My trip to Israel (mid-December to mid-March) was inspired by an intrigue of Israel's history, culture, language, the intensity of faith, and perhaps most of all the notion that, being Jewish, I could call this foreign country home. This blog is part diary, part photo gallery, part factual information, and essentially the best way to share my experiences with everyone. In an effort to explore different parts of Israel, I divided up my time there into more or less three different parts, and the common thread between all of them seems to be "roots".
Tel Aviv : העיר ללא הפסקה
I spent my first month in central Tel Aviv. While much of the city itself does not have incredibly nice buildings, the coast is incredible and the view from Jaffa is breathtaking.
Who wouldn’t want to visit this place? It is known as “the city without a break”, which is unsurprising as it took us about 2 minutes to hail a cab at 3am on a Wednesday night.
Tel Aviv is known for its nightlife; people here really live it up especially in the summer, I'm told. One of my favorite parts of the day time, however, was going to the market (shuk, שוק). In the US, the only thing I’ve seen comparable to the Shuk HaCarmel are farmer’s markets, and even then they are expensive, and lack the infusion of a boisterous culture. Here are a few pictures:
Also awesome: the ice-cream... and all other dairy products, really.
During this month I also was fortunate enough to have a friend visit from Spain for New Year’s, and my parents visit for ten days in January. I had a great time sharing with them the things I love about Israel.
Roots Phase 1 - History and Ancestry : ארץ ישראל
My great-grandfather was born in Jaffa (above).
Ruins from Caesarea tell a story of a culture-rich and busy sea port under a number of different reigns (below).
Herod built the second temple in the year 20 B.C. and one wall still stands; I’ve touched it.
photocred: <gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com>
The diversity of Israel, for me, has much to do with the uniqueness of Jerusalem. Few other places exude such mystery and intrigue that Jerusalem does, as it is home to many stories from the Torah, the Bible, and the Q'ran.
The Temple Mount, where Abraham took Isaac to sacrifice him at God's command.
Suggested further info: <http://www.templemount.org/ftm/archeology.html>
<photocred: jerusalemshots.com>
The Al-Aqsa Mosque, where Muhammed rose to heaven (and, contrary to popular belief, is of more religious importance to Islam than the Dome of the Rock, the recognizable gold-plated mosque in Jerusalem):
The Mount of Olives: Jesus' death and resurrection:
The Holy Sepulchre Church, where Jesus was crucified and buried.
<photocred: wherejesuswalked.org>
The via dolorosa is also noted with 14 different points around the old city. Our tour guide told us that regardless of whether or not the route is accurate, its tangible existence and the religious' ability to follow it is most significant. I agree.
Some peoples’ religious beliefs overwhelm them with emotion. I saw women crying at the Western Wall, touching it with their hands, arms, sometimes their face. I went to the Holy Sepulcher Church and witnessed a group of eight nuns weeping at Jesus’ resurrection site. These are things that we hear about and read about, and -- our own spirituality and religion aside -- to witness the intense effect that these monuments have on people is a true insight into humanity. And they’re all in the one square kilometer called Jerusalem.
Suggested further info: http://www.religionfacts.com/Roots Phase 2: Hebrew and People
עברית ואנשים
My most concrete (or maybe just the easiest to explain) reason for spending three months in Israel was to learn Hebrew. I took the intensive Hebrew class at Tel Aviv University; the course went from 8:30am to 1pm (with breaks), five days a week for four weeks.
<photocredit: greenprophet.com>
Tel Aviv University
I learned a lot, and my attempts to converse in Hebrew after the course were much more rewarding as I had the basic vocabulary and grammar to work with. Before the class started I had no choice but to speak in English… and I’m honestly not used to it and I really didn't like it!
The past six months have underscored an observation and interest of mine--aspects of a language illustrating the culture it is used in. In other words, language and culture are inseparable.
Example - "to forget"
Example - "to forget"
English and German: “I forgot it” or “Ich habe es vergessen”. Direct, to the point, and the subject pronoun takes responsibility.
Spanish: “Se me olvidó”. I.e., “it left me”, and the subject pronoun does not take responsibility.
Spanish: “Se me olvidó”. I.e., “it left me”, and the subject pronoun does not take responsibility.
Also Spanish: “I dropped it” translates to “se me cayó”, the reflexive verb configuring the phrase to literally translate as “it fell from me”. All by itself... uh-huh.
Unsurprisingly, Hebrew has its own cultural descriptors in the language as well. There is no word for “like” – just for “love”. (speculation: measure of cultural intensity?) This explains why, when I was working at the Jewish Community Center camp one summer, one 5 year old Israeli girl kept saying “I don’t really love ____”.
Real example: “Why don’t you sit next to Sarah?” “I don’t really love her a lot”
Real example: “Why don’t you sit next to Sarah?” “I don’t really love her a lot”
Real example: “Do you want some goldfish?” “No, I don’t really love that”
Similar to the “love/like” phenomenon are a few other mistakes that are typical of Hebrew speakers speaking in English. I learned a lot about Hebrew just from listening to their mistakes. “All the day I am working” which is a literal translation of the phrase in Hebrew that means “I work all day”. But in Hebrew, “all day” also includes what is literally translated as “the”. So, logically, “all the day” makes perfect sense. And I learned how to say “all day” in Hebrew now, without hearing the phrase in Hebrew.
Israelis’ favorite phrase to use when speaking English is “of course!” and no, it never occurs without the exclamation point. It takes the place of “yes” in most cases.
Real examples:
At the artisan market: “Did you make this yourself?” “Of course!”
At the airport: “Is there a fee to convert money here?” “Of course!” (not “yes, it’s ____.” That information requires a separate question).
Clip from a conversation I had with an Israeli who has never lived outside of Israel:
Him: “Have you ever been skiing?”
Me: “No, actually, but I’ve been snowboarding. Have you been skiing?”
Him: “Of course!”
Me: ………
Recently, while watching programs in English on TV I saw many English synonyms for “yes” being translated via subtitles to the Hebrew word for “of course”. For example, “sure” and “alright” don’t exist in Hebrew, as far as I know, so they use “of course”. For a few days I accepted the difference in lexicon as an explanation as to why Israelis always say “of course”, until I realized there are actually two words for “of course” in Hebrew. So, there’s one word that means both “love” and “like” but two different words for “of course”. Who was I kidding? Saying “of course” all the time is a Hebrew thing just as much as it is an Israeli-speaking-English thing. During the conversation about skiing I realized that the Israeli-speaking-“of course” is not the “of course” we are used to. We know it as a synonym for “duh”, but their “of course” is just a very enthusiastic “yes”. (He visited his friend in Switzerland and went skiing there, apparently).
Language Roots : שורשים
One of my favorite aspects of the Hebrew language are its roots. Because the vowels are essentially unneeded (the words in Hebrew in this blog do not have vowels), words are reduced to roots. Not unlike Latin or Greek roots that we are used to in English, roots of Hebrew words hold significance, and with context, prefixes and suffixes, the word's meaning can be deduced.
For example, "how many?" is "camah? - (?כמה)" and "quantity" is "camut - (כמות)". Not only do the two words begin with the same root (כמ) but the suffix that the second word has (ות-) serves to pluralize the root. So, though semantically "camut - (כמות)" means "quantity", when broken down, it literally means "how many (pl)" in non-question form.
One of my favorite roots in Hebrew is that of blood, "dam - דם". Here is the break-down:
English | Transliteration | Hebrew |
Blood | Dam | דם |
Adam | Adam | אדם |
Red | Adome | אדום |
As you can see, they all have the root דם, meaning "blood". Biblically, Adam was the first man, and blood is red. In this sense, the language and religious history are one and the same. Knowing how Hebrew functions with roots helped me understand, learn, and most of all remember the meanings of words.
Suggested further info: http://www.jewfaq.org/root.htm
Also interesting is the numbering system in Hebrew. Today, the Arabic numerals are used (1, 2, 3 etc.) but way back when, the letters of the alphabet were also numerical values.
<photocred: skypoint.com>
Here is one of my favorite examples of how the letters' numerical values are still embedded in Jewish tradition:
life : chai : חי
"There is an entire discipline of Jewish mysticism known as Gematria that is devoted to finding hidden meanings in the numerical values of words. For example, the number 18 is very significant, because it is the numerical value of the word Chai, meaning life. Donations to Jewish charities are routinely made in denominations of 18 for that reason." - http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm
Israelis : ישראלי
An American's impression of Israelis is usually not the warmest. They’re certainly not cold people, they just lack personal bubbles and see no use in sugar coating or staying worked up over nothing.
First of all, I believe the majority of Israelis are incapable of getting behind the wheel and not using the horn and/or coming to a complete halt in the middle of traffic. People in the U.S. are actually quite polite when they honk. In the U.S., more often than not, using a horn is a nudge, as in “hey, the light’s green, FYI”. In Israel, it’s “HEY I’M TRYING TO GET SOMEWHERE, GO ALREADY!”
Example: the light turns from red to red and yellow, to signal the green light to come, and people are honking. Before the light turns green. Israelis don’t know how to pull over, either. If they need to stop, they stop in the middle of the lane. Usually they’re thoughtful enough to move to the right-most lane, and sometimes put their hazard lights on… but they are without a doubt blocking traffic, and are completely aware of it. They’re waiting for their passenger to come back to the car, while everyone else is honking, driving around them, perhaps throwing up a hand to say, “dumbass!” and continuing merrily on their way. Normal.
I’ve decided that Israelis need to use the horn, because many times without the reminder that there are other people on the road, a car can sit at a green light with the driver engrossed in a phone call, oblivious to his surroundings. And they seem to accept this fact, and do not honk back.
Israelis might get worked up easily but they certainly do not stay that way for long. I walked into a store for gum, and the cashier was on the phone, yelling in fast and furious Hebrew. From my elementary Hebrew, the volume of her voice and her expressions, I could tell she was in an argument, obviously interrupting and accusing the person on the other line of something. I found my gum and wandered around the store looking for anything else I might want, and after a few more minutes of yelling on the phone, the cashier’s tone of voice did a 180 and she said in a very sweet tone, “Okay great. See you soon”. It really changed in an instant.
An American visiting Israel will probably be taken aback by the “lack of service”. My friend visited on Birthright (the free ten-day trip to Israel for Jewish young adults) and told me about an experience she had at a restaurant.
Melissa and me at the Tel Aviv Port on her last night in Israel.
Melissa: “Excuse me, this isn’t what I ordered”
Waiter: “So? Can you take it anyway?”
Melissa: “Uhh… sure…”
She said the dish was close enough to what she ordered, so she didn’t care about the actual mix up in food. But she didn’t expect the waiter to tell her to eat it anyway, either.
My conclusion: Israeli’s blood pressure spikes easily (due to stress or anger) but also goes back to normal easily.
Overall philosophy: There's no use in wasting time. Tell the person what you think until you’re satisfied with chewing them out or until you get your way, and move on to more important things.
Israelis might come off as rude to tourists or foreigners, but not in the least to each other. If one culture has a different standard of politeness and functions well, who’s to say that another culture’s standard is better? I find it quite interesting and amusing.
Roots Phase 3: Back to basics
יסודות
The three weeks I spent in Beit Yitzhak through WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, www.wwoof.org) were quite rejuvenating and grounding (no pun intended).
The basic idea of WWOOFing is to volunteer on an organic farm while the owners provide room and board. I worked in dirt, I did not wear make up or jewelry, and bad hair days went unnoticed. I planted good bugs on strawberry plants so they’d eat the bad bugs that were damaging the fruit. The left over lettuce from the mornings’ packing went straight into our lunch salad, along with the scallions, lemon juice for dressing, avocados and various other vegetables.
On the way to the lemon and avocado orchards
Distributing good bugs so they eat the bad bugs.
Sunday through Thursday (the Israeli work week) my alarm went off at 5:30am, and was often accompanied by thoughts cursing myself for signing up for a 6am start, pointing out to myself the unwelcome coldness and darkness, and that 5:30 is way too early for me no matter what. But, after I got past the initial grumpiness, I got up, made breakfast, dressed in layers, crappy jeans and work boots and was outside for the sunrise. Diurnal animals naturally sleep when it’s dark and wake up with light, and I was able to go back to my roots and do the same. As many of you know, I need a lot of sleep… so lights out was no later than 9pm during the week, and in order to achieve this bedtime and thereby a less-pissy-in-the-morning-Leah, I avoided anything that threatened my bedtime.
I felt extremely lucky to be in a position in my life where I could stop what I was doing and go to sleep when I needed to. It was truly the epitome of anti-stress—not all relaxation, per se, because it was hard work—but I had nothing to worry about from one day to the next. WWOOFing was an incredible escape; I rarely feel as connected to nature as I did during my time in Beit Yitzhak, when I was working and living off of the earth, and did not have stressors to distract me. I felt whole. While I do not plan on becoming a farmer (ha), I am very happy that I could fulfill my curiosity of living the basic life. (Okay, I had wireless internet, a TV, and the city of Netanya a bike ride away—pretty ideal for keeping my “real” life as close or far away as I wanted on a day to day basis.)
Connections: Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky (because they don’t over think the simple stuff; they are only stressed out when running away from a lion’s dinner plate, and have no need for the stress hormones that cause ulcers when they’re just munching on grass. Life of luxury, no?).
A Perfect Strawberry vs. A Perfectly Good Strawberry
תותים טובים
My first day volunteering on a farm through WWOOF was spent with strawberries, as were many of the days following. I am now an expert at telling which strawberries will still be good in one day, two days, or even three. The owner says he planted too many strawberries, so we had way too many strawberries. No such thing, you say? Yes, there definitely is such a thing as too many strawberries.
Mmmmm!
Because there are “too many” strawberries, we could afford to be very picky when taking them from the Styrofoam tray and putting them in their little plastic containers. The more strawberries we had, the higher the standard we had for the customer, and more strawberries were deemed "not perfect". We made 200-300 packages of these every day, each about 250 grams… that’s up to 75 kilograms or 165 pounds of good strawberries daily.
A strawberry is bad if:
Too red (too ripe, won’t last for the next two days)
Blemish or hole
Too small
Weird looking/deformed
Too many seeds (not enough water)
Any small bit of fungus (white, not very common)
A strawberry is good if:
None of the above criteria are met.
Seeing so many strawberries taught me a few things.
- Strawberries are wimps. They are bruised in 24 hours if you poke them too hard.
- Strawberries are fussy. One day at room temperature = 4 days shelf life in the fridge.
- People are way too picky about how their food looks. Every time I put a strawberry aside that wasn’t perfect I heard my mother say, “This is a PERFECTLY good strawberry. See? It’s fine. Eat it.” And I often did.
There is a difference between a “perfect strawberry” and a “perfectly good strawberry”, but one can be just as delicious as the other. I felt like a squirrel from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, who knocks on each nut to see if it is good or bad.
<photocredit: alicia-logic.com>
Luckily I dealt strictly with the Israeli owner and the two good-natured Thai workers, and managed to avoid any brats in need of being labeled “bad”. After a while, strawberries ceased to look like strawberries; my mind sort of glossed over and I didn’t associate what I am looking at hour after hour with what I might find on the kitchen table, or in a grocery store. It’s like saying a word over and over again until it just sounds weird, like the word “bird”. Bird, bird, bird, bird… it still means “bird” but saying it so much makes the meaning of the word take a backseat and the funny sound take over. The meaning snaps back into place when used in a sentence. Strawberries are now just a funny fruit to me, but hopefully will go back to their old selves when I see them in the fridge. The normal kind of fridge, not the enormous walk-in kind like we had at the farm.
Aside from packing strawberries, I also washed and packed organic mixed lettuce. Here is the process:
Step 1: Goom and Lamphoon (the two Thai workers) pick the lettuce in the morning.
Step 2: Mix up the five or six types of lettuce. Hi, cat.
Step 3: Cut off the ends, hose down the lettuce and soak it in water to clean. Put the lettuce in the laundry basket after shaking excess water out and making sure there are no bugs or dirt left.
Step 4: Fill the washing machine half way with wet lettuce, set on spin cycle, and remove after the water has been spun off of the lettuce (yes, like a large electric salad spinner).
Step 5: Weigh 200g of mixed lettuce, seal the bag and put an "Organic Market" sticker on it. We produced anywhere from 20 to 6o bags a day. Goom is helping me in the picture below.
“the root of the problem”
I also spent some time weeding.
["she could be a farmer in those clothes...!!" -- Clueless]
People often trim their plants to maintain a level of visual aesthetics; if we don’t remove dead flowers or cut plants back, our garden will look haphazard and unkempt. Trimming also serves to encourage the plant to grow more. Taking off dead flowers, leaves, or fruit (strawberries to be specific, surprise, surprise) encourages the plant to produce more new flowers, leaves or fruit and prevents sending energy to the dying ones.
Though useful for plants we want to grow, this plant-trait does not work in our favor with weeds, many of which are very difficult to remove completely. When weeding, it is essential to pull the weed out by the root, otherwise the weed will grow back faster and stronger, and use up the nutrients, water and sun that are intended for the plant put there on purpose (embedded metaphor intended).
Pulling out the onion by accident a few times is inevitable when weeding in an onion field. Especially if it’s grass that is unwelcome; telling grass and scallions apart is easy on your plate but not as easy in the field.
Pulling out the onion by accident a few times is inevitable when weeding in an onion field. Especially if it’s grass that is unwelcome; telling grass and scallions apart is easy on your plate but not as easy in the field.
Lamphoon pulling a few kilos of onions for a customer (above), and me in one of the onion fields (below).
One of my favorite things to do in Beit Yitzchak is pick lemons. I could get happily lost in the lemon orchard, looking for “rak yafeh - רק יפה” – only pretty – lemons to pick. It smells heavenly.
Apparently avocado trees are great for climbing. (I climbed one because I could, and then decided to get down, carefully, taking into account my klutziness that makes appearances at the most inconvenient of times).
Hearing Thais speak Hebrew throws me for a loop. Instead of “boker tov” I hear “boh-kerp tob”. One of the Thai workers (Lamphoon) at my farm has been in Israel over four years, and the other, his cousin Goom, came to Israel a little over a year ago. These guys work every day—even if their boss tells them to take a day off, they can legally go to the neighbor and work for him for the day. They each support about four families in Thailand. From what I hear, Thai workers earn minimal salaries in Israel and are often exploited, but still earn four or five times as much as they would earn in Thailand. As a culture in general they are also very good natured, hard working and responsible, making them and their low pay welcome on most farms.
Side note: Because of the number of Thai workers in Israel, Thai families are inevitable and children born in Israel with Thai heritage are a large point of conflict at present. The Israeli government tries to send the Thai children born and raised as Israelis to Thailand, arguing that the increase of the non-Jewish population in Israel is threatening the Jewish majority in the Jewish state. Interesting topic.
Thoughts on Organic Food
אכול אורגני
Organic food is great. No pesticides or added chemicals. You grow it. You eat it. It’s nature’s offerings with some TLC, coaxing and guidance. Healthy and natural – ideal.
On paper. If we look at the economics of organic food, problems do exist. I’ve come to this conclusion by inspecting strawberries for blemishes, holes or tell-tale signs of non-tastiness (too red or too many seeds, for example). Organic food is also typically more expensive as it absorbs more time and money to grow food sans-chemicals. Organic food’s high cost and customer pickiness leads me to consider the target market: does the organic label also then attract people who can afford – monetarily and health-wise – to be picky about their food? And since we’re such visual creatures, is the threshold for organic food’s visual appeal higher than non-organic, if the target customer can afford to give way to their visual tastes? In other words, do non-organic strawberries have the same standards for their clients as we did at the farm, and do non-organic food buyers have the same visual standards for their food as organic food buyers? If so, how helpful can the organic process be in the big picture if a “perfectly good” strawberry can’t be sold to the target market, and goes to waste instead? In Beit-Yitzhak we ate the non-perfect strawberries ourselves and the family gave them as gifts. But in all honesty, a family and a few volunteers can only eat so many strawberries.
To sum things up, I love organic food, but can’t help but think of the organic food that is wasted because of the organic buyers’ tendency to choose the “perfect” strawberries over the “perfectly good” strawberries. If the pattern were different, I would not have spent so much of my time separating and packing organic strawberries.
Due to economic restraints and lack of accessibility, organic food and non-organic food will always exist simultaneously. The demand for “perfect organic strawberries” will always exist, and organic farmers will always benefit from it. But if the farmers truly support organic food from a health perspective, “perfectly good organic strawberries” should be sold at the same price as non-organic strawberries. In this way people who can’t afford the prices of pretty organic food can still benefit from the healthiness of organic food. Moreover, the time and effort that makes the organic food so expensive in the first place is not wasted.
I would like this. A lot. Because as appealing as organic food is, and as much as I miss it, it’s not realistic for my income bracket (hello graduate school).
Connections: Animal Vegetable Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. "Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, this book (released May 2007) tells the story of how our family was changed by one year of deliberately eating food produced in the place where we live"
I also couldn't help but be amused by the cats. Israel has a cat problem -- there are tons and tons of stray cats. They're like pigeons in NYC but noisier, and I have come to the conclusion that cats might be the weirdest animals I have ever encountered. The cat in the picture below in particular, which my friend named Strudel, feels entitled to anybody’s lap, and is aggressively friendly. As the same friend who named him says, “It doesn’t surprise me that the cat is male and Israeli”. Haha.
So, to document my experiences with cats, I decided to do a short picture essay...
Cat-in-a-flower-pot
Cat-in-a-strawberry-tray
Cat-in-a-fridge (so not cool)
Cat-getting-out-of-the-washing-machine-meant-for-lettuce
Final Thoughts : מחשבות סופית
Beach at Netanya
The two countries that I’ve spent the past six months in each have a day of rest. Not just “oh I need a day off I think I’m going to watch a movie”. The days in Spain and Israel are forced days of rest. Nothing is open, so you can’t run errands. Some cafés and restaurants are open on Sundays in Spain – the most you can do is grab lunch or a café con leche with a friend.
And I think Israelis are possibly the busiest, most energetic people I know… I find myself doubting whether or not they sleep at all. Maybe they manage because Saturday is Shabbat, and like in Spain, everything is closed. Except by everything, I mean, everything. I spent most of my Saturdays with secular people, so my Saturdays were not religious. That said, there are still no stores, coffee shops or restaurants open for those who are not religious. In fact, only one (very small and restricted) bus line runs on Saturdays in Tel Aviv, and in Jerusalem public transportation on Saturday is out of the question.
Somehow, this bustling, profusely productive country comes to a halt for 24 hours each week. If they travel anywhere, soldiers travel home for the weekend, or families visit friends or relatives.
I believe that scheduled rest time is essential to balancing against stress. In my undergraduate class titled Stress, Health and Cognition, we read journal articles detailing the effects of sleep and social support on stress. The core of this class focused on how stress, health and cognition are inextricably intertwined, and I strongly believe that a scheduled weekly “time-off”, “rest-time” or “time-spent-with-others” positively influences all three constructs. Being with people I like is a de-stressor. Physically taking a break allows the body to recuperate from a stressful week. Lastly and perhaps most importantly in my case, I know consciously that I am taking care of myself by resting, and when all is said and done, I believe my health (and sanity) is truly top-priority. I am going to try to implement a chunk of scheduled “rest-time” when I return to having a somewhat normal week-to-week schedule. It will be difficult, but I know it is necessary.
“easier said than done”
This leads me to motivation and dedication, which are tricky and quite the mind game. I know that I will benefit from scheduling “rest-time”, but sticking to it is another story. It is easy to get wrapped up in events, errands, work and other stressors, and extremely difficult to set them aside when they seem to dictate day-to-day life.
The Mediterranean at Netanya
The Mediterranean has an incredibly soft, fresh smell about it. No wonder people go away to the sea shores or someplace with breathtaking nature to recuperate, or to inspire creativity. When I took these pictures, I felt like I couldn't not enjoy this; for once I felt like I can’t do anything but sit, relax, think, smell the air, and watch and listen to the waves crashing. For those of you who read my Valencia blog, this is a huge step for me, and goes hand in hand with scheduling de-stress time. Before, I knew that I should be able to just sit and enjoy, but I was often ansy, stressed, and hated not having anything to do. Now I can embrace it and make the most of doing nothing. Aaah.
So – is stress the trigger? Does scheduled de-stress time help spark internal motivation? In other words, if I know I am actively taking care of myself, will I be more inspired to do activities that I know I enjoy, without being tempted to zone out and escape reality? I certainly had an incredible time in both Spain and Israel, and have learned tons; the test is whether or not I can maintain this knowledge at an accessible level when I go to graduate school.
Experiment commences soon...!
Experiment commences soon...!
with love, ,עם האהבה
Leah לאה
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