This has turned out to be the lamest blog ever. . .more like a picture gallery. . .

The view from a moshav called Ilaniya, in the lower Galil between Haifa and Tiberius. The photo hardly does it justice. My favorite thing about this area is definitely the olive groves. Olive trees are really beautiful and there were fields of them all on the drive to the moshav.

 So, the above picture is my last one from my time in the north. I had a lovely time staying overnight at a guest-house at the above moshav after a Shabbat dinner with the whole Shishkoff clan which was a whole lot of fun. The only one missing was Avishalom because he was still in Canada. I was the only non-family member there, but I felt completely at home. That Sunday morning, I said my goodbyes and took the train to Tel Aviv where I met the Santoros. I've been in the Jerusalem area for over a week now and I love it too. I miss the people I met up in the Kraiyot, but it's beautiful here and my walk through the Old City on Tuesday made me fall in the love with Jerusalem.

This is Mesillat Tzion, a moshav outside of Jerusalem started by Jews from Chochin, India. Eddie and Jackie live here, so this is where I've been staying for the past week and a half. It's a very beautiful place in the middle of the Eshtol forest, near Bet Shemesh.

This is the view you see immediately when you walk through Jaffa Gate into the Old City. The beautiful colors and jewelry are overwhelming, but so are the vendors who bother you to buy their stuff- I love the old city, but not so much that part of it. At least most of them aren't selling cheap stuff made in China. . .as far as I know.

This guy was in the Jewish quarter (duh). Beautiful beautiful tallitot, but I didn't bother even looking at prices because I didn't want to cry.

This is part of the Cardo, in the Jewish quarter. These are some of the remains of the main Roman throughfare built after they destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE.

View of the Kotel from a rooftop in the Jewish quarter. It was shorter than I imagined it, but still awe-inspiring. Praying at the Kotel was probably one of the most moving parts of my trip. I went up an waited forever trying to get a spot at the wall. Well, maybe some people push through, but I didn't, especially since I'm not Jewish it felt weird pushing in front of a Jew who wanted to pray at the wall. Anyway, I finally got to touch the wall and say some simple prayers and cried a lot. I don't know what it's like on the mens' side, but the orthodox women on both sides of me had drenched their prayer books by the time they were done.

Notice the completely disproportionately divided sides. The mechitzah recently became higher, but I think it's always been divided like this. Btw, for anyone who thinks this is part of the original temple, this is actually part of the retaining wall. The temple was where the dome of the rock is now. It is the only remaining part of the temple complex though, which is why it has inspired the reverence of Jewish people for 2,000 years.

The classic view of the Golden Gate from the Mount of Olives. We didn't walk all the way up because it's a sketchy area and it was going to get dark soon, but it was a gorgeous view. The Dome of course stands out over everything, which was their purpose in building it, and the Muslim cemetery in front of the Golden Gate is an unsuccessful attempt at stopping the Messiah from returning through the gate. In the foreground is a Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives in which it is a great honor to be buried.

Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem was definitely the most beautiful structurally.

 The next day, Wednesday, after walking around Jerusalem for six hours, I took a trip to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea with some nice Germans that Eddie and Jackie know, where we did a five-ish hour hike. It was absolutely gorgeous, but I can't imagine even entertaining the idea of going there in the summer. I was sweating profusely and getting sunburned in the middle of winter, so the summer must be brutal. Anyway, this wadi in the middle of the desert was where David went to hide from King Saul.

These ibex are all over the area. In fact, the place is named after them. Gedi means goat-kid in Hebrew. So, Goat-kid Spring, is quite an oasis in the desert. I'm not a desert person, but it was beautiful.

The caves in the rocks made me want to learn how to rock climb so that I could go exploring. As I told the people I was with at the time, if I were a Bedouin who lived in the Qumran area, I totally would have found those scrolls. The caves are so intriguing. And I guess David hid in one of them too. . .

One of the numerous waterfalls in the wadi.

The view across to Jordan was just spectacular. Usually it's much foggier, but we could see almost completely clean across. When we got really high up, the views were phenomenal.

I love this picture because of the stark color contrasts and the lone tree. It was lovely to hike in the winter, but I couldn't live here.

Again, the color contrasts are striking. I believe these palm trees were all planted by workers on the nearby kibbutz. Either way, they were planted by Israelis at some point. The photo is taken from the vantage point of the kibbutz. It gives a good far-off view of the hike we did. We didn't hike the high peak in the right top, but I believe we were on the next level down from there or one below that. Whatever it was, it was high up. We cut down the slope to where you see the bend in the road right above the tree tops and then crossed a rather ugly gully to get to the kibbutz, which contained a botanical garden, but unlike one I've ever seen before. All those cacti- I guess it was a desert botanical garden. . .

On the walk up to the kibbutz there was a random branch on the road. The only one for miles around. Most branches are on trees or else they're not green.

Then we walked down to the Dead Sea so that I could at least say that I've touched the water.

I really don't understand how the water can retain that much salt but it is majorly majorly salty. . .and oily. I took off my shoes and rolled up my pants to wade in. When I got out, after the water finally evaporated, there was this oil left that I had to go up an wash off. One day I'll swim in it. . .but I prefer fresh water.

This is the Eshtol forest that I'm living in the middle of at the moment. When we took a drive up the mountain to get this view, I felt the most at home then I had for the whole trip. I think you can tell why. . .

I've been being spoiled by Eddie's amazing cooking. His bread is especially tasty.

 This past Sunday and Monday, I took a trip into Tel Aviv-Yafo to visit Stacey and to see the city. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I still like Jerusalem better, but Tel Aviv has it's own appeal and is beautiful in it's own way. We started out in Yafo, which I absolutely loved. It's definitely a close second to Jerusalem in my estimation. It has a very antique air, even outside the old city. And I liked the narrow streets and mixture of Arab and Israeli culture.

Yafo was a very significant port city in it's heyday. This pic is still outside the old city walls.

View of Tel Aviv from Yafo coast.

The fisherman and his cat

I really loved old Yafo, primarily for all it's winding stone passageways.

On our way back north, we passed by this amazing baklava shop. This Arab guy makes all the baklava you see here and more and he lays it out so beautifully. He let us go behind the counter to take other pictures and after I bought a gift platter for the Santoros, he gave us each a 6 shekel piece of baklava for free. It was by far the best shop in Yafo.

I forget if this was the Yemenite Quarter of Tel-Aviv or not, but if not, it was around that area. Even though most of the buildings in this are looked like this, it was very cute.

Outskirts of the Carmel Shuk (market) in Tel-Aviv.

We went to visit Evan at his work place in Gilgal Hotel, the only Christian hotel in Tel-Aviv. This was on the 6th floor, which had a lovely view of the beach except it was raining hard and instead I decided to have some fun taking an interesting shot.

This was our late lunch, which we had totally earned after 6 hours of walking. I was hurting afterward, but it was delicious.

I met up with my former Hebrew teacher, Noa, that evening and we went out to eat a late dinner on Shenkein St., a very popular street in downtown Tel-Aviv. Thus, I got to take part in the most common Tel-Aviv night-life scenario-eating at a restaurant or cafe, sitting almost in the sidewalk. I found the menu quite entertaining, and you'll see why if you look closely. I ordered the House Salad which was scrumptious and now I'm hooked on fried chalomi cheese.

After sleeping over in Stacey's flat, I took a walk up to Tel-Aviv University to see the Diaspora Museum. It took way longer than I expected, but I got to see more of Tel-Aviv, so it certainly wasn't boring. This is the horrendously dirty Yarkon River which is so polluted that I guess people who have fallen into it (while kayaking) have gotten really sick. The stench is just awful, so I got out of there quickly.

Tel-Aviv sky-scrapers from the Yarkon Park, which wasn't the prettiest of any park I've ever seen, but it certainly was a lot greener than everything else there, so I guess native Tel-Avivers get eye-relief from it.

An Israeli honeybee along on route to the University.

It was a very interesting and informative and well-laid out museum. It's modern flare, relying heavily on recreations of different aspects of Jewish life across time periods and geographic areas with an emphasis on the latter. Instead of ancient artifacts, there were miniature models of synagogues in many cities across the world, and sculptures like the one above, depicting scenes in a typical Jewish community. This is a musician from the wedding scene.

Stacey and I. We had a ton of fun together in Tel-Aviv, including fun memories like being asked by a random guy in a car if we were Scandinavian. . .

Trip to Acco

You heavens above, rain down my righteousness; let the clouds shower it down. Let the earth open wide, let salvation spring up, let righteousness flourish with it; I, the L-rd, have created it. Isaiah 45:8

The sky was just magnificent. On Friday, we made it to Acco just as the rain cleared up and then immediately after we left, it started pouring, so we made it between the rain falls!

It was chilly and windy on the walls by the sea. The tip of Haifa can be seen in the far background, to the right of my head.

The above picture was taken by Desta. We had fun walking around, taking in our first Acco experience together. It's a very historic area. I believe the wall I walked on is from the mid-18th century, built by a Arab-Bedouin ruler who used the remains of the Crusader walls as his foundation. It was also very beautiful, as long as I didn't look at the ground, which contained plentiful amounts of broken glass, garbage, dog kaka, and even some dead fish.

Acco is one of the more integrated cities with a rather large Arab population. People's back yards are awkwardly right across the street from where the tourist attraction is in the old city.

There's just something about stone walls that is very appealing to me. Especially old stone walls.

Almost at the three week mark. . .

part of the ruins of Caperneum

There's been a lot that's happened since I last wrote. I finished my eighth interview on Tuesday morning, the last one I'll be doing here in the Northern part of Israel. The interviews have been keeping me really busy. So, aside from a day-trip into Haifa last Sunday, I hadn't done that much sightseeing around, certainly not of any tourist attractions. So, on Wednesday, I gladly took up the offer of David Shishkoff, Hannah's brother, to go on a tour of the Galil. After taking a bus (filled primarily with soldiers in uniform and with their guns) from Haifa to Tzomet Golani (one of the main army bases in the North), David picked me up and he, his two oldest boys, Shaked and Yoav, a young woman from Japan, and I spent the day traveling around the western and northern shores of the Kinneret. One of the first things that struck me even on the bus ride into the area was the landscape. Everything was a lot greener than usual because we had just had a couple rainy days. All the olive trees were lush and beautiful. The hills were very different than any I've encountered in NY. It was very rocky terrain with long, dry grasses and an occasional shrub but no trees. I could look up the whole height of the hill and there might be one lone tree at the top. But, it began to grow on me by the end of the day.

First we drove to the base of a hill and looked up toward Nazarath. David said that going inside, it feels just like you're in the middle of a modern Arab village, so we could get the desired effect from afar. I guess the desired effect was to feel the historical vibes, I'm not sure. Driving into Tiberius was next. Shaked, with help from his barometer, kept everyone in the car informed of our descent to sea level and then below. Visually, Tiberius is an interesting mix of religious Jews and Christians. There are signs in Hebrew telling the locals to be nice to the Christian tourists because the much of the city's economy comes from Christian tourism. The highlight of Tiberius was definitely my first shwarma experience. It was a delicious pita with salad and cut up meat to which I added fried eggplant, some potato fries, carrot and cabbage salad and tehina. It sustained me for hours afterward. I think I like falafel better, but it was very good.

The Kinneret, aka Sea of Galilee

 By the way, this was all happening in the rain and fog. Certainly not the ideal way to spend a day touring, but we really need the rain, so I'm not complaining. There were a couple breaks from the rain, one of them when we got to Caperneum and spent some quality time just sitting, praying, and thinking about Yeshua's adventures on those same rocks beside the Kinneret. It was so beautiful and quiet. So quiet. You could hardly hear the traffic from the road and there were no other people down on the rocks, so I was able to look over the water, listening to the bird calls. It was a very peaceful time. When the birds flew just over the water, I could hear the beat of their wings reverberating. There were also some massive fish jumps right near the shore in front of us. The time by the Kinneret was the best part of Capernaum and the highlight of my day. The rest of Capernaum appeased my itching to see some archeological ruins. I guess to some people they're piles of old rocks, but I like to imagine the history and could spend hours just looking at those piles of rocks. I can't wait for the old city of Jerusalem!

Jordan River at the north end of the Kinneret

We took a drive to see the Jordan River, which I was surprised to see was much narrower than even the Rondout Creek at home and was even more surprised to hear that it doesn't get much wider than this. I would think that a river that flows through the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea would be larger, but I guess not.

Altogether, a beautiful day with beautiful views of Northern Israel.

A view from the old city of Korazim

So, that was yesterday. The week before this, I was busy being sick with fever and feeling really cruddy and trying to do interviews also. I got better after a couple days and took a trip into Haifa last Sunday to walk around, go to the National Maritime Museum and walk by the beach (pictures from last post).

Here are some other updates from the time since I wrote last:

- I was completely not expecting that this would happen, but I met Alyosha Ryabinov, an amazing Russian Jewish pianist whose music I listen to all the time on long car rides (Jonina, he's the guy who plays the piano music we listen to on drives to Ellenville). He and his wife had just made aliyah about the time that I arrived in Israel and they were at Ohalei Rachamim's Shabbat service, where he gave a mini-concert of one of the Psalms he put to music. I was sitting there with tears pouring down my face. I just couldn't believe I was listening to him for real. An awesome Shabbat surprise.

- I spent an evening at the community center, where the Ethiopian kids in the town spend much of their after-school time. I could hardly call what I did, English tutoring, because it was almost complete chaos. Kids running around everywhere. Age ranges from around four to sixteen. It was probably the closest I've ever come to dealing with after school programs for inner-city kids. But it was far from organized. More like the supervisor occasionally came in to yell at the kids and the rest of the time they ran in and out of the building. On the other Monday, I had been there when a coach taught tennis lessons, and some of the same kids I was with were climbing onto the [flat] roof and playing around there. So, that gives you a good picture for the chaotic nature of the place. But, there were so many personalities in the room. I did a little bit of teaching English words, but it felt more like babysitting for a bunch of kids that I couldn't communicate with very well. They talked really fast and many of them had an Amharic accent, so it was tough. But I think we managed ok and by the end of the night, some of us had gotten attached to each other. I wasn't able to go back, but at least it gave me an understanding of the situation in Ethiopian ghetto communities in Israel such as this one. It was appalling to see groups of really young kids wandering the streets around their homes, but I guess this is typical of Ethiopian communities where there is very little communication between parents and children.

My interviews have been amazing. I've been learning so much and it's been great to be a kind-of insider look at the Ethiopian community here. I'll detail my first interview with a maven in the community here: I will never forget Wibigig. We (myself and Avi who was acting as translator) drove through the Ethiopian ghetto part of Kiryat Haim to where Sarah lives and walked through the dark hallways and stairs of the apartment building until we came to her door. Avi knocked and said something in Amharic and she laughed and opened the door. She's a very striking woman with a strong, yet humble presence with a joyful face and eyes that show the depth of what she's been through. And so hospitable. After some big hugs and a couple words in Hebrew, she immediately proceeded to offer us, in Amharic, food and drink. Avi had warned me ahead of time that she would offer her whole house, but that I should just pick one small thing so that it would release her to bless her guest. Since we had just eaten dinner previously, I hoped that she wouldn't bring lots of food out. At the same time, when she brought out a huge platter of injera, I was excited to get some authentic Ethiopian food in an authentic Ethiopian apartment. Two huge injeras- way too much for us to eat. By the end of the night we had almost finished off one of them. The green sauce to dip in was some sort of chick pea and spices mixture. Very good, not too spicy. And her injera was so much better than the stuff I had in DC. Worlds apart. She also made us some spectacular ginger tea. 

She is a very popular lady. With three kids between the ages of 15 and 25, the house was a bustle of activity and noise, with knocks at the door often interrupting our interview. Her house was probably one of the more typical in this area with pictures of her kids all on the walls, but the huge TV stood out like a sore thumb. It was the only shiny, very expensive looking thing in the house. Later I learned that she only got it because of pressure from her kids and she's still paying it off. I could have spent hours asking her questions and I'm sure she could have spent tons of time talking, but we were limited and the translation took up a lot of time, but it was the first of many interesting interviews. I've learned far more than I possibly could just from the reading books.

I can't possibly go into the details of everyone, but I can say that one of my prayers going into this all, that my interviewees would be blessed through my questions has clearly been answered in numerous ways. Each interviewee has told either myself or Avishalom that they have come away from our time together more introspective and thinking about their identity and heritage in a deeper way. In one instance, I interviewed the father of a woman who was present during his interview. Afterward, I learned that she had been deeply touched and that she had heard things about her father that she'd never known before.

So, I will be off to Jerusalem on Sunday to stay with Eddie and Jackie, see Jerusalem, process and transcribe the interviews, maybe conduct a couple more. I can't believe that on Sunday I will have been here three weeks. Even though things get organized and planned more slowly than in NY, time itself flies by just as fast and I'm already starting to feel the pressure of school coming up. Always things to do, things to do, but I've definitely been having the time of my life also!

Some pics. . .update to come later today.

Israel definitely has a big stray cat problem, or maybe it's just here in the North. Their cats are almost like our gray squirrels. Try to find all six cats in the pic.

A cute picture of Betty hanging laundry.

A beautiful bird on R'chov HaPlugot. . .and of course some plastic without which it would hardly be Israel.

It was walking on Shabbat and heard these amazing bird calls and then heard a girl yell "Tuki, tuki!!!" to her mom. I looked up and there were a bunch of bright green parrots in the tree above me. There are at least four in this picture.

Maybe it wasn't fair to say that everybody's front yards are bare and unkempt. Some of the yards here are beautiful.

Eitan and Connie Shishkoff's back yard.

After being sick for a while, I took my first sightseeing adventure into Haifa. It was very easy to find my way around.

The closest to the Ba'hai Gardens that I got, but it was exquisite.

Part of my walk through Haifa.

National Maritime Museum

This knot board was one of the neatest things in the museum.

I finally made my trip to the Mediterranean and walked on the beach. It was gorgeous!