You can take the guy out of America...

but can you take America out of the guy? I'm not so sure.

I've recently been struck by how much life here is so similar to life in California. Most of the time I think it's me - I have my own set ways of doing things, and things are going to be that way in Los Angeles, Petaluma, Jerusalem, Singapore, Uganda, etc. But sometimes I think it's because the culture of Jerusalem and the culture of America are slowly creeping together, no longer parallel but more and more overlapping.

Like today. I was walking home from school in the later afternoon, and at the corner of King George/Keren HaYesod/Agron/Ramban/Derech Aza (it's a massive 5-way intersection that's a bitch to cross), I saw this sign:



Translation:
Sign on left: "Animals have a right to live"
Sign on right: "Meat is murder"

Some things really are universal.

The Dark Knight

I just returned from seeing The Dark Knight (or in Hebrew האביר האפל) which has been one of the most intense movie experiences I’ve had in recent memory. If you’ve seen the movie (once, twice, maybe even three times?) then you know what I mean. If you haven’t seen the movie, then I’ll let you experience it for yourself. My advice to you is: Go. It’s a dark, cynical, cryptic, labyrinthine film that left all of us (myself included) a little depressed and feeling a little dirty. But with plenty to chew over. It presents a bleak version of the world – through amazingly brilliant cinema – which, especially in a country currently in the midst of bleak moral and political forecast, is a little hard to swallow. But it owns it. And lives up to it. And delivers, and then some. And so The Dark Knight might just be the best comic book – or even action – movie ever.

Yeah, that’s right, I said it.

Reactions to the movie varied. My internal was one of intense praise, while my external was a bit more ambiguous. I think my during (especially during the break) and post movie reactions are strange. I get into it. But then people interpret them the wrong way. It’s partly an issue of “getting to know you… better.” We’ve all hung out socially for a good few weeks. And while that’s not a lot of time in an absolute sense, time here is camp-time, meaning a day is worth a week. Or more. So there’s been a lot of time to get to know each other. But everyday new things are revealed and exposed about new people. This student likes Dogma films. She’s a lesbian. He hates pickles. Her brother and I share a name. Etc, etc, etc. Tonight, I showed a new part of myself: the quiet, moody, unresponsive self I inhabit after viewing an intense (and also moving) film. It’s the “processing self.” But in a world when everyone is simultaneously treading lightly and forcefully plunging ahead with respect to personal space/boundaries, everything is simultaneously taken very seriously and personally, but also frivolously. I take my movie watching experience very seriously (after 6 years of the Arclight I’m very spoiled on this front), especially of movies I am excited about. I can come off as intense. But not in a badass kind of way. I’m learning, especially with new people, how I’m viewed. What limited conversation means. How interactions, no matter how small, set off a chain reaction in someone’s mind.

But the weird thing about my reactions is that as bleak as The Dark Knight is, I don’t feel depressed or dirty or weirded out. And I don't think I come off like that. On the bus ride back I was arguing with a classmate whether the movie had a positive or negative (or muddled) message about morality and society. He was an English Literature student at Oxford, so he was pretty good at his argument (that the message was negative/muddled) but he didn’t shake me. I think the movie hopes for – and expects – the best in people. Nolan etc. don’t feel society is doomed, but rather we need a push in the right direction.

Maybe that push comes from future Jewish rabbis, cantors, and educators of America?

my first houseguest

The past few days have been very eventful, in a non-eventful way. Thursday night, my best friend Rebecca, who I’ve known, according to a weird slip of my tongue, “since conception,” finished Birthright and spent the weekend with me. It was a bloody good time. Thursday was our official HUC Jerusalem Day, in which we learned text (Psalms, Mishnah, and modern Israeli poetry/songs) about Jerusalem while walking around the Goldman/Haas Tyelet in the morning and the Hinnon Valley (one of Jerusalem’s 3 valleys... ask me to name them) and Old City in the evening. Our afternoon, the hottest part of the day, was a free session, during which I ran to the shuk, ran home, ate lunch, did a load of wash, hung my wash out to dry, took a quick nap, and then received Becca.

Thursday night she decompressed at my temporary apartment while I concluded my “Yom Yerushaliam Day.” Afterwards, I picked her up from my apartment and we went to a delicious dinner of street falafel and shwarma, on the edge of Ben Yehuda, people watching everyone out on the town on a Thursday night (the Israeli equivalent of a Friday night). Then we met up with some classmates of mine for a drink or two, and then turned in.

Friday was spent shopping, schmoozing, and eating our way through downtown Jerusalem, followed by a very lovely dinner at Rebecca’s cousins home in Ra’anana (a suburb slightly northeast of Tel Aviv). I had an opportunity to practice my Hebrew with some real Israelis who were patient and slow and corrected my mis-conjugations and improper preposition use (according to my ulpan teacher, a surefire way of determining whether someone is a proficient Hebrew speaker or not) and helped expand my vocabulary, much to some confusion on Rebecca’s part. I tried to translate as best I could, but it all happened so fast! I swear!

Our Shabbat was loverly; services, and then a delicious, huge, scrumptious lunch at a (non-kosher, cause they’re open on Shabbat) restaurant, a stroll to and around the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and then authentic Shabbat rest. Then dinner, and then she left. The visit itself was wonderful. On one level, it was great just to be with Rebecca, with no agenda (plays, moms, brothers, etc), for a few days, and just hang out. I think it’s been years, years since that’s been able to happen. On another level, it was my first houseguest. You can’t have a houseguest if you’re not settled, if you don’t have a place to put them up. Her visit made me feel that I am (despite not having actually moved into my apartment) living here. This is real. This is happening. Her visit made this city feel a little but more like a home.

RIP: Estelle Getty

Estelle Getty tragically died today. There's a lot of sadness going around right now. Her spunky, hilarious, witty, sardonic character Sophia on The Golden Girls was my favorite. Everybody's favorite.

Follow this link:

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2008/07/remembering-e-1.html

for a nice obit and some classic clips.

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

I’ve been staring at the computer screen for the last ten minutes, trying to find the words to describe the day today, listening to “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” on repeat, unable to both stop listening to Mason Jennings’ cover of the Dylan song as well as type anything coherent. The song is so beautiful. It's haunting and soothing, and so melodic. It's sad and depressing song about class and racial divides, but there's something about the song, and Jennings' version especially that is also very comforting. And today is a day where we all need some comforting.

If you saw the news, you probably saw that there was another tractor attack in Jerusalem today (Tuesday). I have no idea how this is being covered in America (when I called my parents a few hours after they’d been awake, they hadn’t heard anything) but I hope it is. The basic gist of what happened is some guy got ahold of a tractor, and copied the attack of a few weeks ago, but with much less destruction – as far as I’m aware, about 15/16 injuries, some serious, and no fatalities. Except the guy, who was shot by a civilian that climbed into the cab of the tractor.

Our cell phones have a system where the head of student affairs can text the entire student and SO body instantly, alerting us to security concerns, or in the case of a piguah (Hebrew for “attack”), ask for immediate notification that we’re either “okay” or need to “be called.” It’s a good system. Today it worked well.

Ulpan got out at 1:30, and I was in the library checking e-mail, when a little before 2 o’clock, I got the piguah text. I had just heart lots of sirens, but I assumed they were for the Barack Obama motorcade – he arrived in J’lem today and is staying at the King David Hotel, literally next door to HUC. But then I got the text, immediately responded, packed up my stuff and walked to the admin office to see what had happened.

In some ways, this was an incident low on the gravity meter. There were no Israeli fatalities, the attacker was stopped very quickly, and everyone was able to go back to normal relatively quick. What’s upsetting about this incident is the proximity. It occurred on King David street, right at the intersection of Jabotinsky and Keren HaYesod, basically at Montefiore’s windmill and Yemin Moshe. For those that aren’t familiar with Jerusalem geography, that’s about a 3 minute walk from campus. It was incredibly close.

A classmate, who was walking home, saw the whole thing unfold before her. An Egged bus was mangled by the tractor in front of a classmate’s apartment building, and he was in his apartment and heard the commotion and the gunshots. Other classmates were walking towards the site and were told, “Don’t go there, there’s gunfire there.” When I heard what happened, and where it was, I got a little more upset. I had a relatively mundane afternoon/evening planned – go home to drop of bag, help classmates write a song parody for our upcoming student talent show, go to a park to play frisbee, go see apartment, eat dinner, go to meeting for HUC hiking club, then go home and do Ulpan homework – and wasn’t upset enough to not complete my tasks.

I also felt like this still wasn’t happening to me. I didn’t get it. I didn’t feel it. So I left campus and walked the 3 minutes to the accident site. If I didn’t know better, I would have guess there was a bad car accident. There was a lot of broken glass, over turned cars, ambulances, gawking pedestrians, a sense of uncertainty. But then there was the police! And soldiers! They were in the process of setting up a perimeter, and I didn’t want to get too close, but I wanted to see. It was the perverse voyeur in me, I suppose. The human in me who needs to look at a car accident or a train wreck. It was simply bizarre. I have no other words.

The mood the rest of the day has been equally weird. Everyone is talking to each other a little differently. No one really knows how to react. Some people went home and let it all marinate. Some people went to a movie. I played frisbee and then signed a lease for an apartment (It was a day truly filled with ups and downs). Life goes on here. This is what happens. But now I think Israel is starting to make a lot more sense to me. We’ve lived through a pigua, we see what it does to Israelis and what it does to us. We have the ability to start to understand the entirety of the culture. In some weird way, this was our christening. We’re now Jerusalemites.

Me talk pretty one day

is a book that has been on my mind a lot the past few days. When I was at Rothberg, my friend Tamar lent it to me – she’s a big David Sedaris fan and I was on the fence about him and she felt this book would change my mind. It did, but that’s not my point here. I read the book, and really liked. More, I think, for his hilarious and apt descriptions of what it’s like to be in an intensive language learning class. In Sedaris’ case, it’s learning French. In my case (and everybody else at Rothberg, and now at HUC), it’s Hebrew.

His descriptions of his horribly rude teacher, and the way he, after weeks of hearing “Blah blah blah blah blah oui” turned into hearing “You’re a fat idiot who is blah stupid” resonated then. It was completely my experience. In some ways, it totally validated the feelings of infantalization, and frustration, and also accomplishment that pervaded my mind then. I'm anticipating a similar reaciton to ulpan (but we'll see) in the next few weeks, and so, after only two days, I really want to reread it.

Ulpan started yesterday. I was placed in Kitah Daled (Class 4), which is the “highest” class. It was a bit of a surprise to me to be in the highest level, not because I don’t know enough Hebrew to be there, but because I thought I had forgotten too much Hebrew to be there. Apparently not. There are nine of us, and I feel right in the middle of the class. My reading and certainly my grammatical ability is right at the top, while my comprehension is in the center-ish, and my speaking ability is low of center. But it’s all good. My teacher is this tiny, adorable woman named Osnat, and she’s awesome. I’m not sure she likes me (my terrible fear right now is that she’ll find out I don’t know a single word of Hebrew and demote me) but I know I can win her over with my indelible charm and wit. Although my wit in Hebrew is pretty non-existent, so I’ve got to work on that.

In other news, Shabbat was, again, lovely. Friday night was an all-class great Kabbalat Shabbat service, led by two of our summer interns, that was both spiritually and ritually fulfilling, coupled with a great dinner on campus and a fantastic song session led by five students and their guitars. Services in the morning were at HUC: the final element of our orientation. They were led by Rabbi Michael Marmur, who is the Dean of the Jerusalem campus and the head of the YII program, and Cantor Tamar Havilio, who is the resident cantor/liturgy teacher (I think). The service itself was fine - it was packed with students, a wedding party, and visiting Reform congregations from the states - catering the crowd. But Rabbi Marmur's leading and sermon were fabulous. I'm really looking forward to learning a lot from him this year. Shabbat day was nice and relaxing. The highlight was Seudah Selishit, which was hosted by two classmates and one SO – they made chili and had havdallah. Virtually the whole class (and their SOs) came, and it ended up being a great night of bonding before ulpan started.

I also got to briefly see my best friend Rebecca Levy Saturday night. She’s on Birthright this week, and Saturday was her “free night” in Jerusalem, so I met up with her for a little bit before she went to a birthright sponsored dance club. She’s in and around Jerusalem this week, but is extending her trip after they leave on Wednesday, so she’ll be staying with me this weekend. It’s going to be legend… dary!

Toto, I don't think we're in Napa anymore

Last night was the Jerusalem Wine Festival, held in the gardens of the Israel Museum, which is a gorgeous space – a gravel and marble garden, incredible artwork, a phenomenal view. I would say most of my cohort was there, and everyone seemed to have a great time. How could you now? For 55 NIS (about $16) you got a glass and all you can drink from over 50 Israeli wineries.

Now, let me set part of the record straight. Israeli wine is not the same thing as Manaschewitz. That’s American kosher sweet wine, if you can even call it “wine.” Israel, as part of the five wine-growing regions in the world (California, Chile, South Africa, Australia, and the Mediterranean), has a budding wine industry in the Galilee. It’s a terrain very much like the California coast and hence suitable for growing real wine grapes. Over the past decades the Israeli wine industry has blossomed and is starting to gain real international recognition.

At the same time, it ain’t nothing to write home about. I think part of it is, yes, I’m from California (Sonoma county, no less) and so a little spoiled. But Israeli wineries haven’t really gotten the idea of a “palate” yet. I think that may be due to the taste of the soil – it’s very woody and acidic and minerally, especially after decades the pioneers breathing life into it. All of the wines tasted the same. There was very little that distinguished one winery’s Cabernet from another’s. The popular (or growable) grapes were Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet, Shiraz, and Gewurztraminer. And they all tasted very similar, which they don’t in California. What can you do?

Despite the tepid nature of the wines themselves, it was a great evening. As I said most of the cohort was there, so there was a lot of schmoozing in a very Israeli environment. There were Americans, but they were Americans like us: either non-tourists or olim. It was a very authentically Israeli evening. There was a lot of Hebrew spoken, and as the evening wore on, and we tasted more and more wine, I used my Hebrew more and more. It was a really great night.

Yesterday also marked my one-week anniversary of being in Israel, although it feels like so much longer. Right now I’m moving out of the studio I’ve been subletting and into an apartment of a classmate, who has an extra room for the next two weeks. After that point, the apartment I’ve been trying to sign (hopefully this afternoon!) will be available. Tonight is Shabbat, my second, and it’s the Shabbat of orientation, so there are services-related programs tonight and tomorrow morning for us. And the Sunday morning, we start ulpan!

they're home

Today has been a very strange day.

On the whole, it’s been a good day. It was our first full day of orientation, which consisted of a series of talks on things like security, ulpan, expectations of the year, and the political/cultural state of Israel right now. It also is the first day of structure, which has been really nice against the last few days of unstructured activities. Tonight, I met up with my friend Abby, who I met at Rothberg three years ago. She’s since then made Aliyah and is not working at the Jewish Agency in their education department. It was great to see her after so much time (I briefly saw her in DC about two years ago) and I’m looking forward to spending lots of time with her and her roommate Carrie, who is also a friend from Rothberg.

And I think the HUC group is gelling really nicely. There’s definitely an element of “grouping” forming, some based on demography (read: age), some based on program, other based on roommate collectives etc. But as a whole there’s a lot of fluidity, chattiness, hanging outness, etc. I’ve been floating around various different clumps of people, trying to spend time (meals, afternoons, evenings) with as many different combinations of people as possible. And we’ve just started to really, in orientation, talk about our selves and “our journey.” As one rabbinical girl said today, “We all hang out, but we don’t know each other yet.” That’s very true.

On the other hand, there was a very eerie quality to the air outside today. Today can, I think, be considered the end of the Second Lebanon War. Today, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose kidnapping and subsequent captivity by Hezbollah was a main catalyst for the war, were returned to their families today. In coffins.

Until this morning, when the remains were exchanged for Lebanese prisoners, nobody knew whether the soldiers were alive or dead. These soldiers, along with Gilad Shalit who is alive and being held by Hamas in Gaza, have, for the past two years, been larger-than-life symbols of the hope and the tragedy of the summer of 2006. Their names and faces have become ubiquitous in Jewish communities across the world. Their return has ceased to be a demand, and has become a necessity, a prerequisite before this country can move forward.

And now they have come home. They will be given a military funeral tomorrow (Thursday) as their own lives are etched into the cultural memory of Israel. It is a huge tragedy. I don’t want to understate that. And I can feel the trepidation, the uncertainty, the sorrow Israelis are feeling today. At the same time, there has been so much staked on the return of these three boys, now that two are back and the third’s return seems to be imminent, I wonder where Israel where go from here? Who will be their next mascot, their next symbol, the next driving force for vengeance or peace?

World: Open your eyes instead of your mouth

I saw this article just now:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/world/africa/15sudan.html?ex=1373774400&en=65974089a90214bf&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

and got really excited. I'm not sure what it means in the long run, but it's somewhat comforting that the people who run the world might have an inkling about what they're doing.

First Shabbat

My first Shabbat in Jerusalem has been, mostly, really lovely.

Kabbalat Shabbat started with a reception at the President of HUC’s, David Ellenson’s, apartment on campus, just for the first year students, as well as some visiting officials from HUC and the URJ (the Union for Reform Judaism, the congregational branch of the Reform movement. I think. I’m still sorting out all of the Reform nuances and how the different organizations relate to each other). It was a lovely event; it was the first time all first years were together, and we did some introductions, the officials talked a bit about how important our jobs are for the Reform movement and for American Jews in general, we did a quick text study, and then moved outside for Kabbalat Shabbat services.

Sidebar: a quick note about the environment. I was previously told, by a few people, that this year would be a “Rabbino-centric” culture, meaning the program, while for Rabbinical, Cantorial, and Education students, would be centered around the Rabbninic students. They are the largest block and the one with the greatest perceived importance. That was made very clear at the reception, when the HUC and URJ machers mainly talked about the role of Rabbis, sometimes Cantors, but mostly ignored Educators. This could get a little frustrating. Additionally, I’m not a Reform Jew. I wasn’t rasied in the movement and I don’t identify as a Reform Jew. I’m not sure I identify as a Conservative Jew either, and so let’s call me trans-denominational, for the moment. But whether or not my degree will be nondenominational, it’s from a Reform institution, and for the next 3 years, I’m going to be deeply submerged in the Reform culture, a culture I’m really very unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable in.

The service was a mixed experience. The setting was gorgeous; we were on the grass overlooking the Old city as the sun set behind us. Is there a better place to pray? But then there was the prayer itself. For one thing, one of the reasons why I’ve resisted identifying with the Reform movement is I’ve never sat through a Reform service I loved. Part of that is I just don’t go to Reform services, but part of that is my discomfort with some liturgical, performative, and ideological choices. Friday night was no different. It was led by a Cantor on staff, with a classical guitarist playing along; one student later described it as a “classical guitar concert.” It was not a fulfilling prayer experience, to say the least. I was slightly comforted to learn that I was not alone in this feeling, which made my previous discomfort of being a non-Reformite diminish. Hopefully, as well, this cohort will work together to make some very meaningful prayer experiences this year and back in LA - otherwise it's going to be a very long three years.

Additionally, there was a very awkward moment during Lecha Dodi. During the last verse, you’re supposed to stand and face the door in order to welcome the Shabbat Bride. But what do you do when you’re outside? My tradition, how I’ve been taught, and what I’ve done at camp and any other outside prayer experience, is to face the setting sun, because that’s what the mystics at Tsfat did: they ran towards the west, welcoming the Shabbat. So during the last verse of Lecha dodi, I turned west, only to look face-to-face with basically everyone else in the crowd who was standing towards the east.

This is an awkward thing. The general rule of thumb in prayer service is to go "when in Rome..." and follow the community. But I was already standing towards the sunset, and saw a few others were as well, and I felt that facing east defeated the entire purpose of the standing, so I stayed. In the row behind me, the people I was facing, one girl (a student) pointed towards the old city and said, “It’s over there.” An older woman (not a student) looked at me, sighed, and snickered. They thought I was stupid or confused or just lost. It was a very sour moment and gave me a bitter taste in my mouth for the rest of the evening. After the service, I talked to two other student who did the same thing, and we agreed that we were also right, and that ended the few hours of self-doubt.

Dinner was nice; the food was fine. After dinner the students dispersed to hang out at a few apartments, some went to bed. I schmoozed with some classmates for a while and then left to go to sleep – still fighting the jet lag!

Shabbat morning was lovely. About a third of the students went to Kol Naneshama, a progressive congregation in the south end of the German colony (read: 50 minute walk from my apartment. A nice shabbas walk.) It was a great service; there was a lot of Hebrew, a very personable and charismatic Rabbi (who was an Oleh and spoke Hebrew slowly and without an accent, making his sermon easier to understand), and a very welcoming community. They called all of the new students (HUC, Pardes, Schecter) up for an aliyah, which was really nice as well.

For Seudat Slishit (the third meal of Shabbat, Saturday evening), the school hosted a picnic in Liberty Bell park, and people brought food and guitars and cards and shesh-besh (backgammon) and frisbees and we hung out until we did Havdallah. It ended up being a really great first Shabbat for the year.

Familiar Faces

So, it’s really true what people say: you do see everybody you know in Jerusalem. Okay, not everybody, but I’ve only been here slightly more than 24 hours, and already I’ve run into three people I know. In chronological order:

1) This first one was really random, and very far reaching to the memories. Adam Cohen and I, I think, went to pre-school together, but we really knew each other from BBYO (high school Jewish youth group). He was peripherally involved, and I was super involved, so we weren’t the best of friends, but we had mutual friends and liked each other enough. Last night, at a NFTY event on HUC’s campus the YII (Year in Israel) students were assisting at, I saw him.

I was, like, “Whoa! Adam Cohen!”
And he was like, “I know you but I don’t remember your name.”
And it was awesome.

He’s an SO (significant other) of a rabbinical student, and is joining her just for the summer, hanging out, reading, coming to events, chilling. We chatted, caught up, and I'm looking forward to hanging out with him more until he goes back to the states in September.

2) David Mendelsson was a professor of mine at Rothberg (of the Hebrew University fame) for a class called “Formation of Zionist and Israeli Identity.” It was a fantastic class; he’s a British oleh (immigrant to Israel) who has this fantastic accent, skittery personality, and incredible wealth of knowledge about Israeli culture. He taught a session this morning at the HUC-Welcome-Study day. The session was basically the class in 90 minutes, but it was great to see him. He remembered my face, not my name, but we chatted and he teaches at HUC so I’ll be seeing him a lot this year.

3) This is by far the coolest, especially since it was so random and is a person I love and love seeing in Jerusalem. I went to the shuk in the early afternoon to get food so I don’t starve on Shabbat, and I’m walking back to my apartment down Ben Yehuda, and who should I see walk out of a cell phone store? Rabbi Lavey Derby, my Rabbi from Kol Shofar. He didn’t see me (or recognize my new do) and I yelled, “Rabbi!” and he turned around and stopped. Shocked. It was brilliant.

I knew he was in Jerusalem, but I didn’t think I would see him, and there he was, right in front of me, on Ben Yehuda street. It was slightly ridiculous. But great. We swapped numbers and are going to try and sit down for coffee next week before he goes back to the states.

Who knows who I'll run into tomorrow?

Initial thoughts on Jerusalem

It’s the same, almost. Many of the favorite (and not so favorite) old haunts are still here, from Yankee Bar to Tmol Shilshon to Schnitzee’s to Capricorn (no news on O’Connell’s yet). It’s fantastic. It didn’t really sink in that I was here. In Jerusalem. For a year. Until after I moved into my swanky short-term studio and started walking toward campus. I was here. I am here. It’s marvelous. It’s like coming back to a familiar part of my home again.

And yet it’s totally different. My favorite Kebab restaurant is gone, which saddens me terribly. There’s construction all over down town. I was walking around the city center, turned a corner, and there was a Coffee Bean. I walked another half block, and suddenly I’m face to face with an American Apparel. It sunk in, hard, that while I came to Jerusalem to get away from LA, LA is quietly stalking me.. Jerusalem really isn’t as oriental as we think it is (or as I think it is).

I did, however, have Hummus and Meat at Pinati for lunch, and it was better than I remembered.

My apartment (two week long sublet while I find Adam and my kick-ass all-Hebrew all-the-time apartment) is gorgeous. It’s a little studio on Shamai street – if you knew Jerusalem, it’s on block over from Kikkar Zion. But it looks over a balcony, so it’s quiet and shady and great décor. My “landlord” is an architecture student at Bezalel, Hebrew U’s art school, and he has his own really neat models and paintings on the wall. It’s a great location too, which makes going to campus and going apartment shopping and going to the shuk (tomorrow! I’m so excited!) convenient.

My memory of the city has stood pretty steady. I have a really good grasp of where things should be in relation (east, west, which street to get where) to everything else. Where I’m totally lacking is remembering distance. Jerusalem is a big city. In my mind, the whole central area, from Emek Rafaim to the Russian colony to The Central Bus station is all 20 minutes – or less. It may be so because when I was here before I was living on Mt. Scopus, and that is really really far from everything else. It may also be my mind. And the jet lag. And the heat (which isn’t too bad; it’s dry and nice in the shade).

But the jet lag. I’m exhausted, and it’s about 10:30 PM in J’lem right now. I parted company with my classmate earlier – we were eating ice cream (they were eating; my stomach is still in knots from the sleep deprivation) on Ben Yehuda – about an hour ago to go to bed but while I’m exhausted, I’m still wired. Hopefully I’ll fall asleep soon because it’s a big day tomorrow.

One word about my classmates before I sign off. As of now, about 10 hours since I started to meet them, I really like the ones I’ve met. They’re all pretty Jewy (as one might expect) but down to earth and fun. They’ve had a lot of hanging out the past week and a half, and I missed out on that, so it’s a little weird jumping in when there are connections and groups already formed. The flip side of that, however, is I have an allure about me. I’m still an unknown quantity.

Amsterdam: a hedonist's paradise?

Right now, for a brief fleeting moment, I am in Amsterdam. This visit, nearing completion, was very short but very sweet. Let me explain.

Amsterdam is a city I have wanted to visit since eighth grade, when my friend Alyssa and I realized that the plane that was taking our eighth grade class to Washington DC was continuing on to Amsterdam and we tried to convince our teacher to let us stay on the place and have our field trip there. Needless to say, she didn’t go for it, but Amsterdam because that kind of El Doradoesque travel destination for me: more of an unattainable myth than a reality.

But here I am. When I got out of the train station, jet-lagged but excited, and saw the beautiful old world buildings and canals, I had two immediate reactions: 1) I love this city and I could live here for years; 2) Okay, I’ve seen Amsterdam, let’s get to Jerusalem! Now, waiting at my gate for my flight to Tel Aviv, both feelings remain.

My visit has been short – I was away from the airport for about 6 hours – but I feel like it could be an “Amsterdam Greatest Hits” trip. I took the train, I walked a lot, I saw a lot of canals, I admired the brick and the cobblestone, I went to the Van Gogh Museum, visited a coffee shop, drank peach juice, rode the tram, walked some more, I was accosted twice by the employees of the red light district, I smelled tulips, I took a little nap on the tram, I admired more brick canals, and I walked some more. It was great.

There’s a lot about this city that I’ve been contemplating; it’s my first continental European city I’ve visited – and actually the first time, I’m pretty sure, I’ve been in a place where I did not speak the language – and there’s a lot of newness to this experience. Dutch is a funny language. I kept confusing people speaking Dutch with German, and tired to use my minute knowledge of Yiddish to access German to access Dutch. It didn’t work. Some English cognates helped, but mostly I giggled to myself about spelling words with two aa’s (I’m also finding it really hard to be a relativist with regards to spelling).

Everyone I talked to was helpful, although not necessarily nice. I think that might have something to do with my own clichéd persona – American tourist comes to Amsterdam in the summer etc. the Dutch must hate summertime. The city is crawling with foreigners, many of them young, early 20’s American/British/German/Korean hippie-type backpackers. They were starting to annoy me by the end of the day and I’m a tourist too.

Which leads me to my main thought of the day: what exactly is the MO of Amsterdam’s culture? It occurred to me after I got the shit scared out of me by a fugly looking prostitute beckoning to me behind a cage of glass that Amsterdam is really a city for hedonists. Gay marriage is legal. Prostitution is legal (I think) here. Marijuana is legal (for the most part). Heroin addicts are given clean needles (try letting that program fly under this US administration). It’s like the European version of Las Vegas, except dignified (and without the gambling). The Amsterdamites have proven that you can have a society that offers many vices many Americans believe are evil and have it flourish.

This isn’t a new argument, but it didn’t really mean anything to me until I was here and saw it in action. And when I could really compare it America – or even California, where Gay marriage is legal, but still tenuously and still heavily disapproved, where medicinal (medicinal!) marijuana use is still questionable, and where heroin addicts are treated like criminals instead of people who desperately need care and support. It’s just bizarre how different many of the cultural and social institutions are, and yet in Amsterdam, they also have McDonalds and Starbucks. Go figure.

Now I’m feeling icky and smelly and gross, and when the cappuccino wears off I’m going to crash harder than Oceanic flight 815, so before that happens I’m going to head off to my gate to board my plane for Tel Aviv!

PS. I’m also wondering what it says about the Dutch that official names for some cities contain a definite article. Is it necessary? Case in point: The Hague. It took me years to realize that The Hague was an actual city, and not just the building for the International Court of Justice (thank you West Wing for that). And the name of the country! THE Netherlands. Is there another Netherlands? Are we going to forget which Netherlands we’re traveling to?

First post... let's say Shehecheyanu

This is my first offical post on "of the sands and the cliffs," my blog for my HUC Year in Israel. I hope you enjoy it.

I'm getting ready to leave for Jerusalem (via an 11 hour layover in Amsterdam) and while I am nervous, the anxiety if slight and really only revolves around the traveling. Once I find myself in Jerusalem (and find an apartment) it's all good.

So check back in later days for more updates about the traveling and the settling in...

This is Joel Abramovitz, the man and the myth, signing off!

PS. Like before, if you tell me where the blog title comes from (DSA I'm looking at you...) you'll get a prize!