Chapter Five - Are we tourists or not?

With shabbat over, we were able to use the bus again, so we piled on and headed toward an ancient Roman hot springs. Sounds cool, eh? Prepare to be disappointed.

What do you picture when you hear the words "hot springs"? Do you picture something natural, water just gushing up from rocks in an idyllic natural setting? Or do you picture something more akin to the Richmond Hill wave pool? Unfortunately, the latter is a more accurate description. The hot springs was basically just a water park. The only thing that differentiated it from any other artificial pool was the method by which the water was heated ("liquid hot magma", as they say, was the heat source) and the incredible stench of sulphur.

So we frolicked around for a while, and this is probably a good time to mention the Shermanator. That's the nickname of one of the other birthrighters. His real name is Aaron Schafitz, I believe, and there's a good chance I've misspelled that name. Anyway, Sherm is exactly what you should think of when you hear the phrase "frat boy". He does enjoy his alcohol, and he is as horny as they come. Unfortunately, he is also very awkward, and while we were in the hot springs we tricked him into saying "I have a small penis" in Hebrew, telling him it actually meant "You have beautiful eyes." We're so mean.

So after this amusing incident we got out of the water and I took a number of crappy pictures. I hate photographing things at night.

This is what happens when you turn off the flash to take a picture of water at night. You don't want to see what happens when you leave the flash on.

Lisa, me, and Esther. Unfortunately for Ilana, she also got in the shot. I really should have turned on the anti-redeye setting on the camera.

The trip to the water park, I mean hot springs, ended fairly uneventfully, except for the incident where I impressed Leah [lee-ah] with my gentlemanliness. Is it not sad that waiting for someone while she ties her shoelaces (or whatever she was doing, I don't remember exactly) is considered something extraordinary? Why can we not simply take such politeness for granted?

But enough commentary on Canadian society. I've got too much to say on Israeli society.

We set up a bonfire on the beach that night, back at Ein Gev. I spent much of it with Leah [lee-ah], about whom I wrote this rant.

I should mention that at this time I had just met her so I was not yet aware of her penchant for spontaneous, unaccompanied dancing, her habit of winking at people just to freak them out, and her shockingly foul mouth. It all added up to a rich tapestry. I have said it before and will say it again, Jewish girls are crazy. You wanna make something of it?

Me and Leah.

After having fun with rocks, we turned our attention to a game of Truth of Dare that was going on nearby. Or rather, a game of Dare or . . . Nothing. There was no truth going on, it was all just dares. I will spare you the sordid details so as to avoid giving you nightmares, but it was pretty raunchy, and most of the raunch was coming from our guard Captain Amir Azulai, whose level of professionalism was, shall we say, sub par. It was this game of Dare or Dare that prompted his eventual dismissal from the trip, along with Boaz, the medic. Boaz totally didn't deserve to be dragged down with Captain Azulai; he was just sitting quietly nearby, playing his guitar.

The night ended with the Israelis peeing, I mean putting, the fire out.

Our next day was supposed to include a hike in the Golan Heights, but it was frickin' freezing out so we just a did a bus tour of them instead. I took too few notes on it in my journal, so I'll have to reconstruct it from my memory. It may not be entirely accurate.

We stopped at a lookout point where Yuval gave a lecture on some Israeli wars. That country has had far too many wars, considering it's only a bit over half a century old. It's pretty sickening. So I say now, but at the time I was enjoying the fact that we were doing something substantial instead of more touristy garbage like the hot springs. So Yuval was talking about how the Israeli army, in the span of [some amount of days, I wasn't really paying attention to the statistics] managed to triple Israel's size from the original, rah rah rah, aren't we amazing? He failed to mention how many innocent people had to die for that to happen.

This would have been a more impressive view had the weather not been so cruddy.

And here's the rest of the stuff that happened on that tour, because I can't remember what order it all happened in.

We visited a war monument of some kind, where Boaz and Captain Azulai (who were still with us at this point) explained the specifications of a battered old Syrian tank to interested onlookers. I caught a little of that explanation, but call me crazy, I'm not all that interested in the technical specifications of killing machines. There was a time when I would have been. The part I did catch was partly about what caused this tank to become battered. You see, this tank underwent what is euphemistically called a "direct hit", instead of a "terrible, fiery death shot". Well, I guess "direct hit" is more streamlined.

The war monument and tank.

A direct hit. It's right in the middle there, just under the turret.

In stark contrast to the monument to war, we also visited an idyllic little waterfall, where merchants were selling their wares, including "sachlav", which is a hot, milk-based, porridge-like snack. It was really good.

The waterfall.

Another stop in the Golan was a coffee shop on top of a volcano. I have no idea how that place makes enough business to stay afloat, but it was actually pretty busy. I mean in addition to the thirty-some-odd birthrighters who barged in like they owned the place. The name of the coffee shop was "Coffee Annan" ("annan" is Hebrew for "cloud"). Get it? Pretty clever, eh? Anyway, while we sipped our respective hot chocolates and coffees (guess which one I got), Yuval gave a lecture on more Israeli wars. The Yom Kippur War, if I recall correctly, where the Syrians cleverly tricked the Israeli army into lowering its guard before they attacked. At least I thought it was clever. Yuval kind of glossed over it. Somewhat hypocritical, really, considering how much attention he gives to the Israeli army when they're the ones who do something clever.

Anyhoo, this lecture went on for a while, with Yuval almost in tears as he described the exploits of a certain heroic tank driver who apparently single-handedly held off the Syrian army until backup could arrive. At the time I appreciated that we were finally getting something that seemed not to have been scripted by the Israeli tourist industry. Yuval would have to have been a pretty damned good actor.

But the highlight of the tour must have been the lecture from Mike Ginsburg the Foul-Mouthed Brooklynite. At least that was supposed to have been the highlight. Allow me to explain.

We were supposed to have this lecture outside, but since it was so bloody freezing out we had it in a bomb shelter instead. Yes, a bomb shelter. We were ushered down into this dungeon and forced to sit on emergency beds without mattresses. The bed frame was made of a metal mesh, most likely originally designed for use in some sort of torture device. I believe I still have a mesh print on my, ahem, posterior. So while I and my colleagues were squirming away trying to find a somewhat less painful position in which to sit, Mike gave his lecture.

Mike Ginsburg is like a cartoon. The kind of cartoon you see on Teletoon well past midnight. He's from Brooklyn originally (which explains much of his character) but has made Aliyah, as they say, and now resides in Israel. He gave a lecture on the Israel/Palestine situation (at least I think that's what it was about. I could be mistaken.) in which about every third word was "fuck" or some morphological derivative of it. The lecture might have been interesting, but between the swearing and the torturous seats, I didn't catch all that much of it.

After the lecture came the endless series of questions, about half of which came from one girl and were in fact the same question: "What percentage of Palestinians do you think are terrorists?" I appreciated what she was getting at, that terrorists are a minority, but she was being really obnoxious and long-winded about it, and I was in no mood to be kept sitting. Marie, who was sitting next to me, got up to use the bathroom. "That's a clever excuse to stand up," I thought. Alas, when she returned she reported that the condition of the bathroom was no more pleasant than sitting on the hard metal mesh. Dang.

Finally the questioning ended and we climbed back up to the surface and onto the bus, ending our tour of the Golan heights. Assuming I've gotten the order of these stops right. Which I haven't.

The bus brought us to the Naot shoe factory and store, located on a kibbutz the name of which I can't remember. It could even be "Naot", for all I know. Apparently their sandals are well known for being extremely comfortable. I had never heard of them before, but most of the other birthrighters seemed to have. Have you?

I had no particular need, desire, or budget for new sandals or any other leather products, so I just hung around while other people went nuts. Steve (the madrich, remember?) bought a brimmed hat, which was cool because it made him really easy to identify from a distance for the rest of the trip. Also, this was the first time I really talked for a while with Shira, another birthrighter. She was to become a major player in three distinct episodes later on.

When everyone had finished buying ridiculous amounts of shoes (the Shermanator bought three pairs, as I recall), we got back on the bus and headed toward a nearby rope-based obstacle-course-like thing. That's about as accurately as I can describe it. There were three parts to it: a climbing wall, a suspended ropes course, and a zipline. It is my belief that they brought us to this at the end of a full day in a calculated attempt to produce some hilarious wipeouts. They're probably selling blooper reels as I write this.

Leah [lee-ah], Marie, Shira, Me, Gill, and Josh at the ropes place.

I only managed to do the suspended ropes course before I became too hungry and tired to continue. I wish I had tried the rock wall. Anyway, I got some pizza from the, uh, pizza area (where did I put that thesaurus) and talked to Shira for a while longer before I realized that I did not, in fact, know her name at the time. I asked Josh. He didn't know. I asked Marie. She didn't know. I asked Leah [lay-ah], and she said, "Sheila? I think it's Sheila."

"No, that doesn't sound right," I replied.

"I think it's Sheila. I think there's two Sheilas." I believe she was talking about Shira and Sherri, but that was not clear to me at the time.

"No, that's not it," I insisted.

She replied, "Oh, then I don't know."

I retorted with a, "What kind of a rotten madricha are you?"

So finally I had the brilliant idea to ask Naomi, her roommate. "Shira," she said. Aha, that did sound right. At last, I had discovered her name.

Back on the bus, I put my newfound knowledge into practice and made such a boneheaded manoeuvre I shudder to think about it. I'm going to have nightmares about this for years to come. Oh God, it's so stupid. I said: "Your name is Shira, right?" AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!! If I was going to just ask her what her name was, why the hell didn't I do it right at the beginning?! Isn't that the dumbest thing you've ever heard? Grrr...

On the bus back to Ein Gev, I wrote this rant.

I think the exhaustion was starting to affect me when I wrote that one. It doesn't seem as lucid as the previous ones.

Perhaps you think it's hypocritical of me to have enjoyed that day's programme after all the complaining I've been doing in this journal about the veneration of the military. I explain it thusly: I enjoyed hearing the Israeli opinions, even though I disagreed with most of them wholeheartedly. History and politics are good to learn about, even if they enrage you. For that reason I signed up for an e-mail mailing list . . . but that comes later.

If I recall correctly, this is the night we instituted the grand traditions of Participant of the Day and Bitch of the Day. The meanings of those terms should be fairly obvious. Lisa, due to her tardiness that morning, had the good fortune to be the first Bitch of the Day, although we had to soften the name to avoid complaints. Since the lucky individual had to wear a pink-feathered boa for the entire next day, we called it Shawl of the Day. Incidentally, if you go to Israel and see some pink feathers floating around, you'll know where they're from. The thing was shedding like mad.

Since this was our last night at Ein Gev, we packed up a bit and then a few of us birthrighters had an after-hours discussion ranging topics from the behaviour of crack addicts to the quality of Israeli beer. Nika gave an excellent performance, mimicking a crack addict she had observed in Amsterdam. It was both amusing and scary, which I suppose is the point. So be warned, if you ever decide to do drugs, someone may be watching you and taking notes so as to mock you later.

After a while our discussion broke up and we slept for the last time in our little houses on the shores of Galilee.

Chapter Six