Israel

Hi everyone! I know I promised I'd blog while I'm abroad, but internet access has been scarce and expensive! The big news is that I'm a finalist for the Hine Fellowship! I had my interview on Monday, and I offered to send pictures to show how my aesthetics have improved since I made the work I originally submitted. I would have emailed them, but I thought this would provide me with a format to give context for the images and you all would finally get a look at some of what I've been up to. Sharon and I started our adventure on a ten-day group tour of Israel through Birthright Israel. Birthright is nonprofit organization funded in equal parts by private donors, congregations, and the Israeli government. Without Birthright we would never have been able to do this three-month trek, because Birthright provided us with free plane tickets (as well as 10 days of free hotel and travel accommodations, food, museum fees, etc). Of course, nothing's free, so we had a lot of political discussions, supplemented by our accompaniment of eight Israeli soldiers. The soldiers were (I presume) hand-picked by the army for their relatability, passion, patriotism, and proficient English. I loved every one of them and their intelligence and openness helped me see Israel from their perspectives - job well done IDF! Even when I expressed dissenting views, the soldiers were open to my opinions and enthusiastic to share theirs. Of the eight of them, six have invited Sharon and me to stay with them and their families during the remainder of our trip. There are many companies that take young Jews on Birthright trips, but we chose to do Israel Outdoors for its alleged emphasis on outdoor activities. Unfortunately, we spent the majority of our time on the bus, but I think the people who choose to go with Israel Outdoors self-select for down-to-earth, liberal groups. Needless to say, I got along swimmingly with my fellow travelers and I now have couches to stay on all over the U.S. My new friend Emilie (who you can see raising the roof to the right) is the perfect example of how special my travel buddies were. Emilie, a vagabond actress, is currently teaching a class at the Freedom Theater in Jenin, a city in the West Bank notorious for the amount of suicide bombers it has produced. I was familiar with the Freedom Theater before this trip because I saw a documentary called Arna's Children about the theater's creation. Arna, an Israeli Jew who married a Palestinian man and moved to the West Bank, started the Freedom Theater during the First Intifada. Her son, Juliano Mer Khamis filmed his mother working with her first class. Six years later, Arna died of cancer and Juliano returned to Jenin with his camera to find out what happened to her former students. This piece is the perfect example of the power of documentary films, and I recommend anyone reading this to rent it. I'm anxious to hear from Emilie about her experience there. Part of the reason I decided to take such a long trip to Israel was to explore the political reality here. I arrived with minimal information and conflicting emotions. I still have conflicting emotions, but I'm gaining more insight everyday. It's incredible how pervasive the political situation is here in everyday life. Whenever we enter any public building we walk through a metal detector and a security guard checks our bags. Frequently we're asked for ID at these checkpoints, and it's telling to see how powerful our little blue passports are. We flash our American smiles and sometimes they don't even check our bags. While we were on Birthright we had a rifle wielding security guard with us at all times:That's Rave. He's obviously the coolest security guard ever. I'm not sure if you can see in the picture but he's wearing a Clockwork Orange t-shirt. Rave and I bonded over films and music and after the trip he took a few of us to his dad's bowling alley outside of Tel Aviv and kicked our butts. Besides the people, we've been able to see some of Israel's most awesome sites. I have no pictures of the Western Wall because we were there on a Friday evening and taking pictures on Shabbat is forbidden. Likewise, I have no pictures from the Dead Sea because I didn't want to expose my new camera to sand and salt. I did get some other good pictures though. To the left is the view from above Jerusalem. The architectural differences here are noticeable. In Jerusalem, all of the buildings have to be faced with limestone, so they all have a clean, ancient look that is exemplified by the wall in my picture.
Almost all of the municipal buildings in Israel are built with architectural symbolism in mind. For example, the Knesset (Israeli parliament) is built with Greek columns to represent the importance of democracy in Israel.


I took this picture outside of the Knesset. It's a close-up of a famous menorah, made by the Jewish sculptor Benno Elkan. The menorah depicts different events, idioms, and characters from Jewish history. This particular branch is David poised to throw his rock at Goliath.




I don't have much more time to write right now, so I'm just going to upload some other good pictures:

I had to include this one! This is apparently what lifeguards in Tel Aviv look like:

This one is beautiful. It's my friend Becca on top of Mount Masada at sunrise.
These last three are from our trip to Petra after Birthright was over. I'll have to write about it later because it was so amazing. We met Bedouins on our first day who took us on an impromptu three hour hike off of the main trail. The next day they took us and some friends we'd made at the hostel to the monastery. Afterward they invited us back to the Bedouin village where we had tea and prepared ingredients for authentic barbecue that we made later at a campfire in 'Little Petra'. There were about 12 of us in total, and we took turns singing for each other. I got video of the Jordanian songs on Sharon's camera. Hopefully I'll figure out how to upload that soon.

Impromptu hike:
The highest point of the ancient city of Petra:

A Bedouin man sitting on top of the world (but really sitting on top of the monastery).