A lot has happened in the past two and a half weeks, but this post will cover Sunday the 13th, a day on which I skipped class to take care of some bureacracy. I then decided that it's a beautiful day and the Arabs aren't likely to stab me, so, after eating some felafel in the courtyard of the Jerusalem municipality building, I walked along the Old City Walls eastward and into the Bab A-Zahra neighborhood. This is basically an Arab village and like all Arab villages/neighborhoods it is dominated by a hamulla (clan) that has an agreement with the Israeli authorities to behave well and keep their people in control. Generally, Arabs abide by the decisions of the elders of the hamullah, so if there's a good established relationship with the Municipality, the police and the border guards, there are rarely problems. Bab A-Zahra was interesting. Like all Arab areas, it has plenty of wealthy homes and plenty of poorer areas, but most of the crappy appearances have to do with people littering and not taking care of public areas than with lack of money. Also, like all Arab areas I visited that day, I was the only non-Arab there. I guess I am "crazy", but I think most people are being stupid by being afraid of the Arabs. Granted, they give you dirty looks, but as Arabs with Jerusalem residency, they have very little reason to piss off the government. The police and border guards are always close enough to show up and crack skulls. Although I guess if you've just been stabbed, it really doesn't matter what happens five minutes later.

After I got tired of the dirt and skaniness I walked back to the Old City walls, towards the northeastern corner. Right there is, randomly, the Rockefeller Museum. I don't know what it's doing there or what's inside, but I'll have to check it out at some point. I turned the corner and started walking southward along the eastern wall of the city. There's a cemetary there that serves the Moslem quarter of the Old City. It's not well-cared for and full of stray cats digging through mounds of trash. There's a real problem with the Moslem quarter, as the residents are fond of dumping trash wherever it suits them, inside or outside the walls. I entered the Moslem quarter through the Shaar Ha'Arayot, which meant I found myself on Via Dolorosa. Back in Roman times, when the city was just Jewish, it was a main road built by the Roman administration, and Jesus, along with thousands of criminals, carried his cross down this road to Golgotha. Today, this road runs through the middle of the Moslem quarter, but it is lined with stalls where enterprising Arabs sell Christian symbolica to fat American and German tourists. Along this road, there are a bunch of stations where Jesus is supposed to have stopped. One of the first ones is a place currently occupied by St. Anne's cathedral. It's a Catholic church of the Order of the White Fathers. Aside from the cathedral, there is some open ground, some nice gardens, and excavations. The latter show cisterns from the Roman period, remnants of Byzantine and Crusader churches, and the place of Bethesda, the pool where Jesus healed some people back when he was playing doctor. There was no one there as it was 11am on a weekday (sunday is a weekday in Israel), so I explored the digs by myself. I then walked around the cathedral, checked out the crypt area. Kind of cool, especially considering that it was an oasis of cleanliness in the middle of a crowded and unpleasant, or shally I say "colorful", neighborhood.

Moving on, I walked down Via Dolorosa and observed a group of Polish and German tourists wearing stupid hats and listening to a starry-eyed guide. Tourist groups are the funniest and most out of place people in the Old City, and yet they at least as common as groups of loud Arab kids with clearly unwashed faces. I am not being racist here, but it's objectively clear that Arabs, at least those living a very Arabic lifestyle in the Middle East, need to shower. I walked off the beaten tourist track and explored the side streets and alleyways. Dirty, but kind of interesting with regard to old buildings and colorful drawing of the Temple of Rock mosque everywhere. I walked into a door that led to a courtyard, adorned with lots of drying laundry and a few Arab families who gave me that now familiar look that combines confusion, hate, fear, maybe some other emotions I can't decipher. I also observed how Arab teenagers throw glass bottles at each other. I guess it's a fun thing to do. There are some entrances to the Temple Mount from the Moslem quarter, but when I attempted to enter via said entrances, the Israeli border guards there told me that only Moslem can use those entrances and that all others must use the entrance near the Kotel.

The Temple Mount is, while under sovereignty of the Israeli government, a bit unique. Despite the fact that it is within Israeli territory, and has been since it was conquered from Jordan in 1967, the Israeli government decided that, even though it won in a massive way in a defensive war, it was wise to show the world that Jews care about their Moslem neighbors. So the decision was made to allow the Wakf, a Moslem religious council to control the Temple Mount. That means that non-Moslems are not particularly welcome and can only come at certain times, in and out of certain entrances, and are prohibited from bringing any non-Moslem objects/literature with them. If the visitors wonder into a part of the Temple Mount where the Wakf doesn't like having non-Moslems, someone will come up to you and ask you to move along. The golden-domed mosque that is built over the rock which all three religions consider sacred is off limits to non-Moslems as is the Al-Aqsa mosque (the one with the homelier looking grey dome). I tested all of these rules when I came out of the Moslem quarter, into the Jewish quarter, out of the Kotel area (access to which is security controlled but not limited to any group of people), and then entered the Har Ha'Bayit (Temple Mount) via the internationally accepted gate for infidels. Once on the hill, known as Mt Moria geographically, I walked around what is basically a compound of parks with Moslem families picknicking, madrassas, the campus of Al-Quds University, and the two aforementioned mosques. I was definitely barred from entry into the mosques, which is annoying. No one disallows Moslems from entering Christian or Jewish holy sites, so it's a double standard that they should reserve for themselves sites that are holy to them, and especially sites that are holy to all three monotheistic religions. At some point, I will have to pretend I am an American convert to Islam and gain entrance. I need to see that rock. Do your own research as to why that rock is so central to Judaism.

Since I was already up there, I decided to check out the madrasses. I walked into one of them, and they teachers ran up to me and started to shoo me out. The kids were all sitting around studying what I guess was the Koran, just like you see on TV. I didn't want to be shooed out, so I told them I just want to observe. The teachers, dressed in sheets and looking angrier by the moment, starting waiving their hands and explaining that tourists can just enter their school. I told them I am not a tourist in fluent Hebrew and they got extremely agitated and one of them called the Israeli border guards who are in charge of keeping peace on the mount. I left before they showed up. It's kind of like that scene in the Big Lebowski when Walter, Donny and the Dude leaving the bowling alley just as the police are pulling up in response to call that Walter drew his gun. If you leave early, the authorities just don't track you down unless you've literallly killed somebody.

Following that fun exchange, I walked over to the eastern wall, with it's great view of the Kidron Valley and the Mt. of Olives. A better view than from the Jewish quarter, which is further back from the eastern wall. There are some nice looking churches on the Mt of Olives and some gardens where all sorts of things occured according to Christian theology. Mt. of Olives is also meaningful to Jews, again, do your own damn research. Today there's a Mormon university there, an Episcopal church, a Russian Orthodox Church, and a few biblical tombs, including Absalom's. After a five minutes on that wall, a Wakf officiall asked me to leave. Granted, I got to the top of the wall by climbing on top of some building and I knew I wasn't allowed there, but it was a good view while it lasted.

After all this fun with Arabs, I had a toasted bagel with lox and cream cheese in the Jewish quarter, while explaining to a black lady who came with some Christian group from Stamford, CT (yay connecticut) basic issues of Judaism. She was totally ignorant about politics as well. Why does one need a visa to go from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, what kind of a country are we? I told her we're not one country, but the complex Israel-Arab conflict and territorial issues where simply too much for her. I don't realize sometimes how for a person with little knowledge the conflict is basically totally confusing and makes little sense. One really needs a good base of knowledge before coming here if one wants to understand what the tour guides are talking about.

I then proceeded out of the Dung Gate (worst name ever) into the City of David, which is an excavation of a neighborhood of Jerusalem that King David built as an addition to the city in order to control the slope along which runs the water from Mt Zion and Mt Moria. Just an aside, the Old City is on Mt Zion, as is the most central part of the New City of Jerusalem, but the Temple Mount in on Mt Moria, which basically a bump in Mt Zion. The excavations of Ir David are limited but interesting, and from there we have a nice view across the Kidron Valley into the village of Silwan. This is an especially large Arab village, as far as Arab East Jerusalem villages go, and it has a history of being periodically violent towards Jews and the State of Israel. The village sits on top of the road that is one of only two ways to access the the Mt of Olives, so good relations need to be maintained so that they don't stone Israeli cars, tourist buses, and individual Jews who like to walk where they shouldn't. But, I had had enough Arabs for one day, and my gut told me that I shouldn't push my luck in a village where my chances of being stabbed are quite high. I stayed on the western side of the Kidron valley, and walked down the slope of Mt Zion. Most of the slope is an Arab neighborhood but it's small and is well patrolled by the police and border guards due to its proximity the City of David. I walked down to Brikhat Ha'Shiloah, the pool of Shiloah, where in ancient times the water running out of Mount Moriah and down the slope of Mt Zion and through David's City was gathered. Today it's a skanky area with some ancient stones and scary looking water, with a madrassa right next to it.

From there, I walked futher down and turned westward, walking along the southern slope of Mt Zion, with Gai Ben Hinom on my left. Gai Ben Hinom is the valley that borders Mt Zion on the south and is named after a pre-Jewish owner of that stretch of land. When the Jews conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites about 3,100 years ago, the locals who lived in the valleys used to sacrifice their children to their various pagan gods. One of their biggest landlords was Gai Ben Hinom. The Jews were so terrified of their brutal practices that they started viewing the valley as a place where those "lower" than good Jews would end up. This discussion entered the Bible, and so the term Gai Ben Hinom then came to mean "hell" in Hebrew, and, in the Christian understanding hell is the place where humans go if they misbehave. Anways, across from where I was walking was view of yet another Jeruslem hill, on the slope of which is the Arab neighborhood of Abu Tor. This is a rich area, where the Arabs are loyal as all hell to the Jewish state that allows them to lead upper class lives. Jews have been moving into Abu Tor, but mainly the crazy artists types that always live where no else wants to. I walked up Mt Zion, the southern slope of which is beautifully undeveloped and green, towards a Christian cemetary and then into a Green Orthodox monastary, where, in typically absurd Jerusalem fashion, one can find both a resting place of Jesus's moms, and the Tomb of King David. I've got a soft spot for King David, like many Jews do, and for good reason.

So the 13th was a good day. At night, we had a Purim party at Ulpan Etzion, which was fun, but a bit restrained since our teachers and administrators were in attendance. Also, there's this one British girl whose is frighteningly ugly and her inapproprate dancing, although not in my vicinity, made me beyond uncomfortable. Monday the 14th was quiet but on Tuesday my dad came to Jerusalem and we commenced exploring and travelling. Next post will go into that. By the way, today are Israeli elections.

I had an incredible day yesterday. But that's for my next post. This one will summarize the weekend. On Thursday night I went to a Megilat Ester, performed in a theatrical type format at the Merkaz Shimshon. It's located on King George Street, between the King David and the King David Citadel hotels. It's a mixture of a religious center and drama/performing arts. The Ulpan bought a few dozen tickets for those interested, and I can't turn down anything free. We first showed up at the wrong entrance. I forced my way in past some objecting guards while trying to explain to them I am here to see Megilat Esther. I forgot what a "play" was in Hebrew and I said "metapelet" instead of "megilat". Metapelet means 'caretaker." So I must've sounded like some confused retard looking for his caretaker Esther. Which was actually a good thing. When Israelis think you're mentally challenged, they become very helpful and patient. Apparently, I had just barged into an event with lots of well-dressed, good-looking people eating expensive cheeses. Security showed me the way, and I found myself in a waiting hall with about 30 other people from my ulpan and about a 100 other people there for the play. I whiled away the time discussing the future of world Jewry with a funny looking guy who's a pediatrician in Moscow and whose goal in life is to help needy children in backward Russian villages. What a loser.

Anyhow, we entered the auditorium and walked up to the stage. The seats were arranged on the stage itself, with only about 15 square meters in the middle for the performance itself. It turns out that it was a one-woman show. She basically told the story of Esther by acting out various parts of it. In between scenes, she'd interact with the audience and relate different parts of the story to the Holocaust. If you don't know how Megilat Esther can be compared to the Holocaust, you're WAY behind on basic reading. All in all, it was a good performance, although the woman did kind of scare me with some of her characters.

On Friday I went to spend Shabbat with my relatives in Rehavia. As before, it was a wonderful experience. This time, we went to another synagogue in the neighborhood - Yeshrun. It was less pretentious and a better experience. Then, Shabbat dinner was had, G is a great cook. She's got a few killer dishes that can easily outshine top notch restaurants. The kids were cute, as expected. On Shabbat, a few neighbors dropped in for lunch. Didn't think anything of them right off the bat, but it turns out that the wife was a big time theater actress in St. Petersburg in her day, which is quite a feat.

Her husband was something else though. He came to Israel in 1922 at the age of three. His parents were living in a small town in the Ukraine, his father was a doctor. During the civil war that followed the Revolution, the Reds and the Whites would win and lose territory to each other on sometimes a weekly basis. When they gained control of an area, they would round up "traitors" and shoot them. Brutal times. Of course, Jews were singled out by everyone for mass punishment. Aside from the communists and the tsarists, there were also Ukrainian nationalists, the Greens, who mostly didn't fight anyone during the Civil War. They mainly destroyed Jewish towns and killed the inhabitants thereof. It was their way to gain Ukrainian independence in whatever government was going to win. I am sure it made perfect sense to them. Dr. Ephraim Ha'Levy managed to get out of the bloodshed and followed the early Zionist route - a ship from Odessa to Turkey, some nasty travel in Turkey (which was in the midst of its own revolution), and finally British Mandate Palestine. The latter was a mass of land including current day Israel, the disputed territories of the West Bank and Gaza and modern day Jordan. The Brits took this area as well as Iraq and other areas in the Middle East as a result of World War I. Jerusalem was the British administrative center and the Ha'Levy's made it their home. This old man was/is an aquaintance of Agnon, Klausner and Amos Oz, all big names in Hebrew literature and all from the original Zionist families. Back then the yeshuv (Jewish settlement) was small. There weren't too many Arabs either, the land was in fact many times emptier than it is now. Jerusalem was completely raw place, it hadn't changed in hundreds of years, forgotten by mankind. The early days of the State were definitely interesting and this guy was as old-school as it gets. In the early 1930's he was in Switzerland studying medicine, but came back to Israel in 1935 and continued on to become a bacteriologist at Hebrew University. He taught and researched there and at Hadassah Hospital. He's also been in every country in the world for at least a month at a time. 87 and going strong, amazing guy.

Spurred on by those interesting discussions, I decided to spend the next day pulling a Felix...

Last night, myself a few other people had an intimate discussion with someone from the Jewish Agency. I am honored to have had the opportunity. My thoughts and analysis of the situation in Israel are right on. To those of you who support the State of Israel's continued existence, let me just say that things are going well and the future looks good, but the path there is going to continue to be ugly. All parameters are moving in the right direction, but the state and the internal social dynamics will never be able to be viewed through purely Western eyes. Security-wise, suffice it to say the so-called "peace camp" is completely detached from reality.

On a annoying note, the South Americans in the ulpan are getting cheeky. They party too much, don't respect the fact that not everyone wants to be kept up until 3am by their festivities. These are the downfalls of living in a communal environment. Thing with a program like this is that it is basically a 5 month vacation with no responsibility. Maybe the authorities that be will kick some of them out, which would be great. It would make everyone else respectful of other people's sleep. By because those same authorities are softies and don't want anyone to feel bad or find themselves with no support network during their first few months in a new country, the trouble-makers will not bear any consequences. One can only rely on their goodwill. And if any of you know South Americans, you know that they keep partying and being loud no matter what. And they do not understand the logic of people differently inclined.

I was aware of this before I came here, as I am more interested in the fact that it's a good language program in a nice Jerusalem neighborhood and it gives me access to key people and information that I wouldn't otherwise get. The bad apples come with the package.

While I am venting - Ynetnews is a shitty news website. The fact that Yediot Ahronot runs it is a black mark of shame on their reputation, if they ever had a reputation to uphold. Weak articles, childish opinions, editorials and analysis written be people that never learned how to write, pieces on topics that are totally inappropriate for a serious audience. If anyone wants journalism and analysis that isn't complete trash read Jerusalem Post (centrist with left-wing and right-wing writers), Haaretz (left-wing) or Israel National News (right-wing). These publications, in both paper and online versions are actually good. Ynet is a rag.

Next week is Purim, so there will be three days off from class, which for most people means they are taking the entire week off. Aside from some great festivities that will include heavy boozing and large parties/demonstrations of the holiday spirit in many public places, I am looking forward to my Dad's visit. There will be touring in Jerusalem and other parts of the country, good eating, and discussions on religion and Zionism. Zot artzeinu, v'nisheret artzeinu l'olam v'ed.

Since the 1940's, when virtually the entire Jewish population was left-wing and secular, waves of aliyah and birth control patterns have completely changed the Israeli Jewish population. I just had a converstation with my teacher at the ulpan. She's been around for a while, and she says that there's no doubt that Israel has become far more religious over the decades. It used to be a socialist, secular state with religion existing on the fringes. But religious families have high birthrates, and the Mizrahim, Middle Eastern Jews who came to Israel in the 1950's and had to endure forced secularization in the school system, have been coming back to the observance level of their parents more and more. Even Ashkenzim, many of whom are avowed secularists, have been "losing" far more young people to a religious lifestyle than they have been "gaining" from the tiny number of people who become secular every year. Add to that the fact that Western aliyah is almost completely religious, and you get the current situation.

The current state of affairs is that 10% of Israeli Jews are ultra-Orthodox (hareidi in Hebrew), 21% are Modern Orthodox (dati-leumi), 40% are traditional (masorti), and 29% are secular (hiloni). It used to be that surveys would lump the last two categories together, but in the last 5-odd years the sociologists wizened up to the fact that there are several million Israeli Jews who observe enough mitzvot to qualify as more than secular. Specifically, observance of kashrut, some observance of Shabbat, periodic synagogue attendance, strong personal belief in G-d, and traditional observance of the holidays would allow someone to be classifed as masorti. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is a good place to look at some research, and I am sure those interested can find other sources. Just beware that online encyclopedias and general-Jewish-info sites are generally are poorly researched and hardly ever get updated. Think tanks and universities are more reliable.

As much as the secular establishment, with its control of the school system and of the media, tries to make Israelis more secular, more cosmopolitan, more American and more consumer/Hollywood obsessed, the reality is very different. Aside from Tel-Aviv and it's northern and western suburbs, everywhere else the true secularists are a minority. I wouldn't be surprised if the Soviet aliyah, which is almost entirely secular, starts to become more religious. Since they are already right-wing nationalists, it's just a natural step to send their kids to government-religious schools. In fact, I knew some families who are doing just that. These schools are completely public, but they have a lot of religious content and are run in a more traditional, old-fashioned way. This is appealing for parents who want their kids to learn and to grow up being proud of their identity. Even though only 31% of the Israeli Jews define themselves as religious, as of the 2005-2006 school year 51% of Israeli Jewish first graders are attending religious schools. This isn't just birthrate differences. A lot of Russian and Mizrahi parents are choosing to give their kids a more religion-based education.

B'sach ha'kol, in sum, secularism is receding and religion is growing.

Firstly, a quick recovery to a friend's sister who was injured skydiving. She'll be fine, but I'll still throw a prayer in for her.

Last week, two people passed on. A friend of my family died of old age. He sponsored my family to immigrate to the US. Basically, at the time we immigrated one had to have a guarantor in the US. Either a Jewish community or an individual willing to vouch for the immigrant family. So this fellow, who used to work in the Soviet foreign ministry and absconded with his family to the US in the early 1970's, was the sponsor that allowed my family to go through the US immigration bureacracy much smoother than if we had gone through a Jewish community. He passed away in New York, and my parents attended funeral on Friday.

I also attended a funeral here on Sunday. My uncles mother-in-law, R., passed away of old age and was buried in the Jerusalem hills. She comes from a big Zionist family in the USSR, and her parents were the original early 20th century Zionists, but they never made it to Israel. They had to go underground, as Stalin ended shooting Zionist activists in the 1930's. Political persecution, camps, jail, the works. She came to Israel in the 1970's. Her daughter married my uncle, who also comes from one of the early Zionist families - my own. By "early Zionist" I mean that they were involved in spreading Zionist ideas before and after the Russian Revolution, until Stalin cracked down on their activities. They hobnobbed with Chaim Weizmann and Ben-Gurion. At the time, the Zionist movement was really small, it was concentrated in the Western Ukraine/Easter Poland so everyone knew the leaders personally. My maternal grandmother was a little girl when Chaim Weizmann stayed at her mother's house for a Zionist meeting in 1920. In the 1930's my grandmother taught in the same school as Weizmann's sister. Of those early Zionists, the ones who made it to Israel became the founders of the state and set up all of the original institutions. May all the family and friends be comforted. People should only know the sorrow of a natural passing.

With regard to my own little life, my dad is coming next week for two weeks. We'll do some travelling, be touristy and discuss politics.

Twice a week I go to the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University. The Mt. Scopus campus is the one with the humanities faculties, the Givat Ram, located next to Gan Sachr and all the government buildings, is the one with all the technical faculties. Bus #24 can be hopped on Emek Rafaim, that really nice street with all the stuff to do in my area. The bus's route takes me through some of the richest areas of Jerusalem, including Talbiyeh, which is where all the top politicians have homes. After getting out of Talbiyeh the bus turns into the government/park area. There's a Greek Orthodox church there, and then you have a massive park, fairly wild, that's basically a massive hill with the top being rather flat. On top of this hill are all the buildings of the various ministries, as well as the Supreme Court and the Knesset. So I get the tour, then the bus pull into Givat Ram, which is on the same hill, but higher up. Off the bus, I enter the campus. Guard, bag searched, of course. A little walk on the campus, which is beautiful by the way, and I am in the stadium. The Givat Ram stadium is proper, Olympic-size with a great track, with a green field in the middle with that really well-maintained, professional grass for athletics. Aside from two weekly runs in the streets, I've started to go to Givat Ram to do some measured track running. There are lots of serious runners there, but always a bunch of slackers like me. There also some girls there that are on the track team who put me to shame. Most of the real athletes there are Ruskies. If it wasn't for the aliyah from the former USSR, Israeli sport would still be useless. But now it is on quite a high level, competing internationally and doing really well, randomly, in Judo. The other sports aren't quite winning medals yet, but they've come a long way. Division I level is already present, it's just a matter of political will to take the top athletes to the next level. It really depends on the money at this point.

On the way back today, I bought some Yotvata Choko - chocolate milk, and some quality bread to go with my tub of hummus. I practically drown myself in hummus at least twice a day. Since it needs to be eaten with bread, this is probably why I am not sporting a six-pack yet. A little will power would help, but if you fall in love with hummus, it's difficult to go on a break. I can explain to the hummus that I need a some time off, that I need to check out some other foods. After all, if I really love the hummus, I'll come back running back eventually. But the hummus is just so smooth and creamy... it'll pretend like it's listening, but then it'll just seduce me into scooping up a large glob, and the taste will overpower all my senses. I'll have to summon more than just simple human courage to push the hummus away.

On a religious note, I am breaking Shabbat right now by typing about 20 minutes after sunset. So I have to go.

Went to the beach yesterday in Tel-Aviv. It required getting out of class a bit early, around noon. We were on the beach by 2pm, and enjoyed a nice, if not warm, day. It's still chilly, and definitely not swimming weather, but the beach is still a great place to lay around. Probably in about a month I'll be swimming. Israelis generally don't swim until May, but I am a bit of a pioneer when it comes to cold water. I even walked into the water up to my knees yesterday. How brave of me. There were a couple of kite-surfers. These are people on small surf boards who use 'kites', actually small parachutes, to catch wind. This allows them to surf at great speeds and to do all sorts of jumps and flips. Very impressive. After some shesh-besh, I forget what it's called in English but it's a great board game with dice and checkers moving around to form columns. You know what I mean. Anyways, we ate at Yotvata B'Ir. Yotvata is a kibbutz in the Arava Valley, which is in the south of Israel bordering Jordan. They make incredible milk products that are sold all over Israel. At some point very recently the kibbutzniks had a great idea that they should open, or at least franchise out, Yotvata restaurants all over Israel. The restaurants are halavi, meaning they have milk products and whatever else as long as it's not meat. The food is delicious if pricey. So far, there's one on the beach in Tel-Aviv and one in Jerusalem, and I think there's one in Rehovot.

The best way to get from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv is to get to Kikar Zion, and catch a mekhonit sherut. From there. These are taxi-vans which fit ten passengers. They have routes, more or less, but you have to figure it out with the driver before you get on. Once the sherut is full, everyone pays 20 shekels and just over an hour later you're in Tel-Aviv. Brilliant. It brought us to the Takhana Merkazit, which is South Tel-Aviv. It's pretty sketchy, as most of South Tel-Aviv is now full of random foreign workers and all sorts of wonders of big city cosmopolitanism. As Tel-Aviv grows, the good comes with the bad. But most of the sketchiness is Philipinos and Romanians, generally I just feel bad for them. They work their asses off for low pay and have to live in sketchy areas. This is a fact in all large western cities, some people think it's colorful, I think it sucks. But the rest of Tel-Aviv is either hip, artsy or luxurious. Quite a nice place to live if you're secular or don't mind the predominance of the secular lifestyle.

A separate paragraph for the Israeli girls. You know there's a Kadosh Barukhu when you see lots of Israeli girls in one place. Easily half of them are so shockingly attractive you think you're on drugs and imagining things. The other half is still far better than anything I've see in the US. There are homely ones as well, but they are in the minority. I usually don't react to things, but my jaw literally dropped several times. This goes for all you girls out there as well. The guys are probably even more impressive than the girls. I should probably keep away from the beach if I want to keep my shomer negia streak going strong.

So around 8pm we made our way back to Jerusalem, again via sherut. Most have screens that display news, they are in Hebrew, but my language skills are getting good enough to deal with the news more or less. As you know, there have been several terrorist attacks in the past few days. There have also been published interviews with heads of terrorist groups, world net news daily mostly, wherein the terror leaders explicitly state that they are planning the 3rd intifada and that it will be in greater scope than the previous too. We recall the first intifada was in the late 80's, the second one started in October of 2000 and theoretically ended last year as a result of the building of the security barrier and IDF action. Round 3 is scheduled to begin soon, probably after Hamas solidifies its hold over all the functions of public life and all the streams of money previously controlled by the PLO. Once the new terror masters are in place, they'll have another go at us. I can only hope that the Israeli government responds in a much more brutal manner than in the past. The Arabs understand only the stick, not the carrot.

Thursday evening of last week I went up to Midgal Ha'Emek. It's a small town in the north of Israel, very quiet, fresh air and very green. I took the bus from Jerusalem's Takhana Merkazit (Central Station) to Hof Ha'Carmel, a station in Haifa. Unfortunately, the only train in Israel is the north-south one that runs along the coast, so inter-city buses are still the only options for the car-less. I like hyphens. The buses in Israel are quite Israeli. That means that getting information on which bus to take to what destination and what gate it leaves from involves getting a dirty look from the information booth employee. Getting the ticket means waiting in a disorganized line. Getting on the bus means jockeying for position in what cannot be in good faith called a line. But my patience levels have increased to some new highs in the two months I've been here, so I hardly notice these inconveniences. There was traffic out of Jerusalem, as expected on Yom Hamishi (Fifth Day=Thursday), and the bus driver was playing Galatz, one of the two IDF radio stations. They throw in American songs once in a while, but three quarters of the time it's Israeli music, which is simply the bomb. Speaking of bombs, there are metal detectors in the entrance to the bus station, and all bags get searched. This requires some patience, but I've already switched my mentality over from the one I had in NY. In fact, the switch happened way before I got to Israel. It happened almost a year ago. I was still employed at Jewish-last-name-A, Jewish-last-name-B & Jewish-last-name-C LLP. They paid well, but it wasn't my cup of tea to say the least. A tangent off a tangent, as I write this I am listening to Subliminal. If you ever learn Hebrew, and you know who you are, you'll appreciate his lyrics on a higher level than that attained from those weak translations I attempted.

Law firms are a great place to work for many pseudo-intelligent types with liberal arts degrees. But by February 2005 I already knew where I was headed and more or less when. And I started to switch to a calmer, more Biblical view of life. That has only continued since I've actually gotten here. Not that there's no room for emotional swings or for specific, aggressive action when necessary. There most definitely is. But most of the time, the approach to life is more laid back. "Laid back" is an expression misused on dating sites and by people trying to sound like they're somehow more relaxed than the next guy. Well, in Israel, being "laid back" is quite a pure concept, in all its Mediterranean-ness. It doesn't mean you're a chilled out stoner hanging out on a beach in Cali, although it may for some people. Laid back means you take most of life at a moderate pace and try not to worry about, well, anything. You make your little niche and you do what you need to without getting stressed. If you decide to spend energy on worrying about the bigger picture, there are more important things to worry about than work, school, careers, bureacracy, money. Those things exist here as everywhere, people just don't have involved conversations about those topics, they're just more of a background to what is actually going on. What is, in fact going on in people lives here? What do they talk about, think about, worry about, dream about? What occupies their thoughts if not what most 'normal' people would consider the stuff of life?

Family, friends, enjoying doing things like going out, walking around, taking trips, going to the beach, eating. All these things are really enjoyable here for some inexplicable reason. Well, there are reasons, but it sounds post-modern to say something is inexplicable and incomprehensible. And since I was raised and educated in an empty, post-modern society, I still write accordingly. Then there's the conflict, which is happening just a few miles from where I am currently located. Despite what the public hears from the media, there's actually a lot going on. Not a random incident once a week or once every few days. Not even close. Every night there are fun activities going on. Living so close to those areas doesn't mean that I see or hear anything. A mile in Israel is like 500 miles in the US. But there are regular people who lead what is basically a double life. These are the active duty soldiers of the IDF and the reservists. Despite the fact that recruitment levels are currently at 82% of males and 62% females, that still means that virtually all Israeli guys you would get to know and most women have or are currently serving. Guys also have to do reserve duty for up to a month per year every year until age 42. It's a small country so when people serve they go back into the civilian world on weekends. Two thirds of guys serve in combat or combat support positions. These people are leading double lives. One moment they are crawling in sand and crouching behind rocks and getting shot at. The next, we're watching a movie or eating hummus in some restaurant. Moment after that, they are hiding in a hole, covered with dirt, for 48 hours eating canned cr@p, waiting to spring an ambush. Next scene - they're eating with family for Shabbat. And it goes on like this... I think it's a lot to ask people, even young motivated ones, to put up with that kind of life. But, like Israelis say "ein brirah" - there's no choice.

Back to me on the bus to Haifa. I eventually get to the Grand Kanyon, a mall, in Haifa where I visit with a family friend, G, who owns a store there. We discuss importing leather products from Turkey and Italy and my presence attracts some Russian-speaking female clientele. They don't buy anything, but one of them attempts to explain to me something about her friend ... blah ... blah... usual female bs when they don't know what to say to get you to ask for their number. People just don't stop. On the other hand, if it wasn't for the Russian girls, I don't know how the Israeli guys would keep their sanity. Israeli girls aren't exactly lining up for casual sex. Anyways, I am shomer negia, so these things bear little relevance to me.

We wait for G's kids to show up. One of them is in the army, and is not the same since I saw him three years ago. Still looks the same, just moves differently and smiles less often. We drive to Migdal Ha'Emek. There are two days of quality family time, amazing food, Olympic figure skating and some discussions about the topics above. They are all voting for the Ihud Leumi/Mafdal block, that's a serious right wing party. Arabs are the enemy, not the neighbor. The land is ours and the international community with their whining and Arab-pandering can shove it. Let them play their liberal tolerance games with their internal Arabs for now, in 10 years they'll reap a harvest of blood and will probably just ask themselves "what did we do to deserve this?" But we, here in Israel, can't cuddle the enemy. Squeeze them until they kneel and beg for mercy. Then mete out justice to all who deserve it and deal with the rest in the manner most suitable to our needs and no one else's. They're basically right. The basic human goodness assumed by bleeding heart liberals is simply not applicable in this part of the world.

I take the bus back to Jerusalem on motzei Shabbat, Saturday night. Some homework, a bit of Spanish conversation with South Americans in an altered state of mind, and sleep.