reminder of israel...

I found this amongst the pages of my Hebrew notebook I carried around with me during my time in Israel....

Standing in the Center of the world

The Sun sets beyond the hills

As the sky is painted in shades of red

Our worlds grow farther apart...

Our eyes view life through different lens

Nature, open spaces, trees swaying in the wind

Awakens my soul

Noise, tides crashing in, crowds of blank faces

Capture your heart

Protestors in clown makeup march in Tel Aviv Saturday

Protesters march in Tel Aviv to mark 42 years of occupation

By Ofri Ilani

Tags: Israeli Occupation


Protesters held a rally in Tel Aviv Saturday to mark 42 years since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Around 1,000 demonstrators marched in the rally, which led from Rabin Square to the Tel Aviv museum.

MK Nitzan Horovitz (Meretz) addressed the crowd, calling on Israel to stop settlement building and heed calls by U.S. President Barack Obama to restart the peace process.
"The negative reactions to Obama's initiatives are only coming from Al Qaida and [Israeli right-wing party] the National Union," Horovitz told the crowd, adding "this is the time to end the occupation."

Head of the far left Hadash party Mohammed Barakeh also addressed the demonstration.


____________________________
I was running yesterday (finally) and I decided to not run on the tiyalet near the beach and to explore a little more. As I'm about 10 minutes into my run I find this protest that is written about in the above article. From what I could understand from the Hebrew I could tel it had something to do with Palestinians but it was a little unclear to me. It was by far one of the stranger things I have seen in awhile. Of course my curiosity made me stop and get as close to the drumming protesters as possible. I squeezed through the crowd and around the camera guy and peered in through a couple of strangely dressed Israelis and the many clowns standing around me. My first thought was why the hell are there clowns here. I thought to myself that maybe it was some sort of entertainment for a good minute but the chantting and drumming squandered that thought. As i stood there I was sweating up a storm because Tel Aviv has become absurdly hot these days, but still I stood and became the curious bystander. About 5 minutes in the police started coming in and later I noticed there was a row of army guys standing there too. As the Police tried to break up the circle of drummers and chanters a couple guys start yelling in English "Fuck the Police." Beyond this experience being quite thrilling i decided this was my cue to keep on running. I stood and observed for a few more minutes trying to figure out what i was observing and kept running. About two seconds a way was a whole crowd of people , young and old, Israelis, Jewish and non Jewish it appeared holding up the colors that represent Palestine. A guy was yelling something through a microphone coming out of his beat up truck.

I always have wanted to be part of a protest but i guess a observer is close enough at the moment. Although until this morning I had no idea what i was observing or that the the buildings I was standing near were government,army buildings. The question I pose though is , How exactly being dressed as clowns fit into this whole picture and have to do with the occupation?

And the whole country ran for cover....or not.

JPost.com » Israel » Article

Jun 2, 2009 0:44 | Updated Jun 2, 2009 20:53
Sirens sound in home front drill
By YAAKOV LAPPIN, JUDY SIEGEL, JPOST.COM STAFF AND AP

Air raid sirens sounded across the country at 11 a.m. on Tuesday as part of a week-long, country-wide war drill dubbed "Turning Point Three."

Home Front official on Turning Point 3
When the sirens went off, citizens made their way to designated safe rooms, while schoolchildren were led to bomb shelters and shown a 20-minute film on safety procedures.

Israel never ceases to amaze me on the out of the ordinary things that occur here. A full out country wide drill occured today. When i was first warned about it i thought it was a joke. But no. This really happened. at 11 am exactly today I was walking around the art street with my friend Julia when the alarm went off. The day before i had asked, "What do i do if i'm on the street" the consistent response was do what everyone else does... Well the alarm goes off, julia and i look around to see what everyone is doing and well the answer is nothing. Everyone just went on with there buisness like it was no big deal. And why is there a country wide drill? for the chance that there could be a full out attack on Israel. a little scary wouldn't you say?

Now this is something to write home about.. "Dear mom and Dad, Today i particpated in a country wide drill to practice what to do if the country is under attack.. Don't worry because I actually don't know what to do because during the drill no one ran anywhere."

My niece told me she had to hide under desk during the drill and my brother ran to a bomb sheltor. As i said...israel just never ceases to amaze me. in a good way and odd way sometimes.

The Bubble

10 Reasons to Love Tel Aviv....
-time out israel-

1. there are draconian laws against smoking which nobody seems to know about

2. you can buy rolling paper, bongs and God knows what else at the corner store

3. its easier to find passion fruit smoothie than a parking spot

4 there is a gay beach right next to a religious beach and g-d doesn't seem to mind

5. the prostitutes, policemen, street cleaners and convenience store owners are all... jewish

6. you can bring your dog to a gourmet resturant

7. the city's official language changes to french every summer

8. every taxi driver feels the need to tell you about his brother, the millionaire in the usa

9. who knew that people actually play paddleball

10. rabbis driving around and dancing to loud trance music are the city's biggest noise violation



p.s i didn't write this, i just read it somewhere. the reality is that half of it is true......tel aviv is like no other part of israel.

The wandering Jew

- Passover Chofesh in Amsterdam...

I was at the jewish heritage museum in Amsterdam and I heard this quote and I wanted to share it...

""There is no Orthodox, there is one Judiasm that we all experience in different ways..."

I've come to the conclusion that there might not be a day where the whole world agrees on the same thing. When an entire group of people can't even agree on the same topic then at what point do we all meet in the middle? I think that while disagreement can at times make one grow, it can cause distruction because everyone wants to think they are right. But, if everyone is right then who is wrong?

I'm on my Passover Vacation right now in Israel. Wait what? Passover Vacation... Thats a new one. Usually i'd be on my "Easter Vacation" but i'm in the Jewish State and here, theres no easter vacation. I actually forgot about easter until I was in Amsterdam and started seeing chocolate eggs everywhere.

Why is Passover different here then in every other part of the world? Why is it special to be here in israel on passover now, rather then any other time of the year? Why today do we eat matzah and not bread? Why do sephardic jews eat beans but ashkenazic jews not? Why do we have one sedar in Israel and not two? Why do I question everything this week and not last week?...

Passover in Israel... Special Round matzah that costs a fortune. Stores that cover up their shelves with white paper that says חמץ... Long vacation for all students... 48 hours of no public transportation... Where kosher could refer to more then one type. Are you sephardic kosher or are you ashkenazic kosher? Is your kosher kosher enough? What label kosher do you buy?

It was sad to not be with my family on Passover but i was with my brother, sister in law and nieces. To answer why its special to be in israel for passover instead of other parts of the world... Because there is a point you say "Next time in Jerusalem." and where was I ...Jerusalem! We jews walked 40 years through the desert to get here, along the way we received the torah...and here I am... years later spending passover in Israel. Now... i'm only 23 years old, so unlike those who left egypt, i didn't spend 40 years wandering the desert to get here...but I did spend 23 years of my life searching for the right path to get here. As much as I missed my family, sometimes it takes different experiences to realize what you beleive in and what kind of experiences you want to have in the future.

For everything else...
The weather in Israel is great... I feel like its Summer in Michigan. Question is..What will the weather be like in the next month in Tel Aviv? Summer in Israel is not really my cup of tea. I spent the first week of my break in Amsterdam and when I came back I realized I need to relax, so i've been hanging out in Afula. Sometimes its nice to not run around trying to catch buses, but rather lay out on a patch of grassy knoll with erica and catch some sun. Who needs the beach, i probably wouldn't have gone in the water anyways.

On Thursday I am moving to Tel Aviv and living with Dana and i'm really excited!

The wandering Jew

"Let your beat go on forever,
They say we are made to live as one
Let this need to fear eachother, Not be passed on to my son
let your beat go on forever
let your fears down rivers run
Let the silence be the music, when the words are said and done..."


Purim: Israel is the only place in the world that all children get a 3 day vacation for. It is the only place where purim, as far as I know is celebrated for a whole week or even better... a entire month. Is the only place where I have seen the most creative creations for costumes in my 23 years of life. Purim I have come to find is by far one of the more interesting holidays. Can't say i completely understand the whole idea behind it, but i guess its a mitzvah to drink until you have lost all senses.
Should i feel guilty that I did not get into the holiday that much, perhaps. I did a few things for it. Afula had this huge carnival/ fair in the center of the city and i was pretty in awe with it. I did not dress up though. It is not that I do not like to party, but i guess since i never celebrated puriim before this year I found it hard to get into it. It was fun to see everyones costumes though, the city really got into and it was kind of exciting to see. I felt like i really was experiencing something in Israel that I could not see in the United States. To Tell you the truth, Purim here is way cooler then Halloween at home.

Considering I work with only children, I was surprised with a 3 day, which turned into a 4 day vacation! Happy Purim to me! Vacation for purim? Thats new to me.
I made pretty good use of my vacation execept for the actual day of purim, where apparently I did not receive the mitzvah of hearing the migillah reading...woops.

Monday Jess and I took a little tiyul (trip) to go hike up Mount Tevor. It was a beautiful day and I'm so happy I decided to go. I need something like that in my life to make me feel like i'm not wasting my time here. I guess we did not anticipate the diffiuculty of the hike, because it was hard and well... i'm out of shape. Everything about it the was beautiful, it is these kind of trips that make me realize and remember how much i love Israel. There is something really refreshing about open space, fields, nature and mountains. Somehow this supposed 30 minute hike took two hours or more. We took the wrong the path and were kind of wandering around the mountain for awhile. As we got closer to the end what did we find, well a heard of wild cows....and their children. Now how often do i walk around michigan and find random wild heards of cows? pretty much...never. Being pretty uneducated about wild cows, jess and i decided we should find out if it was ok to go near them. There was no way to keep going with out being inches away. So we called my friend who informed us that no...wild cows are not dangerous and to just not pet them.

By the time we got to the top of the mountain i was exhausted, we skipped the church at the time and hitched a ride with a sherut going back down with some catholic people from england, here for a pilgramage of sorts. They were absoltutly appaled that we didn't go to the church. We get to the bottom and a group of nigeran tourists try to push their way on to the sherut. Apparently they didn't understand you have to let people off first, so i'm trying to get off this bus and they are pushing me as they shove their way on. A little fact for the day....The nigerian government pays for it citizens to come to Israel once in their lifetime. The rumore has it that they make a lot of money from oil that pays for this. Is this true? don't entirely know.

Today! I took my first small road trip in Israel. It was quite exhilirating. I went with erica and rehut, her host sister and it was a lot of fun. Its a rare occasion that i go long distances in an actual car. I sometimes wonder if i can even still drive after 6 months of not stepping into the drivers side of the car. ERica and I had interviews at save a childs heart and then spent the rest of the day at the beach. Today was also a beautiful day!

Recently I watched this movie called the Bubble....First I want to say i recemend it. Second, i have been thinking about the title. The Bubble. It takes place in tel aviv, and in some ways I can see the idea behind it being a bubble. To come from Afula to Tel aviv in one day, you almost your not living in the same country. Life in Tel Aviv always just continues on, with no realization of life outside of the city. you could live in Tel aviv and barely know whats going on in the south Near gaza, or in the north...