This week wreaked havoc on my mood ring

I have a confession. Nothing exciting happened to me this week. I dont even have one good story that I can expand upon for a few paragraphs to fill the page. But, I dont want to disappoint my adoring fans (thats you), so I am bringing back the good old days of random lists. And to make it more fun. I am color coding

Good things that happened to me this week are this color

Bad things that happened to me this week are this color

As-yet-undetermined-whether-good-or-bad things that happened to me this week are this color.

• I got to talk to my parents, my brothers, and a few friends in America because they were all stuck home in the snow and had nothing better to do.
• There was no snow in Jerusalem. In fact, by the end of the week, it was quite hot outside.
• Boris caused an unnecessary amount of teenage drama in my office and pulled me down with it, so I had to spend way too long trying to extricate myself from them mess he made.
• I then yelled at him alot. 
• Which meant I got to practice my Hebrew. 
• The girls in synagogue are multiplying. On Thursday, Lihi, the english teacher I work with, joined Chen and I at Mincha.
• As a result, they actually made an announcement in synagogue about getting the shiur (class) to end early and get out of the women's section on time.
• I had a religious man on base ask me to please stop causing a ruckus in synagogue
• I hung out with a friend from the army out-of-base. Motti, my bus friend, joined me and Avital when we went to see Avatar (which, actually was pretty awesome).
• The adorable soldier that works with the Rabbi (Ariel) very excitedly presented me with a book "for women" that he found in the synagogue.
• This book "for women" was all about modesty- to the extreme. It included things like 

1. Women shouldnt wear red.
2. Men should not look at women, talk to women, walk between two women, or ask them how they are doing.
3. Women should NEVER under ANY circumstance, join the army.

• Ariel and I are going to have a chat next week about the literature he decides to give to women. Especially since the ones that come with me are not religious and could not tell the difference between legitimate halacha and this crap.
• I was told that my job options extend to secretary or canteen worker. The reliability of this information has yet to be determined. Still upset me alot.
• Being upset led me to painting, which I hadnt done in too long.
• I took a mental health day and went to Walla-je with a group where I met a Palestinian farmer and learned alot about the other side of the "conflict", as everyone calls it. I also learned alot about Arab life. Said, one of the farmers I met, continuously said things that reminded me of Sephardi men. He showed the same sort of shocked-awe as all the men in my base's synagogue when I went and prayed. 
• I heard quite a few stories about army-brutality. I have heard these before from leftists and even from former soldiers, but it is something else entirely to hear it from the man who was stripped down to his underwear, tied to a tree, and beaten with a stick.
• Not only did getting to this farm involve hiking through this beautiful country, but Said and Ahmed were really nice, made excellent tea, expressed a love of this land that I can definitely relate to, and most importantly at the time, took my mind off of my personal problems and reminded me of the greater dilemmas our world is facing. And through all that, they still extended a hand of friendship and kindness towards us.

My feelings towards men this week: quite warm. Unlike the weather.

So I still dont have a job, but I have  been getting called back by alot of my friends and friends friends with supposed interest in switching me into their units. Stay tuned for further progress.

In the meantime, I am trying to make the most of my time where I am. I am attacking this problem on three fronts. First, I have been bringing my Hebrew textbooks to work with me and trying to do at least an hour of grammar work. I have also been reading my way through alot of Jewish philosophy/thought books and trying to learn in all the spare time I have. 

Secondly, I have been making an effort to hang out and chat with more people. Chen, a girl I met on one of the other bases has just been switched to mine, so I have been eating lunch with her and meeting alot of the people that she works with as well. I also made friends with Motti who takes the same bus as me every day. Motti is 24 and married with a kid. He lives in Beitar, and is ex-chareidi (ultra-orthodox). His parents are both American so he speaks excellent english which makes it much easier to become friends with him. We talk alot about being older than everyone else and not quite fitting into other people's definition of "religious". Which brings me to number three.

My experiences with being religious in the army have been somewhat varied. The Israeli Army amazingly functions in a way that all observant Jews can be a part of it quite easily. The food is all kosher, they do not require you to do anything that will break Shabbat (unless you are in a fighting unit, in which case it is okay anyway), the uniforms are designed in accordance with the laws of modesty, and they are required by law to give you time to pray. All of these arrangements were made for the religious men that wanted to serve. There are many units of all religious men, even some ultra-orthodox units. Every base has a synagogue and a Rabbi and they hold services three times a day as well as various classes/shiurim throughout the day. This all makes it very easy to be a religious man in the army.

It is a little different for religious women. We can, of course, request a skirt if we want one, and all the synagogues have some sort of women's section for us to pray. But most religious women in Israel elect to do national service (work in schools and hospitals etc) instead of joining the army. Those that do join the army are in varying levels of observance and few, if not none of them pray in the synagogue every day. Because of this, on pretty much every base I have been in, the women's section of the synagogue tends to be small, unkempt, and frequently filled with men.

In Haifa they merely used the women's section to sleep, but on my base here, the visiting Rabbi's use it to hold shiurim (Torah or Talmud classes). The first two times I went to pray there I had to ask men to leave and the third time I went, they told me they were in the middle and I would have to talk to the Rabbi and find somewhere else to pray. Well this kind of pissed me off. I understand the importance of learning Torah, and I even get that there were more of them that needed to use that room then women that wanted to pray. And Im relatively sure I was the first woman to show up in synagogue in years, given the looks I was given when I walked in. But every synagogue should be open to anyone that comes in and wants to pray, regardless of gender.

Well this week, I finally managed to show up in time for Mincha, the afternoon prayer. (My office is on the other side of base, and I had just been praying on my own in one of the empty offices). When I showed up on Sunday, there was a shiur in session and they asked me to wait. They came out after the men had already started the service and I had to hurry to catch up with them. This also meant that I was left standing outside the woman's section (and incidentally in the men's section) while the men were praying. Well this was still going on by Tuesday, and I was getting kind of annoyed as I figured they should have gotten used to me showing up by now. But, in defense of the Orthodox men, apparently I wasnt the only one that thought this situation was less than okay. I had four or five different men tell me that they had spoken to the Rabbi about it and by Wednesday, the men were clearing out on time.

I started the week annoyed with men for not understanding that women also have an obligation to pray. And, to be honest, I was annoyed with everyone for thinking Im not religious just because I wear pants. But by the end of the week, I was really impressed with how so many of the men went out of their way to try to make me comfortable there, and, well congratulated me (for lack of a better word) for showing up to pray. So then I started to get annoyed at religious women for their absence from synagogue and what that says about us. I understand that the synagogue is a very male-oriented place, but that is never going to change unless those of us strong enough to brave the looks show up and make it our place too.

By the end of the week, I not only had the men used to my presence, but my friend Chen was coming to Mincha with me, despite the fact that she is not religious.

All in all, it made me feel quite accomplished this week. While I may not be making a clear and definable difference, I feel like the time I am spending here is having a positive effect, on myself and others.

As a final note. I am cold. No, we dont have the like 3 feet of snow forecasted for all you east-coasters, but I have fully acclimated to living in the Middle East and these almost freezing temperatures are too low for me.

How do you say "dual-action cylinder" in Hebrew?

Shavua Tov and a Happy New Year (of trees that is)!

This Friday was Tu B'Shvat, the Jewish new year for trees. It is a festival of growth and nature and in more recent years- environmentalism. Last year, I celebrated by going to a Tu B'Shvat Seder- a meal of sorts with lots of symbolism- with a lot of hippies. It was a pretty cool experience in which I contemplated a lot of fruit and heard some pretty cool spiritual thoughts about winter (my favorite being that we all have to go through patches of cold and misery because it is during that time that we are preparing for the growth and warmth of spring. It is that time that not only makes us strong, but lets us truly appreciate the happy flowery turnaround.)

This year was a little different. I met up with a friend and we quite accidentally stumbled upon the Jerusalem Municipality celebration. They had my favorite pre-pubescent boys choir singing in little white tuxedos with red cummerbunds, and even better there was a fleet of oddly decorated men on stilts. They were wandering up and down Ben Yehuda street personifying various aspects of nature. There was a man covered in flowing white cloth and cherry blossoms, another who looked like he had been attacked by the fake flower section at Marshall's, and one who was dressed up as a tree with quite impressive foliage. A woman dressed as a giant strawberry was giving a speech from a balcony and showering her spectators with flowers, while the balcony next to her held some sort of wood nymph blowing bubbles. I was pet by a man in a flower pot, but unfortunately the picture was not taken on my camera, so I will have to show that to you at a later time.

The rest of the week was not quite so exciting. After a few days with the english teacher in my office it became quite clear that I am not in fact capable of teaching technical english in hebrew to people who do not speak a word of english (which really makes me doubt the advisability of letting them fix airplanes when they cant read the manuals, but that is another issue). So after a few meetings with my commander, I am slowly trying to get through the bureaucratic process of switching jobs. As I am slowly but surely learning how things work in the army, I also have been calling everyone I know in the army (and everyone they know in the army) and trying to get someone important enough interested in me enough to pull me into their job. I have been talking to a lot of people in the IDF spokespersons unit as well as in the Foreign Relations unit. It is very unclear who might be able to actually help me and how long it might take, and well, pretty much all the details are unclear. But as I spent the week vacuuming bird poop off of chairs, I am getting kind of desperate. 

That being said, it was not a bad week, and while my job or lack thereof is still frustrating, I am not letting it get me down and I am trying to enjoy the time I am spending where I am. It is charming company when they arent stripping, and I actually think they are going to miss me. Boris practically threw a hissy fit when I told him. 

It is hard for me to feel that I am wasting my time when there are many more productive things I can think of doing, but as I learned last year from some smelly hippies in Nachlaot, sometimes we have to work our way through the hard cold patches to get to the good stuff. I have faith that there is a reason I am where I am right now, but also understand that it is up to me to make something out of what and where Hashem puts me. If I want my situation in the army to change, it is up to me and me alone to make sure that it does. So I am going to keep pushing, keep calling, keep bugging, and keep trucking on. I feel very much like the little engine that could or Dory from Finding Nemo.

I think I can and Ill just keep swimming and I wish you all a wonderful week!

Conundrum is an understatement

This week the army was in its prime. My temporary status finally ended and I was sent back to the Yamam, who is in charge of sending soldiers to where they are needed. I was sent there after basic training and they sent me to the helicopter course. I was sent there after they kicked me out of the helicopter course and they tried to send me to Eilat. I argued, and they sent me for a week to the base I have been at for the past month. Luckily I have learned by now to sleep in and take my time getting there, as inevitably you end up sitting outside on a bench for three or four hours waiting to hear something like your name shouted from the incredibly fuzzy loudspeaker. 

So on Monday I packed my book, charged my ipod, woke up late and headed to Tel Aviv to see where they would try to send me now. Keep in mind, that for the past month I have been talking to the commander on my base about being an English teacher there, and had seemed to have put together a plan for me. But alas, man plans and the Yamam laughs. So when I finally got called in to talk to someone, I, well I think its best if I transcribe it for you:

Yamam: We are going to send you to be a secretary.

My Head: WTF???

My voice: Really? I thought I was going to be an english teacher.

Yamam: No, theres no chance you can be an english teacher.

My Head: WTF????

My Voice: Well, I was under the impression that I just spent a month on this base so that I could become an English teacher.

Yamam: Well who told you that?

My Head: You did you *&@#^*$&#*&@#!!!! Right after you wasted a month of my time sending me to a course I couldnt take. A-hole.

My Voice: Um, you did.

Yamam: Go wait outside.

So I went outside and immediatly called my commander and told him they had no idea what I was talking about. So he said he would call and I sat down to wait for another hour. Eventually they called me back in and told me to come back tomorrow and they would see if I could be an English teacher.

My commander called me back and told me that the English teaching office was on the same base and that I should go see them before going to the Yamam. So the next day I went and talked to them first and they told me all about the job- which is teaching english in hebrew (?) and then gave me a hebrew test that consisted of translating a paragraph. I then went to the Yamam, sat their until 2:30 and finally got called into the office. The man looked at me like we had never spoken of this before and said " We are going to send you to Chazor (my base) to be an English teacher, okay?". And I got my little paper and got all excited that I finally had a job.

So I go back to my base, spent all Wednesday meeting with all the various offices I needed to see to finish my clearance and showed up on Thursday ready to work.

On Thursday my commander called me into his office and said I had not passed my test and was not deemed qualified for the job they had already given me. But since he thinks I can do it, he will still let me, this just means I cant go to the course. 

So the army has given me a job they say I am not qualified for and therefore refuse to train me. Oh, the army...

Momma Week

This week was Ima Week. My mother arrived on Sunday and was super excited to see me despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I was late picking her up from the airport. She was thrilled to be out of the freezing snow in Prague (where she had spent the previous week) and into the warm Middle-Eastern January of Jerusalem.

It was a quiet week ( I had off from the army, of course) as my mother was only interested in a) hanging out with me b) shopping and c) eating out. This was perfectly fine with me because not only did I get to see my mom, but I got lots of pretty new jewelry and ate like a kosher-abiding pig. Our days mainly consisted of: Sleep in, eat out, walk, shop, walk, eat, shop, walk, eat, shop, walk, eat, shop, eat, walk, sleep. It was pretty awesome. 

We did venture up to Tel Aviv on Tuesday where I took my mother to a dance show at the Suzanne Dellal Center for the Arts. The Center is located in one of the older neighborhoods of Tel Aviv that borders with Yaffo. It is beautiful and historical and after reading Exodus, I am much more appreciative of the fact that Tel Aviv was the first all-Jewish city built in Israel. It was also nice to get out of Jerusalem and join into the beautiful, exciting art scene up in Tel Aviv. I began to wonder why I don't spend more time in Tel Aviv. Then, after trying four different restaurants and failing to find any kosher ones, we finally sat down and had ice cream for dinner and I remembered why I don't like Tel Aviv. The dancing however, was quite spectacular. But then again, it was the Jerusalem School for the Arts...

Other than that, it was mostly shopping and eating. I got to have burgers, sushi, mac and cheese, salmon stir fry, ice cream, hot cocoa, donuts, poached fish on a bed of something fancy, squash soup and all sorts of delicious salads. I ate like a queen this week :)

I also got to hear from my mother all about what Jerusalem was like in the 70's when she was first here and how much it has grown since then. 

Anyway, my mother took off last night and all I am left with is a bunch of dirty sheets and some awesome new necklaces. (Not to mention the suitcase of supplies she brought me from America- Thanks Ima!!). It was kind of a whirlwind of a week. It felt so natural to have her here that I havent quite processed the fact that she is gone again. Or that it is almost Shabbat. Really didnt think about that at all this week, so now I have to go get ready.

Spacing out can be dangerous

Not much happened this week except for the ridiculous story that I am about to tell. It seems almost definite that I will be staying in the office I am currently in and will be trained to be an english teacher. I will be teaching officers, which should be fun, and thank the lord, there will be another teacher joining me. Why am I so excited for her to come? Well this week I truly learned what it meant to be the only woman in an office full of men. I was aware of this fact before, as the most common topic of discussion in our office is poop (which I unfortunatly cannot tune out as it is always accompanied with sound effects) but this week we reached a whole new level. The underwear level.

It started on Monday. I was sitting in my usual chair which faces the whole office and gives me a view of each of the three desks. There is one corner of the room that I cant see from there which is the space behind my commanders desk. There were a few people in the office talking, and I was reading my book as usual. My commander, Roi, apparently forgot I was in the room and began to change into his jumpsuit. As he was standing in that conveniently invisible corner, I was unaware of his state of undress until he walked out from behind his desk and yelled "Kfirah! I forgot you were here!" At which point I looked up and got a full frontal view of his red underwear. He is a briefs man, I learned, before running out of the office laughing. 

Now this was funny, it was an obvious accident (though I dont know why none of the other guys in the office didnt mention that I was there), and everytime Roi retold the story his facial expressions got better.

On Tuesday, I was wandering through the building looking for Boris, and stuck my head into one of the offices, to once again find myself facing an underwear clad man. As this was one of the older and religious men in the office, I quickly retreated muttering to myself about closing doors and didnt say anything.

Until Wednesday, when Almog, my other commander, proceeded to change in the room without warning me going so far as to shake his butt in my direction as he walked by. Luckily, Im a space cadet, and missed most of the show. But when they saw me covering my eyes (once I had noticed) and heard my short rant about too many naked men in the office, they seemed to remember that I am religious and that all the exhibition might make me uncomfortable. I did not discourage their thinking.

Almog apparently still thinks it is funny, for on Thursday he once again failed to give me warning when he began to change, but having become more attuned to the state of dress in the office, I noticed before the pants came off and turned away. 

It seems that my next nine months here will be fraught with more peril that I had imagined. 

Speaking of peril, I have another funny story. I dont know whether they are still broadcasting all those commercials about the dangers of texting and driving, but you should believe them all!! Texting is super dangerous. Had I been driving home tonight I would have died. As I dont have a car, I was simply texting while walking home, which proves to be similarly dangerous. As I learned when I walked into a tree.

So lessons of the week:

1) Pay attention to the presence of pants

2) Dont text while in forward motion

Warning: I get kind of sappy when I reminisce

Believe it or not, it has been a whole year since I moved here and started sending these emails. Crazy, right?

I was reminiscing a bit this week, helped in part by my four friends that just made aliyah on Wednesday. I went to greet them at the airport, and even though they had a much more impressive ceremony than I did, it was still a weird flashback. It feel pretty cool to be able to help them and talk to them about all the fears and worries and technicalities that plague new olim. Its kind of weird to realize that I am now the experienced one, despite the fact that it all still feels like a new adventure.

I was thinking about going back and talking about how I feel differently and what things no longer bother me and what things I have found that I love. But it came out kind of silly. Because the truth is, what I am figuring out more and more every day is that it doesnt matter if the banks charge you for everything or if theres not good cheddar cheese here or even if the army has lost me in their maze of paperwork and left me at a job where I dont really do anything.

Because last night I had a party celebrating my aliyahversary and I was surrounded by friends. I had old friends, and friends that are really family, and friends I barely know, and friends I have made in the past year. And they all came for me, they came because they are proud of me or support me, or just wanted to hang out with me. And that is all that really matters.

This was a hard year, I have told you some of it, but the worst moments never quite made it into email form. But I can look back and see where it started to change, where I started to be happier and feel more fulfilled, and it was when I- how did Ron put it- built a community of people around me that I care about. And that care about me. The hardest thing to leave was you- all of you that care about me and that I care about. And a year later, I can say that that circle has grown to include the geographic area in which I now reside :)