summer holiday - week 2

"Wanna have one last fuck?" asked Hubby yesterday morning, in all seriousness, as he read the papers where the Iranian president had threatened to usher in the Islamic messiah today and wreak havoc on the world...

Never one to believe the end is near, I got dressed and met my German friend who was in Israel for a week. She is an interesting character. A young devout Catholic sister in a community of hippie-type religious Catholics of a strange order that wear green most of the time. She looks like she stepped out of a medieval Christian painting. She introduced herself to me a few years back on her first trip because she wanted to "apologize for what Germans did to the Jews". She is also a singer, singing with a duo of Christian Arabs in Nazareth and was practicing with them this week. It was nice to get back in touch, and we caught up on lots over High Tea and scones at Chez Gita's in Jerusalem.

Later that evening I wanted to run off to Tel Aviv to see the movies on the beach, but Hubby talked me out of it, because of the heat wave. It looks like October is probably a better bet for running off to Tel Aviv. The humidity there must be awful right now. Jerusalem is hot enough.

Yesterday I treated myself to a macrobiotic day at a friend's home in Mevo Betar (Cooperative moshav, smallholder settlement, 10 km. southwest of Jerusalem; established 1950 by Herut). I took the special buses from Jerusalem to a nearby ultra-Orthodox settlement where the women sit in the back (I felt so early-1960's deep South Black) and the men in the front. I had wrapped a skirt over my pants, not wanting to offend the modest-conscious people on the bus. She picked me up there to take me to her place. We passed a bunch of Arab kids at the entrance to the settlement selling figs. I gave them a couple of shekels and they thrust their entire stock of home-grown figs at me inside the car. I love figs, but I took only three.

"That was so nice of you. Why did you do it?"

"Better I give them charity than Hamas or Hezbollah. I'm in stiff competition with these groups, you know. I wish more Jews would give these kids' families charity or buy figs from them. This way they wouldn't need to turn to those terrorist groups who support these poor families, give the kids hot lunches and an education of hate."

I was feeling under the weather, as the heat wave persisted. We started out with a breakfast of miso soup and crepes (whole-wheat) with homemade fruit filling, pickled rutabaga and I took down some interesting books to read from their shelves on Past Lives in between courses. I did have a ginger compress treatment, which seemed to heal my aching, stiff neck.

"Is this going to be really uncomfortable?" I asked, as I saw her heating wet towels in boiling water.

"Don't worry. It's not Chinese torture." she looked at me. "It's Japanese torture!"

We laughed, as she put the boiling hot ginger soaked towels on my stomach, neck and kidney areas. It's probably more normal to get this type of treatment in cooler weather, but hey - this was my vacation time.

There were more healthy snacks and drinks, Shinto Buddhist chanting, and a long 1 hour hike through their beautiful Moshav before stuffing myself on a full multi-course dinner. Monster homes next to dingy homes built in the 1950s. Abandoned campgrounds. Beautiful gardens. I'm sorry I didn't take along my camera to capture the visuals, but it is a lovely area 15 minutes from Jerusalem.