Identity

Several weeks ago I attended a lecture entitled "Genesis and the Big Bang". The speaker was a religious physicist, which is a contradiction in terms according enlightened western thought, but here he's just another brilliant scientist. He made the case, in terms I could barely understand but illustrated by a power point so it must be true, that in fact the world could have been created in 6 days.

Time as a concept has been on my mind lately, as we count down the days till we leave. Does time really speed up as we get older? When people say where has the time gone, where does it go? I have a very early (I must have been 5 or 6) memory of telling my father I wanted to be a grown up. He told me I'd be a grown up before I could turn around. Of course I turned around and said see, I'm still little. Then one day I turned around and found an adult staring back at me in the mirror. I can't rewind the tape and stop at the exact frame when the transition took place, any more than I can point to the moment when I began to implode due to the fact that we are leaving here in less than two weeks. With winter weather finally making an appearance in Chicago,  I'm even less inclined to get on that plane.

We rarely go to movies, but last Saturday night we went to a screening of Moonlight, which won the Oscar for best picture. Maybe we're not sophisticated enough to appreciate the subtleties, but neither one of us could understand what made this movie worthy of the Oscar. The acting was very good but the story didn't hold up. We found it to be choppy, trite, unconvincing, and it left too many loose ends. If it was about identity it didn't accomplish it's mission. As I thought about it, I couldn't help but wonder if the film would have won the same accolades if it had been set in Appalachia. Israel, particularly Jerusalem, is a place where identity is very important. It impacts where you live, go to school, how you dress, who you marry, your political affiliation, your livelihood, even how you spend your leisure time. How would the filmmaker capture the complexities of identity if the story was set here? Would he adequately portray the nuances, or would his characters be one-dimensional cutouts? An authentic film about identity in Israel is no easy task, one that this filmmaker isn't up to. 

Purim was celebrated on Sunday night and Monday. It's a big holiday here, and not just for kids. In Jerusalem the mayor, who is very big on public entertainment and festivities, made sure the right atmosphere was created by having all kinds of music and entertainment venues throughout the downtown area. We went to Pardes to hear the megilla. It was a good choice because we knew two of the readers, and almost everyone wore a costume.

The Jerusalem Marathon took place this morning. 25,000 runners participated, and the route went almost by our door. It's a difficult race because of all the hills. We've seen a lot of runners training in the neighborhood, including an increasing number of religious women who wear skirts over their tights. It brings to mind the burkini and hijab controversies in France, where religious garb can't be worn in public. Hmmmm. I wonder what kind of identity film Barry Jenkins would make about that.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem,
Peggy and Sid

Sushi, Shiatsu and the passage of time

Not everything I do here is of the brainiac variety. Some things are an attempt to bring out my (non-existent) creative side. Actually I have no patience for crafts and the like, but I do find certain activities therapeutic.

Besides ceramics, I signed up for a fruit carving class. (Batsheva can talk me into almost anything; isn't that what friends are for?) It's easier than it looks but it takes the right equipment and a certain amount of practice. Best of all, unlike ceramics, you don't have to wait for the results. (My mother used to make beautiful carved vegetables and watermelon baskets but I never had the interest to learn how to do it myself. There's a life lesson in that, but now isn't the time to explore it.)

On Monday we had a lesson in making fruit sushi. It was a demo only - no hands on - but it looked fairly simple. The results were beautiful and very tasty. Perhaps now people will stop bugging me about not eating sushi.

We love the Dead Sea. It's beautiful, especially for a desert person like me. The salt formations are unstable which makes the landscape new every time we go. We spent 3 days there this week. The weather was perfect - not too warm, cloudless blue skies, starry nights and an almost full moon. We stayed at a different hotel this time, the Isrotel Ganim, and we were very pleased.

       Not tabular icebergs off the coast of Antarctica,

                 but this year's salt formations.

            Yes, flowers. Lots and lots of flowers.

There are a lot of things a person can do in the desert, and we've done many, primarily hiking. This time we wanted to take it easy and be spoiled. We spent lots of time in the hotel's salt water pools and the spa. I've had spa treatments before but never shiatsu. I'd heard about how good it is for straightening the spine and loosening joints. I was also aware that it's painful. Well, the therapist looked like he trained at the Spetsnaz interrogation unit and I immediately regretted my decision to try this out. The treatment is done on a mat on the floor, which is uncomfortable enough, and it did hurt. Even standing up afterwards was difficult, and being told I was doing it wrong didn't help. It took a while to recover but in the end it was worthwhile.

We have two and a half weeks left here, and I'm fighting the end-of-trip depression that usually sets in 3-4 weeks ahead by filling our schedule as much as possible. There's a lot left to do, see and study, which keeps us busy but makes the time pass even quicker. As Sid said the other day as we floated in the salt water pool at the hotel, time doesn't go by, it runs away. Another life lesson best left for another time. 

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem,

Peggy and Sid

Desert Wine

It's been a quiet week.

The highlight was the excursion we took on Tuesday to the Negev. Tours for locals is very popular here. There are tours for kids as part of their school curricula, tours for army draftees as part of their basic training, tours for workers as a company benefit and all kinds of tours for people in the third phase of life, which sounds a lot better than seniors citizens.

Even tho we were told the tour would begin at 730AM, it left about 45 minutes late. Naturally the first stop was a coffee break. We finally got to the first real stop - the Pula Reserve - which is a biosphere between the cities of Kiryat Gat and Sderot. There are many areas like this in Israel - unique biospheres and micro-climates. This one happens to be on the Israel Trail, which is a walking trail that goes the entire length of the country from Metulla in the north to Eilat in the south. Or if you prefer, from the Lebanese border to the Egyptian border. The anemone, the signature Israeli wildflower, is in bloom in the Negev at this time of year, and Pula is one of the places to view them. There's another fascinating plant that grows in the area. As the guide explained, this is the plant that made it possible to transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers. It sounded a bit exaggerated to me, but the explanation made sense. When burned, the plant reaches a temperature of 1700 degrees celsius. This makes it possible to soften the local limestone to a powdery substance, which, when mixed with water, forms plaster. The plaster was used to line cisterns to store water, thereby making it possible to have a water source.

We continued to the desert city of Arad and visited the local history museum. One of the town's original founders was our docent. Located roughly between Beersheva and the Dead Sea, 20th century Arad (as opposed to the biblical Arad located nearby) was founded in 1960, intended to be the first planned city in Israel. At the time there were good jobs and the city's micro-climate made it an ideal place to treat asthma. Well, that was then. Asthma was cured and the jobs dried up as factories closed. Tourism didn't really take off they way they hoped it would, with 4X4 jeep tours of the desert. Today the city is run down; the population is 22,000 and they keep losing people to the big cities where opportunities abound. We had lunch at the city's only hotel, although I can't imagine who stays there.

From there we went to the Large Machtesh. A machtesh is a geological phenomenon, similar to a crater, unique to Israel. It's formed when two mountains collapse into themselves, forming a valley or crater. There are 3 in Israel (Ramon, Large and Small) and the word has never been translated. We took a short hike into the machtesh to see yet another geological phenomenon: huge boulders that look very much like petrified wood, but there are no growth rings or any telltale signs of fossilized bugs and insects. They also have quartz-like characteristics. Yet the chemical analysis doesn't confirm what their composition really is. A mystery for the ages.

Our last stop was of all things a vineyard. Yes, in the middle of the desert. It turns out that 2500 years ago grapes thrived in this area, and were supplied to vintners. When the Muslims conquered in the 7th century alcohol consumption was banned, wine was no longer produced and the grape market dried up. Even back in those days it was all about the economy and jobs. When archaeologists started to explore the region and found wine amphora they realized grapes and wine had been produced here. Researchers from Ben Gurion University in Beersheva figured out how it was possible in the harsh desert conditions and voila, by using those same ancient methods an industry was re-born. We had a tasting and the wine was surprisingly good. Hopefully the bottle I bought will make it back to the States.

Shabbat shalom from Jerusalem,

Peggy and Sid