This is the first entry into my journal for people to read about my trip to the middle east. I will try to update it if at all possible while there. I am leaving the United States on December 22, and will hopefully be returning on or around January 12. The trip with UJA and Hillel ends on January 1st. I am so psyched about this trip. Everyone I know wished that I have great time. This WWW journal of the trip is a 2-credit project that I am now doing for the Judaic Studies department at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst.
1:49 am
I am out of here in 9 hours to get to the airport and 14 hours and 20 minutes until we should be in the air. The plan is to HAVE FUN, see the country, go repelling, meet new Jewish immigrants, plant some trees, dig at an archeological site, take a mud bath in the Dead sea, float there too, and spend all of Chanukah and New Year's Eve ( I wonder if it's a big deal there?) having a great time with old and new friends.
January 14, 1998
ISRAEL WAS AWESOME!!! I recommend that everyone go. The first day there immediately after we landed we went to plant trees in the growing Israeli forest. I planted a 2 foot tall Cyprus tree. I am positive that it will grow to be a strong tree that will keep the land and soil together for years to come. After that we went to a retaining camp that the British made in 1948. It was called At Leit. In that time there were many thousands of Jews trying to make it out of Europe and into the promised land. These brave souls who survived the Death camps of the Nazis and resisted the many temptations to give up and die, struggled to make it to Israel only to be locked up by the British upon landing in Israel. These camps were around for a while until a breakout, organized by Yitzhak Rabin, that allowed the Jews to become free from the camps and run into the forest were they later made homes and cities. That night we were in the City of Haifa which is about a 1.5 hour drive north of Tel-Aviv, where we landed. Before going out for the night we had dinner at the new convention center that was built there. The mayor,Amran Mitzna, of Haifa spoke to us before a young, talented group of students performed what was to be our first experience of Israeli dancing. My friend, Charles Freidman (who I met on the plane and united with his long lost cousin Rachel), and I went exploring over the building. We found a balcony that overlooked the whole center. It was the best place to take pictures. The music was awesome so I started dancing. After about two minutes, Charles told me to look down and I saw about 100 of the other students looking at us. Luckily it was dark, so I assumed they couldn't see our faces. Later though a girl came up to me and asked, "Aren't you the balcony dancer?"
24-12-97
The next morning our guest speaker after breakfast was Professor Arnon Sofer. He talked about the topic: "The state of the nation on the eve of Israel's 50th anniversary." He compared the United States with Israel, talking about allowing immigrants into the country. Israel recently allowed 800,000 immigrants into the country. That might not seem like much to us, but in a population comparison that would be like allowing 35,000,000 people into the United States. He also said that while the U.S. military forces only occupy 3% of our land, the Israeli Defense Force occupies around 50% of Israel.
From there we headed to the Golan Heights. The roadside was full of orange and lemon trees. We went to The Good Fence This is on the border of Lebanon. the purpose of it is to allow citizens from there to come into Israel everyday to work, and then go back to their homes at night. It shows that Israel isn't an isolated country and attempts to become friends with their neighbors.
Then we toured the Golan heights. We took jeep rides and saw an old Syrian bunker. there were fences everywhere marking where not to step because of mine fields. Dinner that night was in a hanger at the country's first Air Force base. Elderly couples, who imigrated to Israel, sat at every table and ours fought for Israel's independence 50 years ago. They were a married couple, the Yuehudas. He was a soldier and she was working in France and they fell in love and were married. They moved to Israel to help build the country.
We spent the night there exploring. My friends Jon, Marcia, and Rebecca went out to the city's finest pub's. It was quite an experience talking to some employees of an underground casino. They had a lot of cash on them and treated us to quite a bit of cheap, but unique wine. It began to sink in that I was in a foreign country when I called a taxi and a beautiful, new, white Mercedes pulled up to take me to my destination.
The only bad part of this trip was that we were so often rushed to get to places that many times we stopped got off the bus, took pictures, and left without ever knowing where we were. I was so happy that I got to have an extended stay to have a more close look at things. One such place was an ancient mosque, completely surrounded by barbed wire. It was a mix of 997 and 1997 together.
From there we went to Kibbutz Giva. It was composed of 600 men, women, and children. They had their own little community there. A factory called The Almond Tree produced candies and nuts. It makes about $35 million dollars a year or 100,000,000 shekels. The whole community shares the profits. Everyone works until they retire. People have specific jobs unless are really needed for some other job for a while.
We spent the rest of the cloudy, chilly day driving to
26-12-97
Last night was my first night in the magnificent city of Jerusalem! A few pals and I went out for dinner. We were literally dragged to a restaurant by a head host from off the street. We ate right off of Ben Yehuda St. ( Ben Yehuda was the man who revolutionized the Hebrew language as it known today.) During a break from school you can see anybody here. I ran into my friend . and Adam Canada, who as my bunkmate at Hillel's Student Leaders Assembly, on the street. He's the second one from the left. It was so freaky just randomly seeing people that I knew from home 6000 miles from home! The group I was with and I were separated when we started exploring more of the new city and I ran into two girls from my high school. Amazing , man!
Friday, the 26th of December, 1997
At breakfast we had a guest speaker Micha Feldman. He was the former Consul of Jewish Agency Mission in Ethiopia. He was one of the organizers that helps to bring thousands of Ethiopians out of Africa and to Israel.
The Wailing Wall (Kotel) was unbelievable. We went there for Friday
night Shabbot.
I got in a few pictures before sundown. There were so many people there
ranging from Reformed Jew to Orthodox Jews and then every once in a while
we would get the not knowing chinese tourist. He would take a picture
and the get a harsh talking to from the Police, not from people praying but
actually
the police. While observing the people there you could see different
people doing things such as puting written prayers into cracks in the
wall, and pray silently and
aloud. Many walked away from the wall as many more walked away backwards
as to not turn his back on the Kotel.
27- 12 97
We had a very productive and active day of rest today as we went
repelling in the valley of the fires in Jerusalem. This is where there
used to be many years ago giant alters devoted to pagan faiths where
children were killed many
thousands of years ago. The repelling cost $20.00 and was boring because
of such a small height and the fact that we were practically lowered down
ratehr than normal repelling. While I was
waiting for other people to go, I went exploring with two other future
archeologists and found a cave. We climbed up to it to find that people
had once used it as a home. There was a fired burned ash stain on the
floor and what looked like an indented sleeping area. It was carved
right out of the stone. I figured that maybe it was there for protection
from the fire at night.
We went to the Holocaust museum memorial. It was very sad and startling. There was a memorial dedicated to the children murdered during the war with 6 candles each burning 100,00 times in reflected mirrored images. These reflected images represented the memory of the 1.5 MILLION children murdered.
From there we went on an archeological dig at a site called Tell Maresha. This place was composed of a man-made maze of caverns composing of over 5,000 rooms all underground. The city was destroyed by its creaters who filled in the caverns with dirt and garbage so that it couldn't be used by their enemies. They destroyed or buried everything that could have been used by the enemy. A "Tell" is a man made mound built. A city is built on top of that and over time is destroyed. Another city is eventually built on top of that for the protection of being elevated. The dig was great, although a couple of us debated on the authenticity of the dig since thousands of people probably go there every year and there was very little achieved. It was very fun though. We found a few bones and some pottery shards. After sorting through the dirt, we looked in the screens for any pieces of the past. We definitly found some! It wasn't all work there, we had a fun crawl through what would have been a claustrophobics nightmare! We literally had to crawl through some tunnels lit by slowly burning candles. There was a skelton of an animal on the side passage of the crawl space.
Something that I learned was to use the phone card machines around
Israel. the cards are like phone cards here, but you put them instead of
money into the slot. I learned that after getting a $24.00 phone bill
for my call from the room to Sharon's cell phone only a few miles away.
We had lunch in a convention center and had a group of children
perform for us in extremely elegant costumes. There were 12 girls and 6
boys ranging in age from 6 to 15.
The ride going back to Jerusalem was long, something I observed on the way back was on one side of the road there was total desert, on the other side (right) there was all green grass and a growing farmland. This was in ARAT. Many people are protesting the JNF planting of trees saying that it causes an environmental change.
We also went to Mount Hertzel. That is the cemetary for all of Israel's prime Ministers and soldiers. Yitzhak Rabin is buried there. Rosemary is planted on every grave, privates next to generals, so that no one forgets them. Rosemary is the plant of rememberance. We will not forget them. We drove down, literally to the lowest place on the earth, to the Dead Sea. The hotel, The Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, was beautiful and right on the water. That night we had dinner at a Bedouin site. The tents there were set up in the middle of nowhere and we had to hike from our buses to get to the site. The chicken and lamb was absolutely delicious. I geuss that all Bedouins aren't only goat herders but have businesses as well. I have to believe that they aren't riding on camels anymore since there was the sounds of a car alarm going off in the background. They had freshly made bread and tea. We had the opportunity to smoke out of a huka (water pipe). We danced around in groups and lit the candles for chanukah. The stars in the sky were the most beautiful that I have ever seen.
To see what the hotel was like click here for a little bit about the
Of course there are
other places to stay there, check
here. to see some.
30 -12-97
We climbed Masada just now. We woke up at 5 am. I felt like
calling my parents when I woke up simply because they would ask me what
I was doing up so early on vacation. No such thing as sleep when on a
UJA trip. I climbed Masada with my friend, Eric, from UPenn. in 29
minutes! We were the first ones up there from our group, excluding those
that could stand the hike and took the gondala. It was awesome for the
first 200 feet vertical becasue there was MORE oxygen there since it was
so low below sea level.
We hiked the Snake Path and for the first time during the trip
here, I got to wear shorts! Yeah! A little history of Masada is that
it was a city composed of about 800 Jews. Their city was being beseiged
by the Romans for about two years. The residents had enough food and
water to live up there for years. They flaunted that everyday by doing
their laundry and hanging it over the walls to dry. Eventually the
people knew that the Romans were going to break down the wall by building
a ramp up to it. They decided that they would rather die free people
then become slaves. So each man killed his family and then were slain by
each other. Only 2 women and 5 children were not killed and they were
captured and brought ot Rome to tell the story of Masada. It is through
them that we know the truth of what happened. Masada is where the IDF
soldiers climb each year to be intiated into the army. They shout,
"Masada will never fall again!" It is a debate among professors here
whether or not that should happen since suicide is against Jewish law.
After we climbed Masada, the entire bus found a place to sit along
the shore of the Dead Sea and shared our feelings of Israel. We all
had
an awesome time and we talked about how sad it would be to leave. A few
of us talked about how we were staying and that made it great. I was
glad that I had friends to go with to the other places.
The Dead Sea was beautiful. There were large mounds of salt in the
middle of the sea. It doesn't look like the old pictures with islands of
salt naturally all over. It is very industrialized now and those mounds
are man made. You could just look across
them and see the country of Jordan. In a few days I would be there.
We went back to the hotel and were in the water immediately. The Dead Sea is an amazing expierience. Enter by backing into it and just sitting down. You are very buoyant in it. It was awesome just to be able to lay back and float. You could fall asleep and not drown! Just don't stick your face in it, don't shave before hand, don't jump in, and especially... DON'T DRINK THE WATER!! It touched my lips and they went numb!
I wonder what the first people who were wondering through the desert and found this massive sea in the middle of it thought when they drank the water and got sick.
Well, my official journal has come to an end. We left the Dead Sea and went back to Tel-Aviv for one last night. We seranaded Mickey, our tour guide, and Schaul, our driver, on the way. Mickey loved it and thanked us saying we were the most enthusastic group he ever had. He's normally stuck with old people who just fall asleep when he talking. At least we put on sunglasses so that he couldn't see if we were awake or not.
I later went down to Eilat (on the Red Sea), into Jordan to see Petra (the lost city from Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.), and to Jerusalem to study at Aish HaTorah and stay at the free Heritage House for a few days. In Jerusalem, I walked to the Kotel everyday. It's a beautiful site.
On January 12, 1998, I left Jerusalem for Tel-Aviv in the middle of the first snow storm in 6 years. It was hilarious watching birds get blown away from the strong wind. The country was not prepared for such an event. There were accidents everywhere. I saw one little kid run out in the middle of a hail storm in Tel-Aviv to "play in the snow", he quickly ran back in. I think that the snow storm was a sign from G_d that He didn't want me leaving Israel. Well, I'll be back.
For more on Israel check out this. or this map of the Old City- Jerusalem. this map of the Old City- Jerusalem. or this for Yahoo's results of what's in Jerusalem.
Since this trip was sponsored mostly by the UJA,
here is a link to them.
This is to national Hillel.
This is to Umass Hillel.
