Jordan Trip Report Part 1: Getting to Amman

Traveling in the Middle East is complicated, to say the least.

I was talking to my brother last week about traveling [he lives in Mozambique] and, while he would definitely win in a competition of general ruggedness [he’s always telling crazy stories about hitching day-long epic rides in chappas full of fish across deserted dirt roads, etc] the Middle East might trump Africa in terms of pure complication. Whereas Mozambique suffers from a general lack of infrastructure, in Israel the complexities are almost entirely political. Unlike in Southern Africa, the buses run on time, they’re relatively clean, taxis have ac, and [to the benefit of foreigners] most drivers even speak English. But despite this well-functioning infrastructure, getting around still takes on a kind of epic quality. Travel, it seems, is not complicated out of necessity, but rather, because of a deliberate effort to make it so.

For example, this weekend I went rock climbing in Jordan. Traveling between Israel and Jordan is relatively easy by Middle East standards; given the peace treaty, it is at least possible to travel legally between the two countries. [This is not the case with Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, where I am now precluded from going because of my Israeli-stamped passport.]

However, when it comes to Middle East border crossings, possible does not mean quick.

As the crow flies, Amman is only 90 km from my place in Sde Boker; however, a slight complication arises from the fact that the West Bank lies between the two locales. The West Bank, I’m beginning to realize, is a bit of a black hole in terms of travel time. There just doesn’t seem to be much correlation between the geographic distance between two places and the time required to get from one to another. This comes from the bizarrely [and intentionally] complex system of check points as well as the fact that there are, effectively, two completely separate road networks in the West Bank, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians.

There are three border crossings between Israel and Jordan. One in the South [near Eilat], one in the North [near Beit She’an], and one in the West Bank [near Jericho]. The Allenby Bridge crossing [in the West Bank] is the only place where Palestinians are permitted to cross, but it is closed to both Israelis and Jordanians. Foreign passport-holders and diplomats are permitted to cross here, but only if they already have both Jordanian and Israeli visas. [It is possible to obtain single-entry Jordanian visas at the other two crossings.]

Because of its associated complexities, the Allenby Bridge has a certain mystique about it, at least from an Israeli perspective. I don’t know how true this is to the reality, but there is definitely a common [Israeli + Jewish] perception that the Allenby Bridge is an uber-complicated mess and general time-suck, requiring many hours of miserable waiting and the possibility of high security detainment and questioning.

Given that I was a] limited to public transportation b] traveling on Friday* and c] subjected to some last minute improvisation when Abo Nehad, the driver for a bus company that offers daily rides direct from Tel Aviv to Amman, informed me that Friday’s ride was cancelled because there weren’t enough people traveling, I opted for the Northern route around the West Bank. I didn’t encounter any problems …there were no hang-ups at the border or difficulties finding the right bus…but, between travel time and waiting time, it took an entire day to get to Amman. I left my place in Sde Boker at 9:30 am and got to my friend Peter’s flat at 7:30 pm, 10 hours later.

*Since public transportation in Israel is under the control of the rabbinate, buses stop running Friday afternoon because of Shabbat. The Allenby Bridge crossing also closes early on Fridays.

It’s possible that this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done to go rock climbing. Then again, Matt and I have driven from Boston to Alabama [19 hrs] just to go bouldering. Regardless, the bottom line is that I don’t have many options other than ridiculous travel if I want to go climbing while I’m here. And besides, I figure it’s good for my climbing karma to demonstrate some hard-core-ness in travel patience. The rock gods will be happy and they will help me send. [Hmm…suddenly that seems like a heretical thing to say, given that I’m in the holy land of the three monotheistic faiths.]

Anyway, I finally made it to Amman Friday night and was instantly amazed by two things: 1] the almost-absurd levels of hospitality / protectiveness of single white female travelers and 2] the experience of Amman at sunset during Ramadan.

1] I met Salam while waiting at the border crossing. She is Jordanian, but now lives in Southern Israel with her husband who is an Israeli-Arab. Since we were both headed to Amman, we shared a taxi there to cut the cost from 28 JD to 14 JD each. Not only did she take care of leading me through the customs process, negotiating a ride to Amman, and making sure that the border officials and taxi drivers knew where I needed to go, but she also gave me her phone number and her sister’s number [so I could call if I needed anything], invited me for dinner with her family, and made me promise to call her when I arrived safely at my destination so she wouldn’t worry.

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The taxi driver who took Salam and I to Amman wasn’t satisfied when I asked him to drop me off at Paris Circle. He wanted to know where I was staying and who was meeting me at the cab. I told him it was fine, that I was meeting my friend [Peter] who lived very close to Paris Circle; I knew how to get to his place and he was waiting for me at his home. The driver didn’t like the sound of this and insisted that I call Peter to check in. When I said I didn’t need to he demanded to see the number and he called Peter himself to tell him to meet me in the Circle at the cab. Peter told him it was fine…that I knew how to get to his house, but this was very upsetting to the driver who insisted that I should be met in person. We compromised, and I agreed to take a second local taxi who could drop me off at Peter’s front door.

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The driver of the cab I took the next morning from Peter’s place in Jebel Lewebde to Naz’s house near the American Embassy refused to drive away until he saw that Naz was, indeed, there and awake and ready to let me into her house. He also gave me his number incase I ever needed a taxi or anything else and refused to tell me what the fare was, insisting that I should only pay what I wanted to pay and if I didn’t want to pay anything or if I didn’t have money, that was fine too. [?!] I guess this strategy worked well because in the end I gave him 2 JD [that’s what Peter told me a fair price would be] plus a 1 JD tip.

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2] During Ramadan Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. This fast includes not only eating, but also drinking water, smoking, chewing gum, having sex, etc. It is, I am told, a time of intense spirituality, self-denial, and reflection. It also has some interesting urban manifestations.

Between about 6 pm and 7:15, the traffic in Amman is insane. First, imagine a city where traffic laws aren’t really obeyed under normal circumstances [i.e. there aren’t really traffic lanes so much as there are just lots of cars trying skillfully not to hit each other.] Now, take that city and fill it with millions of people on the road, delirious from a lack of food and water, all rushing to get home by sunset for Iftar [fast-breaking]. What you get is pure craziness.

However, by about 7:30 there are literally no cars on the road and no people in sight and the city is silent for about a half-hour. I had the good fortune of arriving in Amman just in time for this amazing and eerie metropolitan silence; my [Christian] cab driver was smiling as he sped through town at a somewhat alarming speed. “I like to take advantage of the empty city” he told me “in another few minutes there will be too much traffic to drive this fast.”

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Once I finally made it to Peter’s place we spent a really nice evening wandering around his neighborhood, having a drink at a trendy ex-pat roof-top hang-out, sampling the local falafel [which, I’m sorry to say, does not live up to Israeli standards], catching up, and talking politics.

Religious Graffiti and The Na Nachs

נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן

[English Transliteration: Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman]

Na Nach graffiti at the Tel Aviv bus station.

This is, according to my informal survey, the most common phrase found in graffiti in Israel. A quick Wikipedia search tells us that it is a mantra used by the “Na Nachs,” based on the four Hebrew letters in the name of their movement’s [spiritual] founder, Rabbi Nachman.The mantra [pronounced Nah-nakh-nakhmah-nakhman-meh-oo-mahn] apparently also includes a double entendre: “Meuman” can mean “from Uman” referring to Nachman’s burial place in Uman; it can also mean “believed” or “accredited.”

The Na Nachs are a sect of Hasidic Jews that follow the teachings of Rabbe Yisroel Ber Odesser, whom they believe is a spiritual descendent of Rebbe Nachman, himself. Though small in numbers, they are a visible group, attracting attention by singing and dancing in the streets and blaring “techno-Hasidic” music [I wish I had made this term up, but I didn’t] from the vans they drive. Their self-proclaimed aim is to spread joy…that’s it. As far as I can tell, that’s their whole shtick: chanting their mantra and spreading joy. The mechanism connecting those two aims still remains a bit unclear to me, but it seems harmless enough.

So, why is this interesting?

Well first of all, the phrase is everywhere. Literally everywhere. In fact, the other day I thought it might be interesting to start taking pictures of all the instances I saw of Na Nach graffiti. Turns out someone beat me to it.

Second, it’s weird, right? I mean, where else would you find ubiquitous religious fundamentalist graffiti, roving vans blaring techno-Hasidic music, and men with payot* dancing in the streets…not for any particular reason other than to “spread joy”?

Click here for a YouTube clip of some Na Nachs singing about their Rebbe in the street.

And here is a link to the Na Nach’s site. They are, and I quote, “about real people screaming Na Nach Nachma Nachman meuman!”

*Payot = earlocks / sidecurls / pieces of hair in front of the ear that some Orthodox males wear long because of a biblical injunction against shaving the “corners” of one’s head: “‘You shall not round off the פְּאַ֖ת peya of your head’ (Leviticus 19:27). The word peya was taken to mean the hair in front of the ears extending to beneath the cheekbone, on a level with the nose (Talmud - Makkot 20a).” [Thanks again Wikipedia.]

"News"

I think I mentioned in an earlier blog post something about the challenge of keeping up with the local news in Israel. I have taken to a morning ritual of scanning the NY Times, Ha-aretz, and Al-Jeezera-English sites…to get some semblance of balance.

But, for fun, I’ve also been collecting some of the more…um…memorable Ha-aretz articles. Here are some funny, sad, and sometimes frightening “News” headlines [click on the headlines for links to the original articles].

New campaign targets Jews 'abducted' by intermarriage

Yikes.

Brooklyn bike loan gets Hasids and Hipsters rollin' together

J

If it wasn't bad enough already

“The battered image of Hadassah, the American women's Zionist organization, may be harmed further by the disclosure earlier this month that its former chief financial officer was a mistress to Bernard Madoff - even as she sat on the committee that invested the charity's funds in Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme.”

Oops.

U.S. Jews tell Catholics: We won't accept Christ as savior

No Shit.

The IDF sets its sights on saving the planet

Oh good, the IDF is going green…

Israel aims to colonize Hungary with Jews, says extreme right

“A well known extreme rightist Web site, www.hunhir.hu, is now saying that Israel and American Jews are planning to transport three million Jews with dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship into Hungary over the next two years. “

Really?

Swedish daily hits back at critics of IDF organ harvest story

“A Swedish newspaper provoked outrage in Israel … after it ran a story on transplant organ theft, a report an Israeli official branded anti-Semitic ‘hate porn.’”

What Netanyahu wants from Obama's 'self-hating Jews'

“Who is to blame for the latest dispute with the United States over the new neighborhood going up in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah area? Mayor Nir Barkat? Certainly not. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood behind him? Ridiculous. Any child knows that everything is the fault of other Jews: Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, two American administration officials who are inciting President Barack Obama against their own people.”

I think this paragraph is meant sarcastically, but I’m not sure.

Israel tells El Al: Call it a separation fence, not a wall

“El Al passengers have received maps of Israel marking out a "separation wall" along the West Bank, but the Foreign Ministry has asked the airline to change the classification to "security fence," Haaretz has learned. New maps are to be distributed soon.”

Censorship, much?

Was Michael Jackson a friend of the Jews?

The crucial questions of our time….

Dutch journalist: Flu pandemics are Jewish conspiracy

Clearly not…see below:

Dozens of rabbis fly over Israel praying to defeat swine flu

“Dozens of rabbis and Kabbalah mystics armed with ceremonial trumpets took to the skies over Israel on Monday to battle the swine flu virus, according to local media reports.”

Soccer game or tear gas? Palestinians put controversial ad to test

“The row over a controversial advert for an Israeli mobile phone operator, which shows Israel Defense Forces soldiers playing soccer with Palestinians on both sides of the security barrier, continues…A video recently posted on YouTube has tried to reenact the game in reality, and found that the result could not be further removed from the situation on the ground: when the Palestinians kick the ball to the other side of the fence, what they get in return is a salvo of tear gas grenades.”

For the original add click here.

For the "reality," click here.

An Egyptian minute

Spices for sale on the street, Dahab.

Not only is Egypt a different county, it is also a different time zone.

Now, when I say ‘time zone’ I don’t mean it in the way you’re thinking…I don’t mean it in the GMT sense, where it might be 4:15 in Israel and 5:15 in Egypt, or something of that sort. Instead, I mean that when you enter Egypt from Israel, you are entering a zone where time operates differently. Similar to how you must exchange your Israeli shekels (NIS) for Egyptian pounds (L.E.), traveling to Sinai involves inadvertently exchanging one’s Israeli minutes for Egyptian ones.

Rumor has it that there is a somewhat semi-established exchange rate. Fernando told me -- while we were sitting and waiting at the border crossing in Taba -- that he had heard it was currently around 5 Egyptian minutes for 45 Israeli ones. This figure, in my limited experience, seems to be a reasonable approximation.

Time to travel from Lotan to Dahab: 6.5 hours
Fernando, Bryan and I met in Lotan late Thursday night. I took the bus down earlier in the day, spent the afternoon hanging out and doing some site research, and slept outside under the Bustan’s geodesic dome. Waking up Friday morning as the sun was rising over the Arava was amazing. The whole experience made me wonder why I don’t sleep outside more often…but then I realized that I actually do spend quite a bit of time sleeping outside.

Jennifer in the Bustan, Lotan

Friday morning I met with Alex about the Library project, went to the pool, and grabbed some lunch in the dining hall before Fernando, Bryan, and I headed down South. We left Lotan around 3, after hitching a ride with some friends of friends who were on their way to Eilat. On the way, we stopped for ice cream in Yotvata [Ilan: we tried for black cherry, but they were out] but still managed to make it to the Taba border crossing a little after 4.

Time spent under the control of Israeli officials: less 10 minutes
[basically, just long enough to pay the 94 NIS exit fee.]

Time spent in the Egyptian ‘Arrival Hall’: around 10 minutes
[for basic security check, passport control, and a swine flu screening…yes, I’m serious… they took my temperature.]

For the record: if you want to bring firearms and/or ammunition from Israel into Egypt it’s not a big deal, you just have to tell the authorities. Pornography, on the other hand, is strictly forbidden...end of story.

Time spent trying to get a cab to Dahab: 3 hours
This was partly our error. Since we missed the last bus from Taba to Dahab, we had to take a service taxi. It didn’t seem like it should be difficult; there were, afterall, a fairly steady stream of tourists arriving into Egypt and several Egyptians employed, in one way or another, in the tourism industry. Yet somehow, actually securing ourselves a ride – which involved bargaining over a price, negotiating between ‘official’ agents [largely from Cairo] and Bedouins drivers, and finding other people to fill our service taxi [van] --turned out to be a very long process. Thankfully, we had some entertainment in the form of Egyptians in uniform moving thousands of pages of paper documents from the Arrival Hall to somewhere else using something that looked like a shopping cart. As if the site weren’t strange enough on its own, the wind kept blowing the pieces of paper away and periodically everything would fall off of the cart altogether. I don’t mean to be judgmental here, but it really didn’t seem like the most efficient way to accomplish the task at hand.


Fernando in Taba, waiting for a taxi.

Time spent driving to Dahab: 3 hours
The first part of the drive down the coast was really incredible – dramatic views of the Red Sea coast, framed by rocky peaks to the West. We made a few stops along the way [Basata, where apparently Israelis are not allowed, and Ras, a nature preserve with thatch huts on the beach for tourists to rent.]



Huts for rent in Ras.

After the sun went down, any boredom I might have felt during the long drive was overshadowed by my constant wondering if our insane driver was going to inadvertently kill us before we made it to Dahab. Thankfully, we made it to our destination, and with some advice from a British traveler we met on the way, found an excellent and cheap hostel right on the beach.

Time spent at breakfast Saturday morning: 4 hours-ish
Our hostel [The Red Sea Relax] offered free breakfast from 8-11, so I got up at what I thought was 8:30 and headed downstairs. Turns out that in Egypt they set the clocks back one hour for Ramadan [which coincidentally began that day] and so it was actually only 7:30. I had some coffee and hung out in the lobby, where I made the acquaintance of a fellow American traveler who happened, also, to be a Ranger in the U.S. army [?!]. In comparison to other Americans, I usually feel like a fairly adventurous traveler, with a decently long list of exotic locales under my belt. Not so in this particular case. As we swapped travel stories, my experiences – Europe, India, Morocco, Mexico -- seemed quite tame in comparison to his. Rwanda, he assured me, was beautiful, despite it’s bad rap; Columbia, Burundi, and the Congo were apparently amazing. And, given how nice the people were, he was glad to have made it to Iraq as a tourist [really? Do people do that?]. Anyway, all and all I was just reminded of how cool it is that traveling affords one the opportunity to meet totally random people who do all sorts of crazy things. I mean, who knew I would find myself in Egypt, discuss the merits of vacationing in the Congo over breakfast with an Army Ranger from Texas.

Eventually Bryan and Fernando got up and joined us downstairs [breakfast had since been served] and we all spent another couple of hours discussing Israel and Jews and Middle Eastern politics. I think in the Middle East people talk politics with the same frequency that Midwest farmers discuss the weather, but I could be wrong. Anyway, the point in mentioning all of this was to demonstrate another way in which Egyptian time works differently from Israeli. See…the slowed pace is partly due to a general inefficiency [this is what we got into at the border] but it’s also a function of the generally relaxed atmosphere. This, it seems, is particularly apparent in a beach town like Dahab. When there isn’t really anything to do besides sit at the beach and go snorkeling, there also isn’t really any need to rush though breakfast.

The Roof deck of our hostel.

View of the beach from the roof deck.

Dahab was great – super-chill vibe, gorgeous beaches, and restaurants literally on the water where you can get a sheesha [hookah] for 5 Egyptian pounds [less than $1] and sit for hours without anyone bothering you to leave. Bryan, Fernando, and I did our fair share of lounging at these establishments in between trips to the beach and the hostel’s pool. In addition we spent some quality time playing pool on the roof deck and poker down by the water. All the locals we interacted with were very nice and helpful and while there was, in my opinion a fair amount of leering on the part of Egyptian men, it seemed pretty harmless.



Seaside dining.

Time spent trying to get back to Lotan: 8 hours
We left the hostel at 9:30 am in a ‘cab’ headed for the bus station. The bus was later than we were expected, but by 10:45 we were on our way North. We made it back to Taba in 2.5 hours or so at which point we joined a bottleneck of people at Egyptian passport control. With two officials and maybe a hundred people in line, getting through the ‘Departure Hall’ took some patience…but it was nothing compared to the Israeli security we encountered next. I don’t really understand why 8 different people had to check my passport, but it’s not as if you can argue with the Israeli border patrol. All I know is that waiting in that series of lines, for the right series of stamps and customs validations and security checks and whatever else, took forever…hours and hours of forever. Bryan suggested that maybe the original conversion factor of 5 Egyptian minutes for 45 Israeli was incorrect; maybe the time scale and levels of inefficiency were actually more similar than we had thought…they were just opposite types of inefficiency. In the case of Sinai things just didn’t get done very fast; in Israel things got done, but there was so much bureaucratic craziness that even though it was all getting done, nothing else was.

I just kept thinking about how weird it is to have left one country, but not yet entered the next…waiting in line in a kind of geo-political nowhere.

Me in a 'taxi' leaving Dahab.

As seen from my bedroom window...

Where am I? Do I really live here?

Tel Aviv'n

Don't get me wrong, I love the desert. However, sometimes it's also nice to...y'know...go to a restaurant, or have a beer on the beach, or just be in a crowded place.

I was feeling a little stir crazy last week, so yesterday, I spent the day in Tel Aviv. I went to the Jordainian embassy and the bouldering gym [oh, how I do miss rock climbing!], ran some other errands that require a certain degree of urbanity, and met my friend Zoe for a beer at an outdoor cafe/bar on the Mediterranean. The weather was perfect, the beer was cold, the people were tan and beautiful, and the view was amazing. The beach in Tel Aviv is an easy place to love...

Traveling in Israel is a unique experience. Here are two things that happened yesterday, both of which, although very common occurrences here, might not seem so normal elsewhere...at least not where I come from.

#1 Israeli guys are forward...very forward.

Bus ride from Tel Aviv to Be'er Sheva.

There's a guy sitting beside me...Israeli, mid to late 20s, doesn't speak hardly any English. We kindof chit chat for a few minutes [it's not easy considering the combined state of my Hebrew and his English] and then, he invites me to come visit him in Dimona, where he lives. I thank him for the invitation [thinking to myself...the only thing I know about Dimona is that there is a nuclear reactor there. Go figure, this story was in the news today.] I must not have seemed interested enough, so he began making more concrete plans. He explained that it would be best if I came this Thursday...I could stay with him Thursday night, have Friday dinner with him and his parents for Shabbat, and then we could go to the Dead Sea on Saturday. His friend runs a hotel, he told me, so we could stay there.

Woah...wait a minute...let me get this straight...we met maybe 15 minutes ago and can barely communicate with each other. Your pick-up line isn't...'can I get your number' but rather 'do you want to spend the weekend with me and have dinner with my parents?' Yikes.

At this point, I didn't really know what to say; I just [sortof awkwardly] thanked him again for the invitation, but told him I didn't think I could make it this weekend. And then...he went on. 'You need job in Israel?' 'What?' 'Work. You need work?' I told him that I actually already had a job here, at which point he let me know that he could get me a job at his friend's hotel at the Dead Sea and I could 'stay in Israel forever.' I had, he assured me, 'met the right guy.'

See what I mean? Forward...also incredibly helpful and welcoming...but really really forward...

#2 Racial profiling is totally normal, and apparently not a big deal.

Full bus on the ride from Be'er Sheva to Tel Aviv.

Bus pulls into the Cental Bus Station; security guard flags down the bus and climbs on board. He walks up and down the aisle and over to the two kids sitting in the seats behind me. The kids happend to be Arab guys, maybe 18 or 19 years old. The security guard demands to see their tickets, which they show him; then, without saying a word to any one else on the bus, the security guard leaves.

No one, including the two Arab guys, seemed the least bit surprised or annoyed. Just a normal part of life, I guess.

I was trying to imaging what would happen if I were on an American bus filled with mostly white people and two black kids...and if a white cop randomly got on the bus for no reason and demanded that the two black kids show their tickets. Obviously the reaction would depend on where the bus was. I'm pretty sure that in Philly there would be some vocalized attitude, at the very least. I hope that in Cambridge, people would at least take note.

Life Update

Since I’ve been in Israel a little over a month, I figured it was time for a general update -- something that wasn’t just travel snapshots.

In general, things are going well. I’ve met a lot of nice people here and I’m starting to make some progress on my project. I also do feel like I’m getting some sort of meditative soul-searching benefits from all of this time out in the desert. Below are just some unrelated thoughts about my life in Israel that may or may not be interesting.

Things I haven't gotten used to:

Ibex. Yesterday I went outside and there was, literally, a heard of Ibex standing across the street from me. An ibex, for those of you who don’t know, looks something like a cross between a small deer and a ram; many of them live around here -- mostly in the valley – but come up to the Midrasha to look for food because it is so dry right now. They are a quite common sight around here, but they still take me by surprise every time I see them. I think it’s because of their horns – which are spectacular – and their familiarity with people. You can get very close to them before they spook. The other day I went for a walk at dusk along the cliff edge. I walked down a ways and as I was on my way back up, I walked over a small rise and into a group of at least 25 of them. I turned around, and from in the midst of the heard, looked out over the amazing view below.

It’s okay to talk politics…all the time…even if you offend people. Perhaps one of the most striking ways you know you are in Israel and not the U.S. is that people talk politics and religion a lot [it’s impossible to separate the two in a place like this] -- in public, at the dinner table, with their friends, with their boss, with people they just met. Unlike in the U.S., no one seems overly concerned about offending people; “political correctness” is not a virtue. As far as I can tell, when there is a disagreement [as is often the case] it’s not a big deal. [At the risk of over-generalizing] Israelis seem to have an uncanny ability to separate political discussions from personal relationships. I guess, when you live in a place like this, you don’t have much choice.

This interest in talking about issues is, oddly coupled with a strange distance between political happenings and daily life. When I was in Israel the first time I recognized that Tel Aviv was a bubble – a place where hedonism reigned supreme and it was surprisingly easy to avoid seeing evidence of the things you read about in the newspaper. [A very visible exception was the recent hate crime against a member of Tel Aviv’s gay community.] Then, I came to Sde Boker…which is also a bubble. It’s isolated, the people are left-wing and overly educated, there aren’t really any visible signs of racial tension or political discord…life is pretty good; people are happy; they get along. Then I went to Lotan…which is also a bubble; Ketura as well. From what I remember Eilat was also a bubble…and Nitzanim; certainly the Kinnaret…and the kibbutz nearby here. I guess what I’m trying to say is that, if you’re Jewish and you hang out with other Jews, it’s pretty easy to avoid seeing evidence of the things you read about in the news no matter where you go; in fact, surprisingly, it requires some concerted effort to see what’s going on.

Shabbat. Despite my being Jewish, I have not adjusted to the idea that Sunday is a work day. I guess the days of the week are just one of those things that are pretty ingrained into one’s psyche. Not that it really has any effect on anything, but for me the week still starts on Monday and the weekend is Saturday-Sunday [as opposed to Friday-Saturday]. Also, I mean, I know it’s a holy day and all…and I know that the rabbinate controls a fair amount of things in this country [marriage, divorce, burial, kashrut certification, the bus schedule…] but no public transportation from Friday afternoon to Saturday night? Seriously?

This country is really small. You can get anywhere in a matter of hours and often you get this sense that everyone knows each other somehow. Combine that with a Jewish tribal mentality [“kulanu yehudim!”] and it makes for absolutely fantastic networking. But, as often happens to me when I travel, I am reminded of how special the American West is – the way you can drive for days through amazingly beautiful and barely populated country.

The Israeli idea of democracy – i.e. the notion that a state can be both “Jewish” and “democratic.” Living here, I feel very aware of my American-ness – of certain ideological biases that I have, as a result of growing up in the U.S. Now, I know it’s trendy among ex-pats to bitch about the U.S. and I’m not at all saying that our country doesn’t have major issues [which it does] or that there aren’t things to improve [which there certainly are]…but I have to say, I’ve never been such a defender of the basic tenants on which the U.S. government was founded as I am now that I live in the Middle East.

For example, the idea that Israel could be both a “Jewish” and a “democratic” state makes no sense to me. Now, I know that “democracy” does not, on its own, imply “for everyone,” and obviously early American interpretations of “liberty and justice for all” were…um…not particularly inclusive. But I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here to say that today, most Americans agree that “for all” really should mean for everyone…and when it doesn’t, that’s a problem. That’s very very different than believing “for all” should mean “all Jews.” And of course, the complexity of defining who is and who is not a Jew, only make reconciling “Jewish State” with “democracy” that much more difficult. If you treat Judaism as a religion – a tradition one can adopt – then you’ve got an institutionalized preference for one religious belief system over another…which…with my American biases…is difficult to get behind. However, if you treat Jewish as an ethnicity then you’ve got and institutionalized form of racial discrimination…whic isn’t any easier to stomach then a unification of church and state. Since the government, in my understanding, views Judaism as a tradition encompassing both religion and ethnicity, it’s…well...complicated. Anyway, the point of this was not to critique the Israeli system, but rather to illustrate how ingrained my own American ideological biases are. Fortunately for me, I think that if one has to have ingrained biases, one could do worse than the American variety.

Things I miss:

Aside from people, the list is actually pretty short. And I think most of the things I'm going to mention are less a factor of my being in Israel, and more a factor of where, specifically, in Israel I am [i.e. a remote settlement in the Negev]. In general, I really love being in the desert in the middle of nowhere, but there are a few things I would change, if I could.

Rock climbing. This probably doesn’t come as a shock to anyone reading this, but I really miss rock climbing…a lot. There are, rumor has it, places to climb in the North, but without a car (or climbers who know the area) they feel very inaccessible. It’s also kindof too hot right now for climbing outside. There are climbing gyms in Israel, but they are far away from where I am…and they are nowhere near as nice as CRG or Metro. And it’s not just the climbing I miss, it’s the scene…the other climbers…my people…

A gym. As if it weren’t bad enough that there isn’t a climbing gym…there also isn’t a regular gym. Which, I’ll admit, is driving me a bit crazy. I really don’t think that I’m that high maintenance, but there are, apparently, certain things that I really don’t want to live without and a gym is one of them. There is a pool here, which is awesome…and I’ve been trying to do a sort of modified cross fit to stay in some semblance of decent shape. Check it out: sdebokercrossfit.blogspot.com

A nice coffee shop…to go, have a really good cup of coffee, and just sit and talk or read or write or whatever. Let me just add that in general the coffee in Israel is really good and in Tel Aviv there are tons of cool coffee shops. We just don’t have any here in Sde Boker, which is unfortunate. There is one place that’s like a cafeteria; they do have outside tables, but they serve instant coffee and it’s really not the same kind of atmosphere.

Take-out Ethnic food. I know, I’m spoiled from living in the city. Israeli food is great. And the quality of food here is amazing – the fresh produce and fantastic dairy products. (It’s a good reminder of how crappy our institutionalized and over-processed American food industry is.) However, it’s nice to be able to order Thai food to go, or Indian, or Chinese, or Japanese, or Tibetan…or just burritos. Also, I have to say, Goldstar, the most popular Israeli beer, is just alright. I’m sorry, but it’s no Rogue Dead Guy or Hazelnut Brown.

I also really miss the MIT and Harvard libraries, but I guess this one really has nothing to do with my being in Israel. I mean, even if I were still in Cambridge I would no longer have access. I think I sortof didn’t realize how spoiled I got over the last few years…having access to basically any intellectual material ever printed. When did Google say they’re going to be done digitizing everything? 300 years?

Things that are surprisingly difficult and/or time consuming:

Shopping for dairy products without knowing Hebrew. This is actually the only time when I really feel the language barrier. There are too many options in too many different containers with too few clues as to what is inside. Often I just end up picking something; thankfully, most of it is really good.

Reading the news. In the U.S. I usually just scan the headlines in the NY Times and call it a day. But here, I feel like it’s really important [and interesting] to keep up on the more local news…most of which isn’t covered [or at least not in any detail] in the American media. So…I get up and read the NY Times site, then I look at Ha-aretz, the popular left-wing Israeli paper. In general I find the coverage in Ha-aretz pretty terrible and I just read it to keep track of what Ha-aretz is reporting on. So, after reading Ha-aretz, I read Aljazeera-English, which is actually really good. However, the process takes a while.

Traveling across borders and/or on the weekends. In general, traveling in Israel is really easy and convenient. Public buses go nearly everywhere [except rock climbing destinations]; they are dependable and cheap. However, since they don’t operate on Shabbat, traveling on the weekends requires some advanced planning. Also, despite the insanely small distances, if there are political borders in between you and your destination, it is very difficult to predict how long it will take to get there. For example, I am in the midst of planning a climbing trip in Jordan with another American who is living in Amman. As the crow flies [or by American driving standards], Amman really isn’t that far from me [about 90 miles]. However, since there are only 3 border crossings between Israel and Jordan, getting their either involves traveling to Eilat [going 3 hours south, in order to go 5 hours north], to Beit She’an [going 5 hours north-ish to go 1 hour south], or crossing through the West Bank and over the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge [indeterminate travel time]. Have you ever been to Vermont and heard someone say ‘you can’t get there from here’? It’s like that…only worse. [If you ask Google Maps for directions, you get a message that says ‘We could not calculate directions between Sde Boker, Israel and Amman, Jordan.’] I’m still going to go, I think. It promises to be an adventure, at the very least.