Ten days late

They keep asking to make sure everyone is OK with the new "situation" in Israel. I think it's doing more harm than good. It's the same issue we uncovered in Dom Casmurro. Every time the guy tells you he's telling the truth, you become incrementally less sure that he's a reliable narrator until by the end you have no idea what to believe. So our morning physics stuff was cut short today to have an hourlong discussion that can't have helped relieve the "stress" in the group, which was the reason for the discussion in the first place.

Maybe I'm taking this a little far because on a personal level, I'm not worried at all. We're in Jerusalem, and next week we're going to the Negev for a few days and then down to Eilat. But on the other hand, nothing was ever supposed to hit Tzfat or Haifa, and until last week those were also among the safest cities in Israel. But on the first hand, I realize that there are some kids in the group and also some parents who are much more worried than I or mine, and I'd rather spend some group time being able to clarify the current situation than having the worried people worry themselves to death.

This weekend was quite an experience. Friday morning we went to Hazon Yeshaya (http://hazonyeshaya.org) where we did a few hours volunteering putting together bags of food.

Shabbos we spent in Yerucham. I won't go into the creation of or the concept behind these Negev development towns (intended to settle the desert and other sparsely-populated regions of Israel) because you can get at least a little of that on wikipedia or google. Our first introduction to Shabbos there was with the "shabbos whistle" that hums for about 30 seconds per go a few times about an hour before candle-lighting time. After shul (a slightly confusing adventure that mixed Nusach Ashkenaz and Sephard with a kid reading Pitom Ktoret in its entirety) we headed back for a no-complaints dinner. Then a group of two dozen Bnei Akiva kids, most of whom we'd seen in the shul, came over and we finally got our introduction to Israelis our own age. Splitting up by mentor group (n=3), we rotated around the room talking to two or three at a time, nominally answering the guiding questions but mostly not. Most of them were slightly younger than our group yet somehow looked a few years older. I also finally got my question answered: a decent chunk of those I asked think that the American Hebrew accent is "chamud". Speaking of that, since Dima and Laura both are half-decent conversationally, we pretty muich avoided English during the two hours of this activity. Sleep at 12:30 was very welcome, though some didn't take advantage and talked with them some more in the hallways--really loudly.

We went to another shul for Shabbos morning. It was set up like a Sephardi shul with the bimah in the center, but didn't have the elaborate Torah holder that the shul in Tzfat had. The Torah was nusach Ash., the Haftarah nusach Seph. And in line with neither one, the service ended at...10:30 AM. Absurd. There was a dvar torah afterwards (a practice which should be adopted by all synagogues everywhere, thus allowing those who wish to leave to leave) about the role of chance across the Tanach. I never thought I'd hear about chaos theory in a dvar in Israel, but hey, always expect the unexpected!

For lunch we were broken upo roughtly by Hebrew level, meaning I was with Abolafia and Aaron. We went to Adi's house (she was the most motormouthy of all the Hebrew motormouths we met Friday night) and she had a few friends over whom we also met the day before. It was good food, a perfect setting with the cute 4-year-old brother who was never quiet...all sorts of things I'm horribly used to but don't get any exposure to anymore. We spoke no more than a few sentences of English the entire time we were there, including a discussion of one-year-after-disengagement and the current Hizbullah situation. When we said that every place they'd hit was a place we were, Chayim told us jokingly to get the hell out of his house. (Yes, true: they hit Tzfat, Rosh Pina, Rosh haNikrah, Achziv, the north border, Haifa, Tveriah. But, and from here comes the title of the post, they were ten days after we were there. We think they found a map of the Legacy trip online but somehow got lost between the Gregorian and Julian calendars and were off by ten days.) It was also quite hot in Yerucham.

I'll finish up with a Jewish geography story, though the picture will have to wait. On Sunday we stopped in Kiryat Gat to meet with more Israelis and started off with stupid eight-year-old games to not-really meet the other groups. But then when the organized stuff stopped and after they had said that their youth center was contributed by the Chicago Federation, I asked who know about the Chicago connection. Turns out Ilil (אילאיל) stayed over at the Ceteras house last year. So hi to Ellen from her. I have a picture. But I'm getting kicked off, so good night from the Holy Land.