Back From 12 Days

Long Time No See Everyone.....

I just got back today from a tiyul in Jerusalem about the second temple period, Masada, the Dead Sea, 4 days in the army, two nights in Eilat, and a night in a Bedouin tent. A lot for a week and a half. This is going to be a long post so brace yourself.

I think it was Thursday that we left for Jerusalem to start our trip. We had a full day tiyul about the Roman period, the second temple, King Herod, and all that. It was all really interesting. My teacher believes that the destruction of the second temple in 70 is the central event in Jewish history. It is the turning point because at that point Jews were exiled from Israel for about 2000 years. I don't think you can call one event the most central part of history that spans thousands of years but it certainly is very important. The Western Wall, Kotel, is the remains of the walls that held up the Temple and the Dome of the Rock is believed to be where the Holy of Holies was. We also learned about the different sects of Judaism. There were the underground freedom fighters, the rabbis who were content because they knew rebelling would end bad, the crazy purification freaks who ran to the desert, and the priests who were corrupt and buddies with the Romans. We saw the dead sea scrolls which is the oldest found TaNaK from about two thousand years ago. Almost every letter is the exact same and the previously oldest was from one thousand years ago. It was pretty sick. The best part of the tiyul was when David, my teacher, was explaining how people were called to prayer and I called everyone to prayer with my kazoo. The video should be on facebook soon. 

Then we made our way to Masada. We went to the hostel the night before and had an early curfew because we woke up at 3 45 so we could watch the sunrise on top of Masada. For those of you that don't know, Masada is the place where the Jews who escaped Jerusalem during the Roman period and kept Judaism alive for a couple years while holding out against the Romans. Its located atop a mountain in the Judean Desert in the east of Israel. After three years, the Romans broke through to find that the Jews of Masada committed a mass suicide instead of being taken into slavery They also burnt down everything they built except for the the food storage to show that they were perfectly capable of living there. Here is an interesting tidbit. When they excavated Masada a while ago they found the food storage and inside was an ancient Judean date palm seed. They did some crazy Jurassic Park stuff and now they have a Judean date palm tree growing . But they won't know if its will bear fruit because it takes a while for them to grow and they don't know if its a boy or girl tree. But the Judean date palm was supposed to be the most delicious succulent date in all of Israel and was thought to be extinct till now. Crazy. I like dates. I am very happy about this. You could make some symbolic metaphorical connection about it to Judaism like the people of Masada thought they were the last Jews and they weren't and the date palm was supposed to be gone and it wasn't. But Masada was really pretty and really cool. I liked it.

After Masada we went to the Dead Sea. I don't think I've ever been as miserable as I was in the Dead Sea. The water was freezing. My hands were dry so the water made them burn to the point I couldn't move them. And the water burned any cut or scrape of anything. It tasted terrible. Like if a drop got in your mouth it was disgusting. And after you got out you were covered in salt. And it was cloudy so tanning wasn't an option.  The only remotely cool thing was that since the Dead Sea is so salty anything floats. So we floated. But it was terrible. I never have to go in the Dead Sea again. But it was fun chilling with my friends for a couple days after climbing Masada and before Gadna. I also didn't pack enough so I bought two t shirts, both with camels on them. Thats all they sold there: camel shirts. I also took an epically good nap with my bud Jordy. We were exhausted after waking up so early to climb Masada. As terrible as actually being in the Dead Sea was, the trip itself was a lot of fun just chilling. 

From the Dead Sea we went to Gadnah. That was interesting. First we got broken up into our sevets which had a commander and 12 kids. There were only 4 people from my bus group so I got to meet a lot more people which was good because I really like the guys from the other groups. And the day we spent in field learning to crawl and the different kind of walks was really cool except that I still have cuts and bruises on my knees from it. We also had discussions about being in the army and being Jewish and making aliyah and the state of Israel. On Wednesday we got to fire M-16s. I missed the target with most of my bullets but it was a lot of fun and really exciting firing an M-16. That was all the good stuff. The bad stuff was we spent the entire time in one uniform which was gross after having kitchen duty the first night. It only got dirtier and smellier after that. I only showered once in 5 days. The worst part though wasn't not showering or anything like that. It was that someone told us what to do every second and we had to be in this spot in this formation in exactly this amount of time. I felt like a prisoner. The base we were out was in the desert and it was so beautiful and I could see the roads and the cars going and I felt trapped in a cage. It was pretty bad. I think I'm the only person who felt like a prisoner to this extent but its ok. It was only a couple days and its over now.  I now know that I have no interest in joining the army. Other kids liked it a lot and want to join the army or the air force.  I think that if you're able to do it for three years and enjoy yourself and make that commitment than thats great but I couldn't.

After Gadnah we went to Eilat. The bus ride there was long just because I was so anxious to shower and change clothes. I walked into my room taking off my belt getting ready to shower. It felt so good to get clean and put on cleanish clothes for the first time in a while.  All my jeans had been worn at least once but I did have a clean T-shirt from the Dead Sea where I ran out and had to buy two new ones. They both have camels on them; one with 4 Andy Warhol style camels and one with dancing camels. They are both pretty touristy but they were really funny. Eilat and the Red Sea was a lot cooler than the Dead Sea. The two best parts was that I snorkeled for the first time. There is a coral reef in Eilat and its was really cool. I saw a lot of fish and the water was really clear. They also explained that the Red Sea is the split between two tectonic plates and some other stuff and that its growing and it will eventually become a big ocean. The water was really cold and it wasn't perfect beach weather but anything was awesome after Gadnah (except for the Dead Sea). The other really cool was a hike though some of the mountains in the South. Israel is a beautiful country with lots of terrains and the South is very rocky and has the desert. It was really pretty and I saw a wild ibex. There will be pictures on facebook coming soon. 

After Eilat we went to the Bedouin tent thing for the night. We got there and it was drizzling and kind of cold. But the tents were the coolest thing I have ever seen. I freaked out. They were huge tents with rugs on the ground and a heater in the middle. So cool. We put our stuff down and then went to get tea and baklava because apparently thats what Bedouins do. The tea was almost good. I don't drink tea or coffee so it must have been amazing and the baklava was good. Then David Solomon, one of the administrators, led a little meditation thing before we went to bed. I was all ready to meditate and all that and I put my mattress down and I fell asleep immediately. It was the best sleep I got all night because the tent was pretty cold and I still had funny sleep patterns from Gadnah. I woke up before we were supposed to every time and went to sleep really early and was falling asleep in everything.  We ate breakfast in another massive tent thing and since it was raining and we couldn't ride camels yet one of the Bedouins came and talked to us about the lifestyle. They are sunni Muslims and people today are becoming more assimilated. It was interesting and afterwards we were supposed to ride camels but we weren't able to because of the rain. they were smellier and dirtier than usual. I was so ready to get back to Tzuba that I didn't care. And I've ridden a camel before. I don't remember when or where but in the back of my ming I've ridden one. Maybe at one of those carnivals at the JCC when I was little? I don't know. 

Last thing. I saw my old rabbi, Mark Kaiserman, yesterday. It was really good to see him because I think its only the fourth time I've seen him since he left Dallas a couple years ago. We talked about the Mets and Alex Rodriguez, and Israel and EIE and walked around Jerusalem. I also ate unkosher food for the first time in over a month. Seafood Linguini Alefredo something. Delicious. 

Anyways, now I'm back at Tzuba and I recently heard a good random fact. If everyone wanted to play the character Hamlet at the same time, it would be impossible because there aren't enough skeletal skulls in the world to do do. This post took me a while to write and I made a real effort to write it and I wrote it pieces of it at different times. I try to just sit down and get it done but I didn't have that kind of time and I really wanted to post. Anyways, I love everyone for reading this and if you made it through the whole thing then good job.

=)

Joey Blatt