Something frustrating.

What is there to say, when John Mayer has already said it all?

http://jhnmyr.tumblr.com/post/855941804/bed

It's usually nice to read/hear somebody's words and think, 'my sentiments exactly', but it becomes kind of unpleasant when the idea seems almost taken right out of my brain, and I can't even sit down and eat food with the thinker who thought it.

Either my writing needs melodic accompaniment and I could sell millions, or it's already been written and I should just throw my pen away.

More real life kindred spirits, please.

Something sleepy, something controversial.

4th July - Sunday

Everybody was exhausted so there was a subconscious collective sleep in. We start the day late with a seminar on politics, geography and whatnot in Israel and the Middle East. I think my brain has had all the information it can take at the moment and I don't really absorb anything, just sort of space out.

Our bus rides between places take us through endless sparse terrain. The land is brown, rocky, sandy; the sea is blue, and the mountains seem to stretch on forever. Our first stop is the City of David, where we start by eating felafel, and Inbar shows Yael and I her favourite tree - the pomegranate.

"Sisters! Come, I want to show you my favourite tree... It's like a crown."

Yeaaah... we are in a tree.

Everyone then heads indoors to watch a short movie on the history of the place, and I stay outside with the soldiers (me: informationally exhausted, them: just exhausted).

They are very easy to get along with, even though they're all (obviously) different people. Asaf is a clown and we get along like a house on fire, or some other more sensical metaphor; Tzlil and Adi are more shy but super sweet, and Mali reminds me a little of me in some ways, but then again she is a shooting instructor (!!!).

 Asaf + Inbar

Mali

 Adi

 Tzlil

The city has an underground water system, kind of like a shallow tunnel of water in a very narrow cavelike passageway. We are supposed to walk through it - it takes about 45 minutes and I am really reluctant. It's supposed to be very claustrophobic, and I am somewhat anxious. Inbar tells me it's amazing and refreshing - she is really trying to convince me, so in the spirit of being an Israeli, I decide to brave it.

actual darkness

It's very narrow and low at times, but walking through the cold water is beautiful, and afterwards I'm glad I did it. I think being so small helped in making it not so scary.

The bus rides pass in a blur as I continue to nod in and out of consciousness, dozing against the window. Marc is so tolerant of his sleepy bus companion and has taken to calling me 'sleeping beauty' when he talks to Tim and Yael.

We ride in an armoured bus to the city of Chevron, and the bus driver asks us not to stand because the little windows at the top are not bulletproof. Weird.

Chevron is a holy place to the Jewish people because it's (apparently) where the forefathers and mothers are buried, but of course there is some kind of political dispute about who owns the land, so we are escorted by an extra guard aside from Inbar. Our tour guide also carries a gun. It's a very strange place, old and stony - it kind of gives me the creeps, and not in a good way. The only people we see are religious people praying, and we have been asked to wear long skirts and cover our shoulders which totally shits me.

I suppose a place like this will always be dangerous, for as long as it remains rooted in belief. There will always be those willing to kill to attack it, and there will always be those willing to kill to defend it.

Only a few days later do we find out about the huge controversy our trip to Chevron has caused - we are the first birthright group to EVER have been allowed to go, and it turns out that the approval we were given was an oversight. We find out that Chevron is actually in the West Bank, and that there is now media from all over the world contacting our group leaders for statements and information about our trip there.

A video of our group, accompanied by a sort-of article.

At Chevron, we discover the beauty of the continuous shooting setting on my camera.

(I have so many sets of these silly things... I must learn how to make gifs)

Saturday was supposed to have been our night out, but because of our tour through the Kotel tunnels it has been changed to Sunday. Daniel and Yonit are super helpful in organising a fun evening for us, and I feel kind of bad when everybody starts whingeing that we have to be back on the bus at 11:15pm. Yonit and Daniel argue with our grumpy bus driver and eventually organise it so that we can take taxis home.

(we sit on the bus being beautiful while they sort it out)

Mali, Adi and Tzlil mention that there is a waffle shop nearby so I walk with them to indulge my sweet tooth. Apart from the fact that it's still strange to walk around streets where everybody is Jewish, it's even stranger to enter a waffle shop and see people eating desserts and chilling next to their rifles.

Because of the kosher factor here (no mixing of meat and milk), some places have non-dairy icecream and such. This was one of those places, so the girls decided to go elsewhere. Yael, Tara, Daniella, Inbar and I walked the shopping strip for a while and haggled with some Israeli shopkeepers, then went and found everybody else at a bar down the road.

Tania, Tania + Margarita

With only an hour or so, everybody started drinking and getting into the free hookahs - I was just happy we found a dance floor that played some Weezy. While some people got a little loose, most of us were just happy to actually be out in the world.

I sit outside for a little while with Joel and Adam (who is one of the most with-it 19 year olds I've met), and feel pretty good about being social instead of overanalysing it and getting cynical. At midnight, we Cinderella it back to the meeting point and take a taxi home. Our cabbie is Arabic and laughs at Tara's drunken attempts at Hebrew. It's funny how in Australia I feel like it's really unusual to randomly encounter somebody Jewish, whereas here it seems strange to encounter somebody who isn't.

 
Daniella, Yael, Tara and I manage to haggle the cheapest cab ride out of the group. Back at the hotel, most continue drinking. I eat some cereal and talk nonsense with Tara and Asaf, then bed.



(brand new says:
everything that i own starts to pile up like bones)

Something Jewish.

3rd July - Shabbat Saturday

Tara

Yiscah + Yael

Spent most of the day lounging around in the sun and attending talks about Jewish law and spirituality. It still sits much too strangely with me - especially the sexist stuff - but it's at least somewhat interesting. It turns out that people with tattoos can indeed be buried in Jewish cemeteries (this must be a lie some parents made up once to deter their Jewish children from getting tattoos...). A note from the future: I would have known this all along had I been to Tel Aviv earlier - EVERYBODY has tattoos here, and EVERYBODY is Jewish.

There's still far too much I don't buy, like the idea that a husband and wife can only touch each other two weeks out of the month, as the other two weeks (surrounding her menstrual cycle) the woman is not "pure". My skin just crawls when I hear this nonsense.

Later in the day I check my emails and when I find nothing from Christopher I get pretty down... it's unreasonable because he doesn't owe me anything and I'm having the best time here regardless, but I watch people getting cosy on the bus and I miss the arms that feel like home. All the Israelis keep telling me I'm like an Israeli girl, and I'm still not sure he can handle the intensity that brings. When we catch each other on Skype in the afternoon, talking to him makes me feel a lot better, and as usual I realise that 90% of the darkness I live in exists only in my head.

On the bus we pass kids of no more than ten dressed in black coats and hats with their hair shaved short and their peyot grown long. They look like little rabbis in the thirtysomething degree heat, and they're eating icecreams like any other kids, and I can't help but think of Dawkins describing religion as a virus. These kids have had the virus of orthodox religion transmitted to them, and they will suffer it for the rest of their lives.

Evening

Shabbat ends, and we head back to the Old City of Jerusalem. We take a short break - some eat pizza, some eat ice cream, and we all take in our postcard surroundings.

(Look closely, that's all Jewish stuff)

 Tara + Daniella

 Inbar, me + Dominique

Surrogate baby brother Adam + wonderful Joel

At the Kotel (Western Wall) they give us some time to write notes and place them in the cracks of the stones. I felt a bit phoney writing a note to nobody (a wall? God?), but I did it anyway.

There is something weighty about placing my hand on the smooth rock of a 3000 year old wall. Especially when I have to make my way through hundreds of crying women to get to it.

  Kotel tunnels

What baffles me is that after we come out of our midnight tour of the Kotel tunnels, it's about 1:30am and there are still so very many people there, praying and weeping. Is it always that way, every minute?

sisters + Asaf

(sidenote: as i write this, we literally drive past five camels just chilling on a mountain.)

Something that already happened.

1st July - Thursday

On the bus, we race the shadows of clouds. The motion soothes me and I fall in and out of sleep. Makes me wonder if the calm I feel when being driven around has anything to do with the fact that mum used to put me in the car and drive to get me to fall asleep when I was a baby.

We leave the north of Israel for Jerusalem. First stop of the morning is to pick up six of the Israeli soldiers who will be spending the next five days with us. Asaf, Adi, Tzlil, Mali, Itay and Neta. Avi joins us later. The bus then takes us to the grottos at Rosh Hanikra.

Caverns made of rock hollowed out by waves that branch out into pools. Years and years of water lapping at the rock. Such a bizarre natural phenomenon - one of the few times nature really gets me.

We then visit an old prison that was discovered under a palace. I'm sure they gave us more information than this but as usual I am living mostly inside my own head. It seriously looks like the setting for Assassin's Creed.

Tara wonders what made them dig underneath the palace in the first place. "How do they know where to dig? I never dig!"

 (Yael + I accidentally both wear stripes and everybody makes sure to comment.)

 

 Best looking couple in Israel

John says:
we're never gonna win the world
we're never gonna stop the war
we're never gonna beat this if belief is what we're fighting for.

2nd July - Friday

Yiscah + Ben

This morning we are at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. I am sitting in a room where a gentleman has just told us his story of survival. He was a young boy from 10-14 or so during the war, and was taken - amongst other places - to the Lodz ghetto and to Auschwitz. I wish I had words to describe what an incredible speaker he is. His English is good, slightly broken, and like a poet he calmly recites his story to a room full of young people. He talks of the last time he saw his mother and brother ('their eyes I can see even now'), of Mengele with his hand in his jacket signalling life or death, of kicks like presents and a boot to the head. 'I was on my own like a sinking stone'. He explains that for 50 years the survivors of the Holocaust did not talk about their experiences not because they wanted to forget or were ashamed, but because their were no therapists to tell them how to deal with such a trauma. They were told instead that in order to move on, they needed not to speak of it. I can't help but think of when I went to Auschwitz, set foot on that soil in that cold place. I am overwhelmed to have had the choice to leave when it became too much, unlike so many before me.

After Yad Vashem we walked to the cemetery at Mt Herzl where many of the Israeli soldiers who have fallen are buried.

 

 Daniel

All seven of the soldiers with us and Inbar, had friends buried there and spoke to us about the people they had lost. Inbar spoke a bit through her tears and I wanted to crush her with love. I find it so amazing that these women are shooting instructors or tank mechanics and are ready to die, but can then put on dresses and cry unashamedly. To watch Inbar holding a rifle and being emotionally vulnerable at the same time makes me realise that women are the same everywhere. We should never be told our feelings are too much.

It's been pretty spectacular to meet people who lead such starkly different lives to us. On the one hand they really have seen nothing of the world - they come straight out of school and into the army, they're still kids when they become soldiers. On the other hand the army seems to quickly turn boys into men and girls into women... the soldiers with us are between 20-22 years old, and really, they're badass.

Mali + Asaf

Asaf, Avi + Neta

Sometimes I imagine what they'd be like had they grown up in Australia - sitting around drinking overpriced beers and wearing dumb pointy shoes and talking shit. I'm glad they are here instead, being strong and far less full of shit.

Sombre part of the day over, we take a bus to the market and spend a frantic 45 minutes buying candy, checking out the junk shops, and finding little presents for our "shabbat-o-grams" (which is basically the Jewish equivalent of that Christmas thing where people buy a secret gift for someone in their workplace or whatever). Daniel, our tour guide, pulled out my name and bought me the besssst halva. Lucky guess - I love that stuff! The best part was the card:

Dear Talia,
Halva great shabbat.
You rock!
Daniel

The only thing I would have wanted more than halva was a good pun.

We all got into our Shabbat clothes and walked to the Western Wall. There was singing and dancing and soooo many people - thousands and thousands. Men and women are separated which drives me crazy because of the reasoning for it. It's something along the lines of 'man has an animal nature so for him to focus on praying instead of sex he can't be near a woman or hear her sing.' There are actually some super orthodox rabbis walking around with ear plugs in so as not to accidentally hear a female singing.

I felt pretty uncomfortable after a while (even though the spirit of the evening is pretty amazing, forcing a dance feels weird), and Mali had a headache so we went and sat away from the crowds and talked a bit about our very different lives. When the group was done, we all walked for 45 minutes (!!) to an empty synagogue where we had dinner. Pretty cool. Everybody was asked to say a small something about their feelings regarding the trip... it was a good night.

At about 2am (rabbis know how to party), we walked back to the hotel (another 45 minutes). Somehow we ended up on the rooftop, where everyone was drinking and dancing to music that made me want to put screwdrivers deep inside my ears. After a while I commandeered the iPod and subjected the remaining few to some Lil Weezy. Sat with Avi + Dom + a few others until about 5am when almost everybody went to bed.

Dom, Asaf, Avi and I then sat and talked until the sun was well and truly up - Avi in broken English, me in non-existent Hebrew, Dom translating back and forth. We spoke about the differences between Israelis and Australians, and even though they are men in some ways, when they talk about women they still sound a bit like boys (perhaps that never changes). Avi's English is super limited, and my favourite part of the evening was when they were telling us about their different jobs in the army. Asaf explained how he is a commander, and is sometimes responsible for up to 3000 soldiers. Avi then said simply, in perfect English and with a mad grin on his face, "I kill people for fun."

It's funny how some languages are universal, like smiles.