Exploring Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv Post coming soon! Until then enjoy the pictures of my trip to Tel Aviv



Some great beach shots. Yes, they have a gym on the beach in Tel Aviv. Yes, there is an older religious guy on the workout bicycle with his kippa. Also there's a guy in mid-flip on the pull-up bar.

My First Real Shabbat

This past weekend was my first Shabbat in Israel. I have never been “shomer Shabbat” (literally ‘guarding Shabbat’ – someone who keeps the mitzvahs of Shabbat), so it was a very new experience for me. I always thought the ‘day of rest’ was just meant for not going to work. I got the part about G-d creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh. The part that I didn’t know was that He sanctified the seventh day, making it the holiest day of the week. It’s meant to be the most spiritual day of the week, when we are closest with G-d. I’m embracing this in my quest for spiritual enrichment; and as such, I’ve decided to try keeping Shabbat while I’m in Israel (at least), and hopefully continue after I leave.

Being in Jerusalem for Shabbat was amazing. The entire city shuts down. Stores close mid-day Friday to prepare for the Friday sundown to Saturday sundown holiday. You can walk down the streets and see cars racing to get home on time, people hurrying around to prepare for Shabbat, everyone wearing their best clothes, all while the rich aromas of Shabbat cooking seep into the streets and leave you with anticipation of the celebration to come. Shabbat is considered a festive day, when a person is freed from the regular labors of everyday life, can contemplate the spiritual aspects of life, and can spend time with family.

I never made time for Shabbat before. I could only think of how unproductive I’d be; how much I’d have to catch up on; all the work, missed calls, and unanswered emails. Though I had no idea what I was missing. It’s amazing how completely unplugging from it all, even for just 24 hours, can change one’s entire outlook on the week. I can only imagine what impact keeping Shabbat might have on one’s entire outlook on life.

Sukkot in Yerushalayem

This is my first time really celebrating Sukkot. I was surprised to realize how little I knew about the holiday. Over eight days Sukkot celebrates the harvest and commemorates the passage through the wilderness. It is a particularly important holiday because we fulfill the important mitzvahs of building a Sukkah (a hut) and the mitvah of eating each meal under it. Throughout the holiday the sukkah becomes the living area of the house, and all meals are eaten in it. On each day of the holiday, members of the household recite a blessing over the Four Spices.

This is my first time really celebrating the holiday. What I am finding particularly meaningful in it is that Sukkot is centered on sanctifying the ordinary. Almost any other day, a meal is just a meal. But during Sukkot, we are completing a mitzvah just by eating our meals in the Sukkah. We even sanctify the water, and all of the sudden something so common becomes holy, with much more spiritual valor than normally. Eating and sleeping in the Sukkah; a make-shift temporary hut (that we each construct), makes you really appreciate what you have while also realizing that our needs are far less demanding than our desires. Simple food, simple drink, and simple shelter for eight days maintain us; and yet beyond the eight days would seem unbearable for most of us; especially considering how privileged and fortunate we are to live comfortably. Yet not only do we stick it out for eight days, we spend each day celebrating with friends and family under the Sukkah. It’s not a time for TVs, cell phones, computers; it’s all about making face time.

Last night all the guys from Machon Shlomo went to Rabbi Sigler’s house to have a Sukkot celebration in his Sukkah. It was a great experience. What came after was even more interesting. A number of us went to Mea Shearim, a neighborhood in Jerusalem that is one of the most ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in the world. They are a very small population, some of which gets its news from posters pasted along the walls of the quarter (as most people there don’t want to have TVs, radio, or internet). It is often making news in Israel; primarily for their opposition to the actions of the Israeli government.

The below pictures and video are from a huge Sukkot celebration in Mea Shearim.

And this is the video:

What a Welcome!

I arrived into the airport yesterday to see a large Israeli flag planted in the ground outside the airport. I couldn’t help but smile looking at it, as it really sank in for the first time that from that moment forth, I didn’t have anything to be afraid of in being Jewish.

I arrived just in time to catch Sukkot (more on Sukkot later). I walked outside of the airport and I saw a few Orthodox Jews literally running around with the Four Spices of Sukkot (lulav, hadass, aravah, and etrog). Now this was just plain funny. Every time I’ve ever traveled to a foreign country, I saw scammers and dodgy people hanging outside the airport, preying on the tourists. Here I saw Orthodox Jews praying for the tourists. They were running around to people offering them blessings and lending them their Four Spices so they could make the blessings of Sukkot if they so chose. They didn’t want money or anything; they just wanted to welcome people and help people fulfill the mitzvah of saying blessings for the holiday. How about that for culture shock?

I jumped in a sherut and headed for Jerusalem. [Sherut, Hebrew for “service,” is an Israeli collective taxi equivalent to crowding 15 people in an 8-seater van; more accurately described in Turkey, as they call it a dolmuş, meaning “stuffed.”] I arrived at my Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Machon Shlomo, and was welcomed very warmly by my fellow Yeshiva Bochurim. Everyone offered to help me carry my things, get my room set-up and settled in, etc. The one person who couldn’t be there to greet me went so far as to write a thoughtful, one-page note saying he had heard about me and was looking forward to learning together this year. He added an apology for not being able to be there when I arrived. This should give an idea as to the caliber of the guys I am studying with here. All of them are from the US, so having made the trek out themselves they knew exactly what was on my mind: “You must be starved and exhausted.” So my choices were to go pass out or to leave immediately for dinner with a Rabbi in Kiriyat Sefer.

“Wow,” I thought, “I’m not even here 15 minutes and I’m already packing into a sherut and headed to a settlement in the West Bank.” [Sherut, Hebrew for “service,” is an Israeli collective taxi equivalent to crowding 15 people in an 8-seater van; more accurately described in Turkey, as they call it a dolmuş, meaning “stuffed.”]

Since it is the Jewish holiday Sukkot all week, we ate with Rabbi Lessen outside in his sukkah. Besides taking the opportunity to get to know the Rabbi and his family, I had a chance to chat with them a little about living in a settlement. I could tell we were coming from very different worlds. His children were particularly interested in the fact that I spoke Arabic; apparently they rarely meet Arabic speakers. The kids said they were interested in learning. I naively asked, “Don’t you have any Arab friends?” and one of the daughters gave me a petrified look [the type of look I imagine you would get from a flight attendant by saying ‘bomb’ on an airplane].

-Jacob chimed in, “Don’t you realize people here are scared to death of Arabs?”
----I lifted my eyes brows and said, “Do they really think all Arabs are out to kill them?”
-“Yeah, they do. You might have had a different experience because you’ve met Arabs from all over the world. But realize the only Arabs people in the West Bank interact with are the Palestinians throwing stones and blowing up buses.”

I naively thought to myself, “I’m sure people here would be much less afraid of Arabs if they actually met them.” My idealism got the better of me and I suggested to the Rabbi’s young daughter that she make some Arab friends. She seemed genuinely perplexed. She took my advice to heart but wasn’t sure how to act on it. “So I just go to an Arab town and try to make a friend?” –at which point someone interjected, “Whoa! What are you telling her? Are you trying to get her killed?! Now she’s going to think it’s safe to just run around and try to make friends with any Arab.”

I’ve tried to stay far away from the Israel-Palestine debate for as long as I can remember. On my first evening here I received a jolt of realization that there’s no way to avoid it here. At least here I can bypass the intentionally misleading “reporting” that we are hand-fed all over the world (and especially in the US). I am finally going to get a first-hand perspective from both sides and see the truth behind what’s really going on without the veil of the profit-driven, pop-media.

Just the Beginning

I left my country, my birthplace and my home. After a long journey, I arrived in Israel today. I wasn’t ready to leave.

I rushed to get to the airport, only to find that the airlines would delay my flight by 2 hours. The awkward feeling I got from the 2 hour wait in front of the gate was an interesting metaphor for where I’m at right now with my (Jewish) identity. I was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. As a rule I never wear a suit for a long flight unless I’m 99.9% sure that the ‘I look more important than I really am’-look will score me an upgrade to Business Class as it has in the past.

My shirt bore the logo ‘US Embassy Abu Dhabi,’ where I had worked through the State Department four years ago. This is only worth noting because UAE does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and as such does not, for example, allow any maps in the country that do not have Israel crossed off the map—something I noted upon seeing maps, even in the US Embassy in UAE, with Israel crossed-off in pen. A poor choice in shirts to bring to Israel one might say, though very reflective of the fact that I have had more exposure to Arab/Muslim communities than Jewish.

I was carrying a backpack in one hand, my black hat in the other. My attire likely marked me as secular, yet my black hat was undeniably Orthodox. I saw the puzzled looks from the other passengers waiting for the plane. The Orthodox Jews, dressed in black suits with white shirts (along with black hats), saw my hat and looked at me as if to ask where my black suit and white shirt were. The more secular Jews looked at me and eyed the hat, maybe under the assumption that I was holding it for some Orthodox Jew who left for the restroom.
Alas, I answered all these imaginary questions by putting the hat snug on my head. People stared at me for a good 1-2 seconds. Then the moment was over and people went back to being concerned with their own matters. Nobody said anything—until our descent into Israel. Sitting next to me was an older Israeli woman, who was trying to chat with me in Hebrew, to which I smiled, nodded, and said the only Hebrew I knew, “אני לא מבין עברית” (I don’t understand Hebrew). She returned the smile and spoke to me in perfect English, asking what I was doing in Israel.

I informed her that I would be attending a Yeshiva in Jerusalem, to which she replied, after nonchalantly looking me up and down, “You sure don’t look religious to me.” I laughed and told her that I was curious and interested in learning more. She looked at my black hat and said, “Well, at least you’ve got the right hat.” I immediately thought about my black hat story, and everything that has brought me to this point. I chuckled a bit and agreed with her. I watched out the window as we landed into Israel. This is just the beginning.