Chapter Eleven - Let's dance the shabbat away

We must have had some free time in Ramat Rachel, since we had just had lunch so shabbat would not be for a few hours, but I cannot for the life of me remember what I did. You have no idea what happens to your mind after being kept in a state of constant exhaustion for eight days. I wasn't even drinking at all; I was simply too drained for my mind to record the moment.

This is one of my problems with the way the trip is conducted. I appreciate that there's a lot to see, but how does it help anyone for us to go through it all like zombies? Maybe something really interesting happened in this time. Perhaps something that would even change my mind about going back to Israel. It's unlikely, but it's possible. Think about it.

Sigh. My best guess is that I showered and changed for shabbat. I might have taken a short nap.

The bus dropped us off in Jerusalem and we started walking towards the kotel. On the way, we stopped and did our traditional "circle of love" thing. We hummed for a while until the sun had almost set. Finally, we heard an eerie sound on the wind. It was someone on the site of the ancient temple, blowing a shofar to warn us that shabbat was coming. That was pretty cool.

We lit the shabbat candles and tried vainly to keep them lit for entire duration of the prayer, but alas, the wind kept blowing them out. Oh well, God probably wasn't watching. Anyway, we did the whole shabbat thing. It was just as boring in Jerusalem as it is at home when my mother insists on doing it. I'm all for a day of rest and/or fun during the week, but I'll pass on the mysticism that goes along with it. We moved on.

We were again permitted into the kotel area without the need for metal detection or body searches, and there we reformed the circle of love. We sang off-key (well, everyone else did, the crazy, tone-deaf Jews) and danced, and danced some more. That was actually a lot of fun, for reasons that I outlined in my next rant.

Then we had some time to do our own thing, so I foolishly attempted to enter the men's area. It was incredibly crowded, so I left after a couple of minutes. Apparently there was an area behind a curtain where people were having a crazy shabbat party, but I never saw it. Josh told me about it later, and I tried to re-enter the men's area but it was just a solid mass of bodies. I was not about to go fighting my way through it.

It really made me sad, to see all those people praying to a wall as if they thought anything would happen as a result. Here's another instance where I could be treading on people's religious toes, but it's my journal so I can say what I want. If religion gives people such ridiculous, false hope, I want no part of it.

So I hung around for a while as other people did whatever it is people do at the kotel. It makes me sad, what religious people do for fun, but let me state for the record that I'm not saying they're bad people or anything like that. I offer the following example. I am very sensitive to the cold, so I was wearing my winter coat and hat. I had to take off my hat and put on a kippah to enter the men's area, and in the process I dropped my hat on the ground and didn't notice. I was about to walk away when someone wearing one of those ridiculous black hassidic coats stopped me and handed my hat back to me.

It's such a simple thing, handing a hat back to someone who has dropped it, but it really impressed me for some reason. I couldn't begin to describe why. I just thought I would recount this event for your analysis.

Oh yes, one more thing. There was an armed-forces swearing-in ceremony going on at the time. All the prospective soldiers looked incredibly young. That also made me sad. In any case, we were toying with the idea of staying to watch the soldiers swear their oaths, but we voted against it.

When finally it was time to leave, we of course had to walk. Oren would not drive the bus on shabbat, being the good Jew that he is. It was a cold but pleasant walk, and I talked with Leah [lee-ah] for most of it. I will mention again what a lovely person she is, despite, you know, the pure evil thing. Anyway, it really made me realize how starved for female attention I am, not that I was really unaware of that fact beforehand. I ought to do something about that one day. Where does one go to meet nice girls of no religion? Seriously, no religion. I'll get into that later.

We stopped along the way and did another circle of love. Yuval started humming a tune I didn't quite recognize, but I tried to hum along anyway. Then suddenly it launched into Queen's "We Are the Champions". Make what you will of the symbolism.

When we got back to the hotel it was well past dinner time, but that didn't stop us from eating. I ate way too much and got sick . . . or did I? Here's what actually happened.

We waited at our tables, getting skinnier by the second, as the organizers took their sweet time getting their act together. When they finally did, we said the appropriate shabbat blessings and then ate. I did, in fact, eat too much, but I was used to it by that time. I needed the extra calories just to keep from collapsing during the day. So I ate until the singing started. I mentioned in the chapter on the previous shabbat that the singing went on way too long. We followed that pattern.

But I was having none of it. I was not in the mood to sing stupid army songs with Israeli soldiers. I sat at the table for a while and watched the others do it, quietly singing "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav" (my favourite Hebrew song, you may recall) to myself. But one can only sing that song to oneself so many times. After a while, when the singers showed no sign that they were going to stop anytime this century, I got up and left.

I went back to the room, where I wrote that rant about Jewish dancing. I stayed there for a little while, then wandered out into the lobby to see if anyone else had walked out on the singing. Josh had, but he had a valid excuse. He really was sick. I hung around with him, since we had no idea where anyone else was. They had left the dining room, no doubt to engage in another one of those incredibly boring and stupid discussions.

Missing one of those discussions was grounds for Bitch of the Day status, so I was a little worried. When finally the others emerged from a conference room we hadn't known existed, Gill quickly told me that he had said both Josh and I were sick. Quick thinking. Apparently a lot of people had skipped out on that discussion, so Gill had to do a lot more quick thinking. "Oh, he was right in the corner, didn't you see him?"

I went to bed shortly after that. Steve came around to check up on me, so I said that I had eaten too much at dinner and that's why I missed the programme. He probably didn't believe me, but he had no proof so it didn't matter. Well it's too late to give me the boa now, Steve. I've beaten you! Mwahahahahaha!!!

I got another good sleep, but I needed way more than I was getting. Quantity over quality would have been helpful, in just this one instance.

It was another leisurely shabbat, with another curiously disappointing "tour" of a kibbutz.

I had a simple breakfast of yogurt and some cereal that might have been corn flakes. I was pretty sick of the gigantic crazy breakfasts we had been having throughout the trip. At breakfast I was actually wearing my spring jacket and baseball cap because I had missed the programme the previous night and thus had no idea what I would need for the day.

I must have looked pretty ridiculous wearing those things in the lecture hall inside the hotel. You see, we were to hear a lecture from the eminent Neil Lazarus, whose qualifications I don't actually know but are probably pretty impressive. Gill was excited because in the process of studying for his Ph.D he had read the work of a post-colonial theorist named Neil Lazarus. This turned out not to be that person. Oh well.

Mr. Lazarus gave a lecture on the political situation in the middle east and presented some interesting views on US foreign policy as it concerns that region. Among other things, he said that the invasion of both Iraq and Afghanistan is in fact an effort to contain Iran, which happens to be located between them. I don't know if I buy that, but I enjoyed the lecture. Especially the part where some random Israeli children just sort of wandered into the lecture hall and Mr. Lazarus ran at them shouting something along the lines of "Oogy-boogy-boogy-boogy" to scare them out.

The lecture ended and we went on a "tour" of the kibbutz. That's what it says in the itinerary: "tour Ramat Rachel". What a letdown. I thought I was finally going to see some Marxist Israelis in action. Alas, our tour was nothing but a mild walk through some open fields. We stopped at a monument to Ethiopian Jews, which was kind of interesting. Leah [lay-ah] gave a lecture on her family's migration from Ethiopia to Israel. They should have stayed where they were, say I, but what do I know?

The Ethiopian monument. [photo courtesy of Steve Glowinsky]

We also stopped at some ancient ruins. I had seen enough of that already, so I was unimpressed.

We went back to the hotel to have our penultimate boring discussion. This one wasn't about Judaism, though, so it didn't suck. It was a farewell to our Israeli soldier friends. At least I think we were supposed to be friends. The closest thing I had to a friend among them was probably Sela, and I only feel that way because I roomed with him once and had a brief discussion with him on the shore of the Dead Sea. He was only a friend relative to the other Israelis, whom I barely knew at all.

Bree-on and Sheye-ra at the penultimate discussion. [photo courtesy of Shira Wolch]

So when it was decided that we would go around in a circle and share our feelings about being with the Israelis for a few days, I hoped the room would explode before it got to me. Sadly, it did not. I was one of the first people to speak, so I didn't have much time to think. I was all set to say "Pass" when suddenly inspiration struck. It probably would have been better if it hadn't. What I did was, I basically recited all the salient points of that rant I had written a while ago about Sela and his views on Israel and its people. Including my comment about Yuval being a "walking advertisement". Oh, that went over well. When the laughing died down I sheepishly said, "Well, that's all I have to say."

"Good job!" remarked Gill.

So the other members of the circle had much more pleasant and trite things to say, like, "It's amazing how similar the Canadians and Israelis are". Maybe (in fact, definitely) this was my own bias acting up, but I didn't see it. When I look at Israelis, I don't see myself. They are not my people. I felt like a criminal for believing that in light of all the Zionism with which I had been bombarded over the past week and more, but my people are the ones who live in my community, with whom I go to school, who have always been there for me, whom I love dearly; not some people who speak another language and live half a world away.

When the circle had finished, we exchanged gifts. Well, it wasn't so much an exchange as just a change. The Canadians laid out all their gifts on a table (mine was a pack of cards with a picture of a Canadian flag) and the Israelis had a pushup contest to see who got first pick.

You would think a group of soldiers would be fairly good at pushups, right? Think again. It was pretty sickening, the kinds of strange motions we allowed them to get away with instead of proper pushups. One of the Hilas was not even bending her arms! She was just bobbing her head and bending her back at a weird angle. No more than maybe two of the soldiers were actually doing proper pushups. I don't recall who won, but they should all have been disqualified. So say I, the disciplined Canadian. I could teach them a thing or two.

The "pushup" contest. [photo courtesy of Shira Wolch]

After this mockery of a contest was finished, we did our havdallah service and ended shabbat. Freed from the burden of not being allowed to write, we were able to fill out questionnaires about the birthright programme. I was reluctant to fill mine out because I didn't want to sound like a jerk. Nevertheless, I did fill it out. The Canada Israel Experience will rue the day they let me get through the screening process.

The meeting finally came to a close.

Chapter Twelve