a few illustrations

the view while climbing massada. (massada is a mountain, a natural fortress because of its steep walls. someone, i'm confused about who did what, built a palace city on top of it, with a very nice view.) the hazy blue in the back is the dead sea, which is shrinking by meters every year. it's probably half the size now that it looks on the map.

inside a cistern at massada.

tasting locally made liquors after a long day.

massada

this picture is from the church of the holy sepulchre, which was two days ago.

yesterday, we went to where the dead sea scrolls were found, to ein gedi, and then to the dead sea. you really do float, it's really weird. our synchronized swimming was fabulous. and you really do sting in places you didn't know you had cuts.

today i walked up massada with two tripmates (not at sunrise) then walked around up top for two hours, then cable car-ed it down. on the way down this large dutch tourist group started singing dutch songs, in synch. they sang frere jaques in a round. just out of the blue.

then we went to a roman ruin, and i was so tired and nauseous by then that i had to lie down instead on a bench. i meant to lay down for 5 minutes and fell asleep for 45 instead.

on the way to the hotel, on the border of syria and lebanon, we tasted some liquors made by a local winery. delicious. and hilarious when the bartender suggested we try and reach the bottom of our glasses with our tongues to get the last bit of dark chocolate liqueur. in case you were wondering, i didn't buy any to bring home. sorry.

we ate dinner at the kibbutz tonight and danced with israeli tourists on vacation who were handing around a bottle of anise. in israel they drink anise with grapefruit juice on ice. it's very nice.

i feel like i'm starting to get a better grasp on the israeli political stance. they feel surrounded and threatened, and you can see why when you look at the hills where rockets are fired from. they don't seem to see how constantly taking the offensive may be creating some of their problems, but israel really is small, and jordan, syria and lebanon seem like a big united arab threat against them. they carry pictures around of soldiers killed in war and since everyone has to serve, people feel connected to military losses in a way people in the US don't. i'm not saying i agree with the israeli stance, but i can see where the fear comes from.

one thing on my mind is the british mandate. it seems israelis feel like the land is their own because legally, a lot of it is. it was given to them by the british and by the UN. so they can say the suburbs of jerusalem belong to them, because a piece of paper says so. on the other hand, i can see why the palestinians don't recognize israel, since they weren't the ones who gave their own land for the jewish state. it was colonial policy, so why should they accept it?

there is so much tension here, i'm glad for every chance to ignore it and just look out the window at beautiful scenery.

old city with tour

yesterday we took a tour of the old city. the picture is of the women's side of the western wall.

it's strange to be on a tour, can't go take a nap when i want to. the local israeli tour guide clearly hates muslims and thinks they're dirty hateful people. all of them. this, i find frustrating. i'd been living in the muslim quarter for two days and survived.

it was interesting though. sites: mount of olives, garden of gethsemane, temple mount, church of holy sepulchre (gorgeous!!!), western wall tunnels, rooftops, all the quarters, all the quarter's mom's... we walked all day it was exhausting.

i skipped dinner to take a nap so i could go to the drag show. two of the guys joined me, and it was nice to walk at night in the company of men. we missed a lot of the jokes, since they were in hebrew. turns out one of my tourmates went to oberlin, about 20 years before i did.

this morning we went to yad vashem. depressing, to say the least. not least because it's so jew-focused, and it ends with the formation of the state of israel. i came out crying because it's so fucking sad all those lives that were lost and ruined, and also because none of that really matters unless we use that information for the betterment of humanity in the present moment. yad vashem is not about the latter. it's a place for mourning the past, which has a place, but in the context of current affairs, it feels removed from reality. the tour guide (nadine) made some comment about The Arabs when we were leaving and i lost patience finally and asked her to quit making generalizations. isn't the whole point of the museum that vast generalizations about groups of people are dangerous? argh.

then we went to a market. now i'm in an internet shop with one of my companions, ernie. i think it's time to move on.

the west bank

yesterday i went to a coffeeshop that i had been to before in the muslim quarter, and i met a palestinian tour guide performance artist musician who i got into an interesting conversation with and ended up going on an adventure with.

we went to this monastery that's cut into the hills in the desert and rode donkeys down to the bottom of a valley where it's an oasis. on the way we passed israeli settlements and bedouins who aren't allowed to wander and live in half-boxcars. the picture above is of an electrified fence that surrounds the water pumps. you can figure, in the desert, water is a big deal. according to old arab tribal laws/customs, if people are occupying a hill you have to pay them to use the water in it. so, the israelis fenced off the water pumps so they can use the water without paying. the settlements are huge! i pictured some little old west dusty towns, and even though there's definitely an old west mentality here, the settlements are giant "suburbs" (depending on who you ask and where they are) that go on for miles and miles and miles. the israelis supposedly say they stopped building new ones but i saw construction going on.

when i came back from the desert adventure i was late to meet my homos so i ran into the chic hotel all dusty and sweaty and breathless and muttering about palestinians and donkeys that's how i met them. then suddenly we classed it up on the israeli side and had a 7 course dinner at an art collectors house. it was a bizarre day.

ARE YOU JEWISH?

events:

25th
woke up and went to the temple mount. put on a long dress and a baggy shirt over it, and a head scarf, out of respect, and because "modest dress is required". got up to security and they say ARE YOU JEWISH?
um, yeah, i said.
WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
u.s...
WHERE IS YOUR PASSPORT?
here...
DON'T PRAY. YOU HEAR? DO NOT PRAY. YOU WILL BE ARRESTED. IF THE MUSLIMS DON'T SEE YOU FIRST.
um, okay... don't worry, i'm a terrible jew.

apparently, jews go up on the temple mount and pray, and it's an aggressive and territorial act because it's under the control of the muslims. i asked a guard in there why they thought i was jewish and he said because look at how you're dressed! americans wear jeans and a t-shirt, that's how the orthodox women dress.

ok, so now orthodox women dress in old navy and target clothes. it was weird. i saw some orthodox men there being followed around by israeli security. i guess they do'nt want a Situation.

it was beautiful though.

"this is not a melting pot."

so said the proprietor of a coffeeshop that i befriended yesterday and visited again today. wise dude, wise.

my brain is full of arab-israeli relations today, but i have 1:51 minutes left on my internet time and so i'm going to say that i'm alive

insomnia

i have a touch of the jet lag. so i couldn't sleep all night so i cancelled my plan to go to ramallah for the day. all i wanted to do was sit somewhere nice, really, by a pool or on a beach, or in a bed, but the hostel isn't nice enough for that and there are no bikini-friendly venues in jerusalem. so i just kind of wandered, in the new city this time.

today was shabbat, so the streets were vacant. i finally came accross a couple little restaurants on a pretty little side street that were open, and so i enjoyed a crisp glass of israeli wine. if you want to drink in solidarity its called: Messah Israeli Vit Kin 2008 White. the tourists there were nice and quiet, but twice i was disturbed by israelis. the first was a hasid who saw us down the street and yelled something about shabbat. i guess yelling at people is a better way to observe the lord's day than relaxing with a glass of wine. the second was a loud couple who sat down with their siberian husky and sang along to the norah jones songs that were playing. talk about sacrilege.

i asked the young russian immigrant waitress with awesome pants where i could wander on shabbat, and she gave me some leads. i walked through an orthodox residential neighborhood, where i took the picture of the kids on the sculpture. 30 seconds later a pack of 10 year old boys came up to me, one looking very stern and said something in hebrew. "huh?" "no pictures. shabbat." i said "you say please," which was an automatic response and then i thought i had offended him by taking a picture of his compatriot, so i said "sorry."

when i walked away i realized he was scolding me as a jew for using a camera on shabbat. little twerp. you should have heard the authority in his voice and i wished i would have told him it's my shabbat too and shouldn't he go back to shul? but that's when the full force of the power that the ultra orthodox have really hit me and i remembered that people get killed over things like that here.

i randomly ran accross the chinese roommate and we went to get a drink at the american colony hotel in east jerusalem. we were amazed at the prices until we realized they were in dollars not shekels, so food was not ordered after all. she told me how shes going to change the world by being an uncompromising artist while making lots of money, i asked how old she was, she said guess, i said sophomore in college, she said, "im going to be." i introduced her to mojitos and the term "asian bar tan".

tomorrow evening i meet up with the homos and i can't wait. i can't wait to have someone else to show me beautiful things and tell me all about them so i don't have to think, and to be around men so men can't talk to me. and i can't wait for the drag show tomorrow night, where i'm assuming i can show my elbows without risking what lonely planet calls "the attentions of the amourous israeli male."

i've been wearing a big ole head scarf today, and while i stronly suspect i look like a retarded tourist (or as hannah said when i was sampling options at home, "you look like you have a tablecloth on your head"), it's cut down on the aforementioned attentions, so im pleased.

maybe some yoga now, then melatonin, then bed.

p.s. does this drink have a name? - fresh squeezed lemonade, crushed mint, vodka? i want to drink it.

this is an old ass city

ok. so, i arrived and am alive. alive, exhausted, and running on real coca cola and strong middle eastern coffee.

culture shock began in the airport in new jersey, where the special el al security man interrogated me about why and with whom i was going to israel (normal questions), and also what synagogue i belong to and whether i go to shul and what holidays i observe. at this point, i begin to sweat. "um, yeah, i go on the high holy days..."
"which are?"
"rosh hashana and yom kippur?"
"and do you celebrate at home?"
"uhh, no..." sweating more.
"do you celebrate passover?"
"yes! yes i do that." he noted my name is german jewish and i said yes, my grandparents lived in austria before the war.
"do they speak german and yiddish?"
"no, i speak spanish." a part of my brain just assumed he was still interrogating me, and not my grandparents.
"no, your grandparents."
"uh, yeah, they speak both. i think."
"and do you?"
"um, not really... i can understand a few things, like how to say someone's crazy or it's raining... schvitzing..."
he glared at me. "schvitzing means to sweat."
"oh, really? i thought id heard it used to mean a light rain..."
"no, " he said very seriously, "it means to sweat. please proceed to the ticket counter."

on the airplane, i woke out of a daze to go pee, and the first thing i saw when i stood was an orthodox jew in full coat and hat bowing and praying next to the bathroom.

i got to the hostel, which is lovely with a rooftop view of the old city, and passed out. i woke up to the call to prayer, put a scarf on my head and dragged myself out the door. eventually i came to a cafe where the proprietor fed me goat cheese and oregano "pie" and told me i was an amazing person with a calm presence and brought be that coffee on the house. then his friend came and sat next to me and told me about how because he's palestinian his children who are american citizens aren't allowed to come visit him because the israeli goverment is afraid they'll stay. his daughter was visiting from chicago and was detained for 14 days in israel before being sent back home.

upon my request he took me on a little walking tour and showed me the house where he was born. we walked out the damascus gate where arabs had set up a wild bazarre in the 6 hours since i had walked in, which is illegal but the jewish police are having shabbat today. "there are no laws here" my guide Tofik said, and a guy who overheard him laughed. later we saw a storefront that a palestinian paid 3 million dollars for the right to rent. apparently land in jerusalem is so contested that it costs this much even for a bookseller to occupy. the idea is that whoever has more people living here will win, so rich jews from new york and extended palestinian clans pay up the butt to claim a bit of space.

later i went to the western wall, because it's shabbat and people gather there at sundown. to see and touch the place i was always told is the holiest site in the world and the closest i will ever be to god was overwhelming. men on their side and women on their side grabbed each other's hands and danced in circles, while one guy drummed on a table, and others prayed out loud and others cried into their prayerbooks. some women stood on chairs looking over to the men's side, and i wished i had my camera but i left it at the hostel because i was told i wouldnt be able to use it there (a lie). there were guys from the ultraorthodox in their russian looking hats and also "the bad jew contingent" as i heard them refer to themselves later, with sports team embroidered kippas which they probably got for bar mitzvahs and never wore again. its not so often you see guys hold hands and dance together, coming from my context, it looks pretty gay.

then i tried to get back and got utterly lost in the jewish quarter and then who knows what quarter i was in when i wandered into an armenian pottery shop and the proprieter decided to tell me all about how to sexually fulfill my husband. (i wear a faux wedding ring when travelling alone.) apparently, if a man "do not throw the water in to the womans sex, he goes crazy." we had to go over the proper english vocabulary (penis, vulva, vagina ("the hole that's not the dirty place")) for him to elaborate his theories to me, which i requested because i wanted to know. he seemed taken aback when i took out my pad of paper and a pen, but notes were key.

apparently he knows a 95 year old man who has 4 women and sex every day and he's so strong and smart you'd never know his age. also, fyi, "if you take your clothes off, your husband, he not interesting, but when you have a little bit clothing your husband he's interesting." (he means, we ladies should wear sheer nighties for our husbands in order to keep them satisfied, because women are too self conscious when completely naked.) he says that the woman, she's the same as the man, she has water and needs to get rid of it. "if you take the hair off the woman, the man, he likes it, so he can smell the woman."

the whole thing was weird, and that's around the time i edged my way out of the store, but it opened my narrow mind to the idea that men demand that their women clean house still value the woman's satisfaction.

i made my way back to the hostel finally through the dark twisted streets full of jews going to shabbat dinner. i paused on the way to listen to a family pray through the window, which was beautiful.

and now i'm going to bed.