The Pascal Feast
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Jerusalem,
Israel
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
And it came to pass that I returned to Israel. Two things took me by suprise. Number one: It's sunny in Jerusalem! Finally, after two and a half months of freezing weather I can wear T shirts with aplomb and lie out on the grass in the heat. Great. Number two: Israel has bird flu. B*llocks. Seeing as I don't eat red meat this was a particular blow. The government say it's okay to eat though so I'm taking their word for it, but making sure that everything I eat has been cooked to oblivion.
And so it happened that on the 28th of the third month, that Israel had its general election. It was pretty mad here. All the parties were canvassing for votes on campus and giving out free stuff. Kadima had the best stickers by a long shot which might have been something to do with their victory. At Hebrew U, they ran a pretty professional mock election with real voter registers etc. A student gave me my ballot paper and I complained that there were about twenty five parties, to which he proudly replied "Welcome to Israel." Election day here is a national holiday so we had the day off of lessons. I went to Independence Park thinking it would be somewhat symbolic going somewhere commerating independence on election day. It was boring. There are a bunch of huge rocks and no swings or slides. We just played football and ate Bisli. The truely interesting part about the election was our foriegn policy lecture the next day. The teacher, who has held some very high profile positions (head of the government press office among them) gave us a summary of the results and the domestic political implications in terms of coalition possibilities etc. It was very interesting and I counted myself extremely lucky to be on this course, with such informed lecturers, at such an interesting time.
The other day for our Rashi class, we went on a field trip (that's on "outing" in proper English) to a nature reserve where they rebuild the biblical landscape of Israel. It was a nice excursion and the weather for it was great. We made our own Zatar and ate mustard flowers and saw pommigranits actually growing on trees. I tried my absolute hardest to find a money tree, but to no avail. Maximum Humous cooked some wheat on a fire like our ancesters would have. Everyone liked it except me. I thought it tasted of burnt. No disrespect to Maximum's cooking, just who eats cooked wheat grains?
Last Sabbath I went forth to Yehuda's Yeshiva to spend Friday night and the day there. It was an interesting experience. It wasn't as frum as I thought it would be because it was mainly people about my age just sitting around and eating because we'd cooked dinner ourselves (well Yehuda had cooked for all of us) and we just chatted. However, there was plenty of talking about Judaism and singing as well. I met a guy there from Rochester NY who knew of Camp Seneca Lake (I worked there about eighteen months ago) who said if I ever work there again (which I hope to do) that I can go and spend Shabbat round his whenever I like. I thought that was very cool and will take him up on his offer.
Classes are going quite well. I wrote an essay for Arab-Israeli conflict about whether there was a missed oppertunity for peace in the period 1917 to 1937. I did a reasonable amount of work for it but didn't try too hard. I still achieved full marks though (not many other people did) which I was rather pleased about. DISCLAIMER: This paragraph may seem big heahed. It is. That makes this not a disclaimer then....oh well.
I have more to write, but I'm afraid that will make this all too long and if I tell you about it now, I will have nothing to talk about on my final return.
I'll stick up some pictures later - I have loads!
Until next time,
Daniel
