Blundering Through Israel - Part IV - June 29, 2006

Continued from Part III.

My father has been to Israel many times. One of the reasons is the city of Or Akiva. Or Akiva is a poor city in central Israel near rather wealthy areas, such as Ceaseria. The city serves as the home of many new immigrants who come to Israel, often with little money.

After Israel's founding, Or Akiva was in very poor shape. The city had an extremely high crime rate and considerable drug problems. It also lacked any viable infrastructure. The homes were in extraordinary disrepair and there was no viable sewage treatment. In fact, much of the city had raw sewage in the streets.

The American Jewish community stepped in to help. Through various methods, they contributed money to improve infrastructure and made sweeping changes in Or Akiva. And when the situation in Or Akiva stabilized, much of the community moved along to other Israel projects.

Except Miami.

Miami stayed, realizing there was much work to be done in Or Akiva and has spent the last thirty years making widespread and incredibly significant contributions to Or Akiva. And to this day, Miami serves as Or Akiva's sister city.

For the past seventeen years, I've heard my father discuss projects related to Or Akiva. He's been involved, in one way or another, with almost every major project related to the city. And the organizations he's involved with make, not only financial contributions, but send employees to live in the city and manage the use of the contributions to address the community's needs. However, while I've heard of Or Akiva often, it had always just been the name of an Israeli city.

Until today.

Today, I visited Or Akiva for the first time. I toured the older part of the city and saw some dilapidated houses that we learned were the example of how the entire city used to look. Then we went to the rest of the city.

The improvement of thirty years of investment was exponential in scale. The entire city, while still certainly having a way to go, was simply not even comparable to the dilapidated few houses that were examples of the city three decades before. Certainly, this was still a poor city, but one where investment bore hope and where its citizens discovered opportunity.

The jewel of Or Akiva is its schools. Prior to the Miami Jewish community's help, the schools in Or Akiva were some of the worst in Israel. Graduation rates were abysmal and students had very little opportunity for success.

But today they are the gem of the city. The schools are so good that the wealthy community of Ceaseria, where parents could send their children anywhere for school, send their children to Or Akiva's schools.

We went to a school for at-risk children and celebrated their completion of their year with them. The kids loved the toys we brought, but were even more enamored with the digital cameras that everyone in my group had. One even asked me if he could keep mine.

As we joked later, those kids have expensive taste!

My favorite story of Or Akiva and Miami is an older one. Or Akiva was scheduled to become a city in 2001. A Miami contingent came to Or Akiva to join the residents for this momentous occasion.

The dedication ceremony was set for commence at 4:00 p.m. on September 11, 2001.

The Miami group was loaded on their buses at 4:00 p.m. Israel time to go to the ceremony.

Then the cellphones began ringing.

When the Miami group realized what was happening---that America had been viciously attacked by terrorists---they unloaded the buses, when to a television and watched the events unfold. The Or Akiva dedication ceremony was delayed.

The residents of Or Akiva were beside themselves.

Here were these people who had provided so much help to them for over a quarter century and now their homes were under siege.

So the residents of Or Akiva did what Jews do.

They brought food.

Lots of food.

And they were there for the Jews of Miami in their hour of need.

And later that afternoon, when the time for the city's rescheduled dedication ceremony, the people of Or Akiva made clear that the ceremony could wait until another day. But the Miami group decided that the dedication was why they were there and that it was incredibly important to the people of Or Akiva.

So the ceremony went on.

And now, the Or Akiva dedication plaque reads September 11, 2001.


The Or Akiva Community Center...

A gift to Or Akiva from Miami...

Our party with the kids...

Our visit to the Tishbi winery. Such great wine!

Some shots of Ceaseria...

An unfinished sarcophogus...

More ancient ruins in Ceaseria...

The palace in the sea. The square in the middle was a freshwater pool...

Where the chariot races happened. A la Ben Hur...

The Ceaseria bathhouse false floor. Wood would be burned underneath to make a sauna...

One of the beautiful Ceaseria mosaics...

More ancient Roman ruins in Ceaseria...

Blundering Through Israel - Part III - June 28, 2006

Continued from Part II.

The first full day in Israel was just that. A full day.

The day began with rafting down the Jordan River (sorry, no pictures, couldn't risk getting the camera wet), followed by a nature hike in the Golan Heights, by the Jordan. Hopefully, the pictures from the hike will offer a sense of the incredible beauty of northern Israel. As the area that provides two-thirds of the nation's fresh water, it is an incredibly lush part of the country. And even though I'm the "indoorsey" type, I feel like more than a visitor---like I was always meant to be here.

After our time at the Jordan, we went to Sfadt (pronounced Tza-fat, with short a's). Sfadt is renowned for its mystical history as the origin place of Madonna-made-famous Kabballah. It also houses a large orthodox Jewish community and a community of Jewish artists---two communities that don't always coexist well together.

The most well-known art in Sfadt, other than its candles, is its microcaligraphy art. In these paintings, entire sections of the Bible are inscribed into watercolors paintings of biblical scenes as the lines of the pictures.

I knew I desperately wanted one of these paintings showing the biblical scene of Jacob wrestling the Angel, but I didn't anticipate I would find one. I walked into one gallery and the artist/owner said, "I see your name tag. What is your hebrew name?"

I told him and he said, "I have a painting of your biblical namesake. Here, let me show you."

He pulled open a drawer and took out an amazing pience of art. "Look," he said, pointing to the top corner, "Your namesake, with his brothers."

But then I looked at the bottom and there, in the lower right hand corner, was a picture of Jacob wrestling the Angel.

And as I looked closely at the lines that made up Jacob I saw a very familiar part of the Torah.

The part I read sixteen years earlier.

My parsha. My bar mitzvah Torah portion.

Admittedly, I'm not the most religious Jew, but that rite of passage still holds a special place in my heart.

And now, sitting in front of me was a beautiful painting with my parsha and my namesake.

I had to have it.

For the first time in a long time, price really was no object.

And I still got a pretty good deal.

So now I have a cardboard cylinder that both reminds me of a fantastic city and allows me to display two important parts of myself.

Money very well spent.


Some shots of the nature hike in the Jordan River, by the Golan Heights...

An old synagogue in Sfadt...

My infamous painting...

More pictures from Sfadt...

Blundering Through Israel - Part II - June 27, 2006

Continued from Part I


Today was predominately spent traveling to Israel, but once I got here, I remembered how much I love being here. Just seeing street signs in Hebrew---even though I can't read it---reminds me of how special it is that there's a country of people like me.

Okay, like me, but different.

Very different.

But as an American Jew, I can never shake the feeling of constantly being a minority. When people advocate prayer in schools, they aren't advocating saying the Shema. When people claim that they are "saved," they mean being "saved" from beliefs like those I hold.

So being here reminds me that somewhere these debates occur involving my beliefs, that somewhere, people like me are a majority, not just a vocal minority.

And that place is here.

But the bus ride to dinner tonight was a stark reminder that Israel is no panacea. As we drove from the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv to Kfar Geladi, the hotel/kibbutz on the northern border with Lebanon, we took a new toll road by "the Green Line," that area that separates Israel proper from the territories. And lining the Green Line is the security fence---a winding line of electrically charged chain-link fence and 24-foot concrete barriers constructed to keep Palestinian Arab terrorists from striking inside the Green Line.


As I looked at the Arab cities from the window of the bus, I couldn't help but think that I drive three to four times the distance between there and here on my fifteen-minute drive to work.

With a nation so small, it's no wonder Israelis always feel under siege.


Seeing for yourself how close the Palestinian Arab cities are to the Jewish areas reinforces how, in the absence of a true and lasting peace, something has to be done. Hopefully, the fence is the answer.

But as important as the fence may be for security, it stands as a constant reminder of how far we---and by "we," I mean all people---have to go. Fences and walls shouldn't have to be necessary. Good neighbors should be able to exist without them.

And, hopefully, someday they will.

Hopefully, someday we'll be able to coexist together, respecting and appreciating each other's differences, not just tolerating them. Hopefully, someday all people will be able to live together freely and equally.

But for now, the security fence stands as a reminder that that day is not today.

And this troubled land, which I love so much, shows how much progress the world still needs to achieve.


The new and improved Ben Gurion Airport:

Some blurry shots of the separation barrier:

The view of the Lebanese border from my hotel room in Kfar Geladi:

The beautiful hotel on the Kfar Geladi kibbutz:

Blundering [To] Through Israel - Part I - June 26, 2006

My deep-seeded love of air travel reared its ugly head when I experienced the extraordinary cluster fuck that occurred in the process of finally getting to Israel. The story is a long one, but full of the entertaining antecdotes that you have come to know and love.

When I booked my flight to New York, I made the mistake of doing it online without consulting anyone who was on my trip. I used on the panoply of online ticket services and purchased the cheapest flight to get to New York's JFK, our departure point.

At least it was what I thought it was the cheapest.

I also booked what was the shortest flight to JFK, a drive to Jacksonville, followed by a flight to Miami and then to JFK.

At least it was what I thought was the shortest.

Evidently, those internet services don't really tell you about little things like JetBlue. JetBlue had a less expensive direct flight from Jacksonville to JFK.

Yeah. I got hosed.

However, no airport trip would be complete simply be getting screwed on tickets. When my Miami flight got onto the tarmac, the pilot came on the speaker---always a bad sign---and told us that while the crew was unloading the luggage from the last flight two panels came off the plane's cargo hold!

I'm willing to admit that I am certainly no expert in aviation. But I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that large pieces falling off the plane before it gets into the air is probably a bad thing. Sure, large pieces falling off the plant after it gets into the air would be worse, but before...still bad.

Evidently, the airline agreed because we, and by "we" I mean an entire airplane of passengers, sat at the gate for a solid two hours waiting for them to repair the plane.

As a rule of thumb, anytime an aircraft is repaired at the gate, I tend to get a little nervous. I visualize some groundscrew (and you can break that up as grounds-crew or ground-screw) man named Pedro running to the plane with jumbo pack of duct tape, yelling to his coworkers, "No, no! We just need to put this on it!"

Eventually, we were cleared for takeoff and I had a lovely discussion with the lady next to me, who told me of all things New York. As a born and bred Southerner, I always enjoy having Yankees tell me about the north. Unfortunately, this pleasantness quickly passed.

When I got to JFK, I raced to the baggage claim. The takeoff delay (a/k/a shit coming off my plane) make my comfortable transfer to El Al a mad dash across the airport.

And the Miami-JFK flight was no help. Whatever the problem was with the luggage compartment, it wasn't fixed when we got to JFK. Apparently Pedro's duct tape job was a temporary fix. It was another hour---that's right, another hour---before the luggage started to come out on the luggage carousel. The only saving grace was that I won the luggage lottery.

Everyone has experienced the luggage lottery. Each person sits at the luggage carousel with a claim ticket in hand, hoping---indeed, praying---that their luggage comes out first.

And I won. My bags were two of the first five off the carousel.

No NBA first pick, but I'll take it.

I grabbed them and, like Mercury, ran through the airport (and with an overweight bag, that says a hell of a lot). It was during that dash that my trip coordinator, quite literally, ran into me when she almost took me out with her luggage cart.

We ran like diuretic track stars in search of a bathroom to the El Al ticket counter, which for the first time that I've ever seen, was entirely barren of any other passengers. And, after I sweet talked my way into checking an oversized bag (I love flirting with Israeli women), we were on our way.

***

The last time I went to Israel, I looked at it as an opportunity to make friends and share the experiences with them. And it didn't quite work out that way. I didn't really connect with anyone on my trip and certainly don't keep in touch with them now. Looking back, I wish I had been a bit more selfish then, letting the experience be one only for me.

So, it may sound a bit rude, but this time, I plan to be a bit more selfish. I see the next week or so as an experience for me and me alone. If I meet some people who's company I enjoy, great, but it's not the reason I'm here.

I'm here to experience my history, to find myself, to remind myself who I am by experiencing where I come from from that singular perspective.

I know it sounds selfish, but sometimes being selfish is the way to learn about those little parts of yourself that you wouldn't have discovered unless you looked.

And this week is my time to search.

Throughout this series, I will accompany the posts with pictures from my time is Israel. Hopefully, this will give you some glimmer of this fantastic experience. Today though, all you get is the plane location monitor as we approached Israel. Don't worry, the good stuff is coming soon...

The joys of international travel...

I got home about 30 minutes ago, after spending around 30+ hours on planes, in airports (waiting on standby tickets) and driving home. New post tomorrow afternoon/evening. Really.