Photos, Day 12 through 15

Day 12: Thursday, August 14, The Northern Galilee, emerging from the Jilaboun Waterfall hike. Jeff had the digital camera but went on a different excursion with Raya of The Broken Toe and Matthew of The Tired From Hiking, while Max and I did this very fun and slightly difficult tiyul. It was outstanding, with many highlights although Sarah, one of our tripmates, and I did restrain ourselves from flashing the Orthodox men who scurried out of the water once it was obvious we were going to be wading in - in bathing suits.


Day 13: Friday, rafting (which they called kayaking) in the Galilee on the Jordan River. I have no pictures of this excursion but hopefully tripmates will post some that can be shared, but here's information about Kibbutz Kfar Blum and their operations, which we used. As a preview, sadly, in case no one has ever told you, the "Mighty Jordan" requires you to have a broad concept of what "mighty" might look like (think small, like mouse). (the picture below is not from our trip but yeah, you've seen one group go over a little fall and you've seen us all)


Day 14: Saturday, August 16, at the Ruth Rimonim hotel, Simply Tsfat perform a private concert for our group in one of the courtyards at the hotel. It was tremendous fun.


Day 15: Sunday, August 17, dinner in Caesaria before we leave the country.

Hope this whets your desire for more and hopefully I can be a bad Jew tomorrow and write, write, write and label, label, label photos for albums online etc. If you're interested in seeing the albums I'm assembling, e-mail me for an invite.

Photos, Day 7 through 11

Day 7, Saturday, August 9, The Kotel (aka Western Wall, aka Wailing Wall) on Erev Tisha B'Av. Now, I'm not sure that the evening when this holiday begins is actually an "erev" since it's not a holiday that's celebrated for two days, in part I assume because it's a fast day and recalls the destruction of the First Temple. But regardless, you can see how many thousands of people crowd the esplanade and prayer areas. On the left in the photo is the area for the men and on the right, the women. I have video from both sides. (This is the place where Barack Obama placed a note in the cracks and someone removed it and Ma'ariv published it.)


Day 8, Sunday August 10, Yad Vashem These two large pieces of artwork (relief in some kind of metal) are absolutely speech-stopping. At the moment, I can't locate specific info about the artwork, but the one on the right contains images primarily of Jews being shuttled out of the ghetto toward delivery to concentration camps with only two or three images looking up (a child is one) while the rest look down and downtrodden. The image on the left is of several individuals who appear to be fighting or putting up a fight, showing resistance.

Day 9, Monday, August 11, Tel Aviv, The Ayalon Institute This location was an underground, secret bullet factory which manufactured something like 2 million bullets for use during the War of Independencein 1948-49. Not even the residents of the Kibbutz knew what was going on beneath a bakery and a laundry.


Day 10, Tuesday, August 12 Bike ride south along the Mediterranean, from Rosh Hanikra down to beach location for sunset swim and BBQ dinner (this day was my birthday).

Day 11, Wednesday, August 13 Underground portion of the Western Galilee Hospital (ancillary to regular hospital) that will have more than 400 beds, located near the Lebanese border, north of Haifa. Was used during July 2006 military conflict with Lebanon. You can see tours of the underground on YouTube.

You deserve photos!

We have over 1000 photos and I shot more than 250 videos (approximately 180 minutes worth, with some lasting five seconds and others 10 minutes). The next step is for me to put them on either Flickr, Picasa or both, and upload the now-converted videos to YouTube or edit them into some movies with iMovie.

But until I complete those tasks, I've chosen one from each day to show here:

Day 2 (Day 1 was on the plane): Monday, August 4, Neot Kedumim, The Zimon Five.


Day 3: Tuesday, August 5: Jewish Quarter, The Old City of Jerusalem, Window for Chanukiah (the rule is to show the remembrance to others and we put the lights outside for others to see the commemoration of Judah Maccabi's victory; these cases are outside many, many homes througout the Old City's Jewish Quarter and illuminate the streets in the winter celebration)



Day 4: Wednesday, August 6, Bet Guvrin National Park archeological dig where my daughter discovered a step that led to a chamber 9 meters down that had been suspected as being there but had yet to be found. Pretty cool.


Day 5, Thursday, August 7, camel ride in the Negev from the Mamsheet Bedouin Tent location where yes, we did attempt to sleep in tents and wake up at 3am to climb Masada. So much more about that and my trip to the front of the bus that morning in another post.


Day 6, Friday, August 8, sunrise over the Dead Sea from the Roman Ramp as we climbed Masada. The Dead Sea has retreated nearly a mile in recent years (I forget the exact amount of time, but it's been faster than they anticipated).


Running out of steam but will post a few more later today or tomorrow.

We're baaaaack

And I've opened up the blog so it's findable and public and I'm in the process of copying all my photos and movies from the laptop I took with me to this one.  Once I regain some semblance of local time and place, I'll post as much as I can as often as I can, in between loads of laundry and getting the kids ready for school - and taking Raya for an Xray for a stubbed toe in Jerusalem and...you get the idea. 

Peace.

Safe and sound and all around

We are 100% safe and sound but getting around!

I have 27 minutes left on my battery - I can't find an outlet close enough for my cord. Rabbi Weiss and I worked hard to upload photos to the Israelingo.com website but without any luck - kept getting a 302 error (anyone with advice, feel free to dole but I don't know when I'll be on again).

I'm getting up early tomorrow morning to go with a chunk of our group to meet the mayor of an Arab town in the West Bank area known as The Little Triangle, where about 170,000 of Israel's more than 1 million Arabs live (they vote, they are in the government and they can serve in the military if they want to - it is voluntary for them). We've had many occasions to meet unique individuals that make up the landscape that is Israel. Today, we spent time with NGO volunteers who work on behalf of the hundreds of Darfur refugees, all Muslim, whom no other country but Israel is taking in. Yesterday, we met with a woman who traveled here after wandering from Ethiopia through the Sudan and finally to an airlift more than 17 years ago. She is one of tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews - these Jews were found in many corners of Ethiopia practicing Judaism - Biblical Judaism - in small villages of all Jews and were brought to Israel primarily in the 1980s. And the day before that (Saturday) we spent the night (past midnight) at the Kotel to help usher in Tisha B'av - the date of the destruction of the First Temple (and the Second Temple).

We'll be near the Lebanese border several times over the next few days. I've taken many, many videos and photos and will eventually catch up, I pray, but we are safe and we are having an amazing experience.

Thank you for following.

PHOTOS! FINALLY!

Please check them out - lots of descriptions.

It's been an ODYSSEY!

Days 3 and 4

We're going to do this primarily with photos because it's late and I'm tired and grubby from the day but here's where we've been:

Day 3 - I can't remember Day 3 I'm so tired even though it was only yesterday. Oh, wait, it's coming back to me - City of David, The Old City, walking through wet tunnels, going to the Burnt House, visiting with my relatives and going behind and in front of the Kotel (Western Wall).

For those who gave me messages to put in the Wall, done.

Today, Day 4, we went to a settlement, Efrat, and met with Lenny Ben-David - who is a blogger, among many other things. Then we went to Bet Guvron (I think) where the kids did a dig (and my daughter found a new step that led to a level 9 meters down, in a cave), we picnicked at a kibbutz, visited for a short time with an army psychologist who works in Sderot (the place that's 2 km from Gaza and is operating under a cease-fire right now) and then met with Ethiopians at an absorption center in Beer Sheva. Now we're in Pundak Ramon and will go into Mitzpe Ramon tomorrow, followed by dinner and sleeping in a Bedouin tent tomorrow night (no Internet for sure).

On Friday morning we'll be climbing Masada at about 4-4:30am, in time for sunrise and later in the day go to the Dead Sea, then return to Jerusalem for Shabbat. Sunday is Tisha B'av which is a fast day so it's going to be an interesting weekend but we'll be doing some studying and walking around a lot. Most places on the holiday will be closed but apparently there's quite the party in Jerusalem Sunday night.

I hope to write way more tomorrow and also perhaps over the weekend about the West Bank and many other observations.

Look for photos tomorrow.

Monday evening video: Moon over The Old City from Mt. Scopus

I don't know if today is Day One or Day Two since we left yesterday (Sunday) and arrived today (Monday). It's now 4pm in the afternoon where most people are reading this and it's 11pm, OY and OUCH here in my hotel room - which isn't bad.

A few things to note: Ah yes! Pull the knobs on top of toilet tank up to flush.

"Slicha" means excuse me, and "sham" means there as in "Is Shmuel there?" which I needed to ask my relatives re: if my cousin who speaks English was around. I chickened out and had the madrichim speak with my cousin anyway and we'll be seeing him and his wife tomorrow for about an hour. We hope to make longer arrangements for another day while we're hear, but the schedule is changing constantly.

I'm testing out how these videos do if I don't bother with changing the format. So enjoy. The song in the background is HaTikvah, I think. I'm kind of tired. I'll have to listen once I post.

Photobooth in the airport shot

Here are four of us (Ileen Proper, me, my oldest child, Max and Melissa Kunka - an honorary member of our family) as we check out how to use PhotoBooth since my digital camera and its connecting cord (USB?) for this computer are somewhere in my husband's backpack.

Our flight to JFK is about 25 mins. late but they are calling for us to board now.

Security and checking in went smoothly and only a plastic fan with a metal motor inside stopped us for a search. Otherwise, no snafus.

Thank goodness for along layover at JFK.

Kids' backpacks are full of food, I've got a diet Pepsi, The Economist and The New Yorker (yes, the New Yorker - with a much tamer cover this week).

Have a great afternoon!

Leaving, jet plane, Peter, Paul, Mary

We'll be on that sucker from 9pm tonight until about 8am, 3pm Tel Aviv time. The Ben Gurion airport has been re-designed since I was there - and I'm starting to realize just what being away for an entire generation means to the development of a country trying to get out of the third world stage.

The new (relative to me) design of the airport is probably a good thing for me. I had a very romance-movie style departure from Israel and if I were to go through or see the same space again, I'd be transported to more than just the next stop on our two-week odyssey. I wrote about it for an essay contest I was in a couple of years ago and if I can find it, I'll provide a link to it.

The car is packed, we're eating lunch (I know 11:18am - but we won't be eating again until JFK airport) and showering up.

Shalom for now!

I guess we're really going

Damn, only one real argument between my husband and me, and we're over it, so I guess this means that we're really going to get in our car, get to the airport, get through security and get on the plane.

With my laptop (that was an element of the one argument).

Interestingly, my kids' rooms never looked cleaner - because they've been cleaned out of everything - it's all in the luggage now (no laundry for 14 days will do that to your drawers and closets).

We've got a revised itinerary and it looks like we have even less free time than originally scheduled but that too can change. I bought a map of Jerusalem and two books about Israel (one for my husband and I and one for our kids that looked like fun).

The kids got haircuts and picked up some additional playing and reading material for the trip after we attended synagogue this morning. We went with every intention of staying just for our aliyah, but we were treated like royalty and the other family with kids who are the ages of my two youngest walked in just when we did and our kids really do get along well so they all wanted to hang out and play and also say the Ashrei for the congregation. (No - I do not know the Ashrei - I also don't know all the words to HaTikvah - but that's another story.)

The rabbi gave a powerful sermon about boycotting Agriprocessor, the kosher meatpacking company in Iowa that appears to have treated its workers, illegal immigrants in particularly, horribly, not to mention not slaughtering in accordance with Kashrut. So now, there is a boycott and he is promoting it. You can follow the blog about the actions by visiting the Conservative movement here.

We don't keep kosher but I'm supportive of the action because I'd been thinking about how Judaism views Agriprocessor's actions.

Must sleep now - because I don't when I'll be sleeping again - possibly not until Monday night.

Ha.

Lila tov.

The Security Fence

I put that poll on the sidebar up about the security fence because, as I mentioned, I had a little discussion about its existence with my rabbi on the way out of our meeting at his home last Sunday evening.

He was trying to explain its necessity and I was trying to explain how provocative I thought it was. He emphasized his belief that he wished it wasn't necessary but that he felt that to keep Israelis safe, that it had to be done. He assured me that Palestinians with land on the opposite side had all the access they needed but still, I wasn't liking it.

Well - one of the reasons I adore my rabbi is that I do consider him to be, while passionate, also a great listener and not one to dogmatically commit to a particular position. This perception of mine was given more oomph when, late the next day (after the Sunday evening meeting), I received three e-mails from my rabbi. Now - he is a busy guy. With a family, an 1100 family synagogue and a trip coming up with us - among all the other things he does. I know he struggles to juggle as much if not more than most of us.

But he took the time to send me these two articles about how the Israeli government had indeed substituted political reasoning for security-only reasoning when it built part of the fence and now admitted this and will be taking down and rebuilding the fence along the proper path, at a cost of about $10-15 million additional dollars.

What exactly was so political about the path they actually built the fence on?

It allowed for a particular location to be used as a settlement town. Not one that exists, but rather, one that they wanted to plan.

Now - when I say they, I don't know precisely who made this alteration and who within the government is responsible. You can be sure it's some minority, since the government is essentially a coalition.

But regardless, the fence in those parts will come down, there will be no additional land for a new settlement and the fence will go back to the path originally chosen for security and not political reasons.

It is these kinds of situations that make some of us really feel at odds with Israel. But, it was an Israeli court which demanded that the fence be torn down and rebuilt. Maybe not a huge concession, but certainly a boost to those of us who continue to complain about the less than genuine intentions of some people in the Israeli government.

Traveler's Prayer - Hafilat Haderech (right?)

Tomorrow morning, we'll attend synagogue and be given the honor of saying what's called an aliyah, or honor, with all the members or our trip. In our case, it will be a prayer related to the reading of the week's parsha, or Torah portion.

The prayer above is the Traveler's Prayer. I think we say it for ourselves as well as for others and that others will say it for us as well. I can read the Hebrew, but it would probably take me about 15 minutes. I'll listen quietly while my kids and husband do it for me.

Day 1 in Israel

No - I'm not there yet, but just to give you a taste, here's our first day's itinerary (travel starts with our 1pm arrival at Hopkins Airport in Cleveland, 3pm departure for Newark I think, then a 9pm departure for Tel Aviv):

Congregation B’nai Jeshurun
2008 Family Israel Adventure

Connecting to the People, Land & Traditions of Israel
Led by Rabbi Stephen Weiss

August 3 – 17, 2008
Welcome to Israel

Afternoon arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport at 2:55pm. (Welcome snack provided by Keshet.) We strike roots in the Land of Israel with an opening tree planting ceremony at the Neot Kedumim Biblical Nature Reserve. We will plant special hydroponic pods in accord with the Biblical requirements for the Sabbatical (Shmitah) year, and consider the intimate connection between the land and the Jewish concerns for the environment and social equity. Then we make our way up to Jerusalem, recite the Shehecheyanu and overlook of the Old City from atop Mount Scopus, and proceed to our first magical visit to the Kotel (the Western Wall). Check in and Welcome Dinner at the King Solomon Hotel, Jerusalem.

Okay - I really do get verklempt just reading this. Probably the exhaustion.

A slog through the epiphany

Okay - so - here's the recap:

Grew up Reform. Hated all-girls camp with JAPpy Five Town and Scarsdale girls (sorry five towns - this is a recap - some of them were my best friends from camp eventually). Never was cool at Shabbatons. Picked a Catholic school for college because Brandeis was too Jewish (and that's where spouse went - if we'd met then, fahgeddaboutit and fahgeddabout the gorgeous kids we now have). But at Catholic school, couldn't stand up for own religion because I didn't even know my own religion the way I decided I needed to. Went on Methodist Church missions with Catholic classmates to clear my head but didn't know it was a Methodist Church mission.

Until I got there. If you've never been to the Eastern Kentucky portion of Appalachia at the end of winter, only pictures do it justice. But in the 1980s, some people might remember, politics played a big hand there in the status of the mountain tops. Strip mining was destroying them, and kids wanted nothing more than to save enough money to buy a coal truck so they could haul (I know this because my volunteer work was in the schools in a fourth grade class and they had drawn pictures of what they thought they'd be doing in ten years).

The hills were damp green and the tops of the mountains clay-like mud with truck treads everywhere. Somber, very somber, especially on a cloudy day.

The mission leader wanted me to lead a prayer session - we had a lot of those, it seems like, thinking back, but in reality, it was probably once in the morning and once in the evening. He wanted me to do something about being a stranger in a strange land, but I actually didn't even now where that came from. I believe it's far more common in the New Testament? But I still don't know.

The event that truly changed my life came on a day when we went to church with the local residents. Unfortunately, the audio for the Interfaith Alliance's radio show that I was on a couple of years ago in which I tell this story is no longer available, and ironically the producer of my segment was a GU grad school grad. So it may lose a little in the writing of it but here goes:

The church was a simple white wooden structure about midway up a hill - a gravel road that went well up past the church but primarily into woods after the path stopped in front of the door. I would guess there were 10 or so rows of pews (is that what you say?) on each side and they were simple wooden pews. Since I'd been at Georgetown, I'd become more familiar with the songs that people sang in church and some of the imagery no longer made me furrow my brow and wonder what they were singing about.

But the time in the Red Bird Church transported me in a way I'd never felt before. The singing. I remember nothing but the singing and listening to it. Looking around, at the people. Absolutely unbelievably destitute dirt poor people whose life expectancy was probably hal of what mine was and is because of where they lived, how they ate and what they're livelihoods were or would be - something in the coal industry.

And they weren't some happy group of church singers. Or a sad group. But what I heard and observed was a group that was committed, not dispassionate. For all that they didn't have, they sang with such fullness - they sang with what to me sounded like such fullness, despite what I thought was an empty present and future, that I couldn't take it.

All I could think about was, where does this fullness come from? Where are they getting this sustinence to sing so...fully? What makes people feel this strength?

And finally, why don't I feel it for my own religion?

And at that moment, when that thought went through my mind - and it was in fact that exact thought and I remember this all as though it happened yesterday - I excused myself and walked out of the church. I remember it now as if were an out of body experience, but I was crying. Sobbing really. Holding my face in my hands.

I was 20 years old, in the middle of Appalachia, with people I didn't know who didn't know me and, I thought, had nothing in common with me and I had nothing in common with them, and I felt vapid. I felt lost. Very, very lost.

I walked around outside for several minutes. I couldn't go back inside. Eventually the other volunteers with whom I'd traveled to Red Bird emerged at the end of the service and asked me where I'd gone. I couldn't talk about what I experienced until that evening, and I shared it with a girl who was a year ahead of me at GU - her name was Tiny - and she was tiny. But I don't remember her real name anymore. She was a Latina but I don't remember from which country. We bunked together and that night I told her everything I'd felt and I cried again.

When I got back to campus a few days later, I told my friend - the owner of the lucite Libyan leader, what had happened. And I became determined to find a way to understand why I didn't feel for my Judaism what I observed these mission chuch attendees feel when they sang.

Who knows what was really motivating them? Stories had been told to me that many had been forced to convert or simply took the good will offered by the missionaries. I have no idea how true or false that is, or was.

But it really didn't and doesn't matter - because what I saw so affected me that I can't even say that it changed the course of my life. It implored me, it required me to make certain choices from then on.

And that's how I wound up choosing Sherut La'am as what I was going to do after I graduated from Georgetown and spent 1984-1985 in Israel, Egypt and Europe.

I am not a stranger in a strange land...am I?

In order to learn about my own faith, I decided to keep observing how other people learned about their faith - whether through ritual, formal education, cultural activities or observation too.

Being at Georgetown was the perfect place to do this, even at the beginning. In fact, looking back, maybe my choice of college wasn't even the tipping point toward realizing how unsatisfied I was with my relationship to my religion. I honestly believe the dissatisfaction began when I was eight or nine and went to overnight camp in Maine at an all-girls all-Jewish overnight camp. I was lucky - these were and remain places where children and older youth get to experiment with sports and camaraderie and leadership in very comfortable settings.

Except, I hated camp, for the first two summers. My parents dispute this and now, having children who go to camp and alternately love and hate different ones for different reasons, I understand what it may have been like for them, to make a choice about where to send me (there was never a choice of not sending me to the best of my knowledge). Eventually, out of being placed in the "left over bunk" which housed all the kids whom no one had asked to bunk with, I found a group of about four or five other girls with whom I bunked for the following two or three summers.

But they were all from Long Island and Westchester and although the camp was all-Jewish, that seemed secondary to being all-girls. It wasn't a kosher camp and we didn't really do anything for Shabbat at all. And on parents' day, materialism reigned supreme, and my parents were hippy (not hipster) parents who drove up in a VW bug (original, not cool and cute like they are now) while everyone else's parents came in large black German cars.

It wasn't, as many adolescents will tell you, that I wanted them to have those cars too. I just didn't like sticking out in that way.

I'll spare readers any more details in this vein, but again, my feeling pretty different in a setting of all-Jewish kids probably is part of what set the tone for me to feel as though I wasn't the same kind of Jew as most others - or something. I haven't figured it out yet.

Add to this, I lived in a town with extremely few Jews until I was 12 and then we moved to a town that was about 30% Jewish - which is comparable to the Orange City Schools (in Ohio, where we live). And those 30% - most of them were Conservative while we were Reform and at the hippy (not the hipster) synagogue. Which, by the way, I mostly loved and learned a lot about my culture.

But I didn't learn a lot in depth, at all.

And so, by my third year at Georgetown, after I'd had roommates who'd gone to nothing but Catholic schools and went to Mass everyday and offered to take me to Mass on a regular basis and wrote out lists of what they were giving up for Lent and hung those lists on our bathroom mirrors so they (and I) would be reminded daily, I'd had a chance to live with and get to know a pretty good amount about how people of a few other faiths functioned in their day to day lives, along with their religion (my closest friends were Episcopalian).

Then, when Dennis and I had our disagreement about the status of Easter vis a vis Rosh Hashana, and I felt as though I couldn't hold up my end of the theological, historical, political and moral arguments, I had a literal crisis of faith.

For days and days, I wondered, I literally despaired over how it could be that I called myself a Jew and yet here I was, unable to articulate why it was so important that this college that called itself secular not schedule the student activities fair on the Jewish New Year (it never occurred to me that I might be wrong, and I still don't believe I was or am - I just couldn't articulate it, at all).

I actually fell into what I consider to be a depression and going to Aruba with my grandmother was the last thing I wanted to do. It only seemed to symbolize to me further entrenchment in a kind of being Jewish that had no guts, just glory (I think many followers of faith fall into a similar trap and end up trying to figure out what is going on - I feel pretty confident that at least one regular reader of this blog knows exactly what I mean).

And so I started to investigate some of the many spring break volunteer opportunities Georgetown, as a Catholic university, offered. Relief services and community service were huge - there was an entire dorm floor dedicated to housing kids who specifically chose to live on that floor and work all school year long on community service projects.

I got involved earlier in the year in a program of teaching inner-city school kids and going on trips with them on weekends and through my classmates in that program, I learned about Spring Break in Appalachia. I don't honestly recall what my parents' reaction was when I told them that it was what I wanted to do instead of go with my Nana, but I went.

To Red Bird Mission in Beverly, Kentucky, just north of the Cumberland Gap in the Eastern portion of the state, above Tennesee.

Up until we got in the van and started hearing more about where we were going, I didn't realize that it was going to be me, ten Catholics from Georgetown and about 20-30 Methodists from a college in the middle of Virginia or North Carolina at a Methodist Church Mission.

Just like I didn't realize that New York was named New York because it was a York that was New? I didn't realize that Red Bird Mission was Mission because it was a mission. And a Methodist one at that.

But by the time we arrived at our facilities, I knew that I was, without a doubt, as strange to the mission organizers and my classmates as I was to myself.

A Map of Israel #1

I've chosen this one for you to look at because it's got my Kibbutz on it (Gezer) as well as the development town I lived in (Beit Shemesh). Gezer is southeast of Tel Aviv and Beit Shemesh is southwest of Jerusalem. Click here to see a larger version.

I titled this #1 because there are a lot of different maps in use for this region of the Middle East and I hope to publish other ones as the trip progresses.

Hand cream or coffee table books?

It's been suggested to us that we bring some tokens for different communities we'll be visiting: IDF soldiers, children, Druze and Bedouin.

The IDF will get Cleveland Indians stuff and the kids in Sderot are getting stuffed animals. Plus we have the clothing for the Ethiopian children.

But we're still undecided about the Bedouin. When I lived there, they loved to have us put dollops of cream on their hands (we would visit with them frequently when we were on trips in the Negev or below) and I don't recall meeting many Druze, but we often traveled near their homes in the North, between Haifa and Tiberias.

When I asked the person at our synagogue who's doing all the communication between us and the tour people about what specifically we should bring, she suggested a coffee table kind of book with photographs of America.

Now, I love that idea. Just think about it - Middle Eastern nomadic individuals who do in fact still very much live in tents and travel by camel in the desert, shlepping, lugging or otherwise transporting a bound edition of images of the United States. I think that's really neat.

On the other hand, I don't really feel like using up our luggage limit for the weight of a coffee book table. I know - how...something - selfish? Okay, yeah, maybe (come on, my herniated back! No?)

So I've asked for more suggestions, but the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking, okay, so maybe the book could be a soft-cover edition?

Discovering your ignorance

You know, even though I didn't go on that trip to Aruba with my Nana, she'd be proud of the shopping I did today for our trip. Water bottles, packets of flavored powder to pour into the water bottles, gear to carry the water bottles on our hips, shorts that can get wet if our water bottles leak all over them.

Water. This is something we're told, by everyone who has ever been to Israel, makes sure to mention: you don't want to get overheated! you don't want to get dehydrated! spending two days in the hospital for dehydration is definitely not something you want to do!

As someone who survived two weeks in Egypt on water and some kind of British cracker, and drank four or five liters, yes, liters of water a day, especially when I was in Luxor and Aswan, I assure you - water is as important as all the unsolicited advice would have anyone believe.

Our house is starting to look like a receiving depot for clothing donations. Every room has someone's t-shirts, shorts, hat, socks and underwear laid out. We'll be vacuum-packing them in jumbo Ziploc-style bags to conserve space and, since we won't be doing any laundry (can you imagine - no laundry for a family of five for two weeks? all I can think about is what it will be like when we get back three days before the kids start school), we'll be taking each dirty item and vacuum-packing it into bags for the return trip.

So - I'm pretty exhausted. My husband took pity on me and brought in Chinese, but my worry is actually that I'll get so worn out from getting ready that I'll be worthless when we get there.

Eh - enough worries.

So - I turned down the trip to Aruba. My parents thought I was nuts, as did a number of my friends. But I'd gotten into a very public disagreement with someone who had been a friend of mine since the first week of freshman year - someone who, this year, ironically, is running for Ohio Democratic Party Chair Chris Redfern's seat - about the scheduling of an all-campus event on Rosh Hashana. (Important note: Dennis does not remember any of this at all, not one ounce of it. Which, after you read my account, just goes to show you what is important to one person in a memory might be nothing to someone else's.)

Now, as a Reform Jew, at that time, who would be attending services at a chapel with its crosses covered up for the 1000 or so Jews who'd be attending services in Gaston Hall that would be led by a very Reform but revered Rabbi, Harold White, it wasn't as if I was that observant.

But, on the other hand, Georgetown presented itself as secular and scheduling a conflict like that was really disappointing, to say the least. The worst part was that, at the end of the services, the attendees exit out and down wonderful, elegiac stairs and onto the...green space where the all-campus event would be going on.

It's a festive event, but it's also an evenut at which the three or four organizations with which I was involved would have tables and try to recruit and so on. I really hated having to choose between observing a holiday with other Jews who, for the most part, went about their time at GU knowing it was a primarily Catholic school, or being the 100% assimilated American and skip the gatherings that usually occur (around a meal of course) after the services.

So I spoke to everyone I knew and I wrote and had published a letter to the editor in one of the school's student newspapers. But nothing changed (and, in fact, after I graduated, they scheduled a homecoming on Yom Kippur - I kid you not).

This argument I had was set off by my friend's assertion that the gaffe wasn't so bad, since, you know, Rosh Hashana isn't like, you know, Easter. Well - how - how isn't it like Easter I asked my friend. And he said, Well, it's not like it's a national holiday like Easter.

And that did it. How do you know Easter is a national holiday? Because we always have it off. But it's on a Sunday.

And we went round and round on this.

We didn't talk to each other for several weeks - and friends would try to set us up so that we would be face to face. Because this wasn't just a regular friendship - no. We took classes together, we argued about philosophy and political theory and yes, religion. But we'd never had a disagreement like this which really shook my core. Our friends knew this about us - they liked listening to us banter, try logic and, frankly, just like it is now - I won for passion and emotion and humanizing examples but Dennis - well - he is an extremely bright and gifted logician, among many other things no doubt.

I stewed for a very long time. What didn't I know about my faith that made it so hard for me to convince the school that they were wrong? And convince my friend that he owed me more reverance and should see the hypocrisy of what his student government organization had done in regard to the scheduling?

I decided it was completely my fault and my failure as a Jew. And I decided that that had to change.

What's a nice Reform Jew who went to a Catholic college doing in a Zionist program like this?

There are so many posts I wanted to write this evening but I had to take a break and have a bowl of vanilla ice cream with caramel "shell" on it first - might as well call it Heart-Stopping Goo because that, apparently, is what happens to your pumper if you eat too many products with this kind of stuff in it.

So I've chosen to write tonight about how it is that I ended up in Israel on a year-long volunteer program sponsored in part by the World Zionist Organization (pronounced "Wizzo" like "Rizzo" you know, from Grease?) and in part by one of the departments of the Israeli government - either responsible for absorption (usually non-North American immigrants) or aliyah (usually N. or S. American immigrants) - I don't remember which one anymore (looks like the Jewish Agency, especially if you read the very last paragraph at that WZO link - now I can see why I've always been confused about these entities) but I do have the newspaper clippings of how it was cheating us out of money because of the deflation of the Israeli shekel.

The story begins a long long time ago, at a Catholic university far, far away, when, as a 20 year old junior, I moved into my apartment with four other women and discovered an opaque green lucite piece of wall art with a very large image of Moummar Qaddafi, then the leader of Libya, hanging over the apartment's lone toilet, on the very first day at school.

It was right then and there that I should have gotten the clue that my life would never be the same. But no. That easy way out just wasn't meant to be - I much preferred to struggle against signs, no pun intended.

Due to the fact that the owner of that piece of wall art has been one of my closest friends for the last 26 years and is single-handedly responsible for my existence past the age of 20, I will keep my melodramatic retelling of how that piece of art didn't come down for quite some time (if ever - I don't actually remember) and how this friend and I didn't talk to each other for something like the first few weeks and how one of the incidences that contributed to breaking the ice was how she and the other roommates turned my corn plant Jemima into a Chanuka Bush (at least three of my roommates were Catholic, by the way - I'm not sure if all four were and the friend who knows, you do not need to out yourself in the comments unless you want to in order to correct me on this) all to myself.

The significance of the wall art, in retrospect, is that it was only the first of several omens that year that foreshadowed my realization that I didn't know much about my own religion or about being a Jew, even though I'd known nothing but being a Jew, having been in attendance at my sibling's bris (trotting around begging visitors to "Look at my new shoes!"), having attended a Jewish day nursery school (as Pre-K was called back then) and having been raised in the Reform movement from the age of about five and up.

But even that history is not so simple a history and it is this accumulation, compilation and compounding of events throughout my first 20 years, and the lives and habits of my parents and grandparents that led me to choose a one-year Peace Corps type program in Israel which, unbeknown to me, was intended to convince young North and South Americans to make aliyah.

Not knowing any Zionists (especially since I didn't think of myself as a Zionist, because in fact I didn't think all that much about Israel as a destination, per se, and the Reform movement was late in recognizing Zionism as a legitimate ideology and this goal of emigrating to Israel was not something discussed in my upbringing as a Jew) and firmly disavowing that I was one whenever someone at my college would assume that I must be, since I was a Jew, this purpose of the program - to get us to make aliyah - went over my head.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, in my acknowledgement of being in over my head when it came to the topic of Zionism which I know more about now than I did all the time I lived in Israel and was considering myself a Jew.

Because the real story doesn't start until I forego a spring break in Aruba with my 70-something only surviving grandparent (my Nana) and instead decide to travel with 10 other Catholic students from Georgetown to work in a Methodist church mission in Beverly, Kentucky, later that same junior year in college.