Aaahh!!! Israel Monsters

Tufts cham­pi­ons Mount Masada!

Right now I’m in Emma’s cousin, Rebecca’s kib­butz in Akko, Israel—we’re wait­ing for a taxi to come pick us up, as we for­got that trains don’t run on the Sab­bath and we have to be at Ben Gurion Air­port at 3 AM for our flights. Impend­ing doom, stressed pack­ing, and Emma’s snor­ing aside, I thought this would be a nice time to write a blog post.

After Shab­bat, some­thing hap­pened in our group where every­one started get­ting closer and closer. Peo­ple started becom­ing accli­mated to Israel’s many cli­mates and used to using the bus as a Hol­i­day Inn. Israel and travel started click­ing, and after that hur­dle things became even bet­ter and bet­ter. Peo­ple started becom­ing really good friends.

Much like Abra­ham, we needed a way to rep­re­sent this new­found covenant, and the low­est place on Earth is as good a place as Mount Sinai in my opin­ion. That morn­ing, we had come from Har Hertzl where I com­plained of frost­bite in a sweat­shirt and a jacket, and that after­noon we were at Min­eral Beach in bathing suits ready to swim. Israel baf­fles me.

If some­one needed key­words to describe the Dead Sea, I’d be quick to offer up sado­masochis­tic and oth­er­worldly and prob­a­bly add in salty. We all ran in and of course I imme­di­ately splashed my eye with salt water and cried to the heav­ens for a few min­utes while peo­ple started float­ing. The water is slip­pery and your feet don’t touch the bot­tom and it is so cool. But then all of your ori­fices start hurt­ing and every Jew starts kvetch­ing and so we log­i­cally made a human raft.

At the Kib­butz that night, our sol­diers gave us a les­son on Israeli slang and words they use every­day. It was around this time that I think the group started to really bond with our sol­diers, too as here the lan­guage bar­rier was turned into some­thing excit­ing as opposed to some­thing lim­it­ing. That day, we got to relax with impro­vised double-dutch with hotel tow­els, tree-climbing, and light pho­tog­ra­phy. I also have a new obses­sion with vault­ing liv­ing things and man­aged to vault the tallest girl the group (6 feet y’all!).

Israeli slang? Sababa!

The next day, we “woke up” (editor’s note: try instead “stum­bled blindly” or “rolled mis­er­ably”) from bed at 4 AM and loaded our bus. Then, we hiked the Snake Path of Mount Masada, the place where the inhab­i­tants all com­mit­ted sui­cide after being under siege by the Romans for seven years. Once we crested its peak, we watched the sun­rise, screamed into echo­ing moun­tains, did a shema med­i­ta­tion, and explored the ruins atop the moun­tain. Our tour­guide is also an arche­ol­o­gist, so he had a wealth of knowl­edge on the sub­ject (though upon reflec­tion, he may have just been mak­ing a pun on the Hebrew word for “dig­ger,” khofer, which also means some­one who talks too much).

Our coor­di­na­tors had a way of them­ing our days. In my esteemed sci­en­tific opin­ion, this Indi­ana Jones day would be the chem­i­cal reac­tion to the day of sev­eral his­tory muse­ums. After Masada, we vis­ited the grave of Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Min­is­ter; swam in a water­fall and did a nature walk; vis­ited Sha­yarot and Bedouin tents; and rode camels! My sole foot­note is that camels have the most unex­pected feet in the world. Just Google search it or something.

Non-sequitur beauty.

Eat­ing Bedouin food, explor­ing the desert, and danc­ing to Bedouin music with about four other Birthright groups served as a nice change of pace. How­ever, that night 80 peo­ple (two groups) slept in one big tent. I can hardly sleep next to Emma “Snores like a Steam­roller” Temkin, let alone 79 other talk­a­tive, noc­tur­nal, sand-congested Jews. It is unclear if in the pitch black of desert dark­ness the sand­man put me to sleep or just cov­ered me in dust.

Takin’ a hike on the dusty “salad trail”.

Fol­low­ing, we went to Shvil Hasalat and learned about desert agri­cul­ture. This was awe­some for two rea­sons: one was that our tour guide of the “salad trail” was the fat­test woman we’ve seen in Israel, and two was that we got to eat every­thing. Car­rots, cherry toma­toes, cucum­bers, dif­fer­ent spices and herbs, oranges. And it all tasted so good. I don’t think I’ll get used to Israeli break­fasts of raw veg­eta­bles, but hav­ing them for lunch was delicious.

The final two days were pretty sim­i­lar in that our group drove to Tel Aviv and did a lot of sight­see­ing, say­ing good­bye, and pub­bing. Say­ing good­bye to our sol­diers dur­ing sun­set over the beach in Tel Aviv was par­tic­u­larly mov­ing. I befriended one of them named Dor, who sort of resem­bles the sloth from Ice Age and sounds like an excited Mex­i­can. But jok­ing aside, he was extremely warm and friendly and ended up giv­ing me an extra badge off his uni­form as a keepsake.

And the last day was filled with reflec­tions. Look­ing back at the trip, I’m so glad I did it. I think I have even more ques­tions about my Jew­ish iden­tity than when I started, but I am pos­i­tive that that is a good thing, for now I have a desire to seek out these ques­tions’ answers. Not to men­tion I have a knowl­edge base that allows me to soul-search even more. And most impor­tantly: I met some great, great friends who I will have for a long time, and I explored a beau­ti­ful country.

Being tourists in Tel Aviv.

After this, Emma and I stayed with our friend David from the trip for one day and explored Yafo. It was really nice to relax and exist out­side of crammed pro­gram­ming. We then said good­bye to David and took a train to Akko to visit Emma’s cousin’s kib­butz. That time was equally chill—we casu­ally explored the old city of Akko, ate fish on the pier, and hung out with Rebecca’s kibbutz-mates.

It may or may not be fit­ting to end this post by describ­ing how our Birthright coor­di­na­tors ended Birthright—by tak­ing every­one to a club. It was a blast to dance with every­one, par­tic­i­pate in minor bar fights, and wit­ness 200-sheckel tabs for four drinks. The Birthright Face­book group has been explod­ing ever since the 38 oth­ers landed and the facts are in: no one got detained, but one per­son doesn’t remem­ber board­ing the plane and one per­son vom­ited three times in tran­sit. Motion sickness?

Speak­ing of transit—after a two-hour cab ride to Tel Aviv, a three hour plane ride to Istan­bul, a five hour plane ride to Casablanca, and a 45-minute cab ride to Rabat, I’ll be liv­ing Morocco’s mod­ern life. It’s time for abroad adven­ture round two.

Note: I’m post­ing this from a hotel in Morocco. I’m here safe and jet-lagged!

Check out the pic­tures! Click­ing on a thumb­nail will give you a big­ger, bet­ter view.