Ok. There is a dead rat in the ceiling and its stinking up the house. Me and my mom are departing to our respective cross-country destinationd tomorrow, so the rat will continue to stink up the house as it decomposes in the insulation. That is probably not anything anyone wants to know about, but for whatever reason it seems like as logical a place as to start as any. These things are always happening in the house. When it's not rats it's mysterious carpet stains, or detergent spills, or giant stacks of papers covered up with decorative blankets. Israel didn't exactly Jew up my organization skills. In fact, as far as I can tell, most aspects of my life and personality are exactly the same as before I left.
It has now been months since Israel and i'm still trying to figure out how exactly i'm any different. I should be well-versed on this too after all the thoughtful discussions initiated by the staff the last week, drilling us again and again to reach our peak epiphanies so that even if the trip had been a bust the pressure to think of some way that you had "changed" and some thing you had "learned and grown from" would have everyone convinced that something crucial occured anyway. Which in the end is maybe the same difference. Memory is easily manipulated.

so, after some thought, here it is-

1. I am a bad Jew

Israel is a big thing. I didn't know that when I went because I haven't regularly attended a temple since fourth grade, and apparently in all these youth temple groups and Jew summer camps they are telling everyone they need to make "aaliyah" to the "Jewish homeland" (this entry is going to require a lot of quotation marks.) I just wanted a cool political summer abroad, and these kids wanted to explore their Judaism in the place of its creation. And the reform movement! It is the most insane thing! These avid temple-going kids don't even know anything about Judaism, all they have is an extensive lexicon of songs and prayers, but they only know them in Hebrew. And the kids don't know any Hebrew besides the letters, so they are in effect reciting what is to them complete gibberish, just from memorization. This situation resulted bizarre cult-like singalongs where the American kids led playing Hebrew songs while actual Hebrew-speaking Israelis sat in the audience, mystified at how the Americans could sing and recite these things, but at the same time be entirely unable to sustain a converation beyond "Shalom" and "Maneesh-ma?" (What's up)
So there was that. And my total lack of participation in the reform community of the years I'm sure showed at first. But as the weeks went on I became better and better at mumbling along, and embarrassing incidents involving not knowing what to do with candles or when exactly to drink the wine greatly decreased in frequency.

2. I can try and dress normal, not bring up differences in cultural tastes, and start new around people with no pre-concieved notions about my past or status-but I am still horribly a awkward person


and four weeks through during a "first impression" chat, apparently it showed from my first oddly-positioned indian style sitting. Eventually I did get comfortable, and subsequently obtained reputation for playing and singing music like an old black man. The ultimate testament to my awkwardness defying country borders:




We had to pick a community service project. It was either community gardening or singing with the elderly. When we got to the nursing home it was, as you might expect, a collection of crazed dying elders. One particulary crazed man in a kippah was groaning (or singing?) the same note over and over in agony, and with a nice vibrato. We all wheeled our own old person and took them to a nauseatingly condescending song session in the park. My woman was of unknown name, ethnicty, and language to me, because she was completley mute and unreactive. My main job was swatting flies off of her hand. When the event organizer went around and identified the elderly to us, and among distinctions like "Electric Company President" and "Turkish Professor" the only comment on my old woman was "she is over 100 years old!"

And now for a gallery of other awkward moments that were captured during my six weeks in Israel:


heading to breakfast in the Heder O'Chl, drying my hair outside the kibbutz door after a shower


confused and disshevled at the hadag nahash concert


uhhhh


The Knerret. Extremely rocky bottom, I toppled over a few times.


One of the two pictures I insisted on taking, the other was Kosher McDonalds. This is a Quentin Tarantino themed cafe in the German Quarter of Jerusalem (which weirdly has no German connection?) See Uma, Samuel L. and Mr. Travolta?


so, there were no mirrors in the Negev. And no one found it necessary to tell me I looked like a terrorist in underground hiding. So I built apple towers oblivious.

And then there were some losses, The Mysterious Israeli Cell Phone Dissapearence of '07, The Flip-Flop Fiasco. At one point I turned in a two page long list to the housekeeping service. Some items were regained. Most weren't.
And then there were other times when I would not hear about a post-dinner group meeting so instead stayed on my porch reading Harry Potter, or thought we had a thirty minute break instead of five so I stayed on my porch drinking Coke, listening to Israeli electronica, engaged in a staring contest with the Kibbutz cat I named pitzoots(meaning explosive) or the times when I leisurely walked around bus stops thinking we had plenty of time when the whole bus was circling the lot looking for me. I just have a distorted sense of time. But time is not constant. And I think the world needs to stop treating it like it is and punishing me for their illusions.


3. Despite my occasional awkwardness, I can still fit in
As represented (poorly) in the following:



We moved our beds out onto the porch for a few days when it was really nice out, and exchanged messages through a bottle and rope system with the room upstairs. Only downside, Pitzoots took advantage of and literally raped our belongings and mooched whenever we weren't looking.





Israeli pizza is actually pretty excellent. Far left is Tamar, a real live Israeli who lived on the Kibbutz. Cowboy hat stolen from Tom.


Camping by the Jordan River. Love and Friendship.


Apple orchard on top of Kibbutz


Dead Sea!


that hat was awful by the way.


time for some schnitzel

to be continued