Jerusalem Weddings

I noticed a new blog in Blogs of Note - PrisonPete. Intrigued by the name I read his blog - some of it and looked at his profile. Under music he lists the Rolling Stones. "Oh" I shrieked to Hubby engrossed with Fox News, "this PrisonPete likes the Rolling Stones," happy to find a kindred soul, even if he lives in prison. The response was immediate. "Are you gonna write him now?" he bounded over to me in the other room. He's peering over my shoulder as I'm beginning to write this blog. "You're gonna write him, aren't you? And then he's gonna come to Israel and kill us all." And with that, he returned to his favorite position in front of the TV.

Last night my friend's daughter got married. You know you're getting old when... I'll upload some photos tomorrow from the wedding. It was at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel which is the only Kibbutz within Jerusalem. It overlooks the Bethlehem area. My friends live in a Jewish settlement in Samaria and Marty said to me "We've got 400 people here, 30 from Canada and some from France, England and 1 from Jordan." "I assume he's the guy not wearing a kippah (Jewish headcovering for males)?" Since my father passed away recently, I'm not r-e-a-l-l-y supposed to go to weddings and other similar celebrations. However, if you are "put to work" there are some opinions which give leniency to this rule. My work consisted of taking photos and getting them out before the official photographer gets his out, which usually takes a month. I managed to send 30 photos to them already today. I usually dance at thee event, but I had to maintain some semblance of mourning and I didn't feel like dancing - even though the music was great. They had this very Orthodox Jewish guy with long peyot (sidelocks) singing Mustang Sally and Louis Armstrong. That was strange. Could you just imagine that scene? I knew these people because 9 years ago we all ended up in the same absorption center, and we all became like family. It was like staying in a bungalow colony for a year. So I hung out with the Man from J.U.N.G.L.E. our South African friend, some Chassidic friends and the children of our Swedish friends who had since gone back to Sweden for lack of work - but their kids stayed on. The "kids" - one of them is in the army and is married with a kid - even though he looks 17. And his sister was there. Hubby kept on begging me to take photos of her cleavage, much to J.U.N.G.L.E. man's amusement. Sick fuck! The soldier boy lives a block from our home and we hadn't any idea how close he lived to us. So he now has "son" status with us and hopefully he'll show up with his wife and child for a visit soon. This Swedish family was difficult to figure out. We tried to figure them out when they were at the absorption center with us but couldn't. Are they Jewish? Did they convert? I was over there at Christmas time when they moved to our area while they all were still living in Israel and noticed green and red tableclothes, plus other assorted Xmas-type decos, discreetly placed throughout the room. Then the pastor at the Swedish Institute found out where we lived and asked us if we knew that family. The kids' grandfather is Jewish, but he is a Messianic Jew and lives in a Messianic old age home (!) in Haifa. Their mother isn't Jewish, and I don't know if the kids converted or not but it is a bit of a mess when you want to do simple things like get married. So the soldier boy got married to his Swedish girlfriend who had some sort of conversion but not Orthodox. When they tried to cirumcise their son last week, no rabbi would do it. They finally found one mohel (cirumcisor) who would do it but he wasn't available so they got a Moslem circumcisor. That's a switch!