"They say that travel broadens the mind, 'til you can't get your head out of doors"
-Elvis Costello, "God's Comic"
Slavoj Zizek says that even if you meet a greedy Jew, you're still prejudiced if you think Jews are greedy. Of course, we could turn that around and also come up with a true statement: even if you're not prejudiced, you might meet a greedy Jew.
Why am I beginning with this? Because when I talk about my trip to Israel, I might talk about pre- and mis-conceptions, which have been clarified, abolished or nuanced by travel. Isn't that what travel is good for? For instance, have you heard that "French people are rude"? Never, in all my time in France, have I discovered any particular rudeness in the people there. When I walk into a store in France, the shopkeeper smiles and says "hello," and says "goodbye" when I leave, having bought nothing. When I walked into a restaurant in Paris (Thuy Long, a small Vietnamese place that was very good) and there was only one other customer there, that customer said hello to me. In fact, I might have been staring somewhat rudely at what she was eating, but she still was quite cordial in her "hello." (You might think that French might be a difficult language for me to detect sarcasm in, since French is not my native language, but then you'd be forgetting: Sarcasm is my native language.) Or at the bakery Poilane, when I stumblingly asked a baker/saleswoman what something was, she very clearly told me, and it was clear that she was speaking clearly for my benefit. So, are the French rude? Not at all! Do they have a different sense of personal hygiene? God, yes!
Unlike my trip to France, my trip to Israel was completely new and completely particular to Israel: my sister and her girlfriend had a plan of the things that one has to do on a first trip to Israel, and we did quite a few of them (even though they've done them many times before, both on other trips, during a scouting trip before my parents came over, and then with my parents -- so I think they were getting a little tired of touring around). So, what did I end up doing?
Here are 8 pictures--I'll update with more when I get some more time.
Sunday: arrive in Tel Aviv (the most beautiful airport I've ever seen, all modern and done up to look like old stone, with a nice food court, and a waterfall in the center of the waiting area), take shared "nesher" taxi to Jerusalem, and walk in the Old City of Jerusalem (observation 1: sure, there's lots of light-skinned people, but except for contextual clues, many Arabs and Jews are phenotypically similar, i.e., in America, they might get stopped because of how dark-skinned/olive-complected they are. observation 2: the line between the Christian and the Muslim quarter is invisible because they're both Arab groups), see one cousin. [Picture 1, "pillars in the Cardo," remnants of the old Roman central road; Picture 2, "golden menorah," a menorah fit to be kindled in the temple, built by people who await it; Picture 3, "I arrive in Israel," taken at a park]
Monday: go to Israel Museum, see Dead Sea Scrolls, see other cousin.
Tuesday: road trip up the Mediterranean to Haifa, observed a two-minute silence commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day -- we were on the road, and all the cars pulled over to the side, and we all got out. Curiously, a group of young Israeli Arabs who weren't on the road honked their horn, and when we drove away, my sister gave them the finger. We see the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa, and the Crusader ruins in Akko (Acre).
Wednesday: am horribly sick -- that will teach me to eat without asking. My parents leave for home.
Thursday: road trip to Caesarea (old port city, grandly constructed by Herod), and hike in the north around Monfort (a destroyed Crusader castle). I was still a little sick, but the hike was great, and the ruins at Monfort were really fun. Night in small coast town of Nahariya -- which, like many coast towns, seems like an equal mix of tourism-oriented industries and beach bums. Sleep disrupted by lots of yelling in the night; something peculiar about the repeated phrase "you fucking dummy" made me wonder about the sanity of the yeller.
Friday: road trip back to Jerusalem, with stops at:
Sunday: a long day in the Old City of Jerusalem, looking at some old ruins (observation 4: there are too many ruins there -- seriously, if you dig, you'll want to preserve the ruins that you're uncovering, but if you dig deeper, you'll get older ruins, so what do you do? Or how about this: the Muslim rulers at one time walled up one of the gates in the Walls -- the story is that they did so because the story was that the Jewish Messiah would come through that gate -- which means that something of historical interest is blocked up by something else of historical interest); walked the Via Dolorosa, saw the Dome of the Rock, and the Western Wall (observation 5, walking up to the Western Wall, I think to myself "this is it, this is the remnant of the temple, the one destination for Jewish pilgrimage" and I begin to get a little choked up, and I go up to the wall, where I think to myself "I don't get it"), and end up walking through the market several times [Picture 8, "spice tower"], and then under the Muslim quarter to see more remnants of the Temple walls. (Observation 6: so, there's a bunch of ruins where the story is, Herod/The Ottomans/The Mamluks/The Crusaders came in, and raised the level of the ground before building their buildings, which is why the castle at Akko was full of dirt at one time, or why you have to go under the Muslim quarter in Jerusalem in order to reach Biblical street level. For me, this raises the question: who comes into a city, and says, "Gosh, what a lovely place -- now, if it were only 12 feet higher..."?)
Early Monday morning: stay up and go to airport, beginning 22 hours of travel from my sister's Jerusalem apartment to my Monday-morning arrival at my Chicago apartment. Hilariously (and remember, I've been up all day, so everything is hilarious to me), my visit to Israel ends with several security and passport checks. Security guard 1 asks me what I did, why I came -- the sort of regular questions I got when I came in. He then goes on to ask if I speak Hebrew, if I go to services ever, what congregation I belong to. Now, I know he's waiting for me to trip up and reveal something, but all I can think is "I don't need this guilt from you." Then, when I go through the passport check, the woman looks at my stamp from Akhzibland, and says "I don't recognize this," and so I launch into the story of Eli Avivi and his unrecognized country; she says, "and you let him do this to your passport?" and rolls her eyes in such a way that I know she doesn't expect an answer.
Or, for another pov on the trip, here's my sister and Kelli's blog, and you can see some more of our pictures: go to www.clubphoto.com, and: "where it says "enter friend's email," type sarandkel at yahoo dot com (with the actual punctuation).."
Slavoj Zizek says that even if you meet a greedy Jew, you're still prejudiced if you think Jews are greedy. Of course, we could turn that around and also come up with a true statement: even if you're not prejudiced, you might meet a greedy Jew.
Why am I beginning with this? Because when I talk about my trip to Israel, I might talk about pre- and mis-conceptions, which have been clarified, abolished or nuanced by travel. Isn't that what travel is good for? For instance, have you heard that "French people are rude"? Never, in all my time in France, have I discovered any particular rudeness in the people there. When I walk into a store in France, the shopkeeper smiles and says "hello," and says "goodbye" when I leave, having bought nothing. When I walked into a restaurant in Paris (Thuy Long, a small Vietnamese place that was very good) and there was only one other customer there, that customer said hello to me. In fact, I might have been staring somewhat rudely at what she was eating, but she still was quite cordial in her "hello." (You might think that French might be a difficult language for me to detect sarcasm in, since French is not my native language, but then you'd be forgetting: Sarcasm is my native language.) Or at the bakery Poilane, when I stumblingly asked a baker/saleswoman what something was, she very clearly told me, and it was clear that she was speaking clearly for my benefit. So, are the French rude? Not at all! Do they have a different sense of personal hygiene? God, yes!
Unlike my trip to France, my trip to Israel was completely new and completely particular to Israel: my sister and her girlfriend had a plan of the things that one has to do on a first trip to Israel, and we did quite a few of them (even though they've done them many times before, both on other trips, during a scouting trip before my parents came over, and then with my parents -- so I think they were getting a little tired of touring around). So, what did I end up doing?
Here are 8 pictures--I'll update with more when I get some more time.
Sunday: arrive in Tel Aviv (the most beautiful airport I've ever seen, all modern and done up to look like old stone, with a nice food court, and a waterfall in the center of the waiting area), take shared "nesher" taxi to Jerusalem, and walk in the Old City of Jerusalem (observation 1: sure, there's lots of light-skinned people, but except for contextual clues, many Arabs and Jews are phenotypically similar, i.e., in America, they might get stopped because of how dark-skinned/olive-complected they are. observation 2: the line between the Christian and the Muslim quarter is invisible because they're both Arab groups), see one cousin. [Picture 1, "pillars in the Cardo," remnants of the old Roman central road; Picture 2, "golden menorah," a menorah fit to be kindled in the temple, built by people who await it; Picture 3, "I arrive in Israel," taken at a park]
Monday: go to Israel Museum, see Dead Sea Scrolls, see other cousin.
Tuesday: road trip up the Mediterranean to Haifa, observed a two-minute silence commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day -- we were on the road, and all the cars pulled over to the side, and we all got out. Curiously, a group of young Israeli Arabs who weren't on the road honked their horn, and when we drove away, my sister gave them the finger. We see the Baha'i Gardens in Haifa, and the Crusader ruins in Akko (Acre).
Wednesday: am horribly sick -- that will teach me to eat without asking. My parents leave for home.
Thursday: road trip to Caesarea (old port city, grandly constructed by Herod), and hike in the north around Monfort (a destroyed Crusader castle). I was still a little sick, but the hike was great, and the ruins at Monfort were really fun. Night in small coast town of Nahariya -- which, like many coast towns, seems like an equal mix of tourism-oriented industries and beach bums. Sleep disrupted by lots of yelling in the night; something peculiar about the repeated phrase "you fucking dummy" made me wonder about the sanity of the yeller.
Friday: road trip back to Jerusalem, with stops at:
- the grottoes of Rosh Ha-Nikra [Picture 4, "picture of picture taking," which records my love of cable cars];
- Eli Avivi's unrecognized private nation of Akhzibland (he stamps our passports, gives us tea, and hitches a ride into town -- he was born in 1930, came to Mandatory Palestine in 1931 from Iran, did 4 years in the Palmach, has been trying to found his own country for 54 years, and married in '64)
- see the Baha'i Gardens near Bustan Galil, and eat lunch in the Druze-dominated town of Daliyat al-Karmel [Picture 5, "we eat druze pita" -- and it's good].
Sunday: a long day in the Old City of Jerusalem, looking at some old ruins (observation 4: there are too many ruins there -- seriously, if you dig, you'll want to preserve the ruins that you're uncovering, but if you dig deeper, you'll get older ruins, so what do you do? Or how about this: the Muslim rulers at one time walled up one of the gates in the Walls -- the story is that they did so because the story was that the Jewish Messiah would come through that gate -- which means that something of historical interest is blocked up by something else of historical interest); walked the Via Dolorosa, saw the Dome of the Rock, and the Western Wall (observation 5, walking up to the Western Wall, I think to myself "this is it, this is the remnant of the temple, the one destination for Jewish pilgrimage" and I begin to get a little choked up, and I go up to the wall, where I think to myself "I don't get it"), and end up walking through the market several times [Picture 8, "spice tower"], and then under the Muslim quarter to see more remnants of the Temple walls. (Observation 6: so, there's a bunch of ruins where the story is, Herod/The Ottomans/The Mamluks/The Crusaders came in, and raised the level of the ground before building their buildings, which is why the castle at Akko was full of dirt at one time, or why you have to go under the Muslim quarter in Jerusalem in order to reach Biblical street level. For me, this raises the question: who comes into a city, and says, "Gosh, what a lovely place -- now, if it were only 12 feet higher..."?)
Early Monday morning: stay up and go to airport, beginning 22 hours of travel from my sister's Jerusalem apartment to my Monday-morning arrival at my Chicago apartment. Hilariously (and remember, I've been up all day, so everything is hilarious to me), my visit to Israel ends with several security and passport checks. Security guard 1 asks me what I did, why I came -- the sort of regular questions I got when I came in. He then goes on to ask if I speak Hebrew, if I go to services ever, what congregation I belong to. Now, I know he's waiting for me to trip up and reveal something, but all I can think is "I don't need this guilt from you." Then, when I go through the passport check, the woman looks at my stamp from Akhzibland, and says "I don't recognize this," and so I launch into the story of Eli Avivi and his unrecognized country; she says, "and you let him do this to your passport?" and rolls her eyes in such a way that I know she doesn't expect an answer.
Or, for another pov on the trip, here's my sister and Kelli's blog, and you can see some more of our pictures: go to www.clubphoto.com, and: "where it says "enter friend's email," type sarandkel at yahoo dot com (with the actual punctuation).."