Last time I checked in was nearly a week ago, and a lot has happened since then. This post is really long, but there are a lot of visual aids, so hopefully you'll be able to get through it.
Instead of going away last Shabbat, I stayed in Jerusalem. There were fewer than 20 Nativ kids on base, so it was very quiet and very relaxing. Friday night after dinner, I played a rousing game of Settlers of Catan with a few friends. It was among the most entertaining and nerdy things I had done in a while, and we all really enjoyed it. The next morning, a friend and I woke up and decided to go to shul in the rain. I wore my tie-dyed rain boots and had a field day walking along the streets of Jerusalem stomping in every puddle--until it completely cleared up, every puddle dried up, and I was wearing ridiculous looking rain boots in the beautiful sunshine. We went to Kedem, an egalitarian conservative minyan made up of mostly rabbinical students and various people who are in Israel for the year. It was quite nice. That afternoon, my friends and I played another game of Settlers, and then Shabbat was over (since it gets dark at roughly 5 in the evening if not sooner).
Saturday night I went to a Carlebach memorial concert, and it was among the most interesting people watching experiences I've ever had. For those of you who don't know who Carlebach is, he is a Rabbi from the US who wrote thousands of tunes that synagogues all over the world use today. He deeply inspired the spirituality of the Chareidi and Ultra Orthodox communities, so naturally, at this concert, there were TONS of really religious people. However, at least 75% of them were American or immigrants from America, so everything that was said on stage was said in both English and Hebrew. The concert consisted of a bunch of different bands each coming on to play a song or two written by Carlebach with some video clips and speeches scattered between them. The biggest band that played (and they played a few songs through out the night) was conducted by a really well known musician named Yehuda Katz. The name becomes relevant in a bit.
One interesting moment occurred when a band played a very upbeat song that people wanted to dance to. As we were in a large convention center (interestingly, the same one as I saw Idan Raichel in the weekend prior), there wasn't a dance floor or anywhere where people could dance in big crowds, but would that stop ultra orthodox men: NEVER! The men clogged up one of the side aisles and started dancing up a storm. I asked myself where the women were dancing, and I was disguised to realize that the women were dancing in a small room to the side of the main theater. I understand if they want to dance separately, but I was pretty shocked that they couldn't even stay in the room. Having said that, the night was overall a blast.
I spent my Sunday going to class and then writing the paper that I had been procrastinating doing for the entire week prior. It was a very interesting day because the topic of the paper was interesting, but to say the least, it was not my most exciting Halloween. After I was done with my paper, I didn't even go out and celebrate the holiday (which doesn't exist in Israel) since it wasn't Halloween anymore and the printer was broken.
Monday, during my hebrew class, my teacher mentioned that there would be a rally that night at Hebrew U becuase of a law passed by the Israeli government giving more money to the Chareidi (ultra ultra-orthodox Israelis) for their Yeshivas (religious schools). The students studying in the universities were arguing that the people who only study religious subjects, don't go to the army, and don't pay taxes shouldn't be paid to go to school while students that study in secular universities have to pay for school, serve in the army, etc. Then I heard that the rally was actually happening outside of the Prime Minister's house. AKA, the rally was happening on the street outside my window.
When I got home from school on Monday evening, I heard quite a bit of noise coming from across the street. I ran upstairs to look out my window, and this is what I saw.
As we stayed by the window, we watched the crowd grow faster and faster, so we decided we had to join the party. Some friends and I walked down the stairs and headed onto the street and yelled along with the Israelis a lovely message. The only one that I could yell with them (meaning that I could understated translates to the following: "Bibi, Bibi (referring to Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu), good morning. The students are in the street." It's a pretty dumb sounding chant, but in Hebrew, it rhymes and sounds really epic with thousands of people screaming it together.
After some time down at the protest, I came back up to my room and took a final picture before leaving for our first football game. It was one crazy scene.
Nothing exciting happened on Tuesday, but today, Wednesday, was an incredible day.
I always love my Wednesdays because I only have two classes (my two favorite ones), and I have a four hour break in between. Today had two extra special components that made it incredible though. Between my two classes, a friend who also has that break and I decided to go to the Old City to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre since neither of us had yet had a chance to attack it with a camera. We walked down to the old city and meandered our way through the Armenian Quarter to get to the church. We got pretty lost, but we wound up in non-tourist shopping areas seeing some pretty cool things incuding children's books in Arabic.
We got to the church and went in. We spent almost an hour there. I'm not going to go into any of the history of the place, but I will show you a few cool pictures (as I promised I would about a month and a half ago).
After the Church, I had an opportunity to go to a workshop taught by Yehuda Katz, a very famous musician in Israel who was the guy on stage during the Carlebach concert. He was your typical hippie spiritual orthodox Jew wielding a beautiful Taylor acoustic guitar as his weapon. After 45 minutes of us introducing ourselves and telling him why we were in Israel (and him asking us brutally hard questions to make us really think about our answers), he played us a song. It was beautiful, but it was nothing compared to what we did in the next activity.
He wrote a passage from the bible on the board, and told us that we would be writing lyrics to interpret this verse. I was like a kid in the candy store. While some kids chose to write in Hebrew and some chose to write in groups, I chose to write by myself. At the end, we all presented our songs, and I was very proud to present a song that I had written in 10 minutes that was legitimately heartfelt. It was the most unique songwriting experience I've ever had, but I very much enjoyed it.
He asked us for our lyrics sheets so he could look at them and thanked us for coming, but a few of us stayed afterward to ask him some questions. After giving us wise answers to all of them, he gave us his phone number and email address and told us to contact him for anything. He then told me that he'd be more than willing to host us for Shabbat dinners, study with us or play music with us. It was a truly magical experience.
Now I'm going to bed, but I'm sure i'll check in later. Thanks for reading this really long post!
Becca
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