Images and Words: A visit to Israel.

[joshua0]

From May 18th to May 29th, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Israel as part of an program called Taglit-Birthright. Over these 11-ish days (of which 2 were really eaten up by an airplane), I visited 12 cities, spent 5 days with Israeli soldiers, ate infinity shawarmas, and shot 878 photos (after removing excessive duplicates, it drops down to about 580). Over the four posts that comprise my travelogue will be thoughts, memories, and mostly pictures from my visit; although I am no professional writer, with luck I'll be able to convey *some* of the experience! I hope that you all enjoy reading these posts as much as I enjoyed assembling them.

We flew out on SwissAir (which they alternately stylize as 'swiss' or 'SWISS_'; presumably the underscore is silent) by way of Zurich. Now, I know someone who has lived in Zurich and thought it to be a wretched place, terrible to live in, etc, etc, but... well... (1024x768, 3648x2736) ...in the words of Samuel L. Jackson, well, allow me to retort. From looking out the window, they sure did a good job of making it look like a nice place! The SwissAir guys also did a decent job of making sure that people were entertained on their flights... well, at least I was entertained -- (1024x768, 3648x2736) I would say "I crashed the plane!", but I am sure that would get me a visit from someone I do not want a visit from, so I won't say that. At least when we arrived, my tour bus had a professionally attached sign. (1024x768, 3648x2736) Shortly after we arrived, we went to visit some random piece of art that was in memory of something or other. I can't remember what, but that's sort of the point -- you can't walk 20 paces in Israel without seeing a piece of art in memory of shit that went down. (1024x768, 3648x2736) As I recall, this was off Highway 1, which is the main road connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Also along Highway 1 are stripped-out shells of vehicles that were presumably fired upon at some point; another recurring theme throughout Israel was the idea that "this was a place of conflict". (1024x768, 3648x2736) But speaking of recurring themes, I should probably introduce you to another of the cast of characters. This guy is a real Nimrod. No, like, his name is Nimrod (pronounced: "NEEM-road"). For the obvious reasons, he goes by "Nemo" in English! I'll talk about this in a later post, but I think that Nimrod did probably the best job of anyone on the trip of presenting a balanced look into the conflicts in Israel; for that, I am incredibly grateful. (1024x768, 3648x2736) Something unexpected is that almost everything in Israel is trilingual. Shopkeepers, for instance, all speak at least Hebrew and English, and I'd be very surprised if they didn't also speak Arabic. Road signs are all in three languages. Even warning signs are trilingual. (1024x768, 3648x2736) Fast food, although usually bilingual in signage, is the same all over Israel, and is incredibly common, and is incredibly delicious, and is probably not even all that bad for you -- if you get shawarma, it is all cooked fresh in front of you, and if you get falafel, then, well, it is falafel! You'll also get the freshest hummus you can imagine in your sandwich. It is incredibly pervasive; in any city, you can't really walk two blocks without seeing a hole in the wall with someone like this guy inside it: (1024x768, 3648x2736) Imagine, for instance, that you are in Jerusalem -- the holy city -- at, say, 9PM on Saturday. That means that Shabbat -- the holy day of the week, the day of rest -- has just ended. What do you expect to be around you? Well, probably what you didn't expect is thumping music, a swarming crowd, a room with a single entrance to a street, with people pressing in one direction... and probably even more unexpected is what they're after. (Hint: It's in the picture above.) That's how pervasive this stuff is. It's like the national friggin' food of Israel. Now, in Israel, nothing goes without a tax; on shawarma, it is enforced by these guys: (1024x768, 3648x2736) These guys are everywhere. Cats are sort of a fact of life in Israel; they have their run of the cities, especially where there are tourists around who feed them. The British brought them in many years ago, when there was a major rodent problem -- now, instead of a rodent problem, there is a cat problem. I didn't mind. Changing gears somewhat, if you are traveling through Israel, any good tour guide will focus on the history of the place, and the surprising amounts of diversity throughout. You might be surprised at the idea of 'diversity'; after all, isn't Israel full of heterogeneous Jews? Well, there is an old saying -- if you ask ten Jews a question, then more likely than anything else, you'll get eleven answers. In addition to the diversity of opinion, it turns out that there are many different backgrounds of immigrants to Israel; chief among them, however, are the Ashkenazi (i.e., those who descended from most of Europe), and the Sefardi (i.e., those who descended from Spain, Morocco, or Algeria). (That is a gross simplification, but for these purposes, it'll have to do.) (1024x768, 3648x2736) The relevant history of Israel goes back farther than the relevant history of most countries of Europe. Consider, for instance, the city of Tzfat (pictured above); for some perspective, Tzfat was founded somewhere in the Canaanite age (i.e., 300 AD-ish). Tzfat has an incredibly wide variety of people, from the totally secular to the men and women who live their life expecting the Messiah to come every day. (These people are referred to as "Hasidic"; someone commented to me that that must be a life of eternal letdowns, but in reality, for these people, they are living in eternal hope!) (1024x768, 3648x2736) Tzfat is a center for Jewish art and mysticism. Many buildings in Tzfat, especially in the old parts, are painted blue and white. Is this an early form of Zionism? No; the legend goes that during a particularly bad plague, some random old lady showed up and told the people of Tzfat that the Angel of Death had come to Tzfat, but he could be confused into thinking he was in the middle of the sea by painting the city blue and white. Apparently, it worked, and the plague stopped, so the residents of Tzfat decided to keep to place that color. This seems like it is part of a larger mysticism about Tzfat, which is home to the Jewish concept of "kabbalah". Kabbalah is just really applied gematria; the idea that numbers have intrinsic value, and that letters and words have mappings to these numbers. If you put numbers together in the right way, according to adherents, then you can come up with important conclusions. Crack, I know. (1024x768, 3648x2736) The Judea Desert would make for an awesome rally course. (1024x768, 3648x2736) It also has lots of friendly things in it, if you go a little ways off the road. Camels aren't the only things that have been there for ages that coexist peacefully with Israelis, though; for instance, the Bedouin have been chilling there for probably thousands of years, and everybody in that relationship seems more or less happy. (1024x768, 3648x2736) The Bedouin tribes are based on this incredibly close connection based on a system of honor and trust. As far as I can tell, these guys really hold no ill will towards anyone -- they just do their own thing, nobody bothers them, and they don't really bother anyone. Wouldn't it be nice if the rest of Israel were that chill? (1024x768, 3648x2736) No discussion of Israel would be complete, really, without mention of the army; or, by their name, the IDF. Army service in Israel is compulsory; you graduate high school, and immediately after, bam, you're in the army. If you wish to go, college comes after the army; otherwise, there is no shortage of jobs for security services and the like. Israeli men join the IDF for three years, and women for two; compulsory service has a wide range of positions, from commanders, to pilots, to foot-soldiers. The guys in the photo above were spotted on the hike up Masada -- a mountain nearby the Dead Sea where, unsurprisingly, some people didn't like the Jews that were there at some point in history. (In this case, it was the Romans, but this is rather a theme, isn't it?) These soldiers have just hiked about 30 miles through the desert over the course of the evening, but they are still absolutely ecstatic. Why? Well, this is the ceremony commemorating the end of boot camp for them! They just hiked through the desert to say "the worst is over". This is their crowning moment -- now, they're all Real Soldiers. We congratulated them as we hiked by. (1024x768, 3648x2736) It sounds shocking to many people when I say "during our trip, soldiers came to stay with us for five days" -- soldiers??? Yes, soldiers, but here's the thing to remember -- these men and women were our peers! They liked the same music as we did (Yaki, above, was very jealous when I mentioned I saw Symphony X live); they did the same sort of things that we did; they had the same dreams and goals that we did. (Guy, below, wants to be a vocalist and musician. She is totally cut out for it.) (1024x768, 3648x2736) Meeting the soldiers was a powerful experience. Like American Jews, there was a wide diversity in how religious the soldiers were. Some were completely secular, while others were more observant; Yaki, who stayed with me and my roommate, was somewhat surprised -- and intrigued -- to hear that we didn't keep kosher normally. "What does a cheeseburger taste like? I will never know... but I am curious!" (1024x768, 3648x2736) By the end, we had really bonded with the Israelis. Of course, we all friended each other on Facebook. They bonded with us, too; Yaki, in Hebrew, commented on Facebook: "I can't believe it's over! The nicest week in the Service has come to an end." I think this brings part 1 of my commentary on my trip to a close. I stole the name for this travelogue from Dream Theater's album; although it has absolutely nothing to do with the contents of that album, it sure makes for a fitting name, doesn't it? Surely I have more thoughts about the experience than I can fit into a post -- or even structure into four! -- but hopefully this has given you a taste for what it's like to take a tour of Israel. (1024x768, 3648x2736)

Up next: the beauty of Israel. See you in a few days.

(next: The beauty of Israel.)

Comments

[gregh1983]

Nice pictures and nice commentary! I enjoyed reading through this post.

The language aspect is especially interesting to me. I know people from Israel who speak quite good English (and one who speaks Arabic too), but I assumed my sample was pretty biased because these people are all academic researchers dealing with a very anglophone research community. It also wouldn't have surprised me if some people in large cities spoke good English -- since that seems to be the case so often elsewhere -- but everyone and everything being at least bilingual is pretty amazing!

(Aside: Do you speak much Hebrew, or were you interacting with people all in English?)

[joshua0]

So, I guess my samples were a bit biased. But, I really do think that most people at least speak a little English, and probably the vast majority speak at least either Hebrew & English or Hebrew & Arabic.

I speak about three phrases of Hebrew; the vast majority of my interactions were in English.

[gregh1983]

Everyone's figured out bilingualism, it seems, except for the United States!

[bubblingbeebles.livejournal.com]

Great post. I'm looking forward to the rest.

[joshua0]

Thanks! This one took me far too long to write; luckily, the next one will be mostly pictures, so it shouldn't take quite as long.

[hvincent.livejournal.com]

the only opinions and thoughts i have about israel are based on things i see in the media, and people talking about their birthright trips; i don't see enough of the latter, so it is nice to see yours :)

[joshua0]

I tried to keep opinions out of this post, so far. The third and fourth parts of the series will probably have more opinionated content.

[sageofminerva]

I flipped through most of your photos on facebook but I like to hear the stories behind them all. Keep it up!

[joshua0]

Thanks! I've three more on the way, I think.

[dreaminventor.livejournal.com]

Cat Infestation: was a purrrrfect problem.

This looks like it was an incredible journey for you in many ways :) These pictures are fantastic and I can't wait to see more.