Things continue to progress here, and it seems that some get easier and others a little more difficult. Sounds like life to me.
This past weekend I went to a friend’s place for Shabbat. It was a very welcome change, especially since his place is air conditioned and the apartment I am living in is not. That make for a very hot, humid living situation until the heat wave breaks and fall settles in.
The synagogue we went to has 2 different services on Saturday morning, and my friend directed us to the “young people’s” group. This service started at 9:15 and was over by 10:45. The brachot (blessings) were said VERY quickly, probably in part to fit into the 1.5 hour timeframe, and the Torah reading was so fast that I could not follow it in the book. Unfortunately that means that they skipped over many of the cantilations (musical “tune” indicators), performed many of them incorrectly and read “in the spirit of the trope” instead of as the trope is written. The readers were young, and it was apparent that they were doing this from memory instead of actually reading. This was made crystal clear when one of them looked up for about 30 seconds as he continued to chant. Oh well. Next time I go there we will go to the other service, which he says is done at a slower speed.
In the mean time I am still practicing the Friday night service. My next lesson is not until 30 August and I should have that service perfected by then or need only minor tweaking. Time will tell on that one.
I wanted to take a moment to address some questions that have come in to me.
First --- the food: Generally the food here is VERY good, especially fruits and vegetables. I have never had apples and grapes as delicious as they are here and I am eating much more fruit than I do at home.
While I am generally not eating out, I do see what is served here. The typical breakfast is loaded with veggies. If you try to order a bagel and cream cheese with no veggies you will get a very strange look from the servers. (A friend from Ulpan did that and they looked at her like she was crazy.)
The steak here is also very good, which was a big surprise to me. While I have only had 1 steak, it was equal to some of the best I have had in the U.S. and better than most from the chains.
Second --- smoking: For a society as medically and technologically advanced as Israel, I am amazed by the large percentage of smokers. It seems that 60-70% of Israelis smoke. It is difficult to get away from the smoke. There are no non-smoking areas in restaurants or any place else that I have seen.
Third --- odd architectural feature: Watch out where you walk! The multi-story buildings with balconies have a drain pipe (or more) on each balcony. The problem is that they stick out up to half a meter from the balcony and then end. This means that you could get a shower down below at any time. And it probably WON’T be clean water, either.
Fourth --- demonstrations: I walk by the Prime Minister’s house at least once a day. Most afternoons there are huge demonstrations. These are in support of the effort to free Gilad Shalit, who has been held captive for 1,513 days as of today. It is not know for sure, but he is believed to be alive.
Fifth --- big political issues: There are a couple of political issues that are huge here. As I promised when I started this blog, I will not present any opinions. These issues do, however, dominate a big part of Israeli life. The two major issues are:
Settlement Freeze --- This issue is about to boil over as the current building freeze is set to expire in about a month. The freeze prevents any construction, including internal renovation, in not only the settlement areas but also in parts of Jerusalem.
Direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority --- to a degree this is tied to the freeze. There are several major issues here, including but not limited to extending the freeze, giving in to Palestinian pre-conditions, willingness to consider going back to the 1967 borders, ability to secure the borders, internal security and many more.
Both sides on these issues are now mobilizing and pressure is building rapidly. I expect to see massive demonstrations for/against these issues in the near future.
As always, life here in the Middle East is interesting, if nothing else. I’ll let you know how these turn out.
No comments:
Post a Comment