Touring Israel-Masada, Dead Sea and Qumran

Now that my classes have ended I'm spending a few days traveling around Israel. On Sunday I went to Masada, the Dead Sea and Qumran.
Masada (Hebrew מצדה, pronounced Metzada, from מצודה, metzuda, "fortress") is a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel on top of an isolated rock plateau, or large mesa, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada used to be used for military induction ceremonies, but today it is more often used as a Bar/Bat Mitzvah site for families who are visiting Israel. I was interested to learn that most of the physical damage to the buildings had been caused by earthquakes.
The Dead Sea (Hebrew: יָם הַמֶּלַח, Yām Ha-Melaḥ, "Sea of Salt" Arabic: البَحْر المَيّت, al-Baḥr El-Mayyit, "Dead Sea") is a salt lake with Jordan to the east and the West Bank and Israel to the west. Its surface and shores are 422 metres (1,385 ft) below sea level,[3] the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface on dry land. The Dead Sea is 378 m (1,240 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. It is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, with 33.7% salinity. It is 8.6 times as salty as the ocean. This salinity makes for a very harsh environment where animals are unable to live.
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge for King David. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics and herbal sachets.
Blog Activity: Why do you think it's called the Dead Sea?
Qumran, חירבת קומראן, is located on a dry plateau about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank, just next to the Israeli kibbutz of Kalia. The site was most likely constructed sometime during or before the reign of John Hyrcanus, 134-104 BCE and saw various phases of occupation until, probably after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. It is best known as the settlement nearest to the hiding place of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves of the sheer desert cliffs.
Since the discovery in 1947 of nearly 900 scrolls in various states of completeness, mostly written on parchment, extensive excavations of the settlement have been undertaken. Cisterns, possibly a few Jewish ritual baths, and cemeteries have been found, along with a dining or assembly room and debris from an upper story alleged by some to have been a scriptorium as well as pottery kilns and a tower.
Blog Activity: Find the story of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and draw a picture illustrating the story.

Lunch Breaks 2

During three weeks of classes you get a lot of lunch breaks and I thought I would share some more pictures from our lunch breaks. One day I ran over to Mahaneh Yehuda with some friends. For those of you who have not been here this market is an integral part of Israeli culture and history.
Mahaneh Yehuda dates back to the end of the 19th century, when it was established on an empty lot owned by the Sephardi Valero family. Arab merchants sold goods to residents outside the Old City, saving them the long walk to the Old City food markets. Eventually, Jewish merchants opened stalls there. In the 1920s and 30s, the market was turned into a permanent facility by the British mandatory government. Today the market is still going strong and many people do the majority of their food shopping there as it is much less expensive than the supermarket.

Blog Activity: Do the pictures of Mahane Yehuda remind you of anything in our area? What would you buy if you were shopping at Mahane Yehuda?
Bonus Question-Can you guess what was used to make those towers?

Lunch Breaks

Since we are in classes all day our lunch breaks are often used as a time to run errands. I ran over to Yad L'kashish one day to pick out a new tallit and do some mitzvah shopping. I know I've told many families about this wonderful organization, but if you are not familiar with it, the organization was started by Myriam Mendilow because she was upset at how many elderly residents of Jerusalem she saw on the streets begging for food and money.
Refusing to accept this as "the way things are," she began a workshop designed to train a small group of elderly and indigent men in the art of bookbinding. Local schools would bring tattered books from their libraries to the workshop, and for a small fee, the elderly would rebind the books. In only a short period, the group of eight beggars rediscovered their dignity and pride and the 'experiment' took root.

Thus, Yad LaKashish (Lifeline for the Old) began. Still located at its original site in the Musrara neighborhood of Old Jerusalem, the small shack which was originally used as the bookbindery has grown into an impressive building complex. The ten workshops today employ 310 elderly and disabled artisans,newly trained craftsmen and women who have rediscovered their pride and productivity. I make it a point to visit their shop whenever I am in Israel as I think the work they are doing is very impressive and worthwhile. I picked up a beautiful new tallit there which you will be seeing at TI when I return to services.

Here are some pictures of the Yad LaKashish buildings.

Blog Activity: Look for the book about Myriam Mendilow in the Mollie Berch library.

Classes Part 2

Here, as promised, are pictures of the room in use. I am also posting a picture of one of my teachers, Rabbi Shlomo Zacharow, he is teaching the Contemporary Issues in Halakha class. Some of you might have read his article in the recent Conservative Judaism summer issue. All of the teachers have been excellent and extremely knowledgable.

Classes

As I mentioned in a previous blog I am in classes from 9 -5:30. I thought you might like to see some pictures of the Conservative Yeshiva campus and classrooms. I know I posted some photos but these include pictures of the בית מדרש.

Blog Activity: Look up the meaning of the Hebrew words typed above and draw a picture of what you would design for this type of structure.

This room is uniquely designed so that you can study in חברותה
pairs or small groups. That is the main type of learning that we do in our classes. We study text together in small groups or pairs and then get back together towards the end of class to share our thoughts and ideas and learn from the Rabbis as they help us to unpack the meanings. I am also posting picturs of my חברותה

Catching Up with Friends.

One of the nice things about being in Israel is the opportunity to see people who have made Aliyah. In addition to some of the people that I mentioned running into on Emek Refa'im, I also had the opportunity to catch up with Judy White and John Young and family. We got together for dinner one night and this past Saturday, Motzei Shabbat I attended a concert that Evie was performing in, the money that was raised went to the Hadassah Hospital here in Jerusalem. They will be coming to DC this month and hope to stop by Tifereth Israel for Shabbat while they are in town.

Blog Activity: What's the name of the restaurant where we had dinner? What type of food do you think we ate?

Tel Aviv

We do not have classes on Fridays and a few of my friends and I planned a trip to Tel Aviv to go to Nachlat Binyamin, an arts and crafts fair that takes place in Tel Aviv on Tuesdays and Fridays. It was very hot that day and we walked around for a little while and then decided to head back to Jerusalem where it is cooler! I posted some of the pictures from my day.
Blog Activity: Look at the pictures of the teddy bears with all the hearts and tell me what holiday you think they are getting ready to celebrate in Israel.

Tisha B'Av Day

On Tisha B'Av classes were cancelled and I decided to spend the morning catching up this blog as it is hard to find time to write while attending classes and doing homework every night. As luck would have it our internet service was out that day! I started to upload some pictures and realized we had no internet, after making some phone calls and trying to get on some neighbor's servers we had used before ours was installed we realized it was a neighborhood issue not just our flat. It turned out later it was a problem with Bezeq the phone company.

I decided to save what I had written as a word document and attend some Tisha B'A study sessions at Pardes. I also got to see the movie Forgotten Refugees and hear from one of the women who is featured in the film. The movie explores the history, culture, and forced exodus of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities in the second half of the 20th century. Using extensive testimony of refugees from Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, and Morocco the film recounts the stories - of joy and suffering - that nearly one million individuals have carried with them for so long. The Forgotten Refugees has helped raise awareness about this important period of Jewish and world history; an issue which has been tragically ignored in the media, world politics, and educational programs. On June 19, 2007, a fifteen minute version of The Forgotten Refugees was shown before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which convened for a special hearing on the mass violations of human rights of Jews under Islamic regimes in Arab Countries throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and the Gulf Region. On March 31, 2008, the first-ever Resolution recognizing the rights of “The Forgotten Refugees” was adopted by the United States House of Representatives.

Blog Activity: Find some of the places mentioned in the movie on the map and see if you can find on the internet how many Jewish people live in these countries today.

I have posted some pictures of things I saw on my walk from my flat to Pardes

Tisha B'Av in Jerusalem

On Wednesday night I attended the Tisha B’Av service run by the Conservative Movement at the Robinson’s Arch area alongside the Kotel. I walked over with the group which included Iris and Mike Lav who are also studying Hebrew at the CY this summer. We had our picture taken as we passed the Tifereth Israel Road sign as we discussed the bulletin board that used to hold pictures from everyone who went to Jerusalem and posed by this sign.
The service was a lovely egalitarian service and there were people there from all over the world. It was a very moving service, made more so, by the location. Looking around and seeing the remains of the destruction of the Temple while listening to Eicha was an awesome experience! I noticed many others who seem to have the same reaction as they looked around in awe while listening to the reading.

Blog Activity:Look on the internet or ask your parents to explain what Robinson's Arch is and why that site made the Eicha reading so meaningful.

A really funny thing happened as I was preparing for the service. We were told to bring our own siddur and our own copy of Eicha. I had brought a Siddur with me and a Tanakh, however, as I was translating something from Hebrew using my Ipod Touch I started wondering if there was ‘an app for that’. Sure enough there was a Siddur application AND a Tanakh application that I downloaded to my Ipod. This was one of the best things I did since the Ipod lights up and I did not have to shlep the siddur or Tanakh to the old city and I had a nice clear copy of Eicha to follow along that was very well lit. There really is an ‘app for that!’ I was absolutely amazed at how easy and quick it was to find.

Second Week

The second week of classes also went very quickly. The ulpan class is moving rapidly and we were happy to go back into a bigger classroom. On Tuesdsay, after the Legacy Heritage meeting I had the opportunity to have coffee with Sally Klein-Katz, who in addition to being one of those in charge of the Legacy Heritage program, is also a lay leader at Kol HaNeshama in Baka. She is very involved with her community and we had arranged to get together after our Legacy group meeting, because she had mentioned some of the initiatives her congregation was taking in order to help build community. Sally was very generous with her time and information and there are some ideas we can definitely implement at Tifereth Israel. I also shared some of the things we do and she was very impressed with what she heard.

We had coffee at the ‘Cup of Joe’ by the Inbal hotel and this worked out perfectly because afterwards I had planned to meet a friend from my ulpan class at the Inbal hotel across the street where they have a lovely courtyard that on Tuesday and Thursday evenings has a jazz group playing. After our meeting I walked across the street to the Inbal, and had a very nice dinner while we went over our Hebrew work. While walking home after dinner I saw Steve Kerbel, education director of B’nai Tzedek. I should also mention that while having dinner at Caffit on Emek Rafaim on Monday night I ran into Shaiel Yitzchak, son of Linda and Razi, and Rena Fruchter. Emek Rafaim seems definitely to be the place to meet fellow DC Jewish educators!

Shabbat

There are many options for davening on Shabbat and this week I went to Shirah Chadasha on Friday evening. The service is semi-egalitarian with a mechitza and following the service we went to dinner at a fellow student’s house that was very close to the synagogue. The service was nice and the dinner was delicious. Renee and Karen who were out hosts had taken advantage of one of the myriad of take-out places set up for Shabbat and purchased many choices for our dinner. This is something that is very different from home. Rather than a ‘traditional’ Friday night chicken dinner, Shabbat meals here seem to be more diverse as there are so many more options for food.

On Shabbat morning, we davened at Yakar. The service was very nice and they offer their d’var torah between Shacharit and Musaf, before the Torah reading. They actually offered two drashot, one in English in one room and in Hebrew in another. The speaker was very interesting and there seemed to be many English speakers there, we ran into some fellow students there as well. Yakar also has a mechitza, it is a front back mechitza rather than one that divides the room in half sideways.

Blog Activity: Learn what a mechitza is and discuss if it matters in what direction the mechitza is located.

A Very Busy 1st Week

The first week really flew by, in addition to attending classes I also attended the Barbara Wachs memorial lecture on Tuesday evening at Yedidya. Rabbi David Golinkin, Rosh of the Schecter Institute of Jewish studies, spoke about Israel today. The title of his talk was ‘Heavenly or Earthly: Will the Real Israel Please Stand Up.’ Through the use of texts as well as work by contemporary authors he showed how Israel fits into both categories as well as discussed some of Israel’s contemporary problems.

This was the week after the riots by the Haredim surrounding the medical treatment of a young boy who was removed from his home and whose mother was accused of abuse. Rabbi Golinkin of course mentioned these incidents in terms of contemporary Jerusalem and how people live here today.

It was a very interesting talk and I ran into Rabbi Gary Creditor from Temple Beth-El of Richmond and his family as we were leaving. They are also in Jerusalem for a few weeks.

In addition, this week, the Yeshiva brought in Danny Siegel to speak during our Wednesday lunch period. I also ran into Danny while having coffee on Emek Refa’im on Thursday. Running into people you know is a typical ‘Israel experience’ but never stops being a pleasant surprise.

I am posting pictures of some of the signs I see on my way to class each day.

Blog Activity: See if you can figure out the name of the store across the street from the Yeshiva. What type of store is it? What else do you notice about these signs?

Classroom Photos

Here are the classroom pictures. Don't forget to look for the Caravan.

Classes Begin

In Israel, Sundays are like Mondays in the states. Everything is open, and it really יום ראשון. Blog Activity-what does this mean?
We needed to be at CY (Conservative Yeshiva) by 7:30 at which time there were announcements for all participants in the classes, shacharit services were held and then we were given the final list of classes including our ulpan classes.
My class schedule is as follows:
9-12:30- Ulpan
12:30-1:40-Lunch
Mincha
2 -3:45 Midrash -Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays
2 -3:45 Psalms -Mondays and Wednesdays
4- 5:30 Engaging with Israel-Sundays
4 -5:30 Contemporary Halacha-Mondays and Wednesdays
4 -5:30 Legacy Heritage Workshop-Tuesdays
4- 5:30 Parshat Hashavua on Fridays

We get homework every night in Ulpan but not in any of the other classes.
The Conservative Yeshiva have a very nice campus but the classes meet in 'found spaces.' I am posting some pictures of the Yeshiva campus and classrooms and one of one of the caravan, where my ulpan class met for four days.
Blog activity: Which picture do you think is the Caravan? What is an Ulpan class??

Shabbat in Jerusalem

Shabbat in Jerusalem was very nice, peaceful and relaxing. Although I found it very interesting that there are many more cars on the street than I was expecting and I was actually woken up early in the morning by someone blowing their horn! I certainly didn't expect that in Jerusalem!

Motzei Shabbat I took the girls to the The Night Spectacular at the Tower of David. The show has no narration and is not meant to be a comprehensive history lesson. Instead, viewers are treated to a colorful series of moving images that turn the massive walls, arches, towers, turrets and archaeological ruins into lifelike depictions of events that took place over the millennia, right where we were. The show does not provide a full history of Jerusalem however, the images are very powerful and we all really enjoyed it.

Blog Activity: Look online to learn about The Tower of David, what did you find most interesting? Draw your own picture of the tower and hand it in for a prize.

After the show we went to Ben Yehuda street for the girls to do some shopping. It was unbelievably crowded! I have never seen it like that, it looked like Times Square in New York on a Saturday night. It was great to see so many groups of young people there enjoying their summer programs in Israel. I spoke to some of the teens and they were from all the major groups-USY, NFTY, BBYO and Birthright. There were also some European groups there from France and Denmark. Myriam ran into a friend from the Habonim program who had spent the weekend at Beit Shemesh and was shopping with her aunt.