The Old City and Lod

First a few practical details...This trip has not been very smooth in terms of technology for us, but things are looking up. We finally have wifi in the apartment (yeah!) and we have a working Israeli cell phone (050-236-4848) for anyone who might like to call (I believe we do not pay for incoming calls). My US cell phone also still works.

Yesterday, after meeting with our landlord and going over our punch list (wifi, lights not working, dryer not working, blinds not working, you get the idea) and successfully convincing him that we should not pay until at least some of these things were fixed, we headed finally for the Old City. We stopped first at what turned out to be the least helpful Tourist Information office ever. Actual conversation:
Us: Is there a good restaurant in the old city for lunch?
Them: Yes.
Us: What is it.
Them: There is a good bagel place in the Jewish Quarter.
Us: Okay, great. We'll go there.
Them: No, you shouldn't. It's closed today.
Us: Oh. Can you recommend a restaurant that is open?
Them: Not really.

Then, we went on to the Tower of David Museum. This awesome museum traces the history of Jerusalem from Canaanite Days until the British Mandate period, with great maps and models and an awesome audio guide. It was hard to tell how much the kids were getting out of it, but hopefully something sank in! They claimed to like it (?)






We headed on to the Jewish Quarter where we found an open pizza restaurant for lunch and watched the many different type of Israelis (in particular, many haredim and many soldiers) heading toward the kotel. We followed after them.  We had forgotten to pack a skirt, so as Ella and I headed to the women's side, a woman approached Ella (who was wearing shorts) and gave her a skirt to put over her clothes (see photo). The women's side of the wall was very crowded and very emotional (lots of women crying or seeming to be overcome with emotion). Although I would not say that was our primary response, it was still cool to be there. The kids put notes in the cracks, and when we finished and met up with Abe and Jonah, we teased them that on the women's side they had ice cream and freshly baked cookies. They almost believed us! A little souvenir shopping at the Arab shuk and Mamilla mall on the way home (by the way, the same kiddush cup set in the shuk was 450 shekels and in the Mamilla mall was 5000 shekels. We didn't buy either, but when we are ready to buy, I think I know where we will go!).

Today, we saw a completely different, but no less fascinating side of Israel. We had planned to go to Lod to visit the school that Ella's bat mitzvah twin and penpal, Vered, attends. We first took a bus to the central bus station (pretty easy), from there, we got a bus to Lod (rather complicated, but we managed). From central Lod, we got another bus (extremely challenging to figure out) that took us within walking distance of the Rambam school and some very nice Ethiopian Jewish women helped point us in the right direction to the school. On the way we walked the way it was supposed to be and were turned back rather aggressively at the gate of the Border Guard Headquarters and had to make a wide loop around it to get to the right place. We were thus a little bit late for our 11:00 meeting time with Iris the director of the limudia (the after school program sponsored by the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry that Ella contributed to with some of her bat mitzvah gifts). She welcomed us with a huge smile and a hug and told us (in Hebrew) that the class was so excited to meet us, kept asking when we would be coming, etc). She went to get Vered, who also greeted us with a huge smile and a hug. The kids were amazing. Friendly, interested in us and our lives (they wanted to know if we had met Obama), eager to show us around and tell us about their lives, and pretty good in English (especially Rachel, who just went to the English spelling bee in the region) although most of our conversations were in Hebrew. I wish I could have been more fluent, but I did okay, and the rest of the family understood a decent amount. Ella and Jonah built a nice rapport with the kids in the couple of hours that we were there, and I think the experience strengthened Ella's desire to stay in touch with Vered and to possibly support the organization that helps her and her friends.

The sweetness of the kids is all the more striking if you know that these kids live in the poorest neighborhoods in all of Israel, mostly in single parent households, with very little family support. We met the two English teachers, and then were surprised to meet Dalit, an American volunteer from Los Angeles, who has been working at the school for the past year (she finishes in a couple of weeks). Although we have been with a lot of Americans already on this trip (the Leffs, the confirmation class), it was so refreshing to meet and talk with Dalit. First of all, she gave us so much insight into the kids from the Rambam School and the challenges they face (as she put it "you are really in the 'hood now"). Second, she really understood how hard things can be in Israel for us (she said "I can't figure out why, but Israelis seem to like it that everything is difficult"). The Leffs have been here long enough that they either don't realize it any more or don't want to give us a bad impression of their chosen home, and when you are on a tour (like the confirmation class) maybe you don't interact enough with the country to discover just how hard everything is (although it sounds like they have gotten some small tastes of it here and there). But, Dalit recognized that it takes 3 complicated buses to get to Lod, that you constantly feel like everyone is trying to cheat you (because they are), that a pizza costs about $22, and so on. Just having her acknowledge how challenging life in Israel can be made it seem a little easier (on a side note, later we overheard an Israeli woman ask a shopkeeper how much the grapes were. When he told her the price, she was shocked and asked "Ma Kara? Milchama?" ["What, is there a war on?"] which also made us feel better about our sticker shock at the food prices.) The other wonderful thing about Dalit was that she took us to the sherut (shared taxi cab minivan) to the train station for the much easier train home to Jerusalem. So easy, that we decided to walk the 5 km home from the train station, through some very interesting and beautiful neighborhoods including the German Colony, where we noted several restaurants to which we hope to return one day.

We came home and soon welcomed the handymen who fixed the blinds and the dryer! A banner day for home repair :)