So I realized that every week may be a little boring, so let's do like Monday and Thursdays? On the days when we read Torah! (except Shab obvs)
This past weekend was a closed Shabbat. We had a special guest with us for the whole weekend, Jules Gutin! He is the international director of USY, and somehow actually knew my name when I talked to him this time. After 4 IC's, wheels and pilgrimage, he never actually knew my name. That's understandable considering there's thousands of USYers. But this time, he knew my first AND last name! It was very exciting. He gave us a speech which was built up to be another lecture like the two previous rabbi's, Roth and Artson. It wasn't at all. In fact, one could say that this lecture was.... boring? Oh well, he's not a rabbi.
I went to Kedem Saturday morning with Adina and Debbie (two of the girls I watch LOST with all the time). I thought was my favorite shul but ended up being just mediocre. I had only gone there on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and it was great then. It was not so great when not during the Chag Season. We had two more sessions, each with just the Kehilah group and not all of Nativ, and both also proved to be relatively pointless. Don't get me wrong, I definitely learned something from the weekend with Jules, but it didn't take 3 sessions and 6 total hours to learn it.
Sunday came my newfound favorite class, Silicon Wadi. This time, our teacher, Avner Halperin (we're not sure if we should call him Mr. Halperin or Avner) brought in his father to lecture to us about the US-Israel relationship. It was a great lecture. I took a lot of notes so if you want to see them, email me. We learned about the US-Israel relationship from '48 when Israel was established until today. I learned a lot. The one main point he continually reiterated was that although today is Israel's most important ally, the US hasn't always been. There have been many times where the US congress opposed Israel, but the President felt obligated to protect Israel and therefore supported Israel; overriding congress. It was very interesting.
Currently, I'm sitting in Talmud class. This is a good class because it's kind of a break from studying and working during my free time. We just found out about our Talmud Midterm today, exciting! A test on Talmud, never thought I'd see the day where I would be preparing for that.
Still have society and politics after this class, getting back to base around 6:45 (hopefully) and will try to go to the YMCA tonight to workout. That would be great.
Last night, my friend Tyler and I started to write our first song for the album we are going to create while on Nativ. It's a pretty simple song so far, but hopefully it will grow into something amazing. He plays piano decently, but more importantly than that is that he can sing really well. Together, I think we'll make something great. I'll keep you posted.
WAIT TIMEOUT! Friday night, the girls had a "sleepover party" which involved all the girls hanging out for about 3 hours before they went to sleep in their respective rooms. Not so much of a sleepover, but a good time to bond with all the guys since there were no girls around. A bunch of us were sitting in the computer room playing risk when we had this great idea: go to the girls sleepover party and take their food! Well, what a great idea this was. We waited about half an hour until after it started, then we ran downstairs. We ended up not getting any food, but we ended up just crashing their party for a little bit. It was a good start to Shabbat.
On Saturday night, 48 Nativers, including myself, boarded a bus and went to Tel-Aviv for the annual memorial ceremony for Yitzchak Rabin. This was a very interesting experience. I've learned about Rabin here at Hebrew U a little bit, back home at Hebrew school, etc. However, I wouldn't consider myself an expert on Rabin. I still wanted to go and see what it was all about. We arrived, and when we got there our Madrich (staff) Nadiv said, "After the ceremony is over, you have 20 minutes to get back to the bus, then we're leaving with or without you." He was being a little ridiculous considering it took 15 minutes just to walk to Rabin square because all the roads were closed off surrounding the square. We all made it back, don't worry. We get to the square, and I texted my yearcourse friend Arielle (the girl I visited twice that lives in Bat Yam) to see if she and the rest of the Bat Yam people were there. They were, so I decided to meet up with them after getting some Tel Aviv falafel. I wanted to compare it to Jerusalem falafel and see which was better. I gotta say, I really like Jerusalem falafel better. But that's an argument for another time :) Joey, Seffi and I aimlessly wandered around the huge area until we found some Nativ people. I then left them and went to meet up with Arielle and her friends including one of my good yearcourse friends, an Israeli Tzfoim Yoni. I spend the majority of the ceremony with them.
Once the ceremony got started, a bunch of important people spoke such as Talia Rabin and Tzpini Livni. AI obviously couldn't understand about 85% of what all the speakers were saying, so after a while I kind of tuned them out. Also, Hadag Nachash played. Funnily enough, Israelis don't really like Hadag Nachash, but that doesn't mean that I don't! They were awesome, playing "shirit hasticker" (the sticker song) which is probably their most famous song. All of the Americans loved it, can't say the same about the Israelis though. Then in the middle of the speeches, President Obama gave a video message to everyone. Go look it up. If you know my political tendencies you may be able to guess how I felt, but I'm committed to keeping this blog neutral. If you want my opinion, the email box is always open. I will just say that it was not too surprising of a message, I enjoyed listening to it, and the crowd definitely did to.
During the ceremony, I couldn't help but notice the signs that were extremely numerous and prevalent around me. For example, one of them said, "Bibi's government=no peace ever!" They were all mostly conveying this kind of message. After the ceremony, I found myself asked to be interviewed by the Daily Beast. They were asking me about what my views on Obama and Israel were. Again, neutral blog. We had a good talk, and eventually he asked me for my name/where I'm from/where I'm living in Jerusalem and why I'm living there. That lead me to believe that he was writing an article and was going to quote me, but to this day I couldn't find anything. He said his name was Uval Pearlman, or something like that. If you are a Daily Beast reader, let me know if you see my name! I've been checking but haven't been able to find anything.
Our staff member Nadiv felt the need to give his opinion to everyone on the bus after the ceremony. Considering most Nativers weren't able to understand the speeches like me, this was the majority of what they got out of the program: Nadiv said something along the lines of, "I've heard a lot about this ceremony, but I've never been there before. I heard that it has turned from a good memorial ceremony into a free rally for the left of Israel. Tonight, we heard many the speakers blaming the lack of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians on the religious right in Israel, and since I was wearing a Kippah people started giving me dirty looks. They turned Rabin from a prominent and important Israeli political leader into a martyr for the leftist propaganda." Whether that is true or not is not up to me, but just so you get an idea of what he believes happened. I personally think it was wrong of him to put his opinion onto us like that. And I plan on telling him it was out of line to do that as well.
I'll get some pictures from the ceremony.
OK thats all for now. Talk to you in a few days!
-Josh
Joey, Seffi (roommate), Me and Adina at the ceremony!
No comments:
Post a Comment