One thing that Italians and Jews have in common is food. We surround ourselves by it and pride ourselves on it. Italian and Jewish mothers (and grandmothers) all have the best cooking. I implore you to search for an Italian or Jewish person who prefers another person's cooking to his/her own mother or grandmother. I'm pretty sure they do not exist. Another similarity between these two cultures is a sense of dysfunctionality. Italian families seem to be just as dysfunctional as my own, and Israel is like an entire country filled with dysfunctional--but very loving--families. I'm sure the Italian mafia and Jewish mob have similarities as well. Although, I do not want to speculate. It's a good thing I already returned from Palermo...
I was fortunate enough to go to Israel and just hang out and run around for a week. Although I did miss three days of class, this trip was entire worth it. And this has been my favorite trip to Israel--and I've been there five other times! The reason for the trip was to go there for Passover--or as we say in Hebrew, Pesach. The plan was originally to just go for the Pesach seder (the Passover meal), but the trip got extended to a few days beforehand, which worked out really nicely.
Flew Alitalia from Florence to Tel Aviv (aka the worst airline in the world). On our layover, we saw someone had "vandalized" the sign on the bus. Well, they might call it vandalism, I would just call it truth.
Besides for that, the flight was uneventful. When a person flies to Israel, that personal inevitably strikes up a conversation with their seat buddy. This is just like the concept of the "single-serving friend" as Tyler talks about in
Fight Club. The only difference the concept and the reality of the single-serving friend when flying to Israel is that you will inevitably play
Jewish Geography and definitely know someone in common. I sat next to a chap from the Big Wee Britain (Great Britain, London specifically) who actually knew of one of our close family friends. He actually had a really interesting story. His family was from Germany and moved to London before he was born. Actually, the very day he was born (September 1, 1940) was a turning point in WWII and likely the day that most of his family living in Europe was killed by the Nazis. On a lighter note, I was able to practice my British English, which I must admit, is a little better than rubbish.
The first few days in Israel were spent at Kibbutz Be'eirot Yitzchak--a kibbutz right next to Petach Tikvah and about 30 minutes outside of Tel Aviv--with out family friends. I was telling my single-serving friend about my plans and he said that there was a German village right next to the kibbutz called Wilhelmina, which was named after some important German woman named Wilhelmina. Unfortunately, I didn't get to check it out, but I'll have to next time I visit. Anyway, I got to chill with our family friends and I got to travel around a bit. There were two things I wanted to do while I was in Israel. The first was to visit Haifa and check out the Bahai gardens, which is something that has been overlooked in my previous trips. The second was to jump out of a plane above HaBonim Beach. Both of which were very successful. For those of you who haven't been to a kibbutz, it's kind of like camp. The cool kids get golf carts, everyone leaves their doors unlocked, there's a dining hall, swimming pool, and a refet (a cow barn). Some pictures from kibbutz.
Starting with the more exciting thing first, I went skydiving at Paradive Dropzone in HaBonim Beach. I also made sure to
NOT tell my worried, Jewish mother that I would be jumping out of an airplane flying at 12,000 feet while strapped to a guy who called himself "Crazy Tzvika" and falling to the ground at 120 mph. Definitely left that out of the morning chat. In order to get to Paradive, I took a train from Tel Aviv to Haifa. As I was walking to the train station, I saw this sign. How fitting.
After arriving in Haifa, I could either take a bus or cab to the beach. After the guy at the train station handed me a free orange drink (for some reason, normal OJ has not taken off in Israel), he told me to save my money and take the bus. So the bus, I took. The ride was a little over 30 minutes and the driver dropped me off right at the entrance of the beach. Using my handy dandy iPhone, I was able to find directions to the drop zone and learned that it was roughly an hour walk, so I started walking. I then see a car zooming down the road about five minutes after I started walking and I stuck my hand out to hitchhike (or "tremp" as it's called in Hebrew). I remembered that stinking your thumb our was a derogatory gesture (or at least I think it is), so I refrained from doing that. A very rushed and distressed Israeli woman picked me up.
Me: Todah rabah (thank you)
Woman (realizing I am American): Where you go?
Me: Bonim
Woman: I take you. Let me know when you get off!
Me: Great. Thanks.
She ended taking me to Moshav Bonim, which turned out to be a 40 minute walk to the dropzone. Whatever. I started walking and I saw a guy just sitting in his car so I asked him if he spoke English. He did not. It was time to put my 16 and a half years of Hebrew to use. The bus driver actually asked if I spoke Hebrew when I got onto the bus and I responded "si", which was weird because I don't know that much Italian. I decided to tweet about that experience and my man, Jesus responded.
Jesus tweeted back, "What's new? Do you want Doritos?" No clue how that happened. And no, I did not want Doritos. I was about to jump out of a plane, and I'm quite sure (but not positive) Crazy Tzvika didn't want half digested Doritos all over his face.
My conversation with guy two went as follows.
Me: ?סליחה, איפה פיראדיו (Excuse me, where is paradive?)
Guy: ?אתה רוצה ללכת על רגליים (You want to walk by foot?)
Me: .כן (Yes.)
Guy: אתה צריך ללכת ישר ישר ישר. ממש ישר. ואז אתה יראה את השער למושב. אחרי השער, עושה שמאל. ואז הולך ישר ישר ישר ויהיה שלט ליד הרחוב. (You need to walk straight straight straight. Keep walking street. And you will see the gate of the Moshav. After the gate, make a left. And then walk straight straight and there will be a sign next to the road.) (NOTE: This may not be grammatically correct or an exact representation of what he said. But it's pretty close)
Me: תודה רבה חבר. צ'או (Thanks a lot bud. Ciao.)
And I was on my way. So when he was giving me directions, I expected it to be like an hour long walk because he kept on saying, "walk straight straight straight". Turns out, it was only like a twenty minute walk. A beautiful walk too. As I was walking, some guy asked if I needed a ride to the main road, and I said no thanks. Everyone I met was extremely nice and helpful, which is quite different than the usual American's experience with Israelis.
Allora. Got to the skydiving place, watched a video, signed my life away, got suited up, learned how to fall, and the next thing I knew, I was heading to the plane.
Everyone says the plane ride up is the worst part. For me, the worst part was watching everyone else stand by the door and then disappear. It was just an eerie feeling. It was also comforting that the sole pilot of the our one-prop plane was wearing a parachute. I guess I was wearing a parachute too, so I wasn't too concerned. I've already put up the longer video on Facebook, but if you want to see the shorter video, check it out
here. After leaving the plane, I had three thoughts: "Shit. Shit. Shit.", "Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.", and "Look around. Look around. Look around.". It was quite the experience. The first ten seconds were the worst, but then it got to be pretty fun. And once Crazy Tzvika pulled the parachute, the world became so peaceful. He let me steer all the way to the ground, which was awesome. Definitely a thrill, and definitely something I would do again.
After my morning at the dropzone, I headed back to Haifa to check out the Bahai gardens. It was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, I did not get to see the shrine because it was Bahai prayer time, but I got to see the gardens just above the shrine, and just below it. It was really beautiful.
When I got to the bottom gardens, I asked two girls to take a picture of me next to the fountain. They kept on telling me to do funny things instead of just standing in front of it. To be honest, I was fine standing in front the fountain. Here are the results...
That pretty much was the first part of my trip. After kibbutz, I went to Jerusalem and ended up seeing my friend Sarah who made alliyah a few years ago. I don't hike, but we went on a hike to some spring up in the hills beyond Hadassah Hospital. It was actually really fun and really pretty. Here is a picture of the iconic "Bruchim Habaim" sign upon entering to Jerusalem and another picture of some trees from our hike.
Oh yes, and in order to get there, we bussed, and then hitchhiked. I love that hitchhiking (tremping) is just part of the daily life of getting from A to B in Israel. It's "safe," it's easy, and people are so willing to help.
While I was in Jerusalem, I got to stay with my friend Brett (from high school), and another friend Jacob. It's always nice going to Jerusalem and seeing who you run in to, and test out your Jewish Geography skills. Mine are stellar, in case you were wondering.
For the Passover Seder, I was fortunate enough to be invited to our family friend's place, which was actually really nice. Accompanying me, was one of our good family friends from London. There weren't many people at the seder, and it was really special because we incorporated all of our own traditions into the Seder. On a semi-related note, before the Seder I was instructed to pick up some dessert. The dessert had to be kosher for Passover, had to be parve (not dairy or meat), and could not contain
kitniyot (legumes, rice, etc.). So I went to the shuk (the market), and picked out these macaroons and cookie desserts--exactly what you see in the picture below.
On Friday, I brought them over a few hours before the Seder. Turns out, one of the kids that was staying with our family friend took a bite out of two different ones--one of which, had nuts. And he has an extreme nut allergy. Before you freak out, everything ended up being okay, and he's totally fine. But he did spend some time in the ER. I felt really badly.
We were leaving at 5:00 am on Monday morning so we didn't arrange accommodations for Sunday night, but Benny, Justin, and I had dinner with Richard--a good family friend from London at Gabriel's (a fantastic Jerusalem restaurant). The next time you're in Jerusalem, I highly recommend checking it out. It's right off the bottom of Ben Yehuda street. We had an extremely enjoyable dinner outside and split a fantastic bottle of wine. A 2009 Petit Castel. In case you were wondering...
The last exciting thing about Israel was the cab ride home. Our driver, Yosef, was a Moroccan Jewish guy. I got to practice out my Hebrew with him, and turns out, I've actually retained a lot of what I learned years ago. I felt pretty good about that. He is a really nice guy though. If you're in Israel, hunt him down and tell him I say hey.
