Sirens in Jerusalem

Good thing I read in the papers just the day before that the best shelter from missiles, if you are living on the top two floors of a building is the building's stairwell. I was hoping to have a peaceful Sabbath, enjoying the fact that Hubby was at my married daughter's house for the afternoon, and I was joyfully alone, cooking the Friday night meal for my family who were due to come later. Nobody bugging me. Except for Hamas. While the dusk was setting in, the loud siren went off, and I was wondering if it was a drill or the real thing. Well, most warnings are anywhere between 15 seconds and 1 1/2 minutes, so I didn't have much time to figure out whether it was real or not and settled for the "real". I ran to get my phone, shut off the rice and headed for the staircase. I ran down the stairs to the 5th floor wondering how it would be if a missile headed through my building on the very same floor where I sought refuge. I called up my religious daughter, knowing she doesn't usually answer the phone on the Sabbath, but this was obviously an emergency. No answer. I called my husband. My daughter answered his phone.

"Dad is sticking his head out the window trying to see the missile. He's the only one looking out the window."

Of course he is.

No one was in the stairwell but me, though I could hear people talking nervously just inside their apartments. They seemed to be standing right by their doors. After about 5 minutes I went back into my apartment, relieved I hadn't heard any booms anywhere.

Everyone came in shortly afterwards for dinner, and it was like nothing had happened, except the grandkids were rowdier than usual, perhaps their way of acting out.

After dinner and after the family leaves, I'm reading Facebook posts, knowing more about what's going on from my Palestinian friends than from anyone else and feeling touched by the concern of my Syrian friends. I'm reading posts between people who are against any violence and people who feel Israeli strikes are justified. My eyes are closing, and I'm lying on the couch. I eat M&M's for comfort and wake up Hubby, who is sleeping in my son's room, to come to our bed. I usually never do that.

We're On The Road to Nowhere in the land of 1,000 cups of tea

The place was miles away from any known town or village on the map. The Rashaida live in the middle of nowhere, deep in the Judean desert. I had visited them for a one day trip 3 years before, but this was my first overnight with them (). My friend was having a birthday gathering/party and decided to have a campout with friends at the Bedouin tribe's encampment. Passing Maale Amos, the last remote settlement on the road, groups of kids stood on the road watching our convoy of about 7 cars pass by and waved and smiled. Some got out to photograph groups of camels and one young man excitedly ran over to our car - "Have you ever been to India? THIS is so much like India, the way the kids behave and the view!" His wonderful memories of a faraway exotic land were all coming back to him. I tried to GPS where we were and the only thing I got was a blue pulsing dot in the middle of a grey grid. That blue dot in the middle of nowhere caused so much laughter, the birthday girl passed aruond my iPhone showing the blue dot to everyone in the large tent.

We brought in the Sabbath and found a corner table inside the tent to light the Sabbath candles. Then when it got dark, over the kiddush and challot, we had our Bedouin dinner served to us. The younger Bedouin kids hung around us the entire time - they all looked under 7 years old and were so well-behaved we wonder why people think Bedouin are primitive. Their mothers were probably thrilled to have their kids off their hands. I asked one little girl - she must have been no older than 5 - if she wanted to eat. She waved "no" with her little finger. After we all took food, I saw the little girls take food for themselves. So different from our "civilized" brood who whine when they're hungry and tired. The Bedouin kids were adorable, filthy, but so well-behaved. We marveled at how they lived - and walked around on the stones barefoot as if it were just a regular carpeted area - not having changed clothing the next day. How many days did they wear the same outfit? Their hair was long and crackly dry. The adult men's teeth were all rotted and we thought it must be from the 1,000 cups of extremely sugary tea that they drink all day.

That night the local musicians came over and played oud, rabab and another strange instrument that looked similar but with more strings than a rabab. We took turns singing an assortment of Israeli classical folk songs and what seemed like Bedouin love songs. The friend who drove us there spoke Arabic and went over to the women's tent where the women of that family lived. Muhammad has 2 wives who actually say they get along. They seem to think it not strange at all for a man to have more than one wife. They're also cousins which makes it more familiar for them. They seemed to pity our single friend who lived alone. "They probably think your family rejected you and tossed you out into the big, wide, cruel world," I told her. After all, this doesn't happen in their communities. We were happy to hear that their oldest, a 12th grader, loves school and intends to go to university. In fact, all their kids seem to love school. That struck me more strange than anything. My kids and their friends, couldn't wait to finish their schooling. They certainly didn't love it. They coped with it.

Next day we woke up with the sunrise. We saw the little Bedouin children with their mothers sitting quietly outside their tin shack. Again - quietly. So surprising for me. The goats went out of their pen and Muhammad made some goat-like noises to get them back to where they belong. After a breakfast of fresh piping hot Bedouin pita, tea, coffee and cucumbers and tomatoes (no labane until the Spring, because the goats were pregnant, we were told), we headed out in the direction of the Dead Sea. It was a 4 hour hike, through several mountain ridges, with a different magnificent view every time you made a turn. I was happy to go with Muhammad as a guide because he knows every inch of this place. The view to the Dead Sea was beautiful, and on the way, people stopped off at wells and caves for some singing sessions. Luckily, their 2 jeeps came our way and took us back - a 40 minute roller coaster ride over the mountains.

A beautiful weekend spent in an enchanting place in the land of 1,000 cups of tea, in the middle of nowhere.

Traitor or Refusenik

I'm stepping over all these soldiers' duffle bags this morning, dumped in the aisle, trying to get off the bus. They're all going back to their base from home. My son is now in military jail and I get different responses from people, depending on their politics. I hear my left wing and Palestinian friends tell each other excitedly "Do you know her son is a Refusenik!!" and suddenly I'm a hero, even though I live over the green line. My right wing friends and family are disgusted with him because he's wasting his life because he's not serving his country. He's a traitor in some of their eyes. Some say you can't even find work if you don't have army service on your CV. I think that's mostly my concern more than any others...

Truth is - he's neither a traitor nor a Refusenik. He just wants money. He's nearly 21 years old and doesn't want to earn a soldier's measly salary of $100 a month. If he's a combat soldier, it jumps to a giant $200/month. He's not combatting anyone and so it's $100 only. While AWOL he found people willing to hire him for sporadic waiter jobs in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. They coudln't care less about AWOL soldiers.

Life is fun in military jail - they do nothing during the day and at night, he and his 3 roomies watch either soccer or whatever film is on the national station. The food is edible with chocolate spreads and pudding for breakfast, which he doesn't even get at home. But he's itching to go out and work because "girls will only go out with me if I have a car." Even here in the Middle East,the chicks are spoiled.

Lately, I've heard that there's an army program which lets you work for 9 days and then do army for 5 days. The program is called 9/5 or something like that. Looks like there'll be some compromise and he'll be neither a "refusenik" or a "traitor" to his country.

a very different tour of Jerusalem

I thought I had seen it all. I have toured Jerusalem countless times. Even though I live here, I still sometimes feel like a tourist, rather than a resident. It's the wonder and beauty of Jerusalem that does it to me every time.

I saw a post on Facebook that there will be a dual-narrative tour from Mejdi , and I thought that this would be a unique tour and would give me different perspectives, and maybe I'd even learn a thing or two.

Lucky it is still summer and work at the office is slow, so I was able to take the day off. Through Facebook, 3 other friends of mine found out about the tour and joined too, as well as connecting with a few other people whom I hadn't seen in a while - from the wide circle of peace people.

Standing on a scenic hill by Mt. Scopus, the guides, one Palestinian and one Jewish, began their narratives. They went something like this...

"Remember when the tunnels by the Western Wall were dug? They sparked riots from the Palestinians who were nervous that the Israelis would destroy the buildings above the tunnels or try to get to the Temple Mount from the underground passage."

"Riots?? They weren't riots. They were protests." remarked the Palestinian guide, and explained that language is a big part of the dual-narrative, that it's used in different contexts for both Jews and Arabs. He called cities over the green line "settlements" and she called them "communities". And so it went on like this for the day.

At Ammunition Hill, standing by a tank, one Jewish member of Mejdi told us of the dilemma he faced as a young soldier during a covert operation. On the hill was a young Arab boy reading a book. The soldier didn't know what to do with him, and called his commander who told him to tie the kid's hands and feet together. Of course, the child was terribly frightened. The soldier pondered whether to untie the child or not, looking back and seeing how terrifying this was for the poor kid who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. The soldier returned, untied the kid, who promptly ran as fast as he could to his village, obviously alerting the people to soldiers in the area. Needless to say, the operation failed, but this guy had cleared his conscience.

We stopped by a t-shirt shop in the Muslim quarter and the guide explained about the cartoon character Handala on one of the t-shirts. I knew nothing about this. The t-shirt merchant swung both ways,as many do in the old city, catering to all, with Free Palestine t-shirts next to Uzi Does It and Don't Worry America, Israel is behind you. When we remarked about the pro-Israel t-shirts, the merchant looked flustered..."They make me sell them!! They make me sell them!" Who makes him sell them, we never found out, but who knows what he thought of us. The unknown could be quite scary.

The funniest part of the tour was when our Palestinian tour guide ended up at the Western Wall and put on a kippah. The chabad rabbi came up to him.

"What is your name"

"Aziz"

"Azi. Come with me..."

and he proceeded to put on tefillin on the startled guide. He then walked him over to the Wall and said "Pray for whatever your heart desires."

I hadn't gone with them to the Wall, preferring to remain in the shade of the entrance, but heard about it from him, who was like "You'll never believe what I just went through."

I asked him - "So, nu? What did you ask for when you went up the wall?" I smiled because I knew what he asked for. And I was right.

"Free Palestine"

And I, of course, burst out laughing.

The heat is on

Summer has been unbearably hot this year. I usually enjoy the heat, but this year seems to be more stifling, and I'm so much more uncomfortable.

The heat also manifests itself in other ways. Take my son, for example. He's been AWOL on and off from the Israeli army for a year. This past week I was off work on a much needed "staycation", and while he was gallavanting around town with friends in the wee hours of the morning, the military police came twice looking for him. They scared the living daylights out of one of my daughters - by banging loudly on the door and shouting - who opted, as a result, to stay the remainder of the week at her boyfriend's house. Maybe I should be thankful for the military police visit? That's one way to get rid of your kids. I felt like I was in some kind of action film, but not getting paid for it. The first visit was at 12:30 a.m. and the next visit two days later was at 2:00 a.m. I'm sure the intruders felt as if they were in an action film as well.

"His bed is hot! His bed is hot!" one burly guy shouted in triumph. They seemed to think they were hot on my son's trail.

"Why is the bed warm? Who slept in it?" he asked me. I insisted that my son left 2 1/2 hours earlier and maybe the hot weather kept the bed warm. Either that or our new kitten had slept there.

My son had left home at 11:30 that evening, and he stays out all night. I asked them, if they wanted to catch him so badly, why they don't come during the day when he is sleeping? They don't do day catches, one of the soldiers informed me.
Too bad. It's your loss, isn't it? They searched inside our kitchen cabinets and other ridiculous places. Meanwhile, their very powerful flashlights shone on the rooftop of our building, on our neighbor's porch - as they thought he jumped from our terrace onto theirs.

My daughter was embarrassed by the fact that they were on our terrace screaming out his name and neighbors in the building next to ours came out in their undies to check out the scene. She began to cry "Look, all our neighbors are watching this!!!"
I tried to reassure her. "Don't worry. Do you really think that if it happened to them, that dad wouldn't be out on the terrace in HIS underwear watching everything?"

Then the group of 5 military police ran downstairs looking for him in the bushes, where all they found were terrified street cats.

My kids called me up the next day when they heard what had happened and asked if we weren't terrified by the night raid. No. Not really. Next time they come, Hubby promises we'll answer the door in our birthday suits and say it's the heat that's bothering us - not them....but they can search as they please...

Haifa Trip with Arab and Israeli women

Summer has started in Jerusalem. It's hot, it's sizzing during the day, only to cool off quite drastically in the evenings. The weather catches people off guard, tourists especially, and they now know they have to bring sweaters after the sun goes down.

But speaking of non-tourists, I went to Haifa with a group of Palestinian and Israeli women who like to eat. Couldn't find a better group for me. Muslim and Jewish foodies. Fuck the politicians. Women and food will bring peace to the region, I'm convinced of that. The group is called Kitchen of Languages. When I signed up to go on what was advertised as a "trip for Palestinian and Jewish women to Haifa", I had no idea who these people were. I get on the bus with 2 friends - the bus had already picked up the group from the Hebron area, Tarkumia more exactly, and they were already blasting Arabic music and dancing in the aisles. I was nervous beforehand because I just didn't want the group to be "political" because politics stress me out. It was Friday, my day off, I wasn't cooking and I refused to get stressed, especially that I was away from my family. I also found out that these woman could hardly speak any English or Hebrew and they knew as much of those languages as I did Arabic. So no heavy discussions there. I got up and danced, and one of the organizers suggested a dance contest.

"No way" I told her. "I'm not gonna compete with Arab women who've been belly dancing since the age of two."

So I was happy to find out during our trip that this group gets together to cook in each other's homes.

We make a pit stop to pick up some women from Tulkarem and I see some of the women picking a certain kind of weed with short leaves out of the grass.

"What are you doing?" I asked one of them. She understood me enough to answer in halting English.

"We cook with this".

Someone else chimed in - "But you can eat it not cooked"

That's all the English you need to know sweetheart. I just love learning from the natives!! I hoped no dog pee'd on it, I thought, as I put the leaves in my mouth.

We get to Haifa and we put our pot luck lunches on the benches. The Jewish women brought pasta salads, cake, fruit and I brought a rather tasty quinoa salad. I thought let me stick with western food because last time we had a women's Arab/Israeli pot luck, I bought mejeddra and it's certainly nowhere near as tasty as theirs and so half of it was left uneaten. I had more success with "my" food as the whole thing went quickly. The Arab women had homemade bread stuffed with lamb meat. That seemed to be their staple food for the day.

On to the Bahai Gardens where we were met by bilingual guides who spoke mainly in Arabic because there were more of them than Israelis. The gardens are beautiful, but not my style. They're too pristine. I enjoy looking at jungle-like gardens, not perfectly manicured ones. The day was hot and everyone was "schvitzing", especially the covered up Arab women. Once inside the theater where we gathered to watch a short film on the Bahai religion, one beautiful but sweaty woman threw off her head covering yelling "Fish Islam" - which kind of meant "to heck with Islam". I understood and laughed. Of course back on the street her head covering was back on and she was in Islamic mode again.


We landed afterwards on the Hof Hacarmel beach - our entire busload. We plopped ourselves down on a shaded area of the beach and noticed many Israeli Arab families there, staring at our group like we landed from a different planet. The women in these Israeli/Arab families were secular, in bathing suits and I could feel a bit of tension coming from the elderly covered up Arab women from the West Bank towards the Israeli Arabs. They weren't interested in conversing with one another, even though they could speak the same language, and I was frankly surprised. Could that even have been a glare from some of the women towards the Israeli Arab families? I thought I did notice that. I wondered why. What were they thinking? That they're sinners because they're secular? That they're traitors because they're Israeli? That they're jealous because they're Arab Israelis and free to go to the beach whenever they want or to travel all around the country whenever they want not needing permits? It could have been all three.

I watched the surfers - the waves were perfect for surfing and with another woman who couldn't speak my language, nor hers, we walked together, picking up unusual shells and rocks to take back home. I wonder if her family will be jealous that she went to the beach and saw the sea. Most haven't been to the sea since the 2nd intifada - 10 years ago or so.

Back on the bus -less dancing,less animated talking. We were all tired and it's a few hours to get back home - for all of us. But we promised to meet after Ramadan and cook food for each other to our heart's delight!

The Sonny Side of Things

We love our empty nest. I must have mentioned this before, but I can't help mentioning it again. Most of the time my daughters are at their boyfriends' homes. Occasionally they spend one day in the week with us and sometimes a weekend. Now that my son is army-bound, he's not home during the week either. He was supposed to learn how to drive and was at his base for 3 weeks. But they - whoever "they" are - didn't put him on the driving list and he ended up staying on his base, bored out of his mind. And when an ADHD kid has nothing to do all day, oy vey, watch out. He calls me during the week, and our conversations are like this.

Me: What's doing?

Him: Nothing

Me: So why did you call?

Him: Nothing. (long pause) The army is fucked up. I'm the only one not driving. They lied to me again this week.

Me: You're still not driving?

Him: I don't want to drive anyway. I want out of the army. I'm coming home.

And I spend every day trying to convince him why staying on his base is a good thing and that the government of Israel should pay for his drivers license, and he should use his Android phone to play more games, watch videos and go on Facebook. But he's miserable and hurt that everyone on the base is learning to drive but him. And there's no one for me to speak with. I tried calling the City Officers' office in Jerusalem which is who you call when you need something, but it's usually a dead end. I call up the office and there's a young girl on the end of the line.

Me: I need to find out why my son is the only one on his base that is not driving. I want to know if he did something they didn't like. Are they punishing him? Can you give me his commander's number?

Officer: I'm sorry but we're not allowed to give you that number. It could be that because he was put into the unit at the last minute that there were not enough instructors. And we need his permission to speak with his commander.

I call up my son and put him on a conference call with the officer.

Me: Tell her you give her permission to talk with your commander.

Son: What the fuck for? They don't care about me!!! They just don't care!!! No one cares. I'm leaving the army!!! I don't want to drive anyway.

I hang up on the conference call and am not even embarrassed that the officer on the other end of the line heard that conversation.

The next day, I'm at the bus stop in Jeruslem on my way home and someone taps me on the shoulder. It's my son. He passed his theory test and was one of the 22 out of over 60 who passed. They all got let out on Thursday for the weekend. He was thrilled to be in the army at that moment. We get off at our stop and cross the street. He spots a group of young under-dressed girls and makes a dash for the bus shelter across the street, hissing at me not to follow him. I see him out of the corner of my eye taking off his army shirt quickly and I'm thinking, - what the fuck is he doing?? Who does he think he is, Superman - changing into his "outfit"??? He runs to the girls. He's wearing army pants and a white undershirt. He knows them and hugs the pretty blonde one with the long legs.

He is no longer Clark Kent.

Smiling Arabs

I didn't let my son-in-law crush me with his usual anti-Arab rants. After all, missionaries, no matter what their agenda is, have to remain steadfast in their beliefs and withstand all sorts of stumbling blocks - and racist people are included in those blocks. Needless to say, I consider myself a missionary in my work for peace. He and my daughter picked me up from the International Convention Center after I had just returned from a lovely trip to the Caesarea area with a group of Israeli and Palestinian women this past Friday evening, after the Sabbath came in and no buses ran, to take me home for Friday night dinner. "You don't know Arabs" he ranted on to me. "You only meet the smiling Arabs." I sighed..."Well since I've been doing this for 10 years and pretty much every week I go to one peace activity or another, I meet new faces all the time. So that makes for a lot more 'smiling Arabs' than you think." I've tried telling him various reasons why I do what I do - and thought of telling him that today I went on an intercultural picnic with Arab women because their food is so much better than Israeli food, but I let it go. The trip began from Jerusalem at 8:00 am. There was an Arab woman from Hebron who covered her hair in a cap instead of a hijab. It reminded me of the Jewish Orthodox men we used to see in Toronto who would take their families on excursions into the countryside and cover their heads with a cap instead of a kippa, so you couldn't really tell if they were Jewish or not. It served us well passing a checkpoint and the driver telling the soldiers we're all from Jerusalem. She did have a legitimate permit to get into Israel proper, but we just didn't want to be held up more than we had to. On the way we picked up more people and then picked up Palestinians from Tulkarem and Nablus at the Sha'ar Efraim checkpoint. We waited and we waited. The women finally came and told us how difficult that particular checkpoint was. They were made to stand for an hour before the soldiers at the checkpoint finally let them through (from what I saw, it's not a busy checkpoint like many others - it seemed like a very small, quiet one); then they had to go through about 10 gates, each time showing their permits and listening to soldiers shouting at them. Why do they have to shout at them, I thought to myself. After nearly two hours they came through, exhausted but relieved and thrilled at the prospect of going to see the beach which is so close, yet so difficult, if not impossible to get to for them. We tried to go to the Caesarea port and discovered the cost was 35 shekels per person (even as a group). That was a lot of money for some of the Palestinians who had brought their children with them. I wished I had had enough money to pay for them to see the beautiful port with its boutique restaurants, shops and picturesque antiquities. We boarded back onto the bus and got off at Beit Yannai beach, which was a lovely beach with picnic tables. Tons of food on the table -the Palestinian women made their stuffed bread with a variety of stuffings - cheese or meat or zaatar (hyssop) and stuffed grape leaves which were better than anything I had tasted in any restaurant. There's something very connecting about sharing food together.

The kids ran to the water, and though it was quite chilly, that didn't faze them one bit. For them, a trip to the sea is one of the biggest thrills in their lives and it was a joy for me to watch their happiness as they screamed with delight at each rough wave thrashing through.

We let the kids and a few adults stay on the beach while we returned to Caesarea's shopping mall for a workshop and to view a short film made by an organization called Peace It Together. One woman from Nablus had never been to a dialogue with Israelis before and came out of curiosity. One of the Israeli women said "next time you see a soldier, you'll realize that we are their mothers" which prompted a rather harsh conversation between the two - but then one of the coordinators stepped in to say it was much too early for a political dialogue. Eventually, perhaps, but now we women have to get to know one another as humans, as friends, and that will exclude political dialogue for now. On the way back to the checkpoint near Tulkarem the Palestinians asked for a pitstop at McDonalds. For them, it's another treat in a world of theirs which feels boxed in and to which they have rare access to what we Israelis take for granted. The smiling faces of these women with their happy kids with their happy meals, made me feel more patient than usual, even though I knew I was going to come into Jerusalem after the buses would already have stopped running because of the Sabbath. We hugged and kissed each other goodbye and explained to the soldiers at the checkpoint about our special group of women, as "missionaries" love to do. I thought what a great way to start the Sabbath - seeing so many Smiling Arabs.

Empty Nest

My boss was getting irritated at the clicking of my keyboard and wanted me to just sit still while she read some reports. I understood how she got to be irritated at such little noise. After all, Hubby and I are very much getting used to the empty nest in our home. My two eldest are married, and the younger two daughters stay most of the week at their boyfriends' homes. I see them only once or twice a week. My son is finally esconced in the basic IDF training course after being in army jail on and off during the past 6 months and we're so happy at the peace and quiet that reigns in our home.

What was the problem with the army and my son? He wanted to be in the horribly macho unit of the border police and the army wanted to give him the lesser status of military police. Then after going AWOL twice, he turned himself in to the army where they put him in jail and then sent him to basic training. I'm grateful the army knew what they were doing and didn't put him in with the border police. They could be brutal. My son is not. Now we speak once a day while he's in basic military training. The first week was wonderful for him, then less wonderful the second week, and by the third week, he sounded depressed.

"Everyone does what they want and when I do one small thing wrong, they punish me." He had been on guard duty at 3:30 am and then at 7:00 am went to his tent to lie down for 10 minutes.

He's devastated by the fact that they docked him 50 shekels ($13) from his pay and believes he's getting the rough treatment because he's not from the tougher North African lineage, and often it seems like he's blaming me for having given birth to him in North America.

I try to instill some sense of "don't do what everyone else is doing, just do what's right", but it's not instilling.

Meanwhile, Hubby is elated at the peace and quiet at home and we worry that our son will get placed in a unit where he'll be coming home every day, instead of the usual one weekend every two weeks.

We looked at each other like the Al and Peggy Bundys do when they know they're being bad parents and laughed. The army better not do this to us, we said out loud. Don't they know our food bill has been slashed in half because he's not in the house???!!

"Don't worry" said Hubby, trying to cheer me up. "If that happens, we'll just change the locks,"

Friends in a Vegan World

I was cleaning my bag out yesterday, at a Jerusalem vegetarian/vegan club, careful that no one should see the recipes I had printed out for chicken lo mein with ginger and a variety of other prohibited dishes. My friend whispered to me, while looking at someone wearing a t-shirt with a picture of an angry cow that read 'I'll eat YOU fucker!' - "watch it, they're fascist vegetarians". None of us really knew what the word "fascist" meant, even though she's got a Masters and we laughed about it. We just know it's mostly used to describe people/regimes that hate/are intolerant. One day I'll look the word up in a dictionary.

But the Jerusalem Veggie Society is situated somehow in a luxurious neighborhood, across from the prime minister's house, and I wondered how on earth did this Society afford such digs? While we waited for what my friend called our zen (vegan) pizzas "one with everything", I cried bitterly on her shoulder and laughed hysterically at her "zen pizza" request.

I cried because Hubby lost his job 3 weeks ago and I'm nervous as hell as to how to pay our bills and eat, plus my son is avoiding the army, even though it'll give him the discipline he so desperately needs. I bemoaned the fact that I had bought him a Galaxy II phone and am paying for it dearly, but it was on condition that he serve in the army, which I thought he would do in August. Plus I think he's becoming a gambling addict and this really, really worries me. What little money he makes from waitering he runs to the local shop and buys soccer Toto tickets.

My friend and I find a big airy quiet room where I can cry to her, laugh, and we speak in lines from various Beatle movies, as we have done since we were both 14 years old. It's so comforting to act the same way you did when you were 14 and didn't have such adult worries on your head.

Someone comes into our room and sits down by the big piano and plays Dylan and Leonard Cohen. The chai tea, the surprisingly good vegan food and the quiet guests milling around and sitting on bean bags soothe me. It almost made me want to trash those darn meat recipes hidden deep in my bag.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Peace in the Middle East - in 15 minutes

Traveling to Jerusalem from Ma'ale Adumim can be a test of patience as a 15 minute trip can turn into 45 minutes with traffic. However we do have an express lane for busses and for cars with 3 or more passengers. This morning, someone who wanted to travel the express lane, offered me a lift. I've taken rides with him before.

As we drove along the highway, we watched as several young Arab teenagers crossed the highway and made their way through the fence up to an Arab village.

My driver muttered - "future terrorists".

I looked at him. "They're young Bedouins. How can you say that? What if they're not."

"They're all future terrorists."

"Why do you think that?"

I thought let me try to listen to him, rather than me lecture him for being small-minded. And that's when the conversation took a turn for the unexpected.

"Because of how we treat them."

"Go on."

"If you were in their shoes, and every day you had to go through checkpoints and have 19 year old soldiers humiliate you and tell you to put your hands up against the wall, you'd want to strap explosives to your body as well."

"I haven't seen that in quite some time. Not since the Intifada."

"Go to checkpoint 300. Have you seen these checkpoints? This goes on every day."

"What would be your solution?"

Now this is not me talking, remember. I'm just asking the questions.

"I'd get rid of the checkpoints and fences and walls. All of them. Everyone should have Blue ID cards (Israeli IDs) and get rid of the inequality. Why give everyone a hard time with permits and checkpoints. It's common sense that people who want to work aren't going to commit terror acts. They should just let them go without hassling them.

Then if anyone, and I mean anyone, commits a terrorist act because of race, religion - whether that person is a Muslim, Jew, Christian or jackass - we should forcibly move the terrorist's relatives, all their relatives - to a special place in the Negev and let them all rot. Then you will see how there won't be one single terrorist attack. No one would be giving out sweets, that's for sure."

Empty Nest

"Anyone have a basketball?" asked Hubby by the bus stop where this really tall woman stood in front of him. He never ceases to embarrass me in public. I was praying she didn't understand English. I'll have to do an awful lot of praying because it seems to be just the two of us around the house lately.

With the older two married, the third working 6 days a week and around the clock, the 4th daughter working in Salt Lake City, Utah and my son in army jail, it sure is pretty quiet around here. We have nothing to argue about. We're like these quiet old couples who just watch the sunset and walk up and down the block.

My serenity was spoiled this afternoon when I put on some Beatles music and the remaining daughter at home yelled at me to "turn the music down." Huh? Since when are we switching roles?

I celebrated our first Sabbath in a quiet home with just the three of us by ordering take away Chinese - advertised as a Shabbat special for about $35 - happy that I didn't have to cook this weekend. I had so much time on my hands, no one bugging me to get them this and that and borrowing money from me and the general torture kids put their parents through. Nothing.

I worried a bit about my daughter who is deep in Mormon country who had never travelled before in her life. She landed in New York a few days ago en route to Salt Lake City and was enthralled with the Big Apple - even though it was just JFK airport.

"Who is JFK?" she asked me. They don't learn American History here and I gave her a crash course in 1960s American history right then and there on the way to the airport this past Monday.

She loved the friendly and helpful people she met during her 5 hour stopover at JFK which seemed to reflect the general excitement of the city. She messaged me on Facebook in perfectly spelled English. I knew she had managed to cajole someone into writing the message for her. Her English spelling is absolutely atrocious and goes something like - "Hai mami, hoo ar yoo?"

This daughter is the partying type, which is another reason why I'm antsy about the fact that she's in Salt Lake. Mormons don't even drink coffee, so how is she going to feed her restless soul? I googled Festivals in Utah and got the following info which frightened me even more.

"In the fall, get lost and find your way out of a giant corn maze, cheer on pig races, and then shoot corn cannons and pumpkin blasters at the Cornbelly's Corn Maze and Pumpkin Fest at Thanksgiving Point."

I'm wondering how will she survive?

Jailhouse Rock

"We're going to jail" said Hubby to the kid sitting next to him on the bus, who smiled as one would when you're sitting next to someone you think is crazy. We were actually going on what I've been calling "an adventure" to visit my son in military jail. He turned himself in last week, good boy that he is, and he was utterly despondent at withdrawal from Facebook, Cola, sugar, Samsung Galaxy phones, and his computer. Plus he called me on Friday night, nearly in tears because his Sabbath food was absolute shit. What does he expect? He's in prison.

In order for us to visit him, there's this procedure where you have to pick up this permit slip, with your ID #, allowing you access to visit the jail. I applied two days before the visit to ensure that we will be able to get a permit. The young woman assured me it will be faxed to my office before 10 am the day of the visit so that I'll have ample time to get there.

"Can't you email it to me?"

"We don't have email"

How primitive.

Then the day before the visit, my son calls to tell me he's moving to a jail further north. Way north,near Haifa. Fantastic. Now I have to do this bureaucratic crap all over again and make a new request for a permit. Somehow at that moment, I felt very Palestinian, waiting for details on my permit to be able to enter some place in Israel and not knowing if it will come at all. Looking at the bus schedule, I calculate it will take us 5 hours and 3 buses to get there. We'd never make it by 1:00, our designated visiting time. I had to think fast and knew that the only way to do this was to rent a car. This was gonna be an expensive day out. I get to my work and there's no fax. No permit. I'm livid. It's a 2 1/2 hour drive and I have only 1/2 hour before I need to get on the road. The military office in Jerusalem is not answering the phones.

"They're probably just sitting there drinking coffee while the phone's ringing" said one of my co-workers.

I get to the office and storm upstairs to get my permit.

"You were supposed to have this permit faxed before 10 am to my office. I'm supposed to visit my son today!!!"

"There's no visiting hours today." said the girl.

"What??"

"Only Mondays and Wednesdays"

It was Wednesday and this idiot hadn't a clue what day it was. After convincing her that it is indeed Wednesday she ran to get the thing stamped and off we went, while another person in another office called me on my cell to ask me where to fax the permit. "Sweetie, you're late with faxing and we're on our way."

"But you can't get in without the fax!"

"Exactly. Which is why I didn't wait for you. I went straight to the head office."

By this time, all this bureaucracy was making me dizzy and nauseous.

We drive in the pouring rain and when I say pouring it's like a monsoon, without the strong wind, for a good half an hour and the highway is flooded in a few places. We drive real slow. I'm thrilled that Hubby is a good driver and can get through this. We see a lightning bolt hit a power line and we both jump.

We get to the jail 1/2 hour before 1:00 but it's 1:20 before they let us in and only because some giant gorilla of a man, one inmate's dad, banged hard on the metal door and yelled "HEY!!!! THERE ARE PEOPLE WAITING HERE TO GET IN. WHAT'S GOING ON???" and you'd think with him banging and screaming like that, they'd purposely make us wait more. But I guess force works and in a minute the door opened for us. There was a Druze woman who was visiting her son who didn't want to serve in the IDF at all. She said her other sons did but he, the youngest, didn't want to. After 7 years of being AWOL, they finally picked him up and carted him off to jail. Seven years!!!

We hug our son, who is growing a beard because they took away his electric shaver. We hug him some more and feel sorry for him, but he seems happy. He likes his new jail.

"I know so many people here, my good friend is here and the food is much better than the other jail. I had 4 plates of pasta for lunch! My tent is heated too."

They wake him up at 4:30 in the morning for roll call and he goes to bed by 8:00 pm. Far cry from the all nighters on his computer.

We gave him two chocolate bars, the fancy ones he wanted with the rice and M&M's. That's all he asked us for. Other people came with bagfuls of junk food and home-cooked meals, and it's like a family picnic during a holiday when the parks are full. After 45 minutes an officer tells him visiting time is up. They are strict with time.

Everything we spoke about, he was like "no problem". "No problem this" and "no problem" that. We kind of like this new obedient child of ours.

The Good and Bad of Praying

Well I can see that God doesn't want me to pray that much to him. I got ill on Rosh Hashana and wanted to pray for Gilad Shalit's release in synagogue. I even had a special prayer printed out on a large piece of paper and the person leading the service asked me to read the prayer. But I couldn't go after all that preparation and the piece of paper just hung out in my kitchen along with the other "to do" things, in a pile. And thankfully, despite my not having prayed for his release, he was released anyways.

Now there's Sukkot. I had gone to see Israeli heavy metal band Orphaned Land in Tel Aviv and we were one of the very few over 50s there. We waited in line with all these teens wearing black Metallica and Marilyn Manson t-shirts and they looked at us as if we were parental spies. Then we just talked to them and I think they were actually thrilled that someone of our age would listen to them at all, never mind sharing a love of the same music. Some of these kids flew in from Switzerland and Germany, where this band has a huge following and plays metal festivals in front of 100,000 fans. I especially love the band's ethos, which is to get Arabs (from many different countries) and Israelis/Jews together through their music with the way they combine religious texts/music into their songs. Who said heavy metal is all about war, blood and destruction? And to top it all off, their lead singer looks like a tattooed Jesus. In fact, one teenage fan from Europe said if Kobi was Jesus, he'd go to church.

I was surprised that standing in the front, people were friendly, that I wasn't crushed, that people wouldn't kill me (as I feared from going to a metal concert)and I even sensed a spiritual energy from the audience to the band and vice versa. Their music is metal, but has a Middle Eastern element in it, and as they explained in a video shown right before their show, they used to sit in synagogues filled with Iraqi and Libyan old men and listen to their liturgy which would the get incorporated into their music. I laughed as I pictured these long-haired tattooed men, sitting in shul with these elderly men, who probably didn't know what hit them. That's why I'm so intrigued. One fan said he had come from Germany and would never have stepped foot in Israel if it weren't for them, and was astounded at how warm, friendly and open Israelis are. "They even invited me to stay over their homes and they are total strangers!" But our age showed as after the show, I didn't stick around for the "meet and greet" the band had with their fans and as it was, we got home at 4:00 am, even after our own children trudged in with their partying.

The next morning my daughter and I were having our coffee together and she told me how much she loved her boyfriend.

She said, "He told me that he hadn't had dated seriously in years and that for a year and a half, all he did was pray that he'd find the right one."

And I looked at my daughter, the one who usually complains about everything, and laughed until I was hoarse and I thought, - oh dear. This poor guy prays to God for a year and a half and this is what he gets? Oy vey. But he does seem to believe that God has answered his prayers and that's all that matters.

More Highs on the Holidays

Yom Kippur went better than expected. My kids were asking me all sorts of questions - like my still AWOL son asking me - 

"Mom, what will happen if I break the fast?"

"Nothing really. You just won't feel quite part of the community at large if you do, but you'll feel really good if you don't break your fast. Like you'll have this amazing 'yay! I did it' moment."

My growling Hubby was continously reminding me of one sin in particular that I do (going to Arab homes/restaurants to eat their "halal" meat), so I left him at home to seethe with my sins in mind, while I went to synagogue for Kol Nidre services. I hadn't gone seriously to synagogue for Yom Kippur in years because I can't follow the Kurdish, Yemenite, Moroccan, Iraqi, Syrian services that are all over the place in my neighborhood, plus the familiar Ashkenazi one is too dry with all those perfect "real housewives of Maaleh Adumim". I don't fit in. Period. But a Conservative congregation just sprung up over the past year and they were really trying to make a go of it in this mostly Orthodox-ruled enclave. Afraid that it was going to be just a ho-hum service, I was happily surprised. For one, they began with three people, each doing a different version of Kol Nidre. The energy was good, inclusive and happy. They mixed in a bit of Sephardic (middle-eastern) melodic liturgy which I was thrilled to sing along to and was able to easily follow. It felt like family. After all, isn't this exactly what my family has become with my daughters all marrying/dating into Sephardic families from Tunisia, Turkey, Spain and Morocco? So I really felt a kinship with the service and with the congregants who were also a mixture of Jews from all over the place, albeit without any Ethiopians. The next day I attended the "Neila" closing service, which was led beautifully by an Orthodox woman who was open-minded enough to do the service in front of a mixed-seated crowd (Conservative congregations have mixed gender seating, as opposed to Orthodox, which separate men and women during services). People brought cakes, fruit and soft drinks to break their fast and it was lovely to mingle afterwards with this very friendly new-found community.  I brought in the Muslim Ramadan custom of breaking the fast with a date and water and explained this custom to a few people.

Sukkot is probably my favorite holiday because I get off from work, and there are no restrictions on what you can eat, like there is on Passover. Having all meals in the sukkah with my kids and their friends smoking nargilahs in the sukkah make it very enjoyable.

On the first day, I trotted off to Tel Aviv rather early in mid-afternoon. I wanted to see the sunset over the port, which is always breathtaking and I knew that people would be in the holiday spirit (i.e.it would be crowded everywhere). We caught the last bit of sunset over the boardwalk

and wandered over to the indoor food market

where there were a few unique restaurants and sat ourselves down to the tapas bar and had a couple of dishes.

Grilled okra with zucchini and eggplant on the bottom

Even though I don't eat seafood, the grilled calamari that the man sitting next to me ordered looked so incredibly delicious, I felt like grabbing it off his plate, when he wasn't looking...just to taste...but I did control myself.  I did.

Walking around the port several times, we revelled in the hustle and bustle of the happy holiday spirit that was all over the place before heading over to Reading 3 for a concert (to be continued...).

Pre Yom Kippur Reflections

Tonight is Yom Kippur.  I should be reflecting on past wrongs, apologizing to people, my family, strangers I accidentally knock over on  buses, etc.  I'm astounded at people at work these past few days, with whom I only have a minor working relationship, who tell me at the end of their conversations "I'm sorry if I did anything wrong to you".  Honey, all I call you for is to ask you about various meetings.  It's nothing personal.  But these people are apologizing to me left and right.

I was in a foul mood yesterday, thinking I don't even want to fast, I don't want to pray, nothing.  Of course, I'll still fast and I might even pray a little bit, but I'm still a little ticked off at God who I blamed for my stomach flu on the second day of Rosh Hashana.  I had made arrangements to go into Jerusalem to go to services at my Jewish renewal congregation and had been looking forward to it for weeks.  But obviously He didn't want to hear any of my prayers, so there.  I'm also working 12 hour days to pay off government tax debt that our wonderful Israeli government heaped on Hubby for the time he was in business and I blamed God for putting this bureaucracy in place where they run after the regular guy with no mercy whatsoever and tax middle income earners to the high heavens.  Perhaps that's where those bureaucrats should actually go?

Hubby has been acting like a troll of late as well and it hasn't been easy.  Today, as I filled out the form for the special  kapparot ceremony of sending this money to charity instead of us all dying for our sins, I thought about leaving out my husband's name on the form, but I would have felt  so guilty if he would have indeed croaked this year.   We used to do this ceremony as it is originally done with live chickens swinging over our heads, while praying that they will go to their deaths and not us - but I didn't think it was too humane to do this anymore to these animals.  They are always so frightened during this ceremony, squawking like mad, as if they understand the Hebrew prayer sentencing them to death instead of the humans.

And I didn't feel so alone in my foul mood at the local mall, where the lines were huge at the newspaper/bookstore.  People were buying books as if they'll be locked indoors for months and the line was excruciatingly long.  Everyone was complaining - especially after someone was asked for her ID after buying hundreds of shekels of books and she was insulted - "the people who worked here previously never asked for my ID!".  "But we don't know who you are..." said the saleswomen, prompting everyone on line to yell at these people - both customer and saleswoman -  to get to know each other some other time in the week, not today, when the fast begins at 4:38.  

Another gripe of mine.  The religious authorities made Daylight Savings one hour earlier last week so the fast should begin early and end early.  But I don't want to fucking start a fast at 4:38.  By 9:00 at night I'll be starving!!!!  Why couldn't they just let things be?  I wouldn't have to eat the pre-fast dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon, but at a more normal time of 4:30 in the afternoon  if the fast would have begun at 5:30 pm. What is so wrong with that!!??

But I'll be happy when it's all over and we're all munching on bagels and cream cheese to break our fast.  If I feel energetic enough, I'll even make cauliflower soup.  But maybe I'm too hard on God.  Maybe I ought to do some apologizing.  After all, He's got a lot of fixing to do in this world.....

AWOL and other stuff going on in my house

My son is AWOL.  He is supposed to be in the army, but wanted to be in a certain unit, which they didn't give him and he just walked out.  Just like that.  He will eventually go to jail for this, of course not the regular criminal jail, but rather an army jail, which also is a rite of passage for many a belligerent young person. It began on the day when he was recruited and they gave him dark black boots instead of the orange boots of the fighting units.

"What am I, a job-nik?" he yelled at the young guy distributing the uniforms.  He wants a macho job.  He doesn't want to fix tank tires or work with dangerous chemicals.

So three days later they tell him to go to the Army Police Unit - the unit that mans the checkpoints.  But he doesn't want to stand 8 hours a day at a checkpoint for the next three years.  They said to him one late afternoon  "go there now or else".  It took him three hours to get there by bus and continuous phone calls to me and my daughter and son-in-law every half hour, as to how to do this alone by train and bus.  He's not a traveler and adventurer like his mother.  Stubborn like his dad, yes.  When he got there at 9:00 in the evening, there was only a guard at the gate who said it was too late, there was no one in the office and he should come back the next morning.  By that time, he was like "fuck it" and then went back the next day to the main base to tell them what assholes they were, but no one would listen to him.  They told him his name is no longer in their computer. Nevertheless, he still showed up at the main base a couple of times after that, asking for a chance to speak with an officer.  If they were smart, they could have thrown him in jail right then and there.  It's like a tease - neh, neh, I'm heeere! - but they ignored him completely.
 
So now he's home waiting to be picked up and dragged off to jail.  They won't jail him for too long.  It'll be anywhere from 2 days to a month.  And then people have told him that after all that, he'll get what he wants.  It's like an endurance thing.  No one can figure it out, but that's what it seems to be.

The my eldest daughter is planning on leaving Israel this year, taking my grandkids with her to go to the Golden Country of the US of A, to live in New York State, where good deodorants cost a dollar.  We all tell her while that may be true of deodorants, if she wants to send her kids to Jewish schools, "that" will cost her tens of thousands of dollars a year, plus she won't have her mother around the corner babysitting every week.

Hubby was nonchalant about the whole thing - "Just let her go.  Don't make her feel bad about going.  Let her try it out and see for herself.  You won't have to babysit all the time and besides, we'll have more time to fuck."

Selfish old coot.  Like we need more time for that??!

But I have to hand it to him.  Last night we had 13 people over for Shabbat dinner, and he not only showed up at the table, but set it and dusted the entire apartment.  I had 3 non-Jewish guests for dinner who got my name off some mysterious PDF file as "Shabbat hospitality in the Holy Land".  The first time I got wind of this was when I got an email that 11 priests were coming to Israel and were interested in staying at my place and how much would this cost.  I don't have proper accommodations for sleepovers and can only fit in 4 extra people besides the family for Friday night meals, but my friend at work told me to "just put them in the room with your husband". 

So now my kids think that every non-Jewish guest that comes round is a priest of some sort.  But these guests were just regular evangelist Christian tourists and actually thought that the service I invited them to at Nava Tehilla was a kind of Pentecostal Jewish Service because of the emotion they saw while praying.  I took that as a big compliment. I kind of feel amused that I would be on any list because my family is so dysfunctional, but that maybe spending a Friday night with my family could be quite amusing for tourists.  But my good family acted completely normal yesterday.  I was so proud of them.

soldier boy

It's Saturday afternoon and I've had a much needed afternoon nap.  I've been off work for 3 days now on our two weeks forced  August vacation and am happy that I have so much  vacation time, but there is nowhere to go but go local in this heat and in this economy.  Vacationing in Israel is expensive and crowded during August and flying anywhere during the world's vacation month will be crowded, expensive and annoying.  I'm an off-season person anyway.  My first day off work I went semi-wild buying various boutique undergarments and the next evening went to Jaffa's flea market for their Thursday evening fair with stalls open, and artists and music in the streets. Hubby was too tired to join me and I was grateful a friend took me up on the offer. We ate a meal at Regina's at the Tachana - the old Ottoman train station buildings now revamped into restaurants and expensive boutiques -  for a delicious meal beforehand.

And this past week saw a major rite of passage for my boy.  At 19 he was finally inducted into the army.  He didn't want the particular unit the army wanted him in and he held his ground and stayed in this horrific-sounding place called "the vacuum" - where recruits gather and from there go into their various units.  He's on the phone constantly with my friends who know the system and my husband's workers who have just gotten out of the army and who also know the system.  They are telling him not to get into uniform because if he disobeys orders - like going to the unit where they want him to go and where he doesn't want to go - he'll go to army jail.  So he stayed in the "vacuum" not in uniform so they couldn't arrest him.  I was surprised at his stubbornness to get what he wants, but then I'm like that too, aren't I?  I just wish the world was such that we didn't need to have an army and had beforehand given him the speech that he is only in the army to defend our country against those elements trying to destroy it - like terrorists, Hezbollah, Al Qaida or any other retarded group.  He knows that regular Palestinians are human beings who just want to go on with their lives and earn a living  and are not our enemy and I hope he will continue to believe this.  I still dream that we will be a confederation with Palestinians and that they will join the army too to become the PIDF (Palestinian/Israeli Defense Forces).

The entire family jokes around the night before his induction.  He reads an hysterical blog from a soldier about the first few days in the army - especially the public showers with no privacy whatsoever. The blog says "don't be ashamed to show your small package to everyone - there'll be all sorts there, big ones, little ones, red hair, pimply, ones with beauty marks and don't stare at anyone or they'll think you're gay.."

"Don't drop the soap" his sisters warned.  I then showed him the proper way to bend down to pick up his soap by bending the knees only and covering your ass with your hand - which left everyone in hysterics.

He watches videos of the different units and chooses the ones he wants to be in.

"It looks just like in the movies, doesn't it?" he tells me.

Yeah, but unfortunately, this is real life and real war is not  fun to watch and to participate in.  I hope there are no future wars with our neighbors, and he can just have the special camaraderie with his unit buddies - something  everyone knows goes along with this army service - and it is something he craves badly.

He finally puts on his uniform to go back to his home for the weekend and I admire how handsome and how much older he looks.

Paul Simon in Israel

I had to get away from all this horrid male energy. It was like every male in my family thought they were right ranging from my 4 year old grandson who was screaming in the elevator and we're like "Why are you screaming?".  He tells us, "I'm not screening!!!" surprised at our accusation, to hubby who was sitting comfortably in his chair on Friday night, while we were all sweating profusely. The air conditioner was on at its lowest setting and blowing warm air out.  We're all telling him it's not working and he's sitting there looking like the man from the Mr. Clean bottle, with his hands across his chest, telling us that it's fine, it's working and there's nothing wrong with it.  It's just that we're on the top floor and that's why it's spewing warm air.  I didn't buy that ruse and told him I'll get a professional to look at it myself.  He is totally insulted at the audacity of thinking that he might be wrong and leaves the table.

 

No better place to flee to, than a concert from an American superstar in Tel Aviv.  I'm about to go to see Paul Simon concert in Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park.  The hot sauna weather in Tel Aviv doesn't bother me anymore.  My friend from New York tells me she met him once in the 70s and he was rude.  I listened to his latest album and I felt that he was more spiritual these days.  I tell my friend that many were obnoxious when they were younger, especially in the 70s, but that he must have mellowed out with age.  Surely he can't be like the men in my family.

I get on the bus to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem and get to the train station in Tel Aviv - the quickest way to the stadium.  I'm wiping gum off my ass that someone left on the bus seat and I hadn't noticed when I first sat down, as I'm running to catch a train the ticket woman says is leaving in two minutes.    I sought refuge in the beautiful Ayalon Mall right next to the stadium.  I never knew this mall existed and I discovered  it was an air-conditioned haven for most of the concert goers who did not want to sit out in the heat an hour before the concert started.

My friend, with whom I bought the tickets, had just landed from a trip to the US, 2 1/2 hours before the concert began and had one of her kids drive her to the stadium straight from the airport.  Half hour before the show, we ventured bravely out into the Tel Aviv humidity and went to our spots.  We found that though we bought the cheapest seats, we weren't too far from the stage because the stage was situated in the middle of the stadium rather than the far end.  We splurged for expensive beers.   Though the heat is unbearable no one is allowed into the stadium with water.  Strange and horrible rule, but the cold beer did the trick.

"Do you want to hear the setlist?"  I asked my friend.

"You have the setlist?  No, I don't want to hear it.  It's like knowing what you're gonna have before you give birth."

Once Paul came on with his band - I think he won the audience over immediately.  The band was terrific and he was in tip top shape.  I was surprised that he doesn't sound any older than he did 40 years ago, the way other singers do.  Even Paul McCartney can't reach those high notes any longer.  Paul Simon launched into Slip Sliding Away in the middle of the set.

"This is sorta like Hatikva, isn't it?"  my friend noted.  I nodded.  Sort of.  An iconic song it was, but once he came back for his encore and began with a beautiful solo of Sounds of Silence, I said to my friend - "Now THAT's Hatikva!!"  If the crowd was polite and laid back until now, they were really getting into his renditions of that and Here Comes the Sun, which he sang as if it were his own song. When he sang You Can Call Me Al, it seemed as if everyone in the stadium got up to sing and dance.  The Boxer was the last song and he sang it as a prayer for peace in our region addressing us with a Shalom Aleichem and Salaam Aleikum.  He seemed grateful for the show of appreciation from the audience and I must say, it was one of the most enjoyable concerts I've ever gone to.

In the Tent of Sarah and Hagar

I know where I'm most comfortable and that is being a nowhere woman.  I don't feel comfortable in anti-Arab right wing political groups and I don't feel comfortable in anti-occupation left wing groups.  I don't feel comfortable in anything that smacks of "anti".  I'm anti anti. So whenever an opportunity arises for an event that brings people together without the anger and the politics, I'm usually there.

Yesterday I travelled with the Jerusalem Peacemakers to Fareidis, an Arab village across from the picturesque Jewish town of Zichron Yaakov.  I saw on the Facebook event  that only 5 people responded and thought - well, won't this be an intimate gathering.  I left work 1/2 hour early and there were about 5 or 6 people on the bus.  I'm like - okay, let's go then.  But after 10 minutes the bus filled up with Orthodox and secular Jews, Arabs from Hebron and Beit Ummar - some who brought their families, and Christian sponsors with their families.  People I didn't think knew about this event, knew about this event and I was so happy to see them.  On the way, I spoke with Taleb, my "brother" from Idna, near Hebron.  He was so excited about the past weekend he spent with 25 Israeli and 25 Palestinian teachers, all wanting to take the "hate" and the non-recognition of the other, out of their curriculums.  That put me in a good mood, despite stopping at the "express" coffee shop at the rest stop where they robbed me of my hard earned money by charging me a fortune for a small bottle of water and a tiny square of nash.

We went up the mountain to Ibtisam's home where the view was spectacular and the air heavy with light humidity, us mountain people living in Jerusalem and Hebron are not used to any humidity.  There were dozens more people who met us there so our numbers swelled to about 80 people. The speeches made by Rabbis, Imams, Sheikhs and Pastors were uplifting and they blessed the newly coronated Tent of Sarah and Hagar, where I heard that since the Jewish temples were destroyed by baseless hatred, here we will have baseless love.  We will love just for the sake of loving.  And that the there is an illusion in our country that we are not one family, when in fact, the Children of Abraham - Arabs and Jews in particular - are indeed one family.  And laughing together, talking together, eating together, sweating together and making new friends -  I definitely felt it that night.