Ha Nisim B'Kol Yom, The Miracles of Everyday Life

In the weekday morning service there is a section traditionally called Birkhot HaShahar, the Morning Blessings. In the prayerbook of one Reform congregation I know, this section has been renamed Ha Nisim B'Kol Yom which that community translates as "the miracles of everyday life." While I certainly understand and appreciate the more widely-used traditional name for these blessings I have loved thinking about, and teaching about, this particularly progressive interpretation as it seems much more accessible to me.

Among its fifteen blessings the traditional liturgy thanks God for community, freedom, strength, glory, vigor, guidance, and self-identity. While lofty, all of them, I will be honest and tell you I don't spend a lot of time on a daily basis even considering much less reflecting on my own vigor, except maybe right before Hebrew class on Monday and Wednesday nights when I've found a cappucino can be very helpful for keeping my energy up. So instead of formulaic morning repetitions expressing gratitude for ineffable things like "glory", it seems more real to me to observe and appreciate the miracles of everyday life...like the other day at the bakery when in the change I received for two potato pastries and the aforementioned cappucino I got back the rare and beautiful 2-shekel coin with its image of pomegranates--kind of like getting a two-dollar bill. Crowning Israel, in all her constant turmoil, with glory as the Birkhot HaShahar praises is a powerful thing quite worthy of thanks, and maybe this just betrays my simple-mindedness at times but seeing this new piece of Israeli life that I had never known existed in the form of a 2-shekel coin felt miraculous to me.

What's the connection? Many people who read this blog send me email, telling me that they enjoy my stories or my reflections, long and rambling as they can be. I love to tell stories and they have even earned a special name over time from someone who first got to know me just by reading them: "Sarah soliloquies" they have been called, in half-joking reference to the fact that they can be both piercingly descriptive in their detail and mind-numbingly arduous in length. So today instead of stories I am taking the suggestion that has been offered recently via email by those who read my soliloquies and for once I am not writing about the morning blessings of my life here: the community of my funky global household, the freedom I have as an American to travel unquestioned wherever I want to go in this troubled land, or the self-identity I have examined and developed during my time here...all recent blog topics. I posted some photos last night, and when I get home from school today will post some more, of the miracles of my everyday life in Jerusalem: what our street looks like, how I know which house is mine when I come home in the dark at night, how I dry my constant loads of laundry. Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, blessed are you our God, ruler of the universe who gives us the miracles of everyday life.

The Street

The top picture shows what you see as you stand at the gate into our garden from the sidewalk and look to the left down the street towards the bus stop. The bottom picture shows what you see as you look to the right up the street towards the traffic circle.

Our Address

Almost every residential building in Jerusalem has a sign posted on it identifying the address. Unlike in the States, where people must provide their own address signs and there are countless types and styles, here the municipality provides them and they are all the same: white plastic with black characters. One very helpful feature for nighttime visits to friends' homes, or for people like me who can at times get confused about directions because they don't know where to find everything just yet, is the fact that these signs have lights inside and are illuminated after dark.

This is the address sign for our building. You would read it like this: radak, mispar echad...Radak Street, number one.

Laundry

(here is my laundry hung up to dry in our garden)


When I lived at my last apartment in San Francisco, I became very famous among those who knew me for being in a constant state of laundering. I was always somewhere along a continuum of the following steps:

•taking it down
•bringing it up
•digging through it on the couch
•moving it onto the bed if I wanted to sit and watch a movie
•moving it back to the couch if I wanted to go to sleep
•actually folding it
•getting more quarters so I could do the next two loads

Here in Jerusalem I do laundry even more frequently than I did in San Francisco if it is possible to conceive of that. Why? At first I could not understand, because there are so many things to do besides wash clothes! But then I realized that when one only has five pairs of pants and ten shirts, you go through clean clothes pretty quickly.

Coming and Going

This is a view of the entrance to our patio taken from the path through the garden that leads from the sidewalk to the house.


This is a view from the path going the other direction, looking away from the patio back out towards the street.

Self-indulgent Editor's Note

If you already read the post below, with my butchered version of John Denver's classic sing-along hit, read it again because I came up with a much better chorus this morning during recess and have now edited the post accordingly. The verse that describes my bus-riding revelation aboard the 4-Alef a week or so ago is still awkward and hard to sing but I'll work on it.

British Airways, Take Me Home

At Camp Tawonga we love to sing, and we have our own songbook of well-known and well-loved camp favorites ranging from indie hits like the Indigo Girls' "Closer to Fine" and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" to more traditional Jew stuff like "Btzelem Elohim" and "Hillel's Song". One song we never need the songbook for, though, is "Country Roads"...such a favorite that this past summer it was even rewritten into Hebrew by the contingent of Israeli counselors and was sung at many campfires in its new translated incarnation, "Tawonga HaBayitah." We could not be satisfied in either Hebrew or English with the classic lyrics of John Denver so we sing it Tawonga-style, of course:

Almost heaven, Camp Tawonga
Sierra mountains, Tuolumne River
Life is old here, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
Camp Tawonga, California
Take me home down country roads...

Tonight I am rewriting it once again as I think about a difficult but exciting decision I recently made, one to leave Israel early and come home to Berkeley for a few weeks before setting out once again for the next leg of my adventure, further-flung than even I had dreamed when this year began.

Some say it's heaven--Jerusalem, Israel
Mount of Olives, Judean desert
Conflict is old here, older than the trees
But peace is coming, blowing like a breeze

British Airways, take me home
To the place I belong
Back to Berkeley, in California
From Tel Aviv to SFO

All the memories I have made here
Since October when I first came
Old and new friends, teaching English
Yummy falafel, Hebrew unfolding before my eyes

British Airways, take me home
To the place I belong
Back to Berkeley, in California
From Tel Aviv to SFO

I hear the voice, over Skype it calls to me
Telling me of a new chance to go teach far away
Riding on the 4-Alef bus I feel
My time here should be cut short a few days

Lufthansa, take me there
To the place I will go next
Starting in February, and until May
Lead me down that African road

Yes it is true, my placement with AJWS is coming through after all and I have the chance to go live and work at a Liberian refugee camp in the country of Ghana, on the western coast of Africa. I will be there from mid-February until the beginning of May training a group of teachers there to build there skills and improve their school. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the next place I will work to repair the world this year:

Buduburam is a refugee camp located 44 kilometers (27 miles) west of Accra, Ghana. Opened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1990, the camp is home to more than 35,000 refugees from Liberia who fled their country during the Liberian Civil War (1989–1996), and the Second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003). The camp is served by the UNHCR as well as Liberian and international NGO groups and volunteer organisations.

Finding out, after months of waiting to hear about anything definitive at all from AJWS, that I was not only going to Africa but also had a chance to do this work was incredibly exciting but also very daunting. Preparing to go would require everything from acquiring Ghanian travel documents from their consulate here in Israel to finding somewhere in Jerusalem to not only leave all the things I have here (wool sweaters, winter boots) that one does not need near the equator but to also buy things like more contact lenses and a mosquito net---all of which felt both complicated and overwhelming. And, what can I say? I left San Francisco in mid-June, it has been six and a half months since I set aside for now the life I knew and had worked overwhelmingly hard to both build and maintain. During these past weeks upon weeks I have done and seen and experienced and accomplished things I never thought possible. That said, however, life in Israel as in any foreign country is difficult at times. It took me an hour to do my grocery shopping, dictionary in hand, last week and after awhile it stops being fun to wonder, " Is it sour cream, or is it yogurt? Is it tomato paste, or spaghetti sauce?" The excitement wears off and you just want to go home and cook dinner, already.

So the combo platter of logistics and emotions led to my decision to take a break from this nomadic life for a short time. This choice was not without a healthy dose of reflecting--What does it mean about me as a traveler that I had planned to be gone from the States for eight and a half months but am now going back after not even four? What does it mean that out of weariness about checkpoints and bag searches and incomprehensibly expensive groceries that I am using my financial privilege to return to the States and chill out at Mark and Rebecca's for awhile and hopefully do some substitute teaching to make some money and definitely eat some sushi and burritos when 99% of the people I see every day, almost all of the Israelis I know, do not have the freedom to make that choice and instead are searched and questioned and financially strained everywhere they go, all the time?

In the end, I remembered what Mark said when I hugged him goodbye at the airport in Manchester the day I left for Israel..."It's okay if I want to come home, right?" I asked him. "Sarah--of course it's okay--you can do whatever you want." So that's it, I called and changed my ticket and interestingly have been having a much richer and more meaningful experience here in the days since then. I think part of what was hard to enjoy things in Israel--recently at least, since I got sick and had to go to the doctor by myself and spent most of Chanukah vacation in bed with a fever--was the seeming endlessness of it, not knowing about Africa, worrying about making enough money here the next months to support myself if I did decide to stay until May, thinking about what it would be like to be away from my community another five months. Now that I know I am going back every minute is precious here. So I have another two weeks in Israel, only a bit less than the total length of my very first trip here three years ago and then I'll be on my way back to San Francisco for Tu B'Shevat, for my birthday, for Bat Sheva's bat mitzvah, for time to relax and try to understand all I've seen and learned so far, for time with my friends.

British Airways, take me home...

The People In My Neighborhood: Hana

Hana is Polish but made aliyah, or immigrated to Israel and became a citizen, three years ago. We all live in her apartment which she usually shares with her aunt, but her aunt is in France this year so we all get to live here while the aunt is away. Hana works five part-time jobs and is a full-time student at the university so we do not see her often. Her two most commonly-used expressions in English are "But, wait!" and "Fine, so...", both of which she uses to introduce new ideas or shift the topic of conversation. She has an overwhelmingly useful amount of local knowledge since, unlike the rest of us suckers, she actually lives in Jerusalem full-time so I consult with her often about which bus to take to get places. Hana and I have many unique and somewhat surprising things in common including our religous backgrounds, our relationship histories, our preferences for glitter nail polish, and the fact that we both worked at Jewish summer camps in the States this past season. She is very generous and I have benefitted from this in many ways but most notably in that she sometimes lets me use her computer for Skype. Hana is overwhelmingly photogenic and these two photos do not in any way do her beauty justice because they are both action shots. I am forever indebted to her for introducing me to soup nuts, a form of Israeli crouton, which I accidentally thought was a breakfast cereal at first until she found me in the kitchen one morning dousing a bowl full of them with 1.5% milk and politely corrected me.

The People In My Neighborhood: Eva

Eva is French and is a human rights attorney specializing in torture and the ethical treatment of those being detained as prisoners. She is here as an anti-terror watchdog monitoring the actions of the Israeli government regarding Palestinian detainees. She wears tight shirts, wide pants, and she loves to dance. Eva can make quiche blindfolded with her hands tied behind her back and she always shares, like tonight when I came home drenched from the rain and exhausted from a day of teaching and there was half a spinach mushroom cheese pie waiting for me. Her mistakes in English are so adorable I forget to correct her and then she yells at me. Eva is small but you better not piss her off because she is feisty. She is incomprehensibly beautiful and looks hot in everything, constantly, putting Hana and I to shame whenever our household goes out together in public. Eva loves shopping in the shuk and will walk to a bunch of different stalls looking for the best price while I get impatient and just buy whatever I see first that I want because nothing is that expensive in the shuk, anyway. Eva is also in ulpan, an intensive Hebrew class, but not the same one as me although our classes do meet on the same days so we often come home from class and compare notes on what we learned that night/complain about how Hebrew is hard. She recently recycled a pair of her pajama pants by handing them down to me and I am thrilled because like her, they are French and adorable and if she's not careful I am going to steal this one sweater that she has which is also a shawl, fabulous, in the top picture above. Eva finds most Americans exhausting but has somehow decided to tolerate me and I am glad because I like her a lot.

The People In My Neighborhood: Kenneth

Kenneth is Norwegian and speaks five languages, including English with an Australian accent because he learned to speak it while going to university in Sydney. He is a journalist and an absolutely unbelievable cook. When I first came to see the apartment and asked if there was anything else I should know before agreeing to rent it, he told me he and his partner Eva are vampires. He wrote a book on the role of conflict in the former Soviet Union and is in the process of publishing it. Among his many academic ambitions, Kenneth is applying to the United Nations' graduate program in Peace Studies in Costa Rica. Right now Kenneth has strep throat so he is pretty miserable. When we all went out two weekends ago, Kenneth convinced me to come by telling me to act my "mental age" which he says puts me on par with the rest of our housemates, chronologically. The other night Kenneth accused me of not knowing who Optimus Prime is and I said, "Dude! I am not THAT old, okay?" Kenneth might have to bake the carrot cake I intend to serve at my wedding, if I ever have one, because his is amazing and he bakes it from time to time for no reason at all. He has a membership to the Blockbuster down the street at Kikar Pariz and last Saturday night patiently explained the entire plot of _The Usual Suspects_ to me, not even getting annoyed that we had to stop the movie a bunch of times because I was confused. Kenneth is sensible and very, very generous. I don't know who he loves more--his mom, or Eva.

Another Blog You Should Be Reading

People who have blogs tend to know other people who have blogs. I know a few such folks, myself. One person I know who has an outstanding blog, to which I race daily when I wake up to see if she has published something new on the West Coast while I was fast asleep in the Middle East, is my best friend. Click here to read about yoga, sewing, dance class, upcoming forays into librarianhood, and oh yes--First Grade. I live vicariously through her this year, since for the past four years (really--that long?!) I've written a blog about life at school, and a few other topics too I suppose, and what can I say? I miss it. Teaching generates incredible amounts of bloggable material.

In a totally self-serving moment, let me tell you how her blog helped me to realize recently that even though I do not have my own classroom this year, I have not lost the excellent skills of teacher-student communication developed and honed by the past twelve years of classroom practice. I feel this is evidenced by something of which I am particularly proud, a comment I made the other day in response to a situation she described having taken place in her classroom, and I think you should admire it by clicking here.

Anachnu Omrim, We Are Talking

I teach five English classes a week at the school where I volunteer and do my research. All of the classes are co-taught with another instructor because a) I do not yet speak enough Hebrew to teach them on my own without frustrating both the children and myself, b) they do not trust me and my western, graduate-school-acquired techniques for language instruction and prefer instead to employ the more culturally familiar approach of failing to plan engaging lessons, of avoiding the clear articulation of any achievable expectations for student work or social behavior while in class, and of yelling at the students when they inevitably act out. Hmmm. Good thing they don't let me teach on my own because I would do away with all of that, right quick. Yes ma'am.

There is a phrase in Hebrew, ha derekh eretz, that means "the way of the land." It refers to the customs of any given community or situation, and ha derekh eretz of elementary school in Israel is that teachers do not tell their students what to do, then yell at them for not doing what the teachers didn't say. Huh? This is in complete opposition to the social-emotional curriculum of my own constructivist classroom and as a result is very difficult for me to observe, not to mention impossible to implement.

So, I do not participate in ha derekh eretz. Instead I slog along using mysterious and alarming techniques like: Making students raise their hand so only one person speaks at a time! Insisting that students stop talking when a classmate is giving an answer or (G-d forbid) I am actually teaching something so that we can all hear one another's ideas! Planning lessons (in advance--ooooo!) that involve partner work, small group activities, or some other instructional technique besides me standing at the front of the room and talking for the entire period!

The teachers, interestingly, have had a very strong negative reaction to all this American-style hoo-ha going on in my classroom and have insisted I was trying to show them up or get the students to like me better than them. Um, no, I'm just trying to use some instructionally effective techniques in my classes. At first the students were confused and did not know quite what to make of all this, and some of them still don't. They come up to me, they touch me to get my attention (a HUGE no-no in my book), they interrupt. It is tiring.

I remember once when I was quite young my mother tried to explain to me that sometimes the way you can get people to listen to you is actually by speaking very softly. I think she meant this not as some deep metaphorical construct, but rather as a way to get me to stop yelling about something. I have never been able to really put this advice into practice until now. It is like fighting fire with...I don't know. A raindrop. Maybe not even, maybe fog. But for once I can talk softly to get my students to listen to me. It is my only recourse when they are all yelling at one another and at me.

They constantly come up to me when I am teaching, when I am speaking to other students, when I am speaking to teachers, and interrupt. I hold up my hand in the Israeli version of "wait, please" (impossible to describe so I will include a photo in this post to demonstrate, once my camera battery is recharged) but this only provokes them to stand closer, grab my arm tighter, and talk louder at which point I look at them. In the eye. Silently. No one has ever done this before to most of them--not their teachers, not their parents, no one. No one is ever silent in Israel. They are shocked and look back at me, unsure what to do. This is when I use (one of) my famous Ms. Kotleba motion(s), holding my hand upright as if to make a karate-chopping motion but instead moving it back and forth between myself and the person with whom I am actually having a conversation, and use my most frequent phrase in English class.

"Ulai at lo roeh, aval anachnu omrim. Maybe you do not see, but we are talking."

Shuts them up every single time.

Last Friday Night: Introduction

Last Friday night, much to my surprise, was a diverse evening. Writing about it, blog-style, requires a bit of creativity because usually newest posts are shown at the top of the page...so I am going to write about the night in backwards order so you can read about it the way it happened, with the passage of time.

Enjoy...

Last Friday Night, Chapter One: Spirituality and Memory

(I have a cool picture to put here but am having problems with my computer--what a surprise--and will have to add it another time. It is of a very unique menorah. Come back and check it out later.)

Friday evening we were having people over for dinner and each of us had taken on part of the meal to prepare. I got my prep work out of the way early, grating massive amounts of potatoes and onions for the latkes, or pancakes, and buying the challah at a delicious-smelling hidden bakery off of Emek Refaim. As Kenneth and Eva were setting up shop in the kitchen to make the lasagnas I bundled up and headed out for the rainy 45-minute walk across town to Kol Ha Neshamah, the Progressive synagogue in Baka.

Now you are about to witness a secret, feels-like-cheating writing technique of bloggers and diarists everywhere: plagiarizing oneself. Below is the edited text of an email I sent to San Francisco later in the evening once I got back from services, before our guests came over and we sat down to dinner. It seems to represent the elements of spirituality and memory with which the night began.

the sky is dark over Jerusalem tonight but in
California the day is only beginning. as i made the
long walk home in the rain just now from kabbalat
shabbat at the progressive synagogue on the other side
of town, i saw windows all along the streets filled
with chanukiot, lit against the night sky to remind us
that in this darkest time of year there are still
miracles of light around and inside us.

nes

gadol

hayah

po

this year i am really here, the dreidel's "po"
reminding me that it was really here, not in some far
away place there years ago across the sea that a
miracle happened. as i walked i remembered another
shabbat chanukah, one year ago now, another rainy
night not in Jerusalem but in San Francisco. on that
night there was a different miracle: two very different
people exchanging identical chanukah gifts, two people
reading and sharing the same text...elizabeth gilbert's
book _eat, pray, love_. i am rereading it here in
israel where i read it the first time, where i read
that old worn copy i got as a present and then gave
away as a gift a year ago tonight.

and in this past year my travels have taken
me not only far away on the outside but to new places
on the inside as well. in unique ways i have, as
t.s. eliot writes, arrived to old destinations and
seen them with new eyes. i have also journeyed to
completely new places as of yet unknown until these
past twelve months. anachnu nosaot, we are still and
always on our own journeys and i am quite certainly
on mine--last year, this year, next year, yes.

so as the seven candles--four plus one for the holiday
and two for the end of the week--glow in our window
this israeli evening, as my very international
housemates and i prepare lasagna and latkes, salad and
sufganiot for the party we are having tonight, i am
reminded of not elizabeth gilbert's book but another
narrative. for shabbat chanukah this year i am thinking
of a text that i have read many times during my current
journey, a poem about traveling of course:

the journey

one day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do.,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

--mary oliver

Last Friday Night, Chapter Two: Community

(this is the beautiful table Hana set for our Shabbat dinner party)


(here are Kenneth and Eva working in the kitchen)

After I got home and rejoined Kenneth and Eva in the kitchen things got much more hectic. As you will see from the pictures, it is not a large room and the presence of just one chef can fill it completely--much less three. It took a few false starts and a lot of creativity but everything was beautiful and delicious.

The Menu, complete with credits:
challah from the hidden bakery
big green salad, by Sam
potato pancakes, by me
sour cream from the Feel Box Grocery down the street
homemade Granny Smith applesauce, by Kenneth
two huge vegetable lasagnas with cream sauce, by Kenneth & Eva
sufganiot (doughnuts) with prune jam, by Eva
carrot cake, by Kenneth & Hana
wine, by Nir & Helle

We ate and ate and talked and talked until midnight. It was far and away the best dinner we've had at our house the entire time I've lived here, and we've had a few. Inviting guests over really helped me feel like part of my household for some reason; like the four of us as a group were having people over, like I belong somewhere. Having moved out of my own apartment in June and being nomadic for the past six months have made this feeling a little hard to come by.

Last Friday Night, Chapter Three: Identity

(this is where the bouncer stamped me after he finally decided to let me into the club. historically fascinating...)

At half-past midnight, fueled by latkes and lasagna, the seven of us decided to go out. Like, OUT out. I did not even know it was possible to go out like this in Jerusalem on Friday night--this, the town where the buses stop running at 3 o'clock on Friday afternoons so everyone can stop running around like mad as they do in this city the rest of the week and instead go home and concentrate on their brisket and their family and resting, already.

But yes, there is an entire secular subculture that thrives downtown in the liminal space between the week and Shabbat, in the slice of time between Friday and Saturday that to many religious Jews is all part of the same day--the day of rest. We changed into go-out clothes and made our way to that steep, skinny alley just east of Rehov Yoel Solomon, the one with that totally un-kosher sushi place, and found ourselves at Nir's suggestion outside the gates of Jerusalem's Euro-style hipster dance club--Gotham. The bouncer told us sorry, they weren't open yet, and that if we wanted to dance we should come back at one but that things didn't really get started until closer to two. Okay. We'll wait...

At the bar across the alley Sam and I went up to order drinks for our table and I felt proud to put my ulpan, Hebrew language class, skills to work. Unlike last summer when I came to learn Hebrew and was in Kitah Alef, First Grade, and spent five weeks learning the alphabet and simple present-tense singular verbs now I am in Kitah Alef Ploos, First and a Half Grade, and I can say much more useful things. "Slicha, ani tzricha..." I began my conversation with the bartender. "Excuse me, I would like..." Four half-liters of the famous Israeli beer, Goldstar, and three cocktails later she returned. "One hundred seventy-five shekels," she said in English as I dug into my pocket for the money. "Where are you from in the States, anyway?" she wanted to know. "San Francisco," I replied, "is it that obvious? I've been practicing so hard in ulpan!" "It's not your Hebrew," she laughed, pointing at Sam's and my shoulders, "it's your coats. Only Americans wear North Face." It seems no matter how hard I try to assimilate, there are always things that give me away.

An hour and a half later we were back in line at Gotham, waiting to get in and start dancing. "Teudat zehut, ID please," the bouncer said when it was my turn to go in. In defiance of everything Lonely Planet always tells us to do (leave your documents locked up in the hotel safe!) I had tucked my passport into the waistband of my jeans before we left the house and now held it up for his inspection. Seeing him examine the photo and then my face, I folded it shut and began to put it away. "Rega--rak shniah. Ze lo b'seder." Wait, just a second--it's not okay. He called to another guard, this one with a gun, and put his hand back out for my passport. The second man came to examine it, shining his flashlight over the information printed inside and then into my eyes.

"What's this, now?" Kenneth wanted to know, coming up from his place at the end of our little group. "Yesh ba'aya?" he asked the men. There's a problem?

"Ken, yesh!" Yes, there is, the first bouncer answered as he waved my passport in the air. Seeing my North Face jacket, or maybe just my American passport, he switched to English. "This woman here is clearly not the person represented by this document or shown in this photograph."

"Oh, but it's really her," Kenneth replied calmly as I stood there dumbfounded. "What makes you think it's not? The document is obviously authentic and valid."

The second guard turned to me and offered an explanation. "There's no way you are as old as this passport lists your age to be. You look twenty-four, maybe twenty-five at the most but this says you are thirty three years old. It's not possible."

The people in line behind us began to complain and the bouncers, with Kenneth's not-so-gentle encouragement, let me in. For the second time in one night a stranger made an assumption about me based on my appearance--incorrectly, this time. It made me think about how the identity we create for ourselves sometimes matches the identity others attribute to us, and sometimes does not. But I didn't think about it that long--at 1:30 in the morning it was finally time to start dancing.

Payback Doesn't Always Suck

Last week I was very sick and had to go see a doctor at the medical clinic in my neighborhood, here in Jerusalem. When the woman who registered me asked to see my state insurance card, I explained to her that I am a foreign resident and do not have Israeli insurance. She shook her head, clucked, and asked me if I was paying cash or with a credit card.

Five hundred shekels, about $125 dollars, later I had been seen, diagnosed, and prescribed antibiotices and was on my way back home where the first thing I did was email the member services office of my health plan in California to see if any of what I had paid was reimbursable under my coverage in the States.

Yesterday they emailed me back with confirmation that yes, not only is emergency care covered while overseas (which I had known) but urgent care is also (which I had not known). They referred me to the section of their website where I could download and print the proper forms to submit with (English-language, have to go back to the clinic and see if I can get those) copies of the paperwork documenting my visit to the doctor here. They told me that once my request is received they will review it and send me a check within three to four weeks for any amount that qualifies to be reimbursed.

Some people disdain large healthcare management organizations, but ever since Student Health (nicknamed Student Death, where once I doctor told me I was probably schizophrenic when really I was just uncontrollably dizzy and suffering from nightmarish vertigo due to food poisoning acquired from the residence hall cafeteria) in Iowa City I have loved being able to make an appointment, go in, and see someone. No muss, no fuss. I still love it. Todah rabah meod, as my students in San Francisco (incorrectly) say--thank you very much a lot, Kaiser Permanente of Northern California.

A Packing Update: Things I Wish I'd Brought With Me But Didn't Know I Would Want So I Left Them In Berkeley Or Put Them In Storage

1. hand-me-down JCrew jeans and grey Stanford sweatshirt, rescued from the Lost and Found

2. black zip-up hoodie

3. more wool sweaters now that it is cold and I shrank one of the two I did actually pack

4. additional toiletries since I paid an hour's worth of my salary, the equivalent of $17.50, for a bottle of contact solution last week

5. another journal since mine is almost full

6. my necklace with the tree charm from an artists' sale at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival (why do I want this right now? no reasonable explanation...)

7. my green Nalgene water bottle from REI

8. gloves

9. an umbrella

10. Rebecca and Mark

11. Aubrie, Wes, and Sofia

12. Batshir

A Packing Update: Things I Brought But Am Finding I Never Really Use

1. travel iron

2. black wool dress pants from Ann Taylor

3. retro-style red hipster party dress

4. fishnet tights

5. tallit (prayer shawl for use in synagogue at Saturday morning Torah service)

6. stretchy travel clothesline

7. extra books to read

8. nice, grown-up watch

A Packing Update: Things I'm Glad I Brought Because I Use Them Constantly

1. Pierre

2. laptop

3. journal

4. digital camera

5. Israeli mobile phone

6. favorite pens

7. Timbuk2 bag

8. Keens

9. carpenter-style jeans with hammer hook from Banana Republic

10. green windproof North Face jacket (a related post forthcoming on this topic)

11. bathrobe

12. buckwheat and millet pillow from Kelli and Nathan

13. Hebrew-English dictionary

14. outlet adapter/voltage converter

15. water bottle

16. headlamp (laugh if you want, I don't care)

Tired

Only now am I beginning to realize how tired I am. It is Chanukah vacation and there is no school until Thursday so instead of setting my alarm as usual I've been letting my body rest as long as it wants. Today I did not wake up until late morning, after eleven and a half hours of sleep.

To some extent this might still be the result of last week's massive ear infection. Also, though, I think it is related to the fact that I have not really slept since I was 29 years old. For a variety of reasons I stopped sleeping with any regularity or at any significant length about four years ago, instead staying up late doing any number of projects to make myself exhausted enough to actually fall asleep when I would finally get into bed instead of lying there, body still but mind racing. I've always been an involuntary morning person--not my personal nature but instead a necessity of my profession, since school begins very early in the day--and so finally collapsing into bed sometime between one and two a.m., then getting up at quarter to six, comes out to something like one night of sleep for every two days if even that.

Then there was the very long period of time when my relationship with someone halfway around the world kept me up late, or was it early, on the phone doing what I could to maintain whatever connection is possible when people are 7,500 miles apart. And let me not forget the brief period of time I dated a world-class triathlete, during which significant free-choice time was spent running, cycling, and swimming--by turns exhilarating and exhausting.

So the combination of insomnia and elementary school, of projects and transatlantic phone calls and the ongoing quest for extreme physical fitness, means I've been sleeping between four and five hours a night for the past four years. It wears on you after awhile, weakening your immune system to the point that you get sick more often and take longer to get well, and leaving you at times in a semi-perpetual state of such psychological and emotional delirium that it is difficult to concentrate on anything or anyone, including yourself. That, I can see now, is one of the many reasons I did it for so long. That and the fear of getting into bed in the dark and often chilly San Francisco night and not being able to sleep, lying instead restless and convinced that everyone everywhere else in the entire city was dreaming sweetly while I alone was listening to the N-Judah rumble by outside. It did not help that I had a late-night partner in crime, a dear friend of mine who for her own reasons also never slept and with whom I very much took advantage of my Cingular Wireless unlimited night and weekend minutes. It was always interesting when my cell phone bill would come to see how long she and I had actually been talking on any given night: 47 minutes, 123 minutes, 215 minutes...about what? Anything, nothing. It was conversation, yes, but also collaboration, a partnership of two people afraid to go to bed out of fear of what might be waiting there for them.

I began to sleep a bit this summer at camp and it was a gift the likes of which I could not describe. In the mountains of Yosemite, it gets very dark very early even in the longest days of summer. Once dinner and song session are over and the sun sets, once my nightly block of Jewish bedtime folktales was over and I had showered in the always-empty bathroom by Boys' Side Field, not much was left besides staff bedtime snack at 10 and whatever conversation comes along with that each night. Plus, as the camp's only Jewish educator, I was working hard teaching units how to prepare for Kabbalat Shabbat and leading bunks down to the river for midday trips to the mikveh, I was busy making challah with 150 campers every Friday and leading services from morning Torah to evening Havdallah every Saturday.

For the first time since I turned 30 I was tired.

So I slept a bit those ten weeks but then when I moved back to Berkeley that ended almost immediately--I was home and with friends and by a television for the first time in nine years, I was packing and repacking and making endless lists of things to buy at Target in preparation for an eight month trip overseas. Oh, and we were all hard at work getting Mark and Rebecca married, after all. So the sleeping dropped off a bit during the fall.

Only now, nine weeks after I left California, am I finally allowing myself to feel tired...only now, four years later, am I beginning to sleep. I feel lazy and guilty for being so still, it is unfamiliar and uncomfortable after the past years of hyperkinesis. It is also challenging in light of all the "shoulds" (so helpful!) I am feeling about my life here these months: I am living in Jerusalem, so while it is vacation and I have time off from school I "should" go to museums, ride the bus to as-of-yet-unexplored parts of town, go to The Coffeeshop on Rehov Azza and at least sit in the window and drink a seven-shekel cappucino while writing in my journal or working on Rebecca's birthday card instead of sitting here in our library-slash-my bedroom. But you see, I am so very tired and it is just much too far to go...

Plus, I am still working as an English teacher and tutoring my own private students and doing some learning myself in night class twice a week. So it is not as if I never do anything, as if I always sleep. I have to try and consider that life and one's actions within it is not a dichotomy but a continuum, I have to reflect on the fact that the insane and unsustainable schedule and level of commitment I had made in every sphere of my life in San Francisco--professional, personal, social, relational, spiritural--is at the far left of the spectrum and that to move even just slightly right to a place where I have five to-do list items for a day instead of fifteen might be not only still acceptable but actually beneficial. So today I got up, ate breakfast, did laundry, washed dishes, took a shower and got dressed, read a book, had lunch, and wrote. After this I will go to the corner store. Later tonight I am going to dinner at the house of friends for Chanukah. And you know what? That just might be my day.

In her book _Eat, Pray, Love_, Elizabeth Gilbert writes this at the end of her decadent, indulgent, instructive, and very necessary four months in Italy:
But is it such a bad thing to live like this just for a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition that to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?

The United States of San Francisco

Last night we had dinner guests for Shabbat Chanukah, one of whom I knew and two of whom I did not. During the introductions, Nir explained that he was from here in Jerusalem and Helle told us she was from Denmark. When it was Sam's turn he described himself to the group as being "from California, Northern California, from Berkeley."

I felt very validated to hear this, since my housemates (Polish/Israeli, French, and Norwegian) always tease me for telling new people I meet that I am from San Francisco. "Not everyone knows where San Francisco IS, Sarah," Kenneth said in frustration one time. "Can you at least start out by saying that you're from the States to give people some context?"

As I tried in vain to explain to my "partners" (the Israeli word for housemates), introducing myself as being from the U.S., as an American, feels less than accurate . There is a perception or a stereotype, and not an entirely accurate one, about "Americans" and "people from the States" and this mindset about what those of us from the U.S. must be like does not often match my own experiences and points of view. In my travels I have found that while maybe this perception varies from place to place (in the Netherlands, Americans are all loud-mouthed; in New Zealand, Americans are all fat; in Israel, Americans are all rich) it most certainly exists. Describing myself as being from San Francisco also brings a stereotype to people's minds--I must work in high-tech, be liberal in my politics and hipster in my social life, and of course how could we forget gay?! This, while not completely accurate in my case, feels to me amuch more fitting description of the version of myself I want to introduce to the rest of the world.

Sick

"What do you do for work?" the Israeli doctor asked me in the walk-in clinic at 8 o'clock this morning.

"I'm an English teacher at an elementary school in East Jerusalem," I replied.

"Oh, well, there--that explains it," he said with finality as he put down his pen and picked up the tongue depressor. "Teachers are always, always sick."

And yes, I am, sick with a terrible ear infection such that I'm half-deaf and it hurts to chew. Of course I am sick now, on this the first day of our week-long Chanukah vacation...and, of course my health insurance from the States only covers visits to the emergency room. And unlike in the U.S., where the shortcomings of our health care system mean the only access some people have to medical care is in the emergency room, you better not be going to the emergency room in Israel for anything short of a bus bombing or rocket attack. No no. There are *real* emergencies here, don't be bringing your stuffed up ear or your sore throat to the E.R.

So I found myself initiated to the system of socialized medicine early this morning, for which I as a foreign resident without national health insurance paid 460 shekels to be examined and prescribed antibiotics--$115. Words cannot describe, or at least not right now as I am wracked with fever and wearied with malaise, how I missed the after-hours walk-in clinic at Kaiser Permanente, home of the $5 co-pay, in the moment that I handed over my credit card to pay the woman in the billing office this morning.

Passport Control, Chapter One

This (poorly-focused) photo of a page from my passport shows my current visa in black ink at the top left. Also visible in green ink are the visa and proof of exit from my stay here in the summer of 2005, a short and mostly unpleasant trip except for the fact that Mark and Rebecca were here at the same time and we got to do fun stuff together like watch _Pimp My Ride_ on MTV at the place where they were staying and go to dinner at Jan's.

It is not at all uncommon to be asked to show your identification when entering governmental offices and institutions, such as the university, or when one is a visitor to secured areas such as office buildings or schools. This process, along with security checks such as passing through metal detectors and having one's bags searched or x-rayed, can be lengthy and one spends a lot of time standing in line with other people who are also waiting to be permitted entrance.

During these times that I have spent waiting I have done a lot of observation, specifically of the various types of identification people supply when asked. Foreign nationals present their passports, which come in many different colors so it is always a fun game to guess the nationality of the bearer before you see the country's name listed on the cover. Britain (red) and South Africa (green) are easy but Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S. are harder (various shades of blue).

Another document presented by residents of the State of Israel--for all that "residency" can involve in this complicated place--is the Teudat Zehut, or Identity Card. These also come in colors: blue for Israeli citizens or for those granted permanent residency in Israel who hold citizenship in other countries, green for Palestinians. I have also seen orange but despite a search on Wikipedia am still not totally sure to whom those are issued.

I was born outside of Chicago, Illinois, and am a citizen of the United States of America. I travel on an American passport, which I carry everywhere with me while I am here in Israel. I am also eligible for a passport issued by the European Union based on my grandfather's citizenship in the former Czechoslovakia and am in the process of applying for this document since there are countries in the Middle East where those bearing American passports are not permitted to travel.

I am currently a legal temporary resident of Israel and hold a 90-day tourist visa which expires on January 9, 2008. Since my departure for Ghana is not until February 1--if at all, this remains unclear--and my return ticket to the States is for May 12, I need to renew my visa in order to stay in this country legally. Many students in my Hebrew class are in the same situation and have been making phone calls, appointments, and complaints at the office of the Ministry of the Interior here in Jerusalem in order to try and get their affairs straightened out.

To have my visa renewed it is compulsory that I present my passport, a letter of verification from the organization with which I volunteer stating that I do not get paid, the renewal application, a photograph of myself, and 150 shekels (a unique pleasure for Americans since citizens of many other countries are allowed to renew their visas free of charge). Other documents people have been asked to produce include their return plane tickets and proof of their religion.

In San Francisco, as anywhere in the U.S., I am allowed all the rights and freedoms of an American citizen. I am finding that is not the case here and have experienced a number of situations in which my actions are curtailed by my alien status. This gives me a lot to consider as far as what life as a non-citizen resident, legal or illegal, might be like in my own country.

Thanksgiving, Jerusalem-Style

Last week it was not until I read it in the pages of the International Herald Tribune that I realized Thanksgiving was upon us. As the only American in the house I was nominated to prepare this massive meal as a show of global, gastronomic goodwill to my French, Norwegian, and Polish/Israeli housemates.

We went to the shuk and we went to the grocery store and good thing we are not a Shabbat-observant household because I cooked all day last Saturday. Finally around 7:30 I proudly sat my international household down to a traditional holiday meal, American-style:

*roasted red peppers, courtesy of Chana
*steamed green beans with mushroom sauce
*baked yams with brown sugar streusel topping
*stuffing, Israeli-ized with fresh pomegranante
*pumpkin pie, courtesy of Kenneth
*and....baked basil-lemon tofu instead of a bird. What can I say? I'm a kosher-style vegetarian now and our kitchen could not withstand the complications of using two sets (meat and dairy) of pans, plates, silverware, and everything at once.

It was delicious and everyone was very admiring of my work and that of my sous-chef, Kenneth. We went around the table and said what we were thankful for, and then we cleared the table and left for the night at 10:30. It was mozai Shabbat after all, you want to waste the one night a week you can actually go out?

See the pictures here on flickr. If you are not a member, become one! It's easy. One project for this weekend is moving all my pictures there so people can see them. The process of trying to paste them all into entries here is just too complicated. So, look forward to more photos from other events soon!