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!