A Short June Vacation

So since I wrote my last post, the summer semester has officially started -- but not really. I've basically been on a lengthened vacation for the past three (soon to be four) weeks. One of my best friends came to Israel to visit me, I rented a car, I have watched too many movies, and I'm going on a non-Oranim program next week.

A very close friend from home, Mike, came to Israel for me -- okay not just for me, but for a family wedding, too. He's traveling all around Europe as a graduation present to himself. Mike, congratulations on graduating college! You have a very bright future ahead of you. Mike and I went ALL OVER Israel. On June 7th, he got to Tel Aviv and we walked all around the city: Neve Tzedek, Florentin, and Ibn Gabirol Street. We checked out the buildings, grabbed a bite to eat, and marveled at the busyness of Ibn Gabirol (and wondered, why in Israel, do cars not care to let ambulances in a hurry go by). The next day, I met him in Binyamina, a city about 15 minutes south of Haifa. We took a bus to the Tishbi Winery ("יקב" or "Yekev" means "winery"), one of the best-known wineries in Israel. We did a tasting and had lunch there. Tishbi has absolutely delicious food. Then we walked around Zichron Yaakov for a bit and took in the beautiful scenery. I took a bus back to Tel Aviv and then stopped by the Gay Pride parade, the signature event of Gay Pride Week here in Tel Aviv. They had already gotten to Gordon Beach and the party was ON! There were bands, acts, and people dancing, partying, and getting drunk. I walked around, took pictures, and met a few different people.

On Saturday, the Partners Program ran an unofficial event -- a beer pong tournament on the beach. I partnered with my friend, Hila, and unfortunately we lost our only match. I subsequently lost two other matches with Israeli friends, but it was still fun. Another team of Israelis (Amir and Gali) won the tournament, having never played beer pong before. On Sunday, I went to Rishon LeZion to hang with my ITF friends who live(d) there (and are moving out today). I got some falafel with Jenn then watched Space Jam with her and Ariel. I then had to rush back home because I needed to get onto my computer in time for 11pm Israel time/4pm EST to see my very good friends, Stacie and Ilan, get married. I got home 1 minute before it was scheduled to start. Then I waited 25 minutes for it to actually start, meanwhile having technological difficulties with my WiFi and picture on the live web feed. I eventually got it working on my iPod with decent picture. I saw the whole ceremony, and had a big smile on my face as I saw them happily walking down the aisle together, waving hi to the camera (in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture to your right).

On Monday, Mike came to stay with me for his last three days in Israel. We didn't have too much time to hang out before I had my own plans. I went to go volunteer at NVCC and then he came with me to stop by Beit Leni (an apartment building with Career Israel participants) to see some of my friends from Netanya, Rishon, and Career Israel. Then we went to a Partners meeting. It was unfortunately the last meeting, so we went out with a bang. Pregame at Amir's apartment and then go to a club for a few hours to dance our hearts out. So fun.

Best buds Josh and Mike

On Tuesday, Mike and I rented a car, a Hyundai Getz to be exact. We took the car down to Ein Gedi, the Dead Sea, and Jerusalem on June 12th. At Ein Gedi, we hiked the same trail I did with Oranim in January, seeing the David waterfalls and swimming in a couple springs. Unfortunately, Mike forgot he had his phone in his pocket and went in with it. It'll be a miracle if he can recover all the photos he took on the first two legs of his trip to France and Spain. Despite the technological disaster, we thought we may as well make good out of the day and continue with the trip since we were kind of far from main civilization. We swam in the Dead Sea, both having forgotten our flip flops, so it took a while to walk around the beach.

In the evening, we stopped by in Jerusalem to check out the Old City, the Western Wall, and to meet up with a couple friends of mine for a late dinner at Aroma. My friend Jenn stopped by to hang out, and an old friend from middle school ate with us, too. I hadn't seen Emily in ten years -- 10 YEARS! -- since we graduated and she looked great, exactly the same as the last time I saw her. Her family moved from Connecticut to Vermont, then she went to Israel to study and subsequently made Aliyah. She is now happily engaged to an Israeli and works for a cool nonprofit organization. The four of us enjoyed a great dinner with great conversation (Emily and I caught up and reminisced about our middle school days), and I look forward to seeing Emily a few more times before I go back to the States. On the way back, we picked up my friend, Arielle, in Ramla and we headed back to Tel Aviv to Dizzyfrishdon, a fun bar that seems to specialize in wine. However, we didn't get back before getting lost in Ramat Gan and Bene Brak. There are A LOT of Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Bene Brak! We finally got into Tel Aviv and hung with a new friend Robby for a couple hours (and then going to Benedict's, with its delicious breakfast menu).

Left to right: Mike, Emily, and Michael

On Wednesday, Mike and I were having a little trouble leaving Tel Aviv for the Golan Heights to go to a couple wineries. My phone wasn't working properly and we would have gotten lost and not have made it in time to get a proper tour and tasting (and we had to get a GPS). So we abandoned the idea and picked up my friend Michael in Petach Tikvah and another friend Emily in Netanya. We drove up to Caesarea (which both Mike and I have been to multiple times, but Michael and Emily hadn't) and walked the beach, went to a nice restaurant for dinner, and hung around some of the ruins for a couple hours. It was very fun. Once we got back to Tel Aviv, we Skyped with our friend, Sarah, from our Hillel/City Year trip to L.A. last year. Shortly afterwards, I drove Mike to the airport in which we said goodbye -- for him to go on the next leg of his trip to Ireland and for me to go back to life in Tel Aviv. On Thursday, I had the car for an extra day so Adam and I spent the afternoon chilling at the beach and driving the sand dunes in Ashdod. It was a new and very interesting experience.

Since then, I haven't done too much. I've downloaded and watched too many movies (most of them good), done some Zao work, gone to the Neve Tzedek Community Center end of the school year party, gone out to a club with some new friends from a couple new internship programs, and applied and got accepted to a non-Oranim program. Next week, I'm going on Livnot's one week Northern Exposure program. Jenn from Rishon LeZion wanted me to sign up with her, so I did. She has heard great things about it, and other friends like Michael from Petach Tikvah and Adam concur. I am looking forward to this new experience. I'll be based in Tzfat for the week while meeting new people, hiking, volunteering, and taking part in spiritual discussions.

Mike aggressively attacking his falafel

You can check out all of my pictures from Mike's visit to Israel in my Facebook album entitled, "Geveeeeerrr!!! ;)" ("גבר" or "Gever" in Hebrew means "guy" -- he and I had a running joke of it for the week) or click here. I will write next weekend about Livnot! Bye.

Shabbatons, Jerusalem, and Homework... Oh My!

Ah, the Spring semester is over! Now I can rest for about ten days before the Summer semester starts. The good thing about the next (and final) semester is that I won't have to take that hour-long bus ride down to Rishon LeZion to sit in the classroom in the abandoned mall, where there's an abundance of arsim (Israeli guidos). The bad thing is that I have to write my thesis next semester and take an online class that's being offered from the main NYU-Poly campus in Brooklyn. But ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right?

However, this break is going to be great. One of my best friends from home/college, Mike, is coming to Israel in a few days to hang out with me for a week. Can I ask for anything more? How about another friend who's coming on Birthright in a couple weeks and is staying an extra few weeks to chill and to go to Petra with me. Yeah. I plan on going on many more adventures around Israel, probably mainly going hiking and day trips.

So since I last posted, you could say a little bit has happened. On May 16th, a friend from Canada had recently finished her Birthright trip and I went with her and a couple friends of hers to "Taste of Tel Aviv", where a bunch of Tel Aviv restaurants came to the Ganei Yehoshua section of Hayarkon Park to display some of their best foods on their menus for people to taste test. I didn't try anything but we had fun just hanging out and walking around. The next night, we met up and just hung around my place.

On May 18th and 19th, I went to MASA's Aliyah Shabbaton; it was a weekend filled with people on MASA programs who came to get information on making Aliyah (Jews immigrating to Israel), whether they were sure of taking the big step or considering it. I am only considering it; I don't know if I'll want to make Aliyah or not until I get back to the States and think about how I feel about missing Israel and all the wonders it has to offer inside a such a small country. Nefesh B'Nefesh came to provide information with how they can help North Americans and UK Jews to take the big step. They give you tons of benefits and support (monetary and not) to help you get settled in Israel, and they ask for just one thing in return: you live in Israel for at least three years. We had some olim chadashim (new immigrants) talk to us about both the benefits and the costs of the process and making Aliyah in general. It was both inspiring and informative. I came away from the weekend with a lot of information that I probably won't touch for a while and some new friends.

Jesus and 16 other people
(are those the Disciples?)

Immediately afterwards began a period of about two weeks in which the majority of time was spent doing homework. I had a Performance Management presentation due that Monday. When I went to volunteer at NVCC, I helped a girl with her homework in which she needed to read a story about a study done that said teenagers in my generation were more submissive, nice, and got along with their parents well (so not true!). I stayed extra time to help her finish the story. During the next few days, I worked on my Project Management presentation and read up on a bunch of articles to write my thesis proposal. I took a couple nights to do much needed all-nighters.

Group 72B in Jerusalem

On May 24th, my program took a trip to Jerusalem. We visited the Hass Promenade, the place all Birthright groups go to look over the beautiful holy city. Then we went to check out King David's Tomb in the Old City, another common Birthright visit. Then we walked around the Armenian Quarter and had lunch in the Jewish Quarter. At this point, I did my best to search around the Birthright groups in the area to see if my old friend, Andrew, was there. He roomed with me and our friend, Scott, a couple years ago at school. I'm the one who referred him to go on Birthright; I am very glad he had the time of his life and the fact that he had his Bar Mitzvah on the trip! We tried to meet up but it didn't work out. Hopefully I'll see him soon, if I take a trip to Vegas that is. We then went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, then walked around the Jewish Quarter and visited the Kotel (no visit to Jerusalem is complete without a visit to the Western Wall). Lastly, we went to Yemin Moshe, one of the first neighborhoods in Jerusalem built outside the walls of the Old City.

Around table left to right: Mark (the Poland leader) and
his wife, Alison, me, Ariel, Erica, Jenn, Aliza, Sarah, Jenn,
Sofia, and Haddassah

I, along with Cory, Sam, and Joan, defected from the group to meet up with our old friend from our program, Noah, who graduated in March. After hanging out with them for a couple hours in which we went to a local tefillin  place to get new tefillin (phylacteries that Jewish males put on their arms and heads when praying during the week) for Sam's fiancee, because they're getting married in October, I left them to meet up with some friends from other programs who went on a Poland trip recently to visit concentration camps. We met up at Mike's Place in Jerusalem, where my friend Alison worked (it was her last night and since then, has moved back to Connecticut). We all hang out, drank a few beers, and enjoyed each other's company. I took a bus back to Tel Aviv late.

I unfortunately spent Shavuot doing homework the whole weekend, not a pretty sight. The next week, I spent more time doing homework for all three classes. One by one, I finished each paper and felt more weight get lifted off my shoulders. First my thesis proposal, then Performance Management, and then last night, Project Management. The only real break I took during the week was to go to Mike's Place across the street from me and hang with my friend, Max, from Ramla and his lacrosse buddies Monday night.

This past weekend, I went to another seminar, MASA's Security and Diplomacy Shabbaton, run by Kol Voice. This one was very informative, too, and I got to see my friends and make a couple new ones. Kol Voice consists of mostly British Jews who all made Aliyah and started an organization to run seminars to help strengthen identity and improve activism among many different groups of Jewish people. They educate mainly on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Jewish identity. We got to Jerusalem and took a short tour. We stopped at an area in Giloh overlooking the Green Line security fence (only about 5-8% of it is an actual wall). We learned that some Palestinians who live in the Territories and work over the Line in Israel often have to go through a checkpoint every day just to get to work. It takes a while to go through. At the same time, Israelis aren't allowed to go to certain areas in the Territories for safety concerns. I also found out that there hasn't been a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 2.5 years; that's actually a very big thing to be proud of. Now just to come to terms with the Palestinians on a peace deal...

We listened to four different lectures. Each guest speaker gave a short introduction of himself and his views or a presentation, and then everyone got a chance to ask questions. Matt Eussen, a diplomat from the American Embassy was first. He was quite engaging. Second was Bentzi Gruber, an commanding officer in the IDF for the past 40 or so years. He discussed the IDF's Ethical Code and how you have 8 seconds to make a decision on whether or not to let a missile hit the intended target; there are so many unknown factors when you have the power to kill people, both innocent and guilty. We then had Shabbat and I got to know my roommates for the seminar pretty well, philosophical conversations about life are so enriching. We ate dinner then had an Oneg Shabbat workshop on ethical and security dilemmas. My group discussed hypothetical situations such as, "If you were riding on a train, and you had the choice of either killing 5 people or diverting the train to kill just one, what would you do?". There are so many different scenarios you can consider in your head and so many different possibilities of what could happen next, but those are the most difficult decisions to make. What is more ethical when something bad is going to happen either way?

The next day, I slept in until we had a short breakfast. We then went to a lecture with Mark Regev, the international spokesperson for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office. He's a very important figure.
After that, we had lunch and came back to listen to Barak Ravid, a political journalist for Haaretz, one of he leading newspapers in Israel. Haaretz is one of the controversial ones because the newspaper criticizes Israel all the time, yet it always supports the State no matter what, as does Ravid. The question I asked him was, "What are both Israelis' and Americans' views on President Obama's relationship with Israel?" He gave me a very good and interesting answer, saying that Obama's position and relationship with Israel has been the same as it was with both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. A crucial relationship in which both sides have a give and take, Obama wants the same things for Israel that previous presidents have had. Netanyahu may not be the biggest fan of Obama's but the U.S.-Israel relationship is still just as strong as it always has been, and it will continue to be this way for many years to come. Both countries realize how important their alliance is and that they support each other through thick and thin.

After that, I went to a Media Training workshop in which participants got into groups and discussed how to phrase a potential strategic soundbite to provide both local and international newspapers. We also made up headlines that may fit the story to be put into such newspapers as The New York Times. The second workshop I went to dealt with Israel activism, educating us on how to argue your point and stand your ground when someone says something false, disrespectful, or ant-Zionist about Israel. We discussed whether Israel really is or not an apartheid state and what we could do as individuals to help the cause. I stressed an important point: it's not necessary to agree with everything that the Israeli government and military do, and you're allowed to criticize the State. But if you're going to support Israel, you MUST provide CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and always stress the fact that you always stand behind Israel, regardless of whether you agree with certain actions or not. We then did Havdallah and ended the seminar. It was amazing.

I finally finished the Spring semester yesterday by sending in my last paper. I hope I get good grades. I will leave you with a funny video I saw the other day online. If you haven't seen this yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. Bye!