So many good things happened today! I went to yoga this morning for the first time in ages, and then to the farmer's market (where I got pickling cucumbers!). Then, we FINALLY started our herb box/garden, after a summer's worth of planning & procrastinating. In the evening we went to an awesome little restaurant in Adams Morgan (Little Fountain Cafe) to celebrate our wedding anniversary. There really is a little fountain there, and we got to sit by it. I really like fountains. And to top off the good day, I'm now watching my cats being cute and snuggly with each other.

p.s. - The photos from our Richmond trip are now online, you can see them here (along with all the Israel photos).

We checked out of the hotel this morning, and had a briefing on the current Middle East situation. The speaker was a funny British guy, but despite his attempts to inject levity into the talk (hey, a Family Guy clip!), it was extremely disturbing. Not only is Israel surrounded by Arab nations who exhibit varying degrees of hostility toward even the idea of a Jewish state, but it's just so very tiny. The speaker showed us a clip of a children's show they air on a Hezbollah TV station in (i think) Lebanon, where a Mickey Mouse lookalike advocates martyrdom to children, and encourages them to hate Jews. Plus, one of the women in our group came in, right before the talk started, to inform Rachel (the 12-year old girl) and her grandmother that there was a "heightened terror alert," and that it was a good thing they were "evacuating" us tonight. She didn't tell anyone else this (I was sitting behind Rachel, which is how I overheard it), plus, our flight has been scheduled for tonight for months...so...they're not "evacuating" anyone.*

After the talk, we went to see "Lifeline for the Elderly," which is a workshop where old people can come in and make crafts in exchange for food and money. The work they do is pretty amazing - everything from metalworking to embroidering to painting - but it felt just a tad sweat-shoppy. Next we went to the Herzl Museum, which was very silly. They were trying to present Herzl's life story in an engaging way - there were a series of videos about an actor who will be playing Herzl in a theatre production, and his director is trying to get him to "understand" Herzl (and, by extension, telling us Herzl's life story). The acting was dreadful, though. Afterwards, we visited the cemetary on Mount Herzl, where Herzl himself is buried (as well as Itzhak Rabin, Golda Meir, and Hannah Senesh). It was a very pretty cemetary, and Phillip showed us a friend's grave and told us a story about him. Phillip said that everyone in Israel knows someone who has died in either a war or as a result of terrorism. If that's true, it's depressing.

We briefly saw the outside of the Knesset (sorta like the capitol building of Israel) and then went to our final destination: a "Bible Nature Reserve." It was hot and buggy and dull - the big claim to fame is that all the plants grown there are mentioned in the Bible. And really, it's just plants. There was an army practice range nearby, and we could hear constant artillery and gunfire, which was pretty cool. When we were looking at an ancient cistern, the guide pointed out that to our left we could see the Tel Aviv skyline, and to our right we could see an Arab village that was part of Jordan until 1967. From 1948 until 1967, there were only nine miles of Israel separating Jordan from Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean. So wee!

Our last meeting and dinner were a little emotional, and it all went by very quickly.

[July 9]: The flight home was very easy. I slept for 8 of the 12 hours, and watched "300."

*[non-journal note: When we got to the airport that night, I scoured the newspapers to see what was going on that there was a "heightened terror alert," and found nothing. When we got home, I went online and poked around...still nothing. I have no idea where she got the idea that there was a heightened alert, and it makes me all the more irritated that this woman decided to terrify ONLY a young girl and her elderly grandmother by spreading this apparently unfounded gossip.]

It's Shabbat, and the whole day is free!! Except, nothing is open, so there's not much to do. Adam and I slept in (I had nightmares all night about bombs and plane crashes), and then lounged around watching TV until lunch. After lunch, we walked around the Old City. The Jewish Quarter was predictably deserted. The Armenian Quarter was also pretty quiet (and there were eerie genocide maps everywhere), and the Christian Quarter was full of Muslim vendors who were on the pushy side. We exited via the Jaffa gate (there was a camel there!) and walked down King David Street to see the Montefiore windmill. Having exhausted ourselves in the heat, we spent the rest of the afternoon lounging at the hotel's pool. After Havdallah, we went back to Emek R'faim Street for kosher burgers.

I can't believe it's our last night in Israel. I'm not homesick at all; there's so much to do here, and it's so easy to be an observant Jew when everyone else is doing it.

I didn't do a whole lot today. Everyone went to Yad Vashem in the morning (the Holocaust Museum), but I opted out for varying reasons. I took a taxi to meet up with the group for lunch at the Ben Yehuda marketplace, which was insanely crowded. Everyone was stocking up for shabbat. I stocked up on gummies. We took the bus to an Ethiopian community, and met with a woman who had fled to Israel 17 years ago with her children. Phillip had to translate for us, because she didn't speak English (but did speak Hebrew), so it was an abbreviated version of her story, I imagine. Early into her (two-year) trek to Israel, which was apaprently mostly on foot, she was robbed. This provoked a collective pity-gasp from the group - that special sound that affluent people make when they hear about the plight of someone they don't really care about, but feel they should care about. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but it definitely struck me as a false, forced reaction. Especially since as her story progressed, and worse and worse things kept happening to her (and her travel companians), people never again made the sound. Eh, it was weird.



We went to the Kotel for shabbat. It turns out they don't actually have any sort of services there, but there are a ton of people who come out to pray on their own. You're not allowed to take photos, smoke, or use your cell phone at the Kotel during Shabbat, but I still saw people doing all of those things. It's sort of strange, because women always have to have their upper arms/shoulders covered, as well as their upper legs/knees, and they have women who sit there with scarves, ready to forcibly cover any woman who has dared let some of her naughty lady-skin show. But, they don't say a word to photo-taking, cell-phone talking smokers on shabbat. Well, actually I saw one guy get yelled at for taking a photo. But anyway, they were a lot more lenient about the shabbat restrictions than the women's restrictions. Oh and also, there's no dress code for men. Short pants & sleeves abounded. I think I would be less irritated by all this if I had grown up knowing it was this way. But, I didn't, and it just seems outdated and sexist. There are lots of differing standards between men and women in Israel, and studying reform Judaism in American doesn't really prepare you for this.

This morning we toured the underground tunnels of the Kotel. It was a little dull, but we did see a spot on the (underground) wall that is the very closest point to the holy site, and there were three women praying there. The exit to the tunnels leads you into the Muslim quarter, and apparently at some point there were some "issues" with Jewish groups coming through, so we had a "security detail" lead us out.



It seemed to actually draw more attention to us, and seemed totally unnecessary. There were no incidents; the only remotely "hostile" things I saw were two t-shirts - one said "Free Palestine" and the other said "Visit Israel Before It Visits You," with a drawing suggesting Israel was expanding with an intention to take over the world. Neither seemed terribly threatening. Ironically, the street we had to be escorted on was the Via Dolorosa, which contains many (all?) of the stations of the cross. So, there were as many Christian tourists as there were Muslims.

We also saw an old archeological dig next to the Temple Mount, where archeologists have uncovered remnants of another gate (Robinson's) and a Herodian-era street. It was super hot out, but not at all humid, so I got my first "dry heat" experience. It was neat.

After lunch at a crappy mall, our group (the Beth El Hebrew people) met up with our partnership community, Beit Shemesh. We saw a winery (Nachson), which was much smaller than the Golan Heights one, and then we went to an urban kibbutz to have a "dialogue" (where we read a poem, and then people all interpreted it in an identical way, just using different words).



The funny thing about the dialogue was that the theme was trying to communicate with and understand others (other people/cultures/etc.), but one of the women in our group seemed to think that the kibbutz members were implying that Americans don't have a sense of community, and was very indignant about it. She just kept repeating herself, trying to give examples of how Americans do in fact have a sense of community, and the kibbutz members kept trying to reassure her that they were not saying Americans don't have a sense of community. So, the dialogue about communication was plagued with a lack thereof. The kibbutz itself was cool, though - it's still very new, so the atmosphere is much more connected with the Marxist ideals that kibbutzes tend to be founded on. They have a carpool system (and only three cars for the sixty some people who live there), and the kibbutz owns most of the apartments (rather than the residents owning them). There were also these fun mosaics everwhere that the kids had created.



We made a brief stop to "plant" a tree (the hole was already dug, the sapling was in it; we just had to push dirt into the hole) and then went to a Kurdish home for dinner, music and dancing. They had all these crazy sculptures in their yard, and the food was pretty great. They served a stew-type thing, which was a welcome break from falafel.