My first adventure was during hafsacha, the break during Ulpan Hebrew class. Since the class runs for about four hours, breaks are definitely a necessity, especially on days like today when the class seemed a little more rowdy and distracted. So during this break, I like to remove myself from the classroom and visit the sites of the campus. Yesterday I had found the balcony of the Hecht Synagogue, which is just up two flights of stairs from my classroom, so I decided I would revisit the splendid vista. I did notice that the door was closed today, which should have been obvious foreshadowing, but since it wasn't locked, I assumed it was a great idea to go out. I did a lil yoga, a lil sun bathing, a lil thinking, a lil viewing. It felt great to look out over all of Jerusalem from Mount Scopus and unwind. Figuring it must be close to the end of hafsacha, I went back to the door. There was neither handle nor nob. The door was glass and I started to knock. Several people walked by close to the door but it was in a nook and no one turned to see me. I think noises like obnoxious, repeated banging are generally accepted here as nothing. I didn't want to be late to class!!! and I got frantic. I tried prying the door open with my hands. Too painful. I tried knocking again. Useless. Finally I knelt and pulled the door open with my fingernails from the bottom. I got to class just in time for my spelling quiz!
A side note: From the synagogue, one can see all of
Jerusalem, including the Arab sections, which are
close by. They look significantly less luxurious than
the western parts of the city, although some apartments
are apparently quite luxurious. The whole divide has
been on my mind a lot here, and my politics are very
much in conflict with my religion and the reality here.
Security is taken extremely seriously, and there isn't
the whole concept of "innocent until proven guilty" when
it comes to Palestinians. I feel weird about that, but
I know it's part of staying safe. It is strange that in such
a holy and Godly city there can be so much tension. Our
teacher, David Keren, told us yesterday that he thinks if
peace comes to Jerusalem, peace will come to the entire
world because so much of the conflict in the world needs
to be resolved here. This is just something I've been
thinking about a lot because it is a big part of life here,
and I have yet to decide how I feel or what I think.
The rest of the class was fairly uneventful, but we are getting much better at Hebrew! I've always heard that immersion makes learning a language easier but I didn't really think it would work for me, but I'm picking stuff up pretty well. We also all help each other out and I feel a lot of support around our little table. Our teachers are so patient and smart and everyone just wants to help us.
We were all stressed out during lunch (although the teriyaki with cooked vegetables was amaaaazing at the Frank Sinatra Cafe-fun fact: Frank Sinatra loved Israel so much and gave a lot of money to Hebrew U! It was even rumored that he dressed up as a gardener so he could just walk around the campus) because of the required readings for David Keren's Jerusalem Through the Ages class. While stressed out, I felt relieved that I am only kind of at college. A three week Jerusalem intro class is probably pretty low on the average college freshman's stress meter.
My next adventure happened during the Jerusalem class when we visited Hezekiah's tunnels. This adventure happened to everyone and it wasn't all that spontaneous but it was so crazy and dark and wet and scary that it definitely registers as an adventure on the life excitement scale.
We went to Ir David, the City of David, to learn about King David, the First Temple Period, and the 8th Century debacle with the Assyrians (they attacked the Kingdom of Israel to the north so King Hezekiah knew they were coming so he built a tunnel for a water source and they built it from both sides and met in the middle and it was quite a fantastic feat). The main attraction was a walk through ankle-knee deep water in the tunnels, which were about two feet wide and six feet high, at the most. The walk lasted 45 minutes and it was really intense and Josh Sacks' hand hurt afterwards because it was dark and I was gripping. We made it out all right though, thanks to some nice teamwork in the form of "low ceiling!" and some classic sing-along-songs.
Now I am going to try to have my THIRD ADVENTURE of the day! After dinner, I think I'm going to a park where there is supposed to be jazz and swing dancing and who knows what. There is always so much going on here. I want to get cleaned up and do my homework before going out, so...
lihitraot!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment