Idan Raichel Project Concert

Last night I went to an Idan Raichel Project concert in Jerusalem sponsored by MASA. There were easily a thousand other people at the concert who are also in Israel on MASA-supported programs. Apparently MASA holds Idan Raichel concerts a couple of times a year because they are so popular.

I started off the night with a wonderful Skype conversation with my dad, although I had to cut it short so that I could get ready and catch the Egged bus to Jerusalem. It's about a 30 minute walk from my apartment to the bus station in Ramla, and then it takes about 5 minutes to get through the security at the bus station and walk to where the buses depart. But I was really worried about missing my bus, so I moved really fast and managed to do it all in just over 20 minutes. Which meant that I actually caught the earlier bus. This bus was absolutely packed, and the driver just kept letting people on. I was one of the last people on, and joined the other 10 people standing in the aisle. I then moved and got to sit on the floor right up next to the driver, which enabled me to fully experience the very steep turns that we were doing at rather high speeds.

When I arrived in Jerusalem I promptly got really lost, and had to have another person from my program come and show me how to get to the concert. We were very early, and walked around the big exhibition building for a while before deciding that we were hungry and should really go get some falafel before the concert.
 

When we got back from getting falafel I met up with Devora and Noam, who I sat with during the concert. It was fabulous to be at the concert with people who were also not so into MASA’s introduction video, the overt heteronormativity by the singers and dancers, and the lack of Arab, Palestinian, or Mizrahim acknowledgement throughout the concert.

The music was good, although I understood almost none of it. Idan Raichel himself didn’t seem to do much besides play the piano for a couple of songs and walk around on stage, but one of the main singers, this Ethiopian woman, was absolutely amazing. She sang a bunch of Amharic songs, and was she just owned the stage and knew exactly what she was doing. By the end of the first couple of songs, everyone was out of their seats and dancing, including people from MASA’s Board of Governors (identifiable by their nametags, and their age.)

The ride home was much less exciting, as I just took the chartered bus with other people from my program back to Ramla.

A Visit From Jenifer and an Open House Meeting

An old family friend is in Israel for the next two weeks (with a side trip to Jordan), and I got to meet up with her and catch up yesterday! She was in Jerusalem, so I took a bus there and we hung out for the day. It was lots of fun. We walked around Jerusalem and went to the shuk and various other things. I got starfruit, dragonfruit, brie cheese, and cheese with pesto in it from the Jerusalem shuk, all of which are delicious and all of which I can't get in Ramla. It was really interesting to see Jenifer's reaction to the shuk, to Jerusalem, and to Israel in general. It brought me back to my first few weeks here.

Around dinner time we said goodbye to each other and I headed off to another meeting at the Open House. The English Speakers Group meeting was a text study on the creation of gender in Genesis. I personally am not so into text study, but I still found it to be really interesting. There were a lot of ideas floated around that I had never heard or thought about before. We were learning in chevruta, and I got paired up with a fourth-year student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, which was a little intimidating. Even when we got back together as a group (there were almost 20 people there) I still found myself a little intimidated, as a large portion of the people in the group are in rabbinical school, or are studying at Pardes or another yeshiva. I'm amazed that the attendance at the English Speaker's meetings are so high, and that there are always new faces. The meetings also strike a good balance between social, activist, and academic. I am very appreciative of the group's organizers.

The meeting ended a little after 10pm, and everyone hung out and was social for about a half hour. After that Devora walked with me to the bus station and we got to catch up (I had to make sure that I caught the last bus of the evening at 11:30pm.) I love the bus system in Israel. It seems to be a favorite pastime to complain about Egged, but I really like it. It is incredibly comprehensive (you could probably get from any part of the country to any other part on Egged.) I also feel so safe in Ramla. The bus dropped me off in Ramla at 12:10, and the bus station is about a 25 minute walk from my house. The entire walk back, I felt completely safe.

And when I got home I learned that all my roommates are still sick. It seems as if we've all just been passing a bug back and forth. I really hope that they feel better soon!

And fun fact of the day: Scott Gotikov, MassEquality's Executive Director, is a Hampshire alum.

Moshav Modi'in

Last Shabbat (not the one that just ended, but the one before that) I went to Moshav Modi'in for a Shabbaton with Devora and Dev. It was sponsored by an older couple that hosts mostly students every other Shabbat or so. We all brought assorted food items (I brought grapes, pomegrantes, and bananas.) An interesting thing to note: the couple was shomer shabbat and kept kosher, so we only ate on plastic plates the entire weekend, as they couldn't do dishes during Shabbat, and dishes to feed 30 of us three meat meals is a lot of dishes. That meant that there was a lot of waste, but they also couldn't have hosted without the plastic dishes.

The Moshav is famous for it's Carlebach-style services (basically lots of singing), but I only went to the Kabbalat Shabbat and part of the Shacharit services on Saturday. Oh, and Havdalah. The shul had a mechitzah, and it was the type where the men were in the front and the women in the back (in this case the men were actually in the shul and the women were in a tent behind it.) I didn't find that too be very comfortable for me personally, and it definitely contributed to me skipping most of the other services (that and I wasn't really expected to go to all of them.)

The best part of the Moshav was that it was gorgeous! The scenery completely made up for all the other awkward moments throughout our time there. And I got to interact with lots of people who I don't normally interact with (ie yeshiva students living on the other side of the Green Line with politics to match.) Devora, Dev, and myself spent the night outside, which was absolutely amazing, and we stayed up late talking. We also played lots of Rummikub and Bananagrams on Saturday afternoon, and read, and slept. It was a very relaxing Shabbat and I definitely got to experience something different.

Delicious Dinner Last Night

I have promised multiple people much more substantial blog posts than this one will be, and I have a list of topics that I really need to write about, but right now I'm having trouble focusing on more than dinner last night. It was delicious, and I cooked it all by myself!

Our dinner consisted of steamed beets (lightly salted), steamed carrots with honey, Israeli salad (sliced cucumbers, tomatoes, and red peppers), baked sweet potatoes, whole wheat rolls with hummus, and baba ganoush. (Want to know a secret? I'm actually not a fan of eggplant. But my roommates are, as is my mom.) I wish I had taken pictures.

We were in a vegetable mood. Mostly because Rachel, my roommate, had recently been sent two enormous packages full of candy that we have been snacking on for the last couple of days, and we were feeling a little sick of tootsie rolls and fruit roll-ups (although they are still much appreciated!)

Earlier that day (I don't want to call it breakfast because it was around 1pm) we had hash browns, scrambled eggs, toast, persimmons, and grapes. It was also delightful.

I've recently tried several new fruits that I've never encountered before: starfruit, persimmons, and this fruit that tastes like a slightly sour orange but has a green peel. I love love the persimmons, and the starfruit I'd eat again, but I was a little put off by the sour orange. I'm excited to go to Tel Aviv tomorrow and check out all the fruit at the shuk there.