucky to hit the target. Nevertheless we all left the range feeling rather satisified.

We rejoined the group in the sports hall for basketball, once again my complete inability to shoot hindered my ability to be any good, but this didnt stop me from running tirelessly up and down the pitch trying to make a difference, and of course I had to make what is meant to be a non-contact sport as aggressive as possible. At once stage around 100 youths wandered into the viewing gallery and spent the following twenty minutes cheering us on. After lunch we decided that instead of removing the sweat from our bodies and going swimming, we would let it remain clinging to us, a small price to pay for a game of bowling. Always great fun as a team building/destroying game. We left the Canada centre at 3:30, it was followed by a short drive to the Lebanese border where we looked out over Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel, and the view of the snow topped Mount Hermon was truly lovely. Then it was an hours drive back hopme, where everyone inevitably slept.

About a month ago now, it was suggested (mainly by me) that we were not doing enough as a group and something had to be done about this. Part of the remedy was the introduction of the Kef (fun) night, where two people in the group organise a fun activity for the rest of the group. It was kicked off a few weeks ago by Nick and Richard Sarsby taking us all the second biggest club in Israel, the following week Jo and Nir provided ice cream and sweets for a group viewing of the 40 Year Old Virgin, the week after Ruthie and Sophie decided that we were all far too mature, and that we should celebrate Ariel's 6th birthday, this meant party games (including the funniest game of musical chairs ever played), and a birthday tea, with cake and customary mentoes in coke bottle.

I bring up Kef night because last night it was the turn of Jake and I to plan it. On Monday evening we handed out invitations to an Ambassadors Cheese and Wine Party, in celebration of Jessie' birthday. What no-one realised though was what was to come. As Jake made a toast to Jessie I (playing the bulter) apologetically interrupted him and made it apparent that I had lost the rest of the cheese. This lead to a Karmiel wide hunt for the missing cheese, which Jake and I had hidden a couple of hours earlier. Locations included a main roundabout, the basketball court and a local pub. Each team had a starting clue and when they found the cheese they had to call me with a number which was in the package with the cheese. On receiving the number I prompty texted them the next clue. All the teams took it very seriously and rushed to come back first, though that was probably down to the winner's receiving a bottle of champagne. Once all the teams were back we had Jessie's birthday cake, and I breathed a sigh of relief as a night that could have gone badly wrong went off without a hitch.

Democracy

2007-02-12T06:03:00.000-08:00

It was taken for granted from the outset that in a house of 15 there was going to have to be a forum where issues could be discussed, this is obviously aside from the obvious berrating of whoever pissed you off. Consensus dictated that each week there would have to be at least one weekly meeting, and also each week there would be two chairs to preside over the running of the household and the meetings. This week it I am chairing the week with Richard Smith, and so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to talk about the meetings, and some of the issues within the house.

Meetings follow a very common pattern and they rarely vary, and no matter how little time you think an issue will take discuss, it will invariably take 5 times as long. Richard said at the start of yesterdays meeting, with only one topic on the agenda, that we were aiming for it to be the shortest meeting yet, an hour later it was decided to postpone all other points to a later point in the week.

The order of meetings has developed over time but on average it goes something like this. The chair introduces an issue (or asks someone else to introduce it if that person feels more strongly) the chairs tends to speak on the issue for a moment, stressing the main areas of discussion. During this time at least ten hands shoot up. In the beginning the chair just picked people out a random and so at any one time at least five hands were hovering in the air, however, a practice soon developed for the chair to start writing down a list of speakers. We however have no structure for closing the list and so discussions can last for a long time, until the chair finally decides to move to a vote.

This seems to be very orderly and it does work. However, when discussions heat up you frequently have people shouting at each other with absolutely no regard to proper meeting decorum, and as the shouting heats up the chairs struggle vainly to restore the meeting to order something that takes some time. Eventually a vote occurs but before this must happen the motion must be clarified several times, then the issue is split into several votes, then it has to be decided whether the majority has to be simple or two thirds. Finally we vote count and of course have a recount.

The house can be split into three different types when it comes to group meetings, those who dont say a word, those who repete what has already been said, and those who cant say enough and will who continue to speak even when everything has been decided. There is a fourth which can be extracted from the other three groups, these people are the ones who try to speed the meetings up by proposing soloutions, these people (of which I am one) always slow the meeting down and the group suddenly gets bogged down in specifics, and the meetings just drag on and on.

Issues that have been raised and re-raised include washing/cleaning/tidying, guests in the house, group activities, the t.v., internet and the most contentious of all the playstation. I do not really want to go into just how bad the issue of the playstation was, lets just say it divided the house (unsurprisingly boys v. girls) and there were a couple of days when it was the only thing that anyone talked about, eventually it was decided to ban it, and in hindsight, though I hate myself for saying it, the decision was the correct one.

Although we have had our issues, and we will continue to debate discuss and argue I feel we have actually handled house living rather well, and that if we did not have these group meeting however long arduous and repetetive they may be, without them it would all fall apart.

The Druze

2007-02-04T04:49:00.000-08:00

As I have mentioned before I am teaching in a small Druze village about half an hour a way from Karmiel. Because of the location of the school naturally most of the children are Druze, and so I thought it might be nice to speak a little about Druze and the people who I am working with, as are far as I am aware, it is relatively small and obscure religion. The following infromation comes from my own knowledge (mostly from talks on Druzi beliefs and culture) and that vast vat of knowledge that is Wikipedia.

The Druze religion branched out from Islam in around the 11th century, they however do not see themselves as a sect of Islam, but instead as a completely different religion. The Druze split themselves into two those who are religious (the minority) and those who are secular (the majortiy) each member of the Druze religion is able to choose which path they take. However, if one does not choose the path of the religious you are not permitted to know the secrets of the faith, which are jealously guarded.

Basic tennets of the Druze include belief in one god, honesty, protecting ones brother and guarding the elderly. They also rejuct tobacco, alcohol and pork. There is also a belief and at the time when the Druze broke off from Islam, mainly because they believed it to be unfair to women (Druze are egalitarians), there was a period when everyone could become Druze, at this end of this period no-one could join. They said at the end of the period there were a million Druze, and as the Druze believe in reincarnation they claim that if a Druze person dies they will then be reborn as Druze. They also do not permit conversion either into or away from their religion.

However, the most important belief of the Druze is that they must be completely loyal to the country in which they live, even to the extent of sacrificing other values to retain their loyalty. This is why in Israel the Druze are fierce allies of the Jewish state. For example it is optional for them to serve in the army but most do. The only exception is the Druze of the Golan Heights, which was Syrian but was captured by the Israelis. Because of fear of retribution from the Syrians the Druze from the Golan tend not to serve in the army. The Druze do considers themselves as Arabs, but as Israeli Arabs and certainly not as Palestinians.

Having worked in a Druze school for a month and having had Druze hospitality a number of times, I can see without any doubt they are truly lovely people. They are friendly, warm, hospitable and on the whole the kids are really sweet. Their food is also out of this world. Our bus driver who collects us from school each day (there is a minibus for three of us) lives in the village, and he is everyone's best friend. He is a large man with a handle bar moustache, and is rarely seen without his wooly hat or boiler suit. More than once he has stopped to greet friends in the middle of the roads with a "Shalom Shlomo" or some such greeting, and he also seems to know every child and teacher in the school.

But then this should not be surprising when you consider the fact that the village has a population of 700. The other day our driver asked us to forgive him as he needed to drop something back home (it looked like pepper) and he asked us if he would mind if he drove us up into the village so he could drop it off. Of course Jessie and I said we had no problem with him doing so and off he went into the winding roads of Ein-El-Assad, and it gave us the chance to see what a pretty village it is. The houses are smart and well cared for the streets are narrow but honely and there were even orange trees growing outside some of the houses. Also at the top of the village there is also the most amazing view looking down onto the village and the valley below.

Location Location Location

2007-02-01T05:20:00.000-08:00

I thought that for my subject this week I will tell you a little more about where I live. Karmiel is a purpose built town in the Galilee. It was established in 1964, and was developed according to a master plan. The upshot of this is that Karmiel is a purpose built city and thus actually has a plan and structure to it. The city (of 50,000) is divided up into different neighourhoods which each have their own separate amenities like schools, community centres etc. The city is remarkably beautiful with all the main roads being very wide with a big bank of greenery in the middle, nicely decorated roundabouts and tree planted on every street. The city is certainly green.

Whilst this is all very nice there is really very little to do. The main areas of interest are the gym (clearly the only thing that will make me work out is having nothing else to do), the library (the only place where we can get internet from) and the mall, which is a five minute walk away and is very useful incase we ever run out of milk. On the entertainment front there is one main bar called Frankilins which is situated in the industrial district which we have been to twice, and a few more local bars which we have yet to venture into. There is however a very famous dance festival, in June.

Our house is located about a two minute walk from the main high street. This is not as a you might imagine an indictment on how small the town is but how good our location is. We have a four storey house in a small quiet dead end street, in fact we might as well be just waiting for our neighbours to come and complain. But what of the house itself.

On the front gate one sees a large red and white sign with the phone number on, the house is indeed still for sale. Before entering there is a pleasant covered up patio perfect for a quiet phone call, cigarette etc. The front door bell is the highly amusing sound of birds. The ground floor is a large open plan kitchen and living area. The kitchen is tiny and with more than two people in it, it becomes very hard to move around. One the other hand the living area is huge with plenty of space to swing a cat, and more besides. The garden is rather small but there is a small pond and waterfall.

The first floor contains the two girls rooms and my room and the girls bathroom, strictly out of bounds of course. The second floor houses the remaining boys bedrooms and bathrooms. Above this floor there is a roof garden, and here can also be found the washing machine and dryer (well thats what its meant to do). This is clealry the perfect space to have a quick whinge about everything that doesnt work. This includes the washing machine and dryer, the boiler is tempermental and work when it chooses, and the heating works far too well and causes more arguements then its worth. However, on the whole it really is a great house and Karmiel really is a lovely place, and I doubt there is a better place to volunteer, if only there was something to do at night.

Off to work

2007-01-22T02:54:00.000-08:00

As I said at the end of the last blog I would be working in the Druze school and the absorption center. The Albyader school is located in the small Druze vilage of Ein-Al-Assad up in the mountains about a twenty minute drive from Karmiel. Therefore every morning there is a minibus to take three of us to school, Jessie, who is working with me, and I to Ein-Al-Assad and Ariel to Ferod a very arty primary school near by. All lessons are taught in Arabic, and the only person who speaks English is oddly enough the English teacher Nasreen. Therefore the staffroom can be a very isolated place as none of the teachers can talk to us, and so Jessie and I make use of our breaks and free periods (of which there are quite a few) to do copious amounts of reading.

Lessons themselves are very mixed, we take years 4-8, which I think is a range from 9-12 years old. The students have a very mixed ability in English, some are very good, others need things to be said very loudly and require a lot of hand gestures to have points illustrated to them. Although the lessons are in Arabic the children can all understand and speak Hebrew, although I try to avoid using Hebrew as much as possible, as how can they learn English if I am not talking to them in it, and also if they here me speak Hebrew they may get the idea that I can speak it well and then start talking to me very quickly and loose me completely. However, their grasp o English has lead to many interesting conversations, mainly based on how Israel is going to beat England in March, I tend to agree.

The kids are on the whole really sweet, and I frequently get high fived in the corridor. The oldest class are on the other hand absolute hell. They seem to have all the disrputive kids in the school in one class, and as they have absolutely no desire to learn I dread going to teach them, and owing to the fact my role is teaching not discipling I unfortuneatly and much to my regret cant shout at them and tell them off.

Most classes take more or less the same form, the kids push their desks together in two or three blocks, and Jessie, Nasreen and I take a table each. We then spend about twenty minutes going through a couple of pages in the text book, reading passages and answering some questions. The kids then spend the rest of the lesson doing excercises and we are meant to help them. However, as most of the kids are very good and half the work is translating into arabic there is really very little I can do and I spend half the time sitting around clock watching. Occassionally I find someone who really needs help but this always seems to be at the end of the lesson and I cut out by the bell half way through explaining and I have to hurry the rest. It has happened on several occasions that kids have come to me expecting the answers only to be dissapointed by me telling them the rule or explaing the exercise, and so they leave me dissapointed and are forced to go and copy the answers off their friends.

There was one time when year 7 had a free lesson and they requested that Jessie and I take the lesson. So there we were standing in front of a group of 12 11 year olds, trying to work out what to do with them. Luckily we werent supposed to teach anything and so we spent the lessn playing games like 20 questions, hangman and boggle. The kids spent most of the time shouting, although I was rather pround of myself from letting the encounter descend into total bedlam, and the kids were all very grateful to us at the end.

There is one last thing I should mention and that is the bell. The bell is a constant source of amusment for Jessie and I as it consists of famous children's nursery rhymes, which we always find ourselves singing along to. The bell always plays one tune, then starts a second one and cuts out about six notes in.

My afternoon placement is at the moment only once a week at an absorption center half an hour outside Karmiel on a Kibbutz Ayelet Hashar. Every Monday evening I go there with Nick, Annabel and Ariel. There are two absorption centers and when Annabel arrived at us we discovered we were not expected or needed and so we went to join the other two. Here we met a group of four new Ethiopian emigrees between the ages of 11-13. We sat with them very awkwardly for a bit until we worked out a couple of activities to do with them, where we taught them English and they taught us a bit of Hebrew. Actually after two hours we were having qite a nice time and it turned out far better than expected. We are going back for our second encounter with them today and we have been promised it will be better organised.

On the whole volunteering has got off to a very good start, Jessie and I are planning on speaking to Nasreen to see if there are ways we can be more helpful, otherwise all is good apart from the wake up time (which I have realised I have yet to complain about yet) which is at 7 every morning, and if I dont get up then I dont have time for coffee, which is even worse, even though there is a constant supply of Turkish coffee in the staff room.

Over the next few weeks I intend to keep you posted on different elements of what we are doing here, so until then I hope you are all well and happy, and I look forward to writing again soon.

Disorientation Part. 2

2007-01-21T05:32:00.000-08:00

On Sunday wake up was early so that we would not miss the bus, you know I dont know why we bothered we were all ready to leave on time, and we had to wait around for a bloody hour for the bus to arrive, finally it came at eleven and we packed it frantically and boarded it for the ride to Karmiel. We arrived at two (an hour late) and were greeted at our house by Oren our madrich who i will speak more of in due course, the same goes for the house, no sooner had we been welcomed to the house and dumber our excessive amount of baggage on the ground we were being herded onto a mini-bus to do our first big shop, as the house had of course no food in it. The bus ride was taken up with making an ad-hoc shopping list with inevitable arguements over whether we should use olive oil or sunflower oil, butter or margarine. Despite any sign of organisation we still managed to conduct a successful shop, and it took us a whole hour less then Oren had expected.

After the shop we unpacked the food and were shown to our rooms. I was sharing with Ilai and Ariel, two of the newbies, and we were delighted to find our rooms had cupboards, curtains and doors, all things that other rooms lacked. The girls who were on the same floor as us walked into their rooms to discover beds, and that was it. Room selection you might be curious to know was conducted b Oren showing us the names of the rooms and then giving us the choice on the names alone, ultra violet was too hideous for anyone else to pick, and so we ended up with it, and cupboard space. The room is called ultra-violet because for some bizarre reason it has an ultra-violet on one of the walls.

Starting that evening until the following evening we spent our time going around looking at all the different places we would be volunteeing at. On Sunday evening we went to a kibbutz half an hour outside Karmiel, here there are absorption centers where new emigrees from Ethiopia live and study. The first one had no idea we were coming, so they gave us a quick talk and showed us the door, the second one was far more welcoming, they had laid out a whole array of refreshments and gave us a talk about what they did and gave us a tour of the area.

Following the absorption center we returned to the house, during our drive back it transpired that Reg seeing how bad my cold was had instructed Oren to take me to to the doctor. I should explain that I am the sort of person that has a running cold for months on end and never goes to the doctor, so the idea that I should visit the doctor for a cough (however ferocious it may be) was abhorrent to me. Nevertherless I complied and I found myself in a small doctors surgery in Karmiel waiting for the inevitable. The doctor illustrating what an independent and inventive thinker he was took one look at me said I was getting the flu, and banged me straight on antibiotics.

The next day the tour of the placements began, I should explain that there is a morning and afternoon placement, the morning placement is every day and in a local school where we hel teach English, and the afternoon placement and is two or three times a week and in an array of different volunteering locations. The first place we went to was a local primary school called Hairism. After a talk and tour there, we went to the municipality building for a talk about Karmiel and then a tour around the city. I shall devote more space to the city itself but I would like to say at this juncture it is a truly beautiful city and nothing like I expected. Following this it was back to the house for lunch before a speedy tour of the library, pool, school for delinquents, and moadonit (social club for children with disabilities), all places where we might be volunteering in the afternoon.

The following day it was time for us to see the rest of the schools, these included a primary school, two high schools, a druze school, and a primary school very much focused on art and music. Each school provided us with a talk about the school and our roles there and a tour of the school. Once we had seen the schools it was back home to prepare for one of Reg's public relations masterstrokes. Owing to the fact our house is in a very nice residential area we have a considerable number of neighbours, and so it was decided that in order to appease them and make sure they are not terrified of us we opened up the house to all of them, so they could meet us and bring copious amounts of food.

Following this rather successful event (which stretched out for some time as of course our neighbours were not the leaving sort) we prepared for some rather unpleasant business, finding out our placements. During the course of the tour it had been assumed that we would get to choose where we wanted to work, but as everyone wanted to work in the same places, Reg and Oren decided it would be a lot easier if they just assigned us our placements without giving us any say in the matter. To ease the pain we were taken out one by one to hear where we would be working, this caused a lot of nervous waiting around. Finally my turn came and I was told that I would be working in the absorption centre and the Druze school.

Disorientation Part. 1

2007-01-16T03:27:00.000-08:00

Wednesday saw our return to Jerusalem, via a four hour bus journey from Eilat, giving us plenty of time for much needed sleep. During my last couple of days in Eilat I developed a minor cold, something very typical for the time of year, and I assumed that it would remain as it was for a while to come. However, my arrival in Jerusalem also brought with it something of a cough, nethertheless I marched stoically on and tried not to complain about it. We arrived in our hostel at aroound two pm. We were staying in the Rabin Hostel, a very well appointed hostel, which we had also stayed in on tour. We spent the afternoon generally moping around, and then in the evening, in true gap year student who need to save as much money as possible style, we went out for a 100 shekel a head Chinese. What it lacked in sense it made up for in taste.

So as not to cause excess schleping over the break, there had been arranged a storage room somewhere in Jerusalem for all our excess stuff. It was my shared responsibility along with Richard, Ruthie and Grace to collect all the stuff and bring it back to the hostel. Our belongings were stored in the basement of an old age home not from from where we had been staying on Machon. We all brought the stuff upstairs, and whilst I single-handedly attempted to pack all our baggage in the back of a minivan, no mean feet as there was so damn much of it, the girls were chatted up by some octigenarian hebraic gentleman.

Once back at the hostel the orientation started, the purpose of the orientation was two-fold, first it was to initiate our five newcomers into the group and second to prepare us for living together in Carmiel, a small Northern City, where we would be doing our volunteering. The orinetation lasted from Thursday afternoon to Saturday evening. It began with a number of discussions on expecations and so on. An element of the orientation was using more alternative activites to help the group bond. The first of these on Thursday night was pottery painting which despite my reservations was actually quite fun, following this we had a very nice Middle Eastern style dinner, where there was too much food to even bother contemplating.

Friday began with a vist to the gym hall of the Hebrew University for a couple of hours here we played lots of various fun games, including a variation of rounders, dodgeball and basketball. It was here that I really began to feel my cold and I hoped that by running around a lot I could sweat it out, my efforts were in vain. After this we had more discussions and talks (or at least I think we did, to be honest with you I cant really remember) and then got ready for shabbat. Friday evening was very pleasant with the usual prayers, a lovely meal and a slightly more alternative onegg, run by Assael (more on him later).

The next morning was to begin with the usual Saturday morning prayers, in fact that it was exactly how it began I just was not there as I decided that this would be the perfect time to play the sick card and have a bit of a lie in. I finally emerged unsurprisingly for lunch. After lunch we had more alternative group building games and then even more discussions. Finally we finished the day with contact dancing. I had heard of contact dancing but had no idea what it was. It was as it turned out fairly weird. Assael, an Israeli who works in Noam England loves it, he is one of those fairly normal looking guys who turns out to be a bit one of those hippy spiritual types (ie the complete opposite to cynical down to earth me). The guy who lead it might as well have been his brother. Eg he used a stray cat that wandered into the studio to illustrate how our body should move. Contact dancing is a form of improv dancing which involves a lot of rolling all over each other, although once you get over how much of a prat you look it is actually quite fun. Finally when all was over it was off back to the hostel, for an early night (even though I get barely any sleep) in preparation for a departure the next day to Carmiel.

Eilat

2007-01-09T23:21:00.000-08:00

Before I begin I would like to apologise for the long delay, I no longer have constant access to a computer so I will be writing with less frequency, nethertheless this exciting account of my intrepid ventures and fun-packed stories of the land of Israel will continue, I of course do not want to upset my beloved readers. Well that enough with the pre-amble, on with the story.

I left you last with my leaving Jerusalem in the middle of a snow storm and coming down to Eilat, the subject of todays blog. Eilat is a small, incredibly tourist city at the southern most tip of Israel, it sits on the red sea and find itself sandwiched precariously between Jordan and Egypt, two borders which are thank God peaceful. Eilat is not Israel. Of course Eilat is Israel but Israelis dont really see it as such and Eilat truly does not feel like Israel. If it wasnt a port it would be just tourists, and the Israelis trying to scam as much money from them as possible. There are many differences between Eilat and the rest of Israel, for instance Eilat is tax free, everybody speaks English (actually it was like that in Jerusalem as well), and cars actually stop at Zebra crossings, which is a real shock especially since as a pedestrian you are sure a car is going to zoom across one even if you are half way across, which is what happens in the rest of Israel.

So the question is why come to Eilat, three reasons exist. First because it is on the beach and the sea is beautiful, second because the weather should be good (note the should, rant to follow) and third and most important everyone is there, and everyone includes my family. I mentioned before that I saw my family when I was down here on tiyul, and it was really lovely to see them after a few months, and I couldn't wait to spend some quality time with them. Now I should say I love my family with all my heart and I couldn't be luckier (I have to say that they are reading this) but that doesn't stop them from driving me absolutely mad. O.K. its reciprical I annoy them as well, especially Gaby (16) my sister, but still was time with the family really the best way to relax, however not having a choice in the matter, I trekked down to Eilat to see them.

I arrived at the Royal Beach hotel (5 star, being with family obviously has its perks) at arround midnight and tried to enter my room quietly so as not to wake anyone up, needn't have bothered as Gaby made so much noise when I came that she obviously woke up Raphy (10) my younger brother. Of course the first thing she wanted to do was try out the nargillah i had bought her (and of course talk to her dear brother.) The next morning at breakfast I saw my parents.

I would like to tell you that I spent the days basking in the hot sunshine with occassional dips in the sea or pool, that would be a lie. In total I think I spent one day on the beach because the weather left a lot to be desired, ie for the most part it was cold and miserable, not beachy weather. My days consisted of shopping, lazing around, seeing friends and some sitting by the beachh. On Friday the three of us went with my dad to the underwater observatory, which is a small observatory out at sea where you can walk down a flight of stairs and be underwater (hence the name), and you can see all the fish and corals, it is a lovely idea and very serene and peaceful.

I was also lucky enough to be able to spend some time with my grandmother Miette who was out in Eilat as well. She is lets just say somewhat eccentric, I have told her so many time, and whilst she is wonderfully funny and great to talk to she can also be somewhat embarrasing, I have told her that as well. The rest of my family is just as embarrassing, I was thus always absolutely terrified that they may meet my friends, and any meetings that did come about I tried to end as quickly as possible, not always successfully.

On the whole the evenings were spent in the various bars of Eilat, particulalry the Three Monkeys which was the bar under the hotel, its vodka laden chocolate milkshake as well as its actually pretty good band, was enough to make me come back several time. It was also the main haunt for most of the machoniks.

New Year's eve was spent first at a Chinese restaurant called Wangs where we had a lovely meal, and then onto a bar called Nikki Beach with Gaby where we met everyone else. This was the first time that Gaby had met many of my friends and if you are reading this Gabs, you made quite an impression. On New Years day my family returned home and so I went to the slightly less well appointed Eilat youth hostel where I was to spend the next two nights.

That afternoon I went to Kibbutz Ketorah where I will be spending the last part of the program, to see some of the AJ6 Machoniks who had just moved in there. It was really lovely there and they had turned it into home after only three days of being there. The next day a few of us went to Kings City which is a theme park in Eilat. It was great fun and it included a water splash ride, a 4D film which was very cool and a magnetic room where you could reinact your favourite Matrix moves. The next day it was on the bus and back to Jerusalem to prepare for the next part of the program.

Finishing and Leaving...eventually

2006-12-29T10:19:00.000-08:00

In many ways I am a more than typical Jew, for instance I love cream cheese and smoke salmon bagels, will always make a point of noting famous jewish people, and am absolutely hopeless at manual labour. However, one Jewish trait I absolutely can not stand is the Jewish goocbye. For all those that have no idea what this is, although its fairly self explainatory, it is an incredibly long goodbye that can take over a couple of hours. For me however the best goodbye is a quick handshake or kiss and a swift exit. My loathing for the Jewish goodbye probably come as a reaction to my father who is a master of it.

So why you ask do I bring up this topic, the reason is simple, the end of Machon. Coming back from our Southern Tiyul we were scheduled for a two day sikkum which I think means review or analysis and it was essentially a two-day long good-bye, I was as you can imagine dreading it. My fears only got worse when I realised that there was something like a five hour wait between the closing ceremony and the time when Machon finally finished.

It all started at nine on Tuesday morning at about nine with a project fair, in order to graduate machon you had to make a personal project this could be anything from an essay to a piece of artwork, mine was this blog a cunning plan not to do any extra work as I was doing this already. So a couple of pleasant hours were spent looking at all the work that had been put into the projects, which ranged from a pamphlet warning of the dangers of Iran to an Israeli cook book.

A couple of hours later we had our last ever chavra which was essentially two hours of us saying how wonderful we all were and giving feedback about how crap Machon was. The entire afternoon was given over to packing and clearing up, although there was still time for a football match between Noam and AJ6. I am sorry to report that we were soundly routed with yours truly being in goal, however I must say that some of my saves made up for some pretty poor errors.

After dinner we had a closing party, this party had a dress code you had to dress up as someone else, usually of the opposite sex. I had to dres up as Jessie which was actually very easy and comfortable as she frequently wears a very warm hoody, although I had to wear her uggs as well, some people however were truly hilarious, taking an opportunity caricature whothey were dressing up as. I have had a complete blank as to what the party consisted of, except for a video time capsule which had been made as a personal project, and also some paper covering a light caught fire which I had to quickly put out.

After this party we went as a group to Underground. Underground is a nightclub, and it has a reputation for being the sleaziest club in Jerusalem and we were warned against it at all costs, which is why I suppose it became the favourite haunt for some Machonikim both boys and girls. Due to constant and relatively heavy rainfall throughout the day the floor was covered in about half an inch of water,and apart from us the club was pretty well empty as all sensible Israelis were avoiding the rain at any cost. I returned relatively early for my final nights sleep at Kiriyat Moriah.

Prophetic fallacy is a common dramatic device where the weather is used to show the mood and emotions of the characters and plot and as I awoke on Wednesday morning I could swear it was in use, as the first thing I heard upon awakening was the sound of thunder and heavy rain. This I felt reflected the despondency and depression of the Machonikim because of our departure. Despite the weather I arose in good spirits and with my three roomates (Danny, Joel and Richard) we finished packing and clearing our rooms with endless singing, causing many in the corridor to wander in and check if we were OK.

Having cleared our room we killed a couple of hours in the computer room before the closing ceremony. The closing ceremony and graduation consisted of a series of speeches, a bit of singing and a final graduation and certificate presentation. The ceremony was rather nice and actually not as cheesy as one would have expected. After the ceremony hanging around time began, my fear of the Jewish goodbye meant I had to get out of the Kiriyat, and so I decided to brave the rain and took a brisk walk down to a bagel place about ten minutes away.

The reason why the time between the ceremony and leaving was so long was because the powers that be at the Machon had to work out how much of our deposit we got back. As it turned out we all got all of our deposits back, which means the people checking our rooms were either really lenient or we were all goody goodies and did not fulfil our duties as Machoniks and trash the place. Owing to the place that working out deposits was meant to take five but only took five minutes, once the rooms were reviewed, we had absolutely nothing to do. So once I was back from the bagel place and collected my deposit I had nothing to do. I spent the next hour watching Friends which made life slightly more bareable. You might be asking yourself why I did not leave straight away, the reason was because I was one of hordes going down to the Southern Resort of Eilat, and the Machon arranged a bus for that which was coming at five.

Others who were not going to Eilat drifted out so at around at four we had said goodbye to everyone who was not going to Eilat, which meant there were about 30 of us bumming around waiting for the bus. At three it started to snow. This scared us as Israel is like England, ie it shuts down the moment the snow starts to settle, so you can imagine how anxious we were getting. Five comes, and the snow starts to settle, however there is no sign of the bus. We spent the next hour pacing around nervously and watching the weather praying for the bus and the end of the snow. Finally at six the bus arrived, one hour late but at least it was here, we ran to get all our stuff on to the coach, and of course we had so much stuff it did not fit. Finally with frozen hands we boarded the coach and drove for about five minutes, no dont worry the bus didnt break down or get snowed up, instead we went to a storage facillity to dump half our stuff. Finally we were off, well I say off, it took us an hour to crawl out of Jerusalem. Finally once we were out it was much easier and aside for a quick stop to get dinner it was a pretty uneventful ride. Then finally at 12:30 am I arrived in Eilat.

Southern Tiyul

2006-12-26T07:18:00.000-08:00

It was to be the perfect close to the Machon a five day trip to the warm South, away from the dank, cold air of the hills of Jerusalem. Four days of fun yet challenging hikes in the Negev and Judean Deserts in the South of the country. As we had discovered the North (or rediscover it as we had done most of it on tour) so we were to discover the South (actually same thing applies.)

Wake up on Thursday was predictably early as we had a two hour drive down to the beautiful Ein Gedi Nature Reserve for a three hour hike, which we had of course done on tour. That doesnt stop it being a wonderful hike which involves wading knee deep in a small river (I was clever enough to bring sandals and unlike everyone else did not need to spend half an hour complaining of squelchy hiking boots.) After the hike we drove across the road to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the lowest point in the world currently at about -418 below sea level and its salt content is so high that nothing can live there, but it also means the water is so dense that it is possible to just float on top without doing anything. I did not go in as I have rather unpleasant memories of last time where after about two minutes I ran out screaming from the pain, and before you judge me imagine what it feels like to have that much salt water wriggle into your nether reigons.

After an hour by the Dead Sea we drove to a Bedouin Tent, somewhere in the desert (I was probably asleep during the drive, happens a lot). When I say Bedouin Tent, its more like a Bedouin themed tourist campsite. Bedouins by the way are a small nomadic group that live in Israel. The main attraction there was camel and donkey riding both of equally entertaining value, and I was particularly interested to discover that there is more than one way to ride a donkey (thank you Sarah). Before I go on I feel I should mention just how cool camels are, I say this without jest (or any sort of sexaul intent) but I just love camels, I think it is that they are just have a perfect serenity about them, and are completley at peace with their surroundings as they look around in their casual and relaxed manor. After the camel/donkey ride came to an abrupt end we went to one of the big tents where we were treated to a talk on Bedouin music and hospitality and we were also served Bedouin tea and coffee. The tea is amazing but the coffee is rather bitter. Dinner was both lovely and plentiful and then after a short program which involved desert survival games and stargazing it was off to bed in one huge tent for an early night.

Wake up next morning was at 4:30, if you didnt get that the first time I shall repeat it, wake up next morning was at 4:30, why you might ask this truly unholy time, because we were to climb Masada. Masada is a mountain with a long flat top which in times of old was used as a fort by the Jews, it is also the sight of the ancient world's greatest mass suicidies, when a group of Zealot Jews decided they would rather fall on their own sword then be captured by the Romans. To mark this momenntous occasion it is customary for all tour group that pass through the reigon to climb the mountain to see the sun rise, because for some reason it looks so different to every other bloody sunrise. There are a number of paths up to Masada a ramp which takes about five minutes to climb which we took on the way up, and a snake trail which takes 40 minutes which we used for our descent. Masada is a very interesting site, which we of course did on tour, and I am sure I would appreciate far more with more sleep and a different breakfast, but still its worth a visit, althought maybe not with a group that believes its best viewed with little sunlights and less sleep.

After Masada we made the two hour or so drive down to Eilat, a time used by all to catch up on their sleep. I do not want to say too much about Eilat as it shall feature prominently in later entries so I will give a very brief summary of my time there. On arrival we went straight to our lunch, after lunch I walked from the hotel we were staying in the Adi hotel full of tour groups and trashy working class Israeli's to the Royal Beach Hotel full of rich North London Jews, to visit my parents, who had arrived the previous day for a ten day holiday in Eilat. I of course gave them a huge shock jumping out from behind them and it was a real pleasure to see them after so long. After a brief period with them I returned to my hotel for Shabbat, the service was very nice, the meal was lovely and we sang so much that many people in the neighbouring tables came over to sing with us and called out for more as our vocal chords could take no more. After supper we had a program full on Hanukkah games and then it was early retirement to the rooms for a quiet night in front of the TV.

The next day was a typical quiet shabbat with a service in the morning, another lovely meal with more singing, then a free afternoon used to visit parents followed by more food back at the hotel and finally a stair well havdalah (meant to be on the roof but it was too windy.) After shabbas had gone out we went on a disco boat (did that on tour as well) which was great fun and a good laugh. That lasted for around an hour and a half and having disembarked I went a few of the bars Eilat has to offer.

The next day we departed from Eilat to the 'mountains' outside it, I put mountains in brackets because when you get near them they look more like hillocks. This was the day of our five hour hike through the Southern Negev and along the Egyption border. It involved climbing the highest mountains in the Negev, which was actually pretty tricky as in places it was actually vertical. It was a great hike which was lots and lots of fun and actually not that tiring, it concluded with the Red Canyon a beautiful canyon which was a bit like an obstable course, and guess what, we had done it on tour. After the hike we drove to some sand dunes but as they werent there we went on to our next destination Mitzpe Ramon.

Mitzpe Ramon is a small God forsaken settlement in the middle of nowhere, which only has a population because all the Russian immigrants get sent there, there is actually nothing to do there. The youth hostel where we stayed was funnily enough the first place we had stayed in on tour, the only thing that mildly interested me was the fact that there was actually a bar somewhere in the town, and even more alarmingly there were points in the night when we were not the only people in it. So why did we come to Mitzpe Ramon the reason is because it overlooks the Ramon crater the largest crater caused by erosion in the world. Its all very interesting to a geologist but does that really mean we have to hike through it, just like we did on tour, although it was a different, easier, hike, praise the Lord,

Following our hike in the crater we went to a small wooded area for team building games, which may not have been compleltely useful being at the end of tiyul and Machon, which means that if the team was not built by now, there is no real way a few games are going to help. Nethertheless they were good fun and at times rather amusing. When all was over and done with we borded the coach for our final drive back to Kiriyat Moriah and the end of Machon.

Timetable

2006-12-17T03:34:00.000-08:00

I feel as I draw near to Machon, you my dear readers still have absolutely no idea what I am doing. This is perfectly understandable as all descriptions of the program have been incredibly vague, and my idea of talking about one lesson an entry failed miserably, and so today I shall give you a blow by blow account of a typical week of lessons at Machon. But before I do that I just want to talk about a couple of highlights of the week.

On Monday Modi Bar-On a famous Israeli sports anchor and TV personality came to give a talk to us about Israeli Football and Society. The talk was interesting and higly amusing as Modi who had started out as a stand-up comedian was very funny, even though he was not talking in his native tongue. For example when asked the question does Israel have any particualr rivalries with other countries he stated that 'for each country we can find a pogrom.'

On Thursday, in a rather uncharacteristic move I decided to spend a night with a group of friends from the Machon in Tel Aviv. By spend the night I mean spend the entire night as we had booked no accomodation and the entire was to leave Tel Aviv at daybreak. It was a very good if not rather expensive night as we ate in a pretty expensive but delicious restaurant on the waterfront, and we went to a number of bars and clubs as well as just sitting and drinking by the beach. We got back to the Kiriyat at about seven in the morning, and although I tragically woke up around 10 i refused to get out of bed until three.

On Saturday I went with Nick to the Israel Museum, the Israel Museum as one might deduce from the name is the main musuem of Israel. Its exhibits include the Shrine of the Book which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, a huge model of Jerusalem in the time of the Second Temple, a sculpture garden and a large museum which included vasts amout of Jewish art as well as contemporary and impressionist art and a lot more besides. There was a huge amount to take in and i probably saw under half of what was on display there. We spent a good half an hour in the sculpture garden, and there is nothing more fun than looking at sculptures with someone who is just as clueless as art as you are. Nick and I concluded that we had no idea most of the time what we were looking at or what the artists were trying to say, and that on the whole they were doodles in 3D.

So my timetable on Machon. I should state before I begin that all lessons last an hour and a half, unless its a double when it is 3 hours. Sunday is the first day of the week and it starts with double Chinuch which is about education, this basically involves how to be a good informal educator on camps. Our teacher is Reg the Noam Mekasheret, and she has some pretty wacky ideas on the subject, which tend to go over my heard. After this is mini-chavurah with Nic, an old Noam movement worker, a time to process the week gone by and a chance to reflect how we have changed over the last week, as you can imagine I am not particualrly good at it. After lunch which lasts from 1-3 there is double Israeli History and Society with Haggai, Haggai is in charge of the timetable and the logistics on the Machon and it would be no exaggeration to say that he knows absolutely everyone in Israel. The lessons involve looking at, as the name suggests, Israeli History and Society. This is frequently done through looking at poetry, music and film and is very interesting, although being at the end of the day it is reasonably easy to drift off in it.

On Monday there are only three lessons the first is Ivrit Tutorial which is... actually I have no idea it used to be doing lots of work sheets and realising just how clueless I was at the subject, although I think it changed to more oral stuff, but as I was not there last week I'm not sure. Next there are electives which I am going to talk about at the end. After that there is Ivrit, which as I stated in a previous blog is my least favourite subject for a number of reasons, including I am dreadful at it, the teaching leads a lot to be desired and I have absolutely no motivation what so ever, in fact most of the time is spent looking at the time. On Monday afternoon's there are no lessons, every other week we go on excursions, these have included the Temple Mount, Har Herzel and Hebron, all which have been talked about in previous blogs. When we have not gone on excursions we have had a free afternoon, which is lovely.

Tuesday starts with double Kehilla which literally means communities, although it is our Jewish History lesson. It is my favourite lesson of the week and I actually do not mind waking up at eight in the morning for it. Our teacher is Steve Israel, and as a fountain of Jewish knowledge pours from his mouth we all scribble down everything he says as fast as possible, I have more notes on Kehilla than I do on all the other subject put together. After Kehilla is Ivrit (more clock staring) and after lunch there is Peer-Led Chadrachah with Reg, which is where we have to put our leadership skills into action and run programs for eachother and then receive feedback on how good/bad/appaling we were.

Wednesday begins with Israel Update, which is basically a run through a week of Israeli news, this is actually not as dull as it might sound, as Israeli news is often very entertaining with things like escaped rapists, constant threat from just about everyone, corrupt politicians, mad strikets and lots more besides. After this is Chavurah which is a chance to do all the administrative business of the week and to occasionally play games. Then guess what we have before lunch, clock-watching. After lunch there are double electives. Electives is as you may have worked out a chance when we can choose what we want to do and then swith half way through the program to something else. In the first half I did Political Activism on Monday's focusing mainly on Student politics, and on Wednesday's I did Modern Jewish World and Creative Leadership, which both did what they said on the tin. Now in the second half of the program I do Jewish Exstentialism on Monday which is just as heavy and confusing as it sounds, and on Wednesday's I do Israel Advocacy which is a highly humorous lesson on public speaking and more importantly how to win a debate defending Israel, and the day finishes off with Senses of the Shoah which looks at the Holocaust through literature and art, yet its pretty heavy stuff.

Thursday is Judaism day where our entire morning is dedicated to Judaism (which means no Ivrit yay!) . It starts with a class on Uniformity and Diversity which is about the nature of Pluralism and Diversity within Judaism. After that we have what is known as the to do section where for half the program you look at a specific aspect of Judaism and hear lots of different views on the subject, in the first part I had Jewish Signs and Symbols and in the second part I did Shabbat. Finally the day concludes with a lesson on the development of prayer in Judaism which is very interesting if not rather confusing at times. This is the last lesson of the week Thursday afternoon is free as is Friday and Saturday, which gives us enough of a break to be ready to start again for another week on Sunday.

The Real Seats of Power

2006-12-08T05:51:00.000-08:00

I know I often complain in this space of the ungodly hours that I am forced to awake, but for once yesterday morning was actually early. We were instructed to be outside and ready to go at 7:15 in the morning. The reason we were having a day dedicated to Israeli politics, which involved visits to the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and Supreme Court. So we all arrived punctually and exhausted in front of the Kiriyat gates in order that we might have enough time to wait fifteen minutes for the bus. Once it had finally arrived we quickly bored and drove to the Knesset.

On arrival at the Knesset we were subject to standing around in the cold for the security checks which were probably over paranoid, I mean since when was a camera on a phone used to blow anything up, finally we passed the security checks and walked acrossed the large open courtyward to Israel's most famous mental hospital. Once inside the Knesset we were taken on a tour, our first port of call was to go into the actual Knesset room where we were shown what was what, from our seats in the VIP gallery. The Knesset room is ultra-modern with eachmember having their own computer screen and a small LCD screen in front of each desk had the name of the member who sits there. As the Knesset is not in session on Thursday the room was deserted, aside from a single cleaner, and in fact the entire building was rather empty.

Having gone to the Knesset room (I really shoud find out the proper name for it) we were taken to the state room just outside. These were decorated with beautiful huge tapestries by Marc Chagall, who also designed a large mosaic on the wall and several on the floor. After this impressive artistic treat we were taken downstairs to see where the offices were and the entrance for Member of the Knesset. Beside the entrace which showed how many members were in the building, there was a grand total of one.

Upon leaving the Knesset we took a brisk walk through the rose garden and found ourselves in front of our next port of call, the Supreme Court of Israel. Although I am not a connoisseur when it comes to architecure even I was able to appreciate the interesting architecture of the building, although that could be because our guide spent the first ten minutes talking about it. Having been shown around the building we were taken into one of the courts (there are five) which was in session. We all sat at the back looking interested without a clue about what was going on. We were then taken into another, this time empty court, where we were told that a case was being brought to the treasury about compensation to do with the Lebanese war. We were then given a talk which lasted for about an hour on the workings of the Israeli judicial system. Personally I was fascinated as the topic was very interesting and our guide was excellent, but I think many found it went on for a bit too long, which was understandable.

After lunch at the Kiriyat I went with my roomate Joel to Mea Shearim, the ultra-orthodox area of Jerusalem. I had been there once on a tour and had been meaning to come back ever since I had arrived. Mea Shearim is without any doubt a ghetto, everything is run down, the streets stink, and everyone is dressed in religious dress that hasn't been washed sinced their bar mitzavah. Walking down some of the side streets you can just feel the poverty and the obsession with Jewish learning and the refusal to contribute anything to society. O.K. maybe I am being over critical Mea Shearim certainly has some plus points I always feel it has a wonderful sense of community and care for its members, it also has some dirt cheap shops and the best beakery in all of Jerusalem, where we spent a considerable amount of time.

The subject of Mea Shearim gives me the perfect opportunity to talk about the Ultra-Orthodox or Charedi community in Israel. If there is one minority group that holds more influence than anyone in Israel it is them. Their claim to this influence is logical, Israel is a Jewish state therefore everything must be as Jewish as possible and as they are the most Jewish group in the state everything should match up to their standards. A recent example of their influence is when oweing to a back log because of the recent strike El AL the main Israeli airline was forced to fly a few hours into Shabbat, something it usually never does. The Charedi community were up in arms about this decsion and threatened to never fly El Al again. That is 300,000 people that would never fly El Al again, which would cripple El Al and send them bankrupt. The situation is still unfolding and a resoloution has yet to be reached but this is just one example of how much influence this community has.

Other times they have reacted included the recent gay pride marches where the Charedi community was rioting for a number of weeks in the area of Mea Shearim, this included doing such positive and helpul things as blowing up dust bins. Another issue is that they refuse to go to the army and as they spend most of their time studying they contribute virtually nothing to the Israeli economy, whilst taking all the economic benefits they can. The worst part is that there exists a small but vocal minority, that actively advocate against the state of Israel beliving it should not exist until the coming of the Messiah. Thus what you have is a small group that does nothing for society and bums off the state which they do not believe should exist.

When I got back late afternoon of the Kiriyat I heard talk of an arts festival that was going on for three weekends in Jerusalem. As part of the festival called Hamshushalaim which is an amalgamtion of the words Hamshush which I am told means 'something' and Yerushalyaim or Jerusalem. Therefore everyone at the Machon decided to make use of all the offers and openings to do something slightly more cultural. In an uncharacteristically cultural move I joined a group going to a half price concert of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra who were playing a collection of works by Stravinsky including his stirring Rites of Spring.

Following this we walked down the road to the Museum for Islamic Art which like many other Museums was opened till two. Here we looked at the exhibits, played chess (as there was a chess grandmaster playing multiple games and we took advantage of a free board) and watched belly dancing, which I have to admit was rather captivating. The Museum was in fact very interesting and I was particularly pleased to note a number of Ultra-Orthodox Jews paying close attention to all the exhibits so its not all bad news I guess. And who knows maybe they enjoyed the belly dancing as well.

Rifts and Seams

2006-12-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

When thinking of Israel I am sure that many images and ideas spring to mind, but predominent amongst these is the image of the Dome of the Rock, which sits atop the Temple Mount, the most Holy Site for Jews and for Muslims (other than Mecca and Medina). It is a site prominent on the Jerusalem sky line, but it is a site that few Jews ever get close to. The reason for this is that most Rabbi's say that because on that site there was the most Holy Place in Judaism ie. the temple and more particualrly the Holy of Holies (a room in which only the high priest could enter on Yom Kippur), and as we do not know where on the mount it was the Rabbi's rule Jews can not go on the mount. It is also talked about as being an area of great tension, and so not a particularly safe for Jews to venture and certainly not as Jews.

You can therefore imagine our surprise when we are told we were going to go up the Temple Mount, it was akin to when we were told we were going to Hebron. Actually if my memory serves me correctly it was on the same day, a double whammy. On Monday morning we arrived at the gate to the Temple Mount in the Jewish Quarter at around midday. A big sign next to the gate stated that going onto the Mount was prohibitted by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. This stern warining did not stop us, and at 12:30 the official visiting hour we ascended the wooden ramp which lead from the Western Wall in the Jewish Quarter to the Temple Mount above it. We had been warned that there would be strict security measures and that we were not allowed to carry any Jewish items with us, however, we managed to get through security very quickly and it did not take us very long before we were in the sacred enclousre.

On the Mout we encountered absolutely no strange looks, although that could be because outwardly we were not Jewish as we had nothing to identify us as such. In fact much to my surprise the Guard of the Al Aqsa who came to tell one of our group to cover their bare arms was smiling jovially. In fact the hour spent on the Mount was spent in complete harmony in the beautiful Israeli heat. It was lovely to be able to stand right next a group of young Muslim school boys praying without any feeling of conflict. Of course these impressions were entirely false, I was standing on one of the biggest rifs and causes of tension in the Middle East. Any talk of a peace process must contain discussion about the Temple Mount, and therefore the peace was just an illusion on that quiet Monday morning.

Clearly all is not right on the Mount, as although we were free to wander all around it amongst the salesman and playing children we were not permitted to go into either of the two sanctuaries. On the Temple Mount there are two main building the much more famous and noticeable Dome of the Rock with its gold plating and beautiful blue ceramics and the very plain Al Aqsa Mosque. Of the two the Al Aqsa is the more Holy of the two, it is meant to be where Muhammed prayed before he was taken to heave, the Dome of the Rock is supposed to contain the Foundation Stone which Muhammed touched before it went to heaven. It has always been the case that non-Muslims were not permitted to enter the Al Aqsa Mosque although there is probably nothing to see in side. However, it was only in 2000 following the visit of Ariel Sharon that non-Muslims were forbidden from entering the Dome. In response to this many salesman on the Mount seized the opportunity to sell pictures of what is inside to those who are not allowed in. Following an hour of touring the Mount and taking many photos we were asked to leave as visiting time was over.

To get back to the Jewish Quarter we had to walk briefly through the Muslim Quarter an area that is usually restricted to us, and this area is usally off limits to us and entry into it can you see you been thrown off the program. We stayed for only a couple of minutes within the Quarter as we only needed to walk a couple of hundread meters before we took a turn and quickly found ourselves back in the much safer Jewish Quarter.

We spent the next couple of hours in the hustle and bustle Jewish Quarter having lunch and looking around. This woud have been very nice indeed had we not been constantly pestered by cats who were trying to get to our lunch (which to be honest was not particulalrly good). I should take a brief tangent at this moment and took about cats in Israel, they are quite literally vermin. I'm not quite sure what the story is but I think the Brits brought them over here and now there are strays everywhere, I think kicking is not only legal but encouraged, and for every peace of cat roadkill you bring you can get a monetary reward (I am of course joking). Although it must be said I have seen more roadkill in Israel than anywhere else in the world, another example of just how bad Israeli driver are.

But I digress, after out brief sojourn in the Jewish Quarter we drove to our final port of call of the day the Museum on the Seam. This Museum is located on the former border between Jordan and Israel and served as a guard post before 1967. I had been to the Museum on the Seam before, then the exhibit had been about violence and co-existence and I had very much enjoyed my time here. However, they recently changed the exhibition and now it was entitled 'Equal and Less Equal' and it used art-work to look at the ideas of slavery and exploitation in the modern world. The exhibition was really interesting and thought provoking it was however completely runied by the most awful guard who made it sound like a geography lesson (without the colouring pencils) and sped us through the exhibits without giving us any time to engage with them. What could have been a really nice experience was ruined.

Tel Aviv

2006-12-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

Although I have been to Tel Aviv a number of times since I have been here I had yet to have any time to explore and get to know the city. Therefore I could not wait for the Noam Shabbaton which was to be held in Tel Aviv. We were staying in the Metropolitan Hotel in a side street just off the promenade by the beach. According to research done by others in the group it was a 4 star (and according to one accout 5 star) hotel and so as you can imagine expectations were running high. We were to meet in the lobby of our hotel at 5:45 pm on Thursday afternoon for our first activity. It was thus calculated that taking a chiroot from Jerusalem at 4:30 would give us ample time. Of course we did not take into account the traffic jams and so in true Noam style we arrived at 6:45, pretty sure that we would get some sort of bollocking for our punctuality, I don't know why I worried since Reg and Nic who were running the shabbaton had apparently only arrived a few minutes earlier.

We were given five minutes to run upstairs throw our bags down and have a quick look round. The room had the always welcome luxury of TV, bath and comfortable beds, but other than that it was pretty basic. Our first activity was a group discussion on the difference between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and what we thought we preferred. The discussion was short and sweet as the smell of dinner beckoned. For dinner we went to a small restaurant in an out of the way sidestreet. We sat down and immediatelty the food started coming and it quite literrally did not stop. Just as we thought we had eaten more pitta than we could consume in a year more would arrive fresh out the oven, and that was only the starter. The main course was two large kebabs and chips, feeling incredibly full and somewhat unable to move we left the restaurant.

At this point we split into two, one group went to Max Brenner's a restuarant in Tel Aviv famous for its chocolate, they clearly wanted to eat so much they had to throw up. I with the two Richard's and Nick went to Borat a film that was so funny that at certain stages I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to throw up. If you have yet to see this truly hilarious film I suggest you do so immeadiately, in fact go now the rest of the blog can wait until you get back.

Well, did you enjoy it, I told you it was funny. Anyhoo on with the rest of the weekend, we woke the next morning at around I can't remember when for schaharis (morning prayers) on the beach. The service was brief but the strange looks we received from passers by was many. We were then split into groups and given a map and set of instructions, and were sent on a scavenger hunt of Tel Aviv, with a free meal at Joys for the team that completed the most tasks. I was in a group with Ruthie and Grace two girls known more for their desire to shop than their competitivness. I dont know why I even thought we had a chance of winning, but all hopes of that delicious free meal were completely abandoned after the girls walked into the first of many clothes shops. Maybe not really competing was the best thing that happened that day, as we had a lovely time walking through Tel Aviv, a city which I quickly fell in love with. Even the frequent pictures of escaped rapist Benny Sellar couldn't put me off. I particularly loved the bustling Carmel market, the beautiful old neighbourhood of Neve Tzedek and the lively Jaffa. We arrived at the meeting point having completed 7 out of the 12 tasks (the other groups had done several more) and we had cheated at over half of what we had done e.g. for the cheapest thing you can buy in the market we bought a bag of sweets and left one at the end which we said we bought for 10 agarot (israeli pennies, cents etc.).

Given a few hours before dinner we had a quick wander around Jaffa, and returned to the hotel for a few hours of TV watching. At about 5 we left the hotel and walked backed to Jaffa for dinner at Reg's flat. Dinner was both delicious and plentiful, and we stayed for several hours after playing random games. Eventually we forced ourselves up (or rather we were driven out) and we walked back to Tel Aviv. Then in a not very shabbasy move we went not to out hotel but towards the main high streets of Tel Aviv to experience its night life. In a fashionable and popular bar we met several of our friends from Machon. We eventually came back to the hotel a few hours later, but not after I had the first decent vodka since I got here.

The next day forced upon us a ridiculously early wake up of 9am, as we were going as a group to the great synagogue in Tel Aviv. The syngagouge itself was indeed great, the congregation was almost the total opposite. There were about 10 of us in our group and we formed almost a half of the congregation was actually rather upsetting, and it made me realise that although Israel may be a Jewish country Tel Aviv is not a Jewish city. The cars on the roads and the sheer number of shops that were open, on Shabbat just highlighted the situation. However, please do not think that I am complaing, its because Jerusalem shuts down for a day and a half every week that gets to me, and it was refreshing to be a city that does not go to sleep once a week.

After lunch we were given time for a quick rest before didactic encounters. This is when you go off in pairs with a sheet of questions and you spend two hours discussing a list of questions about yourselves. I was with Grace and we went to sit on the beach, it was really nice to just chat for a couple of hours, and if it had not been for the ever colder beach and the attacks by a couple of Israeli kite flyers I would have nothing to complain about, which is rare for me.

We concluded the shabbaton with havdalah on the beach, although the wind kept blowing out our candles and we did not have any wine, and had to use a pack of ciggarettes for spices it was all strictly kosher, if not particularly well prepared. After this I quickly left the group collected my things and walked up the beach front towards the Sheration Moria to meet my grandpa John. It was truly wonderful to see a member of my family for the first time since I had come to Israel. It was the first time I was really aware of the passing of time, as when we met in the lobby he looked at me for about five seconds without realising who I was, I will be scarred for life. We spent several pleasant hours before discussing all sorts of things in the Sheraton members lounge.

Soon it was time for me to bring my brief visit to a close as I had to leave both him and Tel Aviv behind as I had to return to Jerusalem for lessons the next day. I got a taxi to the main bus station where I spent about fifteen minutes navigating the chiroots trying to find one going to Jerusalem. I am pretty sure the world land speed record is held by an Israeli, unfortunealty it has not been recorded as it was probably broken by a chiroot driver somewhere between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Unfortuneatly the dangerously fast driving only meant that it seemed that the traffic jam appeared out of nowhere, and we here were stuck for a good twenty minutes. Just as suddenly as it appeared it dissappeard and we were once again zooming back towards Jerusalem and home.

To never forget

2006-11-28T12:09:00.000-08:00

The last two days have been dedicated to a Shoah (Holocaust) Seminar, and so naturally I feel I should dedicate an entire entry to it, partly so you can know what we did and also as a way for me to reflect personally. The Seminar was devised by Ilana a teacher at the Machon who had studied the Holocaust under Elie Wiesel, a distinguished Holocaust survivor and writer. The seminar started yesterday morning at nine, in my opinion it's a very bad idea to start a seminar dedicated to the Holocaust with the wonderful prospect of an extra hour's sleep. Nevertheless when the time came to get out of bed it was as hard as if it was eight.

I am pretty sure however that you are not particularly interested in what time I woke up but the seminar itself. The morning was spent in talks about Britain's relation with strangers and particularly the Kindertransport, a group of about 20,000 German Jewish children who were taken out of Germany in 1938 and were brought to foster homes in England. The morning session was certainly interesting but lacked any real emotional touch, I was pretty sure that would come in the afternoon with the trip to Yad Vashem.

Yad Vashem is the Holocaust Museum and is the main centre for Holocaust education in Israel, if not the world. Yad Vashem has been around for many many years but a couple of years ago a new museum was opened on the site to replace the old one which had been around since the fifties. The new museum designed by the well known Israeli architect Moshe Safdie is carved into the ground and in the shape of a large glass triangle. Many different reasons for the shape have been suggested for the design including the idea that the triangle is the strongest physical shape and that it represents an arrow going through the heart of the Jewish people.

Before going into the museum we were introduced to our guide, who handed out ear-pieces to each of us. Once we had put them in our ears and spent the inevitable five minutes pretending we were in the secret service we proceeded to the museum. By way of the ear piece our guide was able to talk quietly into a small microphone and we could all hear perfectly. It was these earphones that without a doubt ruined the Yad Vashem experience for me. By having a guide hurrying the group along it meant I was unable to take in the staggering amount of information before me, and it also meant I had a constant conflict between the information in front of me and the information in my ear. In fact I was unable to engage until I entered the final room, the halls of records.

The halls of records is a circular room filled with shelves. On two-thirds of the shelves are boxes and in each of these boxes are a group of records of someone killed in the Holocaust. In these boxes there are about three million people listed. Looking at the boxes as they went all around the room above and below me, for the first time in my life I truly understood what six million means. It is such an unfathomable number that it takes some sort of physical representation to make you fully realise the horror of what happened. Outside the museum there is a viewing platform that looks down onto Jerusalem, symbolising the hope and result of this terrible tragedy. I turned away from this beautiful view vowing to return whilst I am sill in Jerusalem and to dedicate an entire day to it.

At Yad Vashem there are several other monuments beside the museum, because of time constraints we are only able to visit two. The first we went to is the Children's memorial, this is an underground memorial in which there are several candles in the centre, which are reflected by a thousand mirrors giving the impression of millions of candles, representing the 1.5 million children killed the during the Shoah. At the same time names, ages and birthplaces are read out in English and Hebrew. On tour this memorial had had the biggest emotional affect of me and I have left with a tear in my eye, this time around I attempted to summon similar emotions but was unable to do so, I put this down to the lack of novelty in the memorial.

In the evening the entire Machon snuggled into one of the classrooms and watched a film called "Out of the Ashes' about Dr. Gisella Pearl, a Jewish Hungarian woman who attempts to resettle in America following her survival of Aushwitz. The film shows us a unique perspective as she had been a doctor in Auschwitz and was able to see the mad experiments of Mengele, who the film depicts with a warm charm, which made the man seem truly terrifying, particularly when considered in juxtaposition to the terrible things that he did with those fell under his knife.

We began today with a panel debate on the necessity of Shoah education and its importance today, whilst the talk was very interesting I found myself drifting off once to often, and so do not really feel I can give a proper summary of what was said. The next talk was on the relationship between Israel and the Holocaust, and I am sorry to say that the same thing applied to this talk. The next session was a workshop on the position of God in the Holocaust, and here I very much engaged for two reasons. First because it was in a much smaller group and second because I was absolutely enraged by what we were discussing. We were shown the opinions of two Reform Rabbis who highlighted the two opposite ends of the scale, one who said that we must abandoned the traditional opinion of God as an all-powerful good God would not let the Holocaust happen, and so we must turn to Jewish paganism, and if you think that was bad the second one said that God was very much part of the Holocaust as it was necessary step in the evolution of the world to move away from medieval isolationist Jewry and into the modern world, and for that six million Jews must die for what to me is an inevitable step in the history of mankind. I was infuriated by what I heard and let it be known, my own conclusions are that the only world the Holocaust can occur in is a godless one.

After lunch we had a talk from a survivor from Hungary called David Frankel, a former teacher at the Machon and now an established Israeli judge. He spoke with great freedom about his past in occupied Hungary, the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen and his life in Israel afterwards. He spoke with great passion about his experiences and about his beliefs on the subject, which as you can imagine were very strong. Undoubtedly the best way to relate to the Holocaust is to listen to survivor's first hand, and it is a great shame that this opportunity will not be available to future generations.

The Seminar was concluded with a Tekes (ceremony), designed by a group of Machonikim of which I was one. We had spent many sessions designing and preparing the tekes and I am very pleased to say it went off almost perfectly. People were lead into a room which had on its perimeter and its diagonal dissections tables chairs which connected different tables. The tables represented different communities which suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazi's, I had Budapest. Everyone was given a chance to look at the different communities whilst in the background there played a video depicting Jewish life and traditional Jewish music. Then all went dark and onto the screen came a series of anti-Semitic messages from the time of the Nazi's, this was followed by a piece of music called Different Trains, using music to depict the horrors of the Holocaust, then after a brief moment of silence and darkness a short video called the Return to Life was played, which talked about life after the camps. We then broke into discussion groups to process the previous two days. After twenty minutes of discussion we reconvened around a single candle to give our own small reflections on what we had learnt from the seminar. We closed the ceremony singing the Hatikva, the Israeli National Anthem, but also a song of hope, a song that was sung as a last act of defiance by those who lost their lives in the Nazi gas-chambers.

Shabbas Together?

2006-11-25T12:19:00.000-08:00

I am writing only a few hours after the finish of the Machon Shabbat Byachad (think thats how you spell it), which I intend to describe now is some detail. In order for you to understand the issues in question and why there is a question mark at the end of the title, I should give some mention to the make up of the blog. The Machon is a non-religious Jewish institute, and so its participants came from a wide range of Jewish backgrounds. All Jewish denominations are represented here right from modern orthodox all the way to liberal Judaism, and everything in between. Shabbat Byachad means this weekend we all stayed at the Kiriyat and had Shabbas together. Therefore the big question is how do you have a shabbat which makes everyone happy and comfortable with the way things are done. Many people wanted to have a strict orthodox shabbat, which means no music, electricity or general creativity, luckily major conflict was avoided and everyone respected those who were uncomfortable with breaking shabbat.

Before I go onto the services, where most of the conflict was caused, I should really mention the planning and everything else. The machon is split into two chavura's (groups coming from the word friends) and it was down to my chavura to run this shabbas. We all divided up responsibility between different groups and I became part of the onegg (friday evening activity) group and the steering comittee, whose job it was was to organise everyone else. I very quickly took control of the onegg whilst becoming almost irrelevant on the steering comittee, probably down to my own laziness. Essentially the steering comitte fell into the control of one of its members, Amelia who essentially took it upon herself to organise the shape of the whole shabbas. Coming from someone who uses his coat pockets as his filing system her organisational skills scared me.

The byachad started on Friday morning with a charity breakfast, and although I was rather disgruntled about having to get up at 8 in the morning on the weekend (in Israel Friday is the weekend) I was instantly cheered up by the sight of bagels, my first since I had come to Israel. We had woken so early because soon after we had finished breakfast we borded the coast and drove for about 1 hour and a half to a kibbutz near Rahovot, where we volunteered for a charity called to Table to Table, by picking the tomatoes that the farmers had left behind, which would then be sent to those who could not afford them. We did this for about an hour, as we needed to get back in time for shabbas which comes in at about four in the afternoon. Back at the kiriyat I had a quick lunch and then spent an hour preparing for the onegg.

After a quick shower and group photo we brought shabbas in with the traditional candle lighting and kabblas shabbat service, a service full of joyous meant to express the Jewish joy at the advent of this special day, it is not meant to cause pain, annoyance and confusion. And alas we reach the time where we must look at services. There had been a general consenus in our early meetings that we should do all praying as one group and not split into denominational services, thus the group who role it was to plan the services was charged with the task of coming up with services that everyone was comfortable. The comittee was comprised of at least one person from each denomination in attempt to make everyone happy and make sure that nothing got done. I thank the Lord I was not on this comittee so I can only judge by results, which were not favourable, and on this I am supported by most of the comittee. Kabblat Shabbat was a total mish-mash and I was not alone in being totally confused in what was going on. Before dinner an ad hoc gathering convened in the hallway outside the dorms for a polite discussion (heated arguement) about the service, and the way people acted towards it, apparently some walked out. Was a conflict brewing at the Kiriyat or was it an isolated affair.

Dinner was very pleasant with good food, no wait sorry I apologise its just natural when talking about a meal to talk about good food, I shall rephrase, edible food, a good atmosphere and lots of singing, something that I felt had been lacking at meals since I got here. Yet for once everyone sat down together at dinner as one and sang their hearts out with all the wild, repetative and downright weird songs that traditionally accompany a Jewish dinner on a Friday night.

After dinner was the onegg, which as I stated earlier it was my duty to run (therefore there might be a certain bias in the following paragraph). An onegg is traditionally a time when everyone gets together to tell stories, sing songs and play games, although in a Noam onegg we play all the most disgusting and depraved games we can think of. I was told very early on to avoid that sort of onegg and so went in search of an alternative. An idea for a very different onegg was presented to me, in order to remind us all of Friday night TV why dont we run 'Have I Got Jews For You'. Thus a number of us came together to devise said program in which there would be a number of rounds based on British Quiz Shows in particular 'Have I Got News For You' and 'I 'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue'. Without going into to much detail we had five different teams and then a panel of judges, who held up signs with comments and scores based on how funny the answers were, of course we were deliberatly not keeping score. I obviously am not going to rave about the program being mine, although I will say though that it was very well received and when it was announced that it was the last round, there was a general murmur of dissent and we decided to put another round in, so that seems like a fairly positive indication.

The next morning I was dragged out of bed at the ungodly hour of 10 am, for sharharis (morning prayers), once again confusion ensued, although this was largely cross denominational as parts of the service done by all were inexplicably left out. Following the service we had lunch complete with more edible food and singing. After lunch there was an array of activities to choose from and I decided to have a go at touch American Football. This particular sport was chosen because Danny, my roomate and the one running the program, had an American football in the room and so thought that qualified him to run a game, he unfortuneatly possessed absolutely no knowledge of how to play. Nethertheless we compiled a set of rules which all were happy with and we believed bore a slight resemblance to the game. Playing 5 a side for half an hour provided more that enough excercise and a draw was a perfectly acceptable result.

Following this we went as a group for a gentle shabbat stroll along the Tayelet a promenade which looks out over Jerusalem, providing the most wonderful views. Normally we are not allowed on it as it runs through certain Arab villages and is thus deemed not safe without a guard, which is a great shame and it is very near to the Kiriyat and provides excellent escape. The stroll was thus very refreshing and relaxing and provided a lovely conclusion to shabbat. Finally we returned to the Kiriyat for Havdalah (a short service which sees out shabbat), which was held on the roof. We were brought up to the roof one by one, and were given a lit candle, we were then asked to walk through a path of candles and stand around a candlelit circle, it had the distinct feeling of a very Christian service. Nonetheless the service was very atmospheric and pleasant and the candles provided enough heat to keep off the encroaching cold, made worse by our positioning on the exposed roof.

As a post-shabbat activity we went as a group to the Soup Cafe (that's Cafe not Kitchen) a small restaurant in central Jerusalem. The Soup Cafe is one of the more interesting ideas I have seen for a restaurant. It is a very small rustic place which looked like it was in need of a paint job. It served only soup and drinks, and was very well known for its Jazz Scene. It is apparently normal for people to come with their instruments and play to the rest. We came with both drums and guitars and a few people played the piano they had there, however being the sole clients in the Cafe for the first hour and a half (we had booked the place out) we were unable to hear any of the music the place was famous for, although I did catch sight of a double base on the way out.

Hebron

2006-11-20T12:48:00.000-08:00

I had always assumed that during my year in Israel there would be certain places I would be unable to visit, in particular the West Bank and Gaza. So imagine my, and everyone else's, surprise when we were informed that the Machon would be taking us right into the heart of the West Bank to the ancient, violent and hugely contreversial city of Hebron. I had never even considered the possiblity that this might happen, so was taken completely off guard with the news.

To prepare us for the trip we were given a talk last night by an Israeli Arab called Mohammed Darawshe, an eeducator on the Israeli Arab conflict, a representative to the Kenesset during the Rabin administration, and the Capaign manager to the Israeli Arab community for Ehud Barak. Considering this it is not surprising to here that he set out a very articulate and reasonable look at the conflict, and it was very interesting to here the story from the Arab narrative. It was a positive talk and he spoke of both the struggle and successes of the Israeli Arab community, and the talk was truly enlightening, although it only really concerned the plight of Israeli Arabs and not the Palestinians living in the occupied territories. The only criticicsm some had after the meeting was that we were hearing a voice of reason and there was a general feeling that this was not the way the majority would present the situation, although there are solid statistics to show that nearly all Israeli Arabs are happy to be Israeli and see there future in the land of Israel.

As a prelude to Hebron however, the talk failed, nothing could have prepared us for what we saw. We arrived in Hebron at around two, following a 45 minute drive. We started our tour in the Jewish neighbourhood of Avraham Avinu. In Hebron there are 90 Jewish families, and most of them live in the neighbourhood of Avraham Avinu. We were taken into the house of an alumni of JFS who had made aliyah around twenty years ago, and soon after doing so moved to Hebron where she lived with her family of eleven children. As we sat in her living room she told us of a Jewish life in Hebron, the way she and her family had spent a year being shot at from across the valley and why the Jews should be in Hebron. I got the feeling that she was trying to moderate her words, but the disdain in her voice when she said the word 'Arab' was highly noticeable.

Following this talk we went to the Cave of Machpela. The Cave of Machpela is the reason why Hebron is a place that inspires so much conflict, as it is the resting place of the patriachs and matriachs of the three major religions, and anywhere that says it is the last resting place of Abraham is bound to cause conflict. The Cave itself can not actually be seen as it is covered by a rather large building built as a memorial to the cave. I have to say that I found it very difficult to connect with what I saw there, the synagogue there was like any other and the memorials which had been installed to commemorate the patriachs and matriachs seem to be of an Arabic design, and I must admit I had the feeling of 'what on earth is all the fuss about'.

Outside we were greeted by Mihael a member of a society called "Breaking the Silence', an organisation set up by former Israeli soldiers, who took it upon themselves to educate those who come to the area on what they as soldiers were asked to do in the reigon during the time of the Intifada. He introduced us to the area outside the cave and then took us on the tour of the area, it is this tour which if you will forgive me I intend to spend some time over.

Before I describe the tour I should explain something about the situation in Hebron today. Up until 1929 there had been a thriving Jewish community in Hebron but in 1929 it was massacred and driven away, a fact that is quoted by many Jews in the area. Under the partition plan Hebron became part of Jordan in 1948, but being part of the West Bank it was captured by the Israeli's in the Six Day War of 1967, soon afterwards a smal Jewish community moved into the area. In an attempt to keep the peace in Hebron it was divided into two, as part of the Second Oslo Accords in 1996, the far larger Palestinian area known as H1 and the, smaller Jewish area called H2. There are around 130,000 Palestinians living in Hebron, in comparison to about 600 Jews settlers, which include residents and Yeshiva students. The army presence is huge with about one soldier to settler.

Our tour was limited to the street of H2. Very quickly, as we moved away from Machpela, we walked down roads which used to contain vast thriving markets with thousands of people, the same streets were now deserted. Soldiers guarded either end of the street. Palestinians are limited as to what streets in H2 they can use, and even those who live over the street are not permitted to make use of it, instead the roof serves as the only way into H1. The silence was eery, and it was exacerbated by the frequent army posts, constant grafitti and closed shops, it was a ghost town. Occasioally a small patrol comes down the road, or a group of small children run down the road but quickly dissapear into the side streets, signs of life are infrequent.

But underneath the silent surface there is a constant tension, which frequently boils over, and small incidents between Settlers and Palestinians cause 15-20 minutes of chaos, before everything returns to the dead normality of H2. Both the settlers and Palestinians of Hebron are the most violent of their kind. The tension was unquestionably noticeable, although that could have been down to the vast amount of barbed wire, which will always make you feel uneasy. It is apparently normal for settler children to throw stones at Palestinian children as they return to school. Considering this the army presence seems completely necessary, whilst the settlers remain. Even worse the settlers resent the army, and there is a constant tension between those who are doing protecting, around the same age as myself, and those they are trying to protect. A poster on the wall reads 'Soldiers the uniform you wear does not cover the crimes that you do against Jews'. It does seem a tad ungrateful that the army does so much for the settlers without even the slightest gratitude from the settlers.

We finished our tour at Yona Menachem Renneret Yeshiva, this was an almost unheard of event that a Yeshiva excepts a mixed group into its walls. Luckily for us the head of the Yeshiva is the half brother of Chaggai, one of the educators on the Machon. Two things were different for me about this visit the first being that I had never been inside a Yeshiva before whilst people were studying, but far more importantyl I agreed with what I heard inside the Yeshiva. We were spoken to by two people the Head of the Yeshiva Chaggai's brother, and one of his students. The Rosh (head) Yeshiva had in the past told his students they were not to engage in any violence and thus on the whole the students are at peace with both the Settlers and Palestinians. He said that the reason they were there was for religious and not political reasons. The student that spoke had been born in England and had made aliyah with his family at a very young age. He told us that there were around 200 students and that they came from places like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and were drawn away from there relative comfort to the hard life of a student at Yeshiva in Hebron for spiritual reasons. In the past the Yeshiva had brought most of its goods from the Arabs but since the division this option was no longer open to them, and thus the Yeshiva is very self-contained, yet it is a hard life at the Yeshiva with a poor quality of life, although it seems that spiritual nourishment is all that is needed. There are also benefits for going to that particular Yeshiva as those who have studied there often get into the best army units.

I feel that I should say a word or two about my feelings on the issue. It would seem that the only logical soloution other than the tough restrictions in place, would be to remove the settlers. Yet Hebron is one of the four religious cities in Israel and one of the holiest Jewish sites, and there are many people in Hebron who are there not as a Davka (spite) but for real religious reasons, and no matter what my feelings are about religion I cannot advocate moving those who are there because they believe withall their heart that they should really be there, because of its religious significance. What the correct soloution is I do not know, but perhaps I should mention the words of Mihael our guide who said that no matter what we do we must be aware of the cost of our actions, and only when we do that can we progress. After hearing these words I walked towards the Yeshiva, before entering I turned and looked at the sky, all that was left of the setting sun was a splash of blood red across the darkening sky, and that together with the deserted street is how I shall remember my time in Hebron.

Out and About

2006-11-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

As the winter slowly begins to descend over the hills of Jerusalem and the temperature starts to drop, so to does the general feeling towards Kiryat Moriah. Thankfully this week I was given several opportunities to get away from it, for various periods of times. On Monday we went to Tel Aviv to visit the Independence Hall and the Palmach Museum. I had been to both on tour and neither had changed within two years. Unsurprising really considering the sole exhibit of Independce Hall is the Hall itself, where the Declaration of Independece was signed, it had been made to look like how it was when the Declaration was signed almost 60 years ago. We were in the hall for abour half an hour where we were given a short, and thorougly uninformative talk (we had all before, ad nauseam). After the halls the group split into two groups one going to an area of Tel Aviv called Neve Tzedek and the other going to the Palmach Museum, having done both on tour I opted for the latter, the reasons for which will become immediately apparent.

The Palmach was the elite unit of the Haganah (the pre-state army). The museum is one of those new fangled museums which does away with the idea of interesting artefacts and documents and relies totally on films. The group of around thirty is required to go through a series of rooms where there are a series of films which narrate the story of a unit of the Palmach. I suppose the museum was so good because whilst it was very informative there were lots of great special effects and bomb sounds which appealed to the young boy that still lingers within me.

The following day during Ivrit we went to the Zoo. Yes, I too found it very difficult to work out the link between the two, but it seemed that the Ivrit department thought that a visit to the Zoo would help us with out Hebrew, I told you it was bad. In order to fulfil the Ivrit part of the trip we were given a questionare in Hebrew to fill in as we went around the park. Needless to say it was completely ignored, and once again the spirit of the young child came through as I found myself immersed in the mating and fighting rituals of the squirrel monkey, just how big a pelicans beak is (and its big) and the elephant doing its business right in front of you. I failed to mention that the Zoo was a biblical one, which either means only the animals found in Israel during the time of the bible, or every animal on Noah's Ark which, last time I checked, was all of them.

This shabbas I had my first weekend in a while away from the Kiriyat, although not Jerusalem. The reason being, I attended the Tribe Shabbaton. Tribe is the youth wing of the United Synagogue, and a Shabbaton is where you stay somewhere for Shabbas and you do lots of Shabbasy things, thus making it (in a rather round about way) a Shabbaton. Around 200 people attended the Shabbaton, which took place in the Jerusalem Gate Hotel. The participants mainly included Yeshiva Boys, Sem Girls (Yeshiva is a school for pure Jewish learning for boys, a Seminary in the same for girls) and those on programs like FZY and Bnei Akiva. I was part of a contigency of around 11 or 12 from the Machon, and two from Noam. Owing to the make up of those in attendance, for the first time since I had been here I was exposed to some very religious (and occasionally right wing) views, which was refreshing Machon being a very left wing place. I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, especially I was able to see friends who were on different programs in Israel and also old youth leaders, one of whom I hadn't seen since he made aliyah four years ago.

The program of the Shabbaton was jam-packed, when we weren't eating we were praying and when we weren't praying we were attending talks on various issues from torah, jewish identity, trading soldiers and the gay parade. One talk I want to give particular attention to was given by a Dayan (judge) of the London Beth Din (Rabbinic Court), who was good enough to share his 'wisdom' with those present throughout the course of the weekend. With his high-standing he was given the chance to speak several times, and on the whole he spoke on the same message. His message was make the most of the opportunities you have been given by your parents and use them to your full advantage. No problems so far. He then made the seemingly logical step that this meant spending every moment of your waking life in the study of torah, and that apparently is a fulfilling use of your gap year. Admittedly he did praise those on other programs and those volunteering, but it was quite clear in his eyes studying Torah was the most noble pursuit a Jewish teenager could engage in. His words angered me, what infurited me came not from the Dayan but from one of the organisers of the event. I should note I have this story second hand. My friend mentioned to one of the leaders of Tribe Israel that one of the weekly Tribe Shior (torah talks), was going to be happening at the same time as a rally for Darfur, to which she replied "I actually think that going to the Shior and learning torah will be more helpful to those in Darfur than going to the rally." I pray she was not being serious, and was just trying to sell the talk, nethertheless it was still the icing on the cake, and the idea that studying torah can do any good for anyone other than yourself became even more far-fetched. I apologise, I feel that that mini-rant has marred my opinions of the weekend. I should reiterate that I really enjoyed the weekend, although that could have been because the food was so nice and plentiful.

Other things I have done this week included on Thursday going to see the new Bond movie Casino Royale. The film itself was very good, Daniel Craig is excellent as Bond (even though he may not look the part) and the film is well worth seeing, it is however a somewhat unconventional Bond film. If you have ever been to a cinema, they have something that I don't think they have anywhere else in the world, a break in the middle of the film, and I mean in the middle of the film. It does not matter if a character is mid-sentence, if the film reaches its half way point the film will stop. Luckily the stopping place was rather appropriate this time round, but that didn't stop my surprise when half way through the film the screen went blank.

The same point was also raised on Saturday night when I went to my first Israeli Comedy Gig. I had been rather scared that my year in Israel would mean a year without comprehensible stand-up comedy, an integral part of my life, and I was dreading a year without live comedy. So imagine my joy when I was told that some of the group leaving the Tribe weekend after Shabbas had gone out were going to a comedy gig. The venue was in the unlikely location of the basement of the Orthodox Union, the comedians however were very funny. The theme of the night was being an olim (someone who has made aliyah (someone who has immigrated to Israel)), and I left in a very good and fulfilled mood, a lovely end to the week.

Daniel

P.S. Please check back very soon because I have a feeling I will be posting my most interesting entry to date within the next couple of days.

Lockdown

2006-11-11T04:59:00.000-08:00

Up until a couple of days ago I had a very clear idea of what this week's entry was going to involve. It was to be titled 'pride and prejudice' and was going to be a summary of the weeks conflict between the cities ultra-orthodox and gay communities as the gay pride march, which occured on Friday drew closer, and then to top it all off I was going to finish with a first hand account of the rally.

Then why you might ask am I giving you a summary of what I wanted to write but not actually writing it. The answer is that as I am sure most of you know, the Israeli army in response to four kassam rockets hitting the town of Ashkelon, fired two shells into the town of Beit Hanoun killing 18 including women and children. This fairly obviously cause a global outcry and condemnation of Israel's action. An inquiry was held and Ehud Olmert announced that what had happened was down to a technical failure and what happened was against policy. That did not stop Hamas and friends issuing in response 80 solid terror threats in retaliation.

Security was tightened, the gay pride march was cancelled as it was going to take 10,000 border police to guard, and they obviously needed to be on the border, and so only a closed rally was held inside the Hebrew University an area much easier to secure. For us on the Machon it was Lockdown. Lockdown means that for a certain period of time (the entire weekend) you cannot, with a very few exceptions i.e. with express permission, leave the Kiriyat Moriah. Although this did not pose too much of a problem for yours 'chronically lethargic' truly (even though I could not go to the rally, obviously off limits, I could lie in) it did for many of his friends, especically those who had made reservations in hostels around the country, and so it went from what was probably going to a very empty Kiryat to a virtually full one, bang goes the peace and quiet I had been looking forward to.

The question then arose how do we keep ourselves entertained for the weekend, especially since we were not allowed it. One of the soloutions was to have a 24-athon which means watching an entire series of 24 in one go. Although I have seen every single episode ever made I was still up for the challenged, and so we all settled in. Word of warning, when doing a marathon of anything make sure the DVD's arent cheap Chinese fakes and that the discs do actually worked, and so by episode three we were forced to give up the endeavour. Tonight in a spirt of concilliation the Machon are bringing in a Karaoke company to keep us entertained, which promises to be fun.
Untill next time
Dan

A Blind Memory

2006-11-06T03:42:00.000-08:00

I have once again come to the time of the week when I feel committed to sit down and contemplate my next entry (if you have to yet to establish the pattern its somewhere between Thursday-Monday), and once again I am considering what to write. What immediately jumps to mind is Yitzhak Rabin who was murdered eleven years on Saturday last, or about dialogues in the dark a museum about blindness or even just begin to tell you about some of the lessons here at the Machon, an issue I believe I have neglected recently. I feel that all of these subjects deserve some time, but I promise I will be as brief as possible, and I really mean that this time.

I will start with last Monday when the Machon went to a Museum called Dialogues in the Dark just outside Tel Aviv, this involved walking around a museum in pitch black, so that its impossible to see anything. The purpose of the museum is to try and help one to appreciate life without sight, as you experienced a market, street, boat and bar without any visual aid. All the museum guides are blind and at the end our guide spoke about life as a blindman. The experience was truly eye-opening (excuse the pun) and really helped me to understand what blindness is like, and just how hopeless I would be without sight.

As I mentioned at the beginning Rabin was assassainated 11 years ago, and so over the past few days this fact has not been let slip from the forefront of our minds. This started as early as Wednesday when we had a discussion and then memorial ceremony at the Machon, where Rabin's life was recounted accompanied with poety, songs and the Dead Poet's Society. Then a brief respite as media and political tension and tributes built up until Saturday the anniversary of the death. After Shabbat a rally was held in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv. All of Machon plus around ten thousand others attended. It was after a rally for peace in that very square that Rabin was shot 11 years ago and now the rally is in his memory as well as for peace. The rally was 'non-political' although even a non-Hebrew speaker could sense the way the rally leaned to the left, and the attacks on the goverment, the war, Peretz and Lieberman were prevalent, particularly in the speech of award winning author and keynote speaker David Grossman. In a sense the rally seemed like it was going through the motions and lacked any passion in its celebrating of Rabin or its quest for peace, and its opposition to the goverment was very much the order of the day.

Something that I dont think any of the paper mentioned was what came after the rally. I speak of the torential downpour that occured around five minutes after the rally finished and lasted about ten minutes. For my part I was in a coffee shop throughout its duration, but it was very amusing to see thousands of people running down the street for cover. I am also positive that there were certain settlers in the West Bank saying that this was a message from G-d that he did not approve of the rally, whilst those who attended would say that as it came after the rally it was meant to be approval, as the rain was seen as a reward. On a more personal note many people I was with said they found the rally an experience/moving, I personally felt none of this. I found the atmosphere to be subdued and lacking of emotion and obviously not being able to understand the language did not help my experience of it.

Finally I will turn to lessons, from now on until I have covered them all I will talk about one set of lessons at the Machon a week. I shall start with Ivrit. One of my main tasks here at the Machon is to learn Ivrit, many things hinder this, they include I knew none to start with and so am naturally in the bottom set, I am terrible at languages, and the lessons themselves. The favourite activity with the lessons is complaining about them afterwards. There are four Ivrit lessons a week each 90 minutes in duration. The teaching is not as bad as it once was and we are starting to cover some ground, that doesn't stop the classes being too big, the lessons being deadly boring and my complete inability to learn languages. Many people have reverted to messing around or just not attending at all. To be honest things are looking up and we are finally beginning to confront grammar although its gone from being too little to too much. I get the feeling I learn more from taxi-rides than I do from classes.
Daniel

Northern Tiyul

2006-10-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned at the end of last week, the past week was spent on tiyul (excursion) in the North. To the uninitiated mind this conjoured images of long hikes in the scorching heat, with poor food and worse hygeine. Happily this was not the case. We (meaning the entire Machon group) stayed in the hotel on Kibbutz Giladi, one of the older Kibbutzim in the North Eastern part of the country, very near the Lebanon border. The hotel was very comfortable with TV's and baths (both luxuries that are always relished) and to top it off the food was wonderful.

Owing to the fact that far too much happened on Tiyul and I do not have the time nor space to go into each and every detail and so here is a brief summary. On our first day we arrived very late in the day and so only had time to visit a beautiful cemetry by the Kinneret where many of the early Zionists were laid to rest. The second day began with a hike, not particularly challenging and most people had done it on tour. This was followed by a brief trip to Tsfat a small religious town, where we spent at least half the time there looking for a toilet. In the afternoon we went canoeing/rafting down a tributary to the Jordan river. This was as you can imagine rather manic, as all rules about splashing, getting out of the raft, pushing people off were all speedily broken as the journey turned into a huge fight between nearly all parties. I was in a two man canoe with Richard Sarsby and we pushed quickly towards the finish. Realising we probably had missed all the fun we decided to lie in wait just before the finish line for about twenty minutes to join the fray which had been battling down river.

The following day, Tuesday I shall deal with separately for reasons that will become apparent. The first half of Wednesday was spent in the Golan Heights a mountainous area on the border with Syria. We began with a gentle hike, in a nature reserve at the bottom of the heights before going up into the heights themselves. We visited a former military position on the top of the heights where we could look down into Syria and the Valley of Tears, a sight of several major battles throughout Israel's history, the heights being a key military position. After lunch we visited a newly opened film about the Golan, it was essentially a tourism pitch asking you to smell, feel, hear and see the Golan, complete with wind and rainfall during the showing. This was followed by a 'model' of the Golan upon which there was a projection, which was designed to illustrate the history of the Golan, highlighting different areas at different stages as well as the battles that occured in the Golan. It is virtually impossible to describe just how propaganday and pro-Israeli it was, and the tank movements illustrated by images which belonged in a 1980's video game only heightened the hilarity. Following this we went to a leisure centre where we went swimming and ice-skating.

Thursday was the last day of Tiyul and we began by visiting the Rosh Hanikra Caves, which is on the Northern most part of the Mediterranean coast and on the border with Lebanon. Before going into the caves themselves there is an introductory video to the caves. The video talked about the love affair of the sea and coast, the carressing movements of the waves and the massaging of the rocks crevices, never has erosion sounded so sexaul. In my opinion the Rosh Hanikra caves is one of the most beautiful places in Israel, the sea is of the richest blue, the caves themselves are a tranquil tunnel looking onto the deep azure of the Meditteranean, and the gentle sounds of the sea are only marred by the soft screech of bats that populate the heights of the cave, the perfection is only ruined by leaning out over a railing and looking out at the Med. when you realise it is the birds bathroom and some of their business has been transferred to your arms.

After the caves we drove back towards the Haifa, and without actually entering the city we drove up into the mountains above it to visit a Druze village. The Druze is an offshoot of Islam, which rebelled against the way Islam treated women. Druze is an exclusive religion meaning you have to be a born a Druze, however they are a very friendly people and live by the laws of the land, meaning they are entirely loyal to the state of Israel. We began by going to a Druze market where I bought a backgammon set something I had long been meaning to do, as well as sampling Druze coffee (very interesting) and being told by a shopkeeper that a man should respect his wife but always keep a strong whip in his hand 'not for his wife but for self-defence.' Following the market we went to a Druze house where we were served one of the most delicious meals I have had since coming to Israel, it included spiced pittas, houmous, lentils from the heavens, salad, rice and more. This array of food was presented to us in groups of five on a huge platter and we had to keep going back for refills.

To finish off the day we went across the bay to the historical town of Acco, not mark you to learn the important and exciting history of the town but to go to a MASA event. MASA was an organisation set up by Ariel Sharon to bring young people to Israel on long term programs. Therefore a MASA event is where almost everyone who is on Year Course in Israel congregates in a small area to be told how wonderful Israel and Masa is. The event had infact been going on for the whole day but we only came for the end. The end of which I speak was a concert complete with abysmal MC, cheesy music, high ranking officicals saying what a wonderul job Masa was doing.

Er I should apologise for the last few paragraphs, I appreciate I did say I would be brief and clearly failed, and if you think that was bad I am about to talk about Tuesday and be warned its heavy. Tuesday was a day reserved for the war in Lebanon, the day was run by the UJIA, a British charity, who includes as part of its work helping to establish education projects in Northern Israel. We began by visiting a car park just outside our kibbutz where 12 reserve troops were killed, in the car park there lay rubble as well as pictures of the soldiers to serve as a temporary memorial. From here we went to a Moshav (non-Socialist Kibbutz) on the Lebanese border, because of its proximity the Moshav was used as a military base, whilst its community was moved down South. The leader of the Moshav was himself a victim of an attack in 1970 when his school bus was attacked by his militants, several young children were killed during the raid as well as his father who was acting as a guard. It was amazing to see this man who had endured so much emotional hurt in his life standing strong and being able to talk about his experiences. Following a talk from him we went all the way down to the Lebanese border and were able to see building which served as entry points for Hezbollah tunnels.

Next was the most moving point of the day as we visited a man who was in his living on a Friday night when a Katusa rocket came through his living room, his wife and grandaughted died in the blast, he survived because the rocket entered just above his head and went right through the room. A small miracle in a total tragedy, however what was startling was the fact that he could talk to a group about his experiences and appear with strength and resolved. The day was concluded in the small Northern town of Shelomi, a town with strong connections to Britain and particularly the town of Radlett. Here we were given a talk about the town and then had a discussion about Jewish relations throughout the world. What struck me about all the people we heard speak on this most intense day, was their strength resolve and ability to look to the future, for no matter what trouble they had encountered and what difficulties they had been through they showed a determination to survive and continue to go from strength to strength, and that is living in Northern Israel (essentially a frontier area) does to you.
I hope everyone can take someone from that
Daniel

P.S. I am well aware that what is expressed here is very pro-Israeli and I know there was suffering on both sides of the border, I am just relating to you what I saw that day, please dont take offense.

Har Herzel

2006-10-21T05:39:00.000-07:00

Hello Again

It was back to lessons this week at the Machon and unless you want a complete breakdown of every lesson there is nothing of any real interest to report. On Monday however we went as a group to Har Herzel. Har Herzel is the main military cemetery in Jerusalem as well as being the resting place of many leading Zionists and politicians including Herzel and Yitchak Rabin.

Before we visited the cemetry itself we paid a trip to the Herzel museum which is attatched to the cemetry. The Herzl museum is one of those new fangled museums which relies not on exhibits but on a film, and this particular museum had far far too much funding on its hands. The museum appeated to be funded by the entire nation of Austria (which might have explained a description of Vienna as the cultrual and enlightened centre of Europe). The museum had recreated the town hall in Basel where the First Zionist Congress took place, complete with transparent statues of delegates and Herzel's original office. The museum itself was actually quite impressive, the film was as you might expect about Herzel's life, told by way of a theatre company putting on a play about Herzel. The film was was informative, although it went over the top with its Zionism (what do you expect). It was however ruined by poor dubbing and awful acting.

Har Herzel is without a doubt one of the most beautiful cemetries I have ever visited. The first thing one notes is that it is strikingly green and organised. Each grave is identical, in that they all look like beds with the gravestone made in the appearance of a pillow. There are row upon row of graves, steeped down away from the grave of Herzel standing alone at the top of the mount. At the very bottom is Yad Vashem the Holocaust Museum thus creating a symbolic rise from the Holocaust at the bottom to Herzel the founder of Zionism at the top. Throughout the graveyard there are various memorials to different events including the Jews who had fallen fighting the Nazi's in WWII, a lost submarine, the Battle for Jerusalem in 1948 (including a memorial to a 10 year old boy who was acting as a messenger) and many other events throughout Israel's history.

Perhaps the most disquietning thing about Har Herzel are the graves waiting to be dug. There is still considerable space and since the last time I was there some of that space had been filled in, and it is only a matter of time before more graves are created. It is inevitable that when touring Har Herzel with Israelis they know someone who lies there, and we were told of two people known personally by one or other of our guides. One man we were told about was a former teacher on the Machon called Nir Cohen who was killed when his tank exploded in the recent war in Lebanon, seeing his grave and listening to the testimony of those who knew him was truly a moving experience and brought a tear to many an eye of those who were present. It was a downcast and reflective group that returned to the Kiryat that evening.

Tomorrow the entire Machon is leaving the Kiryat for a week as we are going on a Tiyur (hike) in the North. It should be stated that although we will be doing some hiking we will be staying in what is meant to be very nice accomodation. I hope I shall be able to report back with a very upbeat entry next week.
And so until next time
Dan

The Big Meet

2006-10-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

Hi Again

I am well aware that my last blog was bloody long, dont worry I'm not going to start talking about its length again, and so you probably cant take another entry, but you will have to forgive another one, whilst the details are still fresh in the memory. I will try to keep it as short as possible.

Following my five days on the Galilee I returned to Jerusalem by way of a quick stop in Tiberias. We did not however stay at the Kiryat which was supposedly shut, instead we were put up in the Shalom Hotel in Western Jerusalem near Yad Vashem and Har Herzel. The hotel was actually really nice as it had a bath, comfortable beds and a TV all luxuries compared to what I have had for the past month. It was thus a welcom change from camping. The reason we (as in Noam) had returned to Jerusalem half way through our holiday was because we were going to a mifgash (meeting) with our parallel Conservative youth movements in America, South America and Israel. The Yanks both North and South had about 80 members each we had 10 and the Israelis 5/6.

The mifgash occured at some sort of weird biblical themed park half way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We were split up into different groups and I found myself as the only Brit in my group. The activities we participated in included using a pulley system to get water out of a well (which we failed at), cooking a vegetarian biblical lunch (surprisingly good and I helped make rice and lentils which got much praise) and then some sort of dull navigation exercise in the searing heat. Following that there was a dinner and a disco (dont ask), all in all a fun day.

But sod the events of the day I know all you care about are the Americans and just how annoying they were. By the sound of it I got quite a nice group and I was able to get along with everyone in the group (and for the record I did tell them I ate cucumber sandwiches and have tea with the Queen). Apparently in other groups the Americans were over enthusiastic whereas the South American did bugger all which caused significant tension between the two, which in one group almost broke out into war on the Mexican border. Anyway from my point of view they were all really nice and I think I am going to try and keep in contact with them which will be nice.

I am now back at the Kiryat, I've got one more day before the holidays start which just so happens to be simchas torah so I intend to be pretty happy (drunk).
Speak to you all soon
Dan

Succoth on the Galilee

2006-10-13T07:19:00.000-07:00

I know its been a week but boy oh boy is there a lot to talk about. If you have not already scrolled down to see how long this blog is, its long, very long, you would not believe how absurdly long it is. In fact its so long that this elongated description of its length is only prolonging the length of the blog and therefore I shall cease to write on this topic and move to the more substantial part of the blog.

This past week was chofesh (holiday) as it was the festival of Succoth, and for once I actually did spending a week under canvas by the ever picturesque Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), the first few days from Friday - Monday were spent at the Bereshees festival. I went to Bereshees with 15 other people 14 of which were on the Machon (we were joined by Amiel who was staying in Tel Aviv), from Machon there was all of Noam, both of Hanoar and one from each of AJ6 and Netzer. The Bereshees festival is a very chilled out slightly hippy music festival that takes place over the first few days of succoth. It was a rather strange experience for me to go to a festival and not be scared of getting stabbed the entire time I was there (mind you my only source of festival comparrison is Reading, which explains the stabbing fear). The festival was described to be by a fellow festival goer as "A sample of every group in Israel and a sprinkle of happiness" and although I could not account for every group statement, happiness was rife. Even with the language barrier I could sense the happy and friendly feeling of the festival, which had an undoubtedly great atmosphere.

The same guy told me that people come for five reasons and I will briefly go into each:

The first is to chill out. This was for us our primary objective which we achieved unsurprisingly with flying colours. Chilling our primarily consisted of lying under the canapy (which I will come to later) and smoking nargillah. We also spent a considerable amount of time in the sea which was frequently surprisingly warm and refreshing. On our first night we went late night skinny dipping, Bnei Akiva style (ie. boy and girls separately) their idea not ours, obviously. Although no one could see anything we all put our trunks on our heads and encircled the girls, which was rather amusing.

The next reason I was told people come to Bereshees did not really apply to us, and that was to get drunk/high. It might seem somewhat strange that a group of 18 year olds at a music festival on a week long break from an intense study program would not wish to do either of these things, but drinks were overprice and not very nice and getting caught doing drugs means being sent home instantly, and its far too early in the program to do that.

The third reasons is to get laid, once again this was not managed/attempted by anyone in our group (to my knowledge) for two reasons. One the obvious langauge barrier and two all girls there were either 16 or below and the rest of them had boyfriends. It should be stated however that there was a significant proportion of incredibly attractive girls at the festival.

The fourth reason, fairly obviously for a music festival, is the music. To be honest we did not see that many bands maybe five or six in total. Most were incredibly average, although I very much enjoyed a reggae band called Hatick 6, whose album I intend to illegally download/copy as soon as possible and so help improve the Israeli economy.

The fifth reason is actually one that I noted and that is those that were there to "convert". I suppose it is to be expected that at a festival as open and chilled out as Bereshees there was going to be a proliferation of groups trying to convert you to their cause. Amongst the groups there were Jews for Jesus, Hari Krishna, and the Lubavitch. There were also many non-religous groups like the Animal Liberation Front who campaigned for their different beliefs. We had the 'good fortune' to be camped out opposite the Lubavitch Succah which meant that we had to endure their music until the early hours of the morning, provoking huge arguments between them and us.

Other aspects of the festival that should be noted include the mud bath of which I had two, the fact that there was no meet there, I HATE TOFU but other than that the food was very nice and our canapy. But before I go on to the last point I want go mention our tents. We had three tents a two man, a five man and a 14 man. Property oh Hanoar (another Jewish youth movement) we guaranteed stairs from every group that passed by, and when they found out that we were English the temptation to call it a palace and make butler and patio jokes was clearly too hard to suppress. The tents were unfortuneatly not in the shade, a fact that became a serious discomfort on the first morning we were there. In order to lessen the heat and create some shade we created a canapy, made from the the outersheet of the oversised Hanoar tent, which we attached to the tents, a bin and a sign we 'borrowed' from the Lubavitch. Owing to the fact that the tents were quite far apart the canapy hung very low, and forced us to crawl around inside it or complain of back problems. It did however provide a very nice shade to relax under, and about five of us slept under it on the second night, and it did prove to be slightly less stifling then the tent.

After Bereshees I decided not to leave the Kinneret, like the rest of the group, but move a couple of beaches down to join some friends from Netzer and FZY. They were on another beach a five minutes chiroot drive down the road. I spent the next two days with them, swimming, playing cards, going for walks and just generally relaxing. Being on a camp site we had to cook our own food and I feel I should mention the delicious stir-fry we had on the last night which included noodles, rice, eggs, vegetables and veal, it was divine. On the first night I was there we played a mad drinking game called Ring of Fire, which would take far too long to go into hear but suffice it to say we pissed off a few people and I had to drink a hell of a lot of Vodka.

As I sat one day at the second beach, regretting staying by the Kinneret and not seeing the rest of Israel I realised I was discovering far more interesting, namely the Israeli people and in particular the youth. In my opinion the Israeli people are some of the greatest I have ever met and those that I met by the Kinneret only helped to underline that. Let me give you a few examples we met quite a few groups who having not being able to eat all their food they just gave the rest away, this included not yet opened tins of food, whole loafs of bread and many other thins besides. It was very common at Bereshees for someone to sit down at your tent and chat for hours on end, and on the final night a group asked down to the beach with them to chill out around the camp fire, and they really made an effort to speak English and include us in the fun. Obviously there are some negative aspects of the Isreali youth but these were not really on show over the past couple of days, and it is not the time to go into them now. I really felt incredibly at home while I was camping around the Kinneret and that is due to a large part to the people I met. Do I regret not spending my week off to see Israel, no I do not, meeting the people was in my eyes far more interesting.

I will be posting again very soon as I am only half way through the past week. I should mention that there are photos I will be putting up but I cant get them on hear at the moment, but there are a few on my facebook account.
Anyway until next time
Dan

The Middle of the Road or Atoning in the Holy Land

2006-10-03T11:18:00.000-07:00

As I am sure most of you realise yesterday was the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Whereas outside the Jewish community the world lets this annual event pass by (except for maybe my old school which had a half day) Yom Kippur brings Israel and specifically Jerusalem to a halt. And when I say halt I mean halt, all the shops are closed and there are no cars on the streets, the implications of that I will come to later.

Yom Kippur is also a day loved by the secular firstly because they go out and have picnics (probably as near to a synagogue as possible) and

secondly because it is the perfect opportunity to ride their bicycles. Yom Kippur in Israel is also known as the Yom Offanayim (Day of Bicycles) as the street are litterally littered with people on bikes, big and small, young and old all go out on their bikes without fear of being hit by a car, although of course bike accidents are higher on yom kippur than any other day. Another thing that should be noted about yom kippur is that on the day before the clocks go back an hour which means that the fast seems shorter as it goes out an hour ealier, in practice of course its still 25 hours long.

Like all fast days the most important part of the program is eating, and both the making and breaking of the fast were made at the house of ex-Noamnic and current teacher on the Machon called Dina. I cannot even begin to describe just how much food there was for both meals, and we could not finish either trying not to be bloated at the first meal, and failing miserably at this challenge for the second.

For Kol Nidrei we went to the local Masorti synagogue called (I honestly cant remember), but the service was pleasant enough. By some strange coincedence (I may be compleltely wrong about this though) the chazzan (cantor) was the man in the chiroot of the first blog who told me that it was luckly I couldn't understand what was going on in the chiroot. Following the service I returned to the kiryat for a couple of hours before venturing out around 11pm to the western wall (kotel). I was accompanined by four others from the Machon on a very pleasant walk, being careful to stay in the centre of the road. As I said at the beginning the roads were deserted and so walking down the centre of every road without fear of car was an experience to be relished.

On the crossroads of the first main road we saw a small group of people in the middle of the road. Such was the interest of the occasion that Richard decided to take a photo of them. This encouraged one of the boys, an American, to enquire why we were taking photo's of them. One lame excuse later, they had invited us to play cards with them, and so we sat down in the middle of a main road with a group of complete strangers to play President.

Following this amusing interlude we resumed our walk to the old city of Jerusalem. On arrival we spent around half an hour of quiet reflection, discussion and discovery beside the wall (discovering the sheer numbers of ultra-orthodox Jews who sleep by the wall on Yom Kippur night). The walk each way took about 30-40mins and we were out for about three hours in total arriving back at around 2am.

This excursion fulfilled two main aims, 1) to get to the Kotel on Yom Kippur and 2) far more importantly to completely tire me out, in order that I can sleep until the early afternoon on the following day in order to conserve as much energy as possible. The plan actually worked which was impressive and I managed to miss the entire morning service. In the afternoon I went to Shirhah Daschah (probably spelt that wrong) an Orthodox synagouge, with beautiful singing and which is notoriously hard to get a seat in. I was lucky enough however to get a very good seat throughout the whole service. The service was very nice and musical although when you are fasting you sort of wish they would skip the harmonies and hurry too the end so you can refill your stomach to a more normal level. I did however manage to survive the fast although I couldn't get to the breaking the fast, fast enough.

I probably wont post now for quite a few days as I am going camping for five days, three at the Beresheet music festival and two camping around the kineret. I will be sure to send you a fun-filled account of my life under canvas.
Until next time
Daniel

N.B I have just added the picture at the top, and it is of us playing cards with some random Israelis on a main road in Jerusalem

Life at the Kiriyat

2006-09-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

Owing to the fact that nothing of any real interest happened this week, well nothing that I believe would enthrall my dear readers, I am going to describe to life at Machon, situated at Kiriyat Moriah (I think thats how you spell it).

Lessons start at the ungodly hour of eight o'clock, so one tends to get out of bed at about five to. I have never personally been to breakfast and I know I am not alone. Some people dont even get dressed for lessons and so pyjamas are not unusual attire. Lessons last 90 minutes each, which is particularly painful if you've a) got a double b) its first period c) if its really boring d) not yet had a morning coffee e) partied too hard the night before, and many more excuses beside. Lessons include kehilla (history), chadracha (leadership), Judaism, Israel and of course Hebrew. There tend to be around five lessons a day although occasionally we have the afternoon off, bliss.
Some classes are more alternative than others including one where we made masks, using paper machee and people's faces, which was fun if not slightly messy.

Admittedly some lessons are more interesting than others although thats down to personal preference, as well as the teachers. I get the feeling that some of the teachers here will be the most inspirational and interesting ones I have ever had. Although it is of course early days for me, first impressions go along way.

The food is edible but thats about it, meals repete frequently and after awhile the last thing you want to do is have another meal here. I've only been here for two weeks but even I am beginning to loathe the monotony and lack of taste in what is being passed off for food.

I am going to deal with evenings and shabbas at a later stage when I have more experiences to base my narration on. I apologise for the lack of humour in today's article, but I hope this blog answers any questions as to what I am doing here.
I will speak to you soon with hopefully something more interesting to report
Dan

First Impressions

2006-09-22T04:17:00.000-07:00

The gap year, a chance to see the world, enjoy new experiences, meet new people, get drunk and generally have a lot of fun. That is why most people who take this wonderful opportunity go to far flung exotic lands, volunteer on local projects in remote Indian villages and get drunk in every major town or city along the coasts of Australia. The very idea of a gap year is not to go to one country for a year, a country not entirely different to your own and study. Then why do so many young people come each year to this other country, the subject of this is. The country I am talking about is of course Israel, a place where hundreads or even thousands (I'm not really sure on the numbers) come to savour experiences which for the most part can be done anywhere else in the world. Why do they come? Two reasons spring to mind they are Jewish and there parents probably wanted them to, but other than that what is it about this small piece of desert at the far end of the Meditteranean that draws people towards it. Obviously I cannot answer for everyone but over the next year I am going to attempt to convey to you what it is that is so special about this country.

So why did I personally come, well there are two main reasons. The first of which, to use an overused cliche, is to find myself. I am not entirely sure what that means but it sounds profound and maybe when I return I will have completed this abstract goal. The second and most important reason is to understand what makes this country so special. In the previous paragraph when I said it was special I was quoting the words of others, and so the purpose of my year is to confirm what I have been told and come to understand this country.

Phew, thats the introduction over with. I apologise for that, from now I will try to reduce cheesy content and make it somewhat more light hearted and humourous. Now before I relate my experiences to you I better introduce myself. As you should know my name is Daniel, I am 18 year old and I have just finished secondary school. Next year I am going to the University of Nottingham to study American Studies and Politics. My gap year which I am currently enjoying is I am sure you have worked out being spent in Israel. The first part of the program started a number of weeks ago, this is an informal college called the Machon where one studies leadershp and all things Jewish. I myself only arrived on Monday morning two and a half weeks after everyone else. Why, well how techinal do you want it, the short version; medical reasons, the long version; I had a cyst in my cinus which had pushed my wisdom tooth into my nasal cavity and I had to wait eight weeks after the operation before I could fly. I should also mention before I begin to recount my experiences that I am doing this program with Noam the Masorti (conservative) youth movement.

If you have ever travelled to Israel I am sure you are fully aware of the strict security measures in place. Even before I checked in I was met by the Israeli Inquisition (I really didn't expect it). Having mumbled my way through a number of truly bemusing questions "No I dont have any weapons on me and out of curiosity has anyone ever said yes", I was able to check in. Having checked in I said a heartfelt goodbye to the rest of the family who had come to the airport to see me off. Security checks included a complete going over my bag and a strip search (well it might as well have been). The flight was uneventful and sleepless being the night flight and we landed at Ben Gurion at about six in the morning to rapturous applause,only in Israel does that happen. Having waited about an hour for my bags I met Reg the Noam representative in Israel at the airport who put me on a chiroot.

A chiroot is the only proper way to travel in Israel and so deserves a full paragraph of its own. A chiroot is a shared taxi and as such is a hotbed of complete messhuganahs, and the chiroot I was in was no exception. For example I was sitting next to two Sem girls (Seminary's are Yeshiva's for girls) who were praising the joys of Essex. Next to the driver sat a man who seemed to speak fluent Ivrit apart from when he was talking to Israelis when he only speak English. Other passengers included a woman who looked like a nun and several Israeli's who wanted their opinions to be heard on every subject imaginable. A gentleman in front described it to me as trial by taxi. Apart from the characters in the car the journey was uneventful except for the driver almost getting run over by a car which had just smashed into another cars door, hours of fun shouting ensued. At one stage during a particualrly heated discussion (which I believe was about which passenger to drop off first) the gentleman in front and asked my how good my ivrit was, when I told him it was virtually non-existent he said 'good' as what was being said was clearly far too delicate for my ears. Nethertheless as I disembarked at my destination I vowed to learn Ivrit if only I could understand what was going on the next time I travelled in a chiroot.

The Machon at Kiryat Moriah is one of the bases for the Education Branch of the Jewish Agency in the Souther suburb of Talpiot. At the English speaking Machon there are just under fifty people. While arriving late may have its advandatages (its not in my nature to notice them) disadvantages are rife including the daunting prospect of having to learn about 50 names in a very short space of time, (a task I still haven't completed a week later). Giving a blow by blow account of everything that has happened over the last week will take too long and so I am just going to mention some of the highlights, and I will go more into the day to day life of the machon at some later stage.

In the afternoon of the day I arrived we went on a tiyul (hike) through the City of David, which included the usual ruins and visit to the Kotel (Western Wall) but the highlight was without a doubt a forty minute hike throught the water systems under the city, the same systems that King David's men supposedly used to get into the city. This was incredbily fun especially as it provided a wonderful opportunity to scare the bejesus out of the more highly strung members of the group an opportunity seized upon by some of the more malcious types with great delight.

The day after that I had my first run of normal lessons, although I missed the morning lessons owing to a strange and sleepless night before. I spent the rest of the weeks getting used to the Machon meeting people and generally trying to get work out what the hell was going on. Yesterday (being Thursday) I had my first real evening out. This consisted of visiting another youth movement (can't remember which one) in their flat, and going to my first Israeli concert. The concert was a band called Shoteh Nevuah (I thinks that how you spell it) a group that sort of mixed pop/rock/reggae and a bit of folk rolled into one. The venue was small and intimate and we were right at the front, it was a really great gig with the band having wonderful presence and great music.

I am currently writing in a virtually deserted Kiryat Moriah as most people have gone away to family and friends for Rosh Hashanah. I'm off now but I was doubtlessly speak to you soon.
Take Care and Shona Tova
Daniel