The Yom Kippur war on acid

I made friends with the shomer at the youth hostel where I was staying, and will now try to share a story of his in his own voice. I am sure to get the details wrong, but hope to capture the spirit.

This story is set in October 1973.

"I was tripping on acid, and was talking to this Dutch guy, he was new on the Kibbutz, and he was clearly stoned. Judging from him, it seemed like good stuff, and I was about to ask him to break it out when I see this plane, this Syrian jet, come streaking over the horizon, and it's going the wrong way. That plane should not have been going that way, so I say to him, 'Man, that plane's going the wrong way,' and we both look at it, and then these two Israeli jets come in from out of nowhere and start chasing the Syrian jet, firing at it, these white streaks going through the sky. They don't shoot it down, but they kind of force it down, chase it into the ground, and it crashes with this big cloud of dust, you know, but we don't hear anything, cause it's so far away. Then, a few seconds later, we hear this big sound, this kind of whooooomp sound, and the Dutch guy leans back and says, 'What kind of music is that?'

"And that was the beginning of the Yom Kippur war."

There were many other stories, only one of which I'll mention, and then only briefly. He once met Jimmi Hendrix, and, mistaking him for his friend Ernie, greeted him with, "Ernie, man, where did you get that hat?"

Hareidim have a serious sweet tooth

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has spent time at dinner tables in Orthodox communities. But it really came home to me when I was wandering around Mahane Yehuda, a famous open market in Jerusalem. The candy stalls there are phenomenal. There's enough candy to turn the anyone diabetic. And the customers are all Haredi.

I was also struck by the midrochov, the main street, in Tzfat. Everything's kosher, and the food stands fall into two categories: pizza or schwarma. In the main supermarket, I went in search of whole wheat crackers for a drive, and all I could find were chocolate wafers. A little diversity would do this community good.

Israelis don't care about your shoes...

...or at least, not at the airport they don't. Nor are they concerned with how many milliliters of shampoo are in your carry-on. No diagrams illustrating different bottle shapes and where the 100 ml line may lay. No doffing and donning of shoes. Just 2 minutes of intense questioning by Israeli security, and then you're either done or you're not done. And if you're not done, you're really not done.

The difference between the Americans and the Israelis is yet again one of scale. In a country with 5 million people and one major international airport, it's easier to have top people doing security. But when you have 250 million people and many international airports, it's a little more challenging. It's hard to find quality people and the money to pay them. So what do you do? You look to see if you've faced other problems in a similar domain, and try and apply the same solution.

A TSA employee is to an Israeli security agent as a McDonald's hamburger flipper is to a gourmet chef. How do you create efficient, reliable security given a limited budget and unskilled labor? Break security down into a series of small, defined steps. Write the steps down in large type. Reproduce. Laminate. Bind. Distribute. It's security as a franchise, and it works well with clearly defined problems of limited scope, like exploding shoes. But when the problem has fuzzy borders and a broad scope, then you actually need well-trained, proactive people you can depend upon.

It all makes me wonder what the TSA is there for. Are they an actual security instrument, or are they just a sort of pacifier, a way we reassure ourselves that we can do something about a problem whose solution is too expensive or too difficult for us to tackle head on?

Getting toasted in the Golan

When I was in Tzfat, I stayed at a youth hostel recommended by Lonely Planet that also happened to be a religious outreach organization - the stay was cheap, the staff were outgoing, and God was the constant topic du jour. For any number of reasons, some my fault, some theirs, I felt totally out of place. The people were sincere, well-intentioned, and genuinely nice, but, unfortunately, being there made my skin crawl.

The saving grace was the night watchman, the shomer, a fifty-something chain smoking ex-hippy from Seattle. He'd been in Tzfat ten years, spoke Hebrew with an unapologetically American accent, and was quite happy to have the job (employment rates in Tzfat suck; if you're not an artist, a rabbi, or a guide, you're going to have a hard time finding work). When I asked him for directions he responded with a five minute speech that went from detailed directions into a discussion of why the streets were so dirty to a history of Tzfatian politics. This, I thought, is my people.

I have a friend who had spent the summer in Israel learning about wine at an Israeli winery, and inspired by her blog, one of my goals this trip was to visit some Israeli wineries. After hanging out talking to the shomer a few nights in a row, I not only had learned a wealth of information about Tzfat, I had also gained a companion for my trip to wineries in the Golan.

The shomer and I went to a few wineries, but the most interesting was the Dalton, a kosher winery not so far from Tzfat. We arrived early Friday morning to the pleasant visitor center, a wood paneled affair with an elegant, craftsman feel. Gourmet cheeses were spread out to taste, and wines lined the counter, punctuated by that occasional graceless accoutrement of wine tasting, the spitbucket. Oddly, there were no other visitors, and the guide offered to take us on our own private tour. I think they mistook the shomer for my own personal guide and me for a wealthy tourist. With a private tour on the table, I wasn't about to correct any mistaken identities.

The tour was great, and the wine tasting that followed, given in a private room at the guest house, was even better (the 2004 Cabernet reserve was my favorite, with the 2004 Merlot select a close second). I told the guide I was driving, and the shomer was trying to hold back as well, but neither of us did very well. We were both pleasantly toasted by the end.

We took a long walk after that, and spent the rest of the day driving around the Golan, during which time I got to hear some of the shomer's many stories about living in Israel in the seventies and surviving both the Yom Kippur war and the most recent war with Lebanon this past summer, when Tzfat was rained upon by Ketyusha rockets.

Some of the stories I would definitely like to share, but I will save them for a future post.

Jamba Juice, Israeli style

As I was approaching passport control in Ben Gurion airport on my way out of the country, I gritted my teeth and decided to stop at a food stand for something to tide me over. I always feel like a trapped mouse when I have to buy anything at an airport - they know they've got you, you know they've got you, and you might as well just open your wallet and let them take what they want for their watered down coffees and their stale croissants.

And though this food stand did feature prices three times the norm, it also featured something quite unexpected: real food. I had a smoothie, and watched as the attendant plucked fresh slice after fresh slice of mango and honeydew melon from the fruit arrayed in front of her. All the way to the brim, then orange juice, and finally, to top it off, mint leaves. Mint leaves! What a change from the squirt of synthetic peppermint you get at Starbucks, or the precisely measured quarter-cups of fruit you get at Jamba Juice. All this for nineteen shekls. And it was delicious. I felt like I got quite the bargain.

Israel, modern though it is, is still a tiny country. Even in its sleek new airport, you're still not that far removed from the corner market, the shuk. A franchise could never afford that kind of quality, but in a country of only five million people, there's still room for smaller businesses whose focus remains on the customer and not the bottom line. What a pleasure. what a relief it is to be in a country not (yet) dominated by economies of scale.

Hitchhiking as a skill

I tried, and failed, to hitch my first ride today. I'm in Jerusalem and had left my car, and after fifteen minutes at the bus stop I decided I should have enough positive hitchhiking karma stored up to get a ride pretty easily. Not so. I stood there for fifteen minutes with my hand out. I tried it with the cap on, the cap off, casual stance, formal stance, smiling, not smiling. Nothing.

After a while this woman came to wait at the bus stop and so I shmoozed with her. She mentioned how she's always being stopped and searched at the bus station because she looks Arabic (she's a Yemeni Jew). She said it didn't bother her. She understands the situation, she said.

So then I mentioned that I thought I was having a hard time catching a ride because of how I looked.

"This is not the reason," she said, in her thick Israeli accent.

"You don't think so?"

"In Israel," she said, "we know to tell between someone who is scary and someone who is not so scary."

"Yeah, but I'm a guy, I'm six feet tall, I haven't shaved in a while. Bushy beard, you know, people might think, who knows, this guy..."

"No," she said, looking away.

"No?" I said, hopefully.

She gave me another quick glance. "Not even little bit."

Super-friendly soldiers

In the old city yesterday I once again came across a group of Israeli soldiers gathered for some kind of training, this time on the old city rooftops with the sun setting behind them. Once again, I started trailing after them, like a puppy, and when I asked one of them if they were going to the kotel and could I follow them, they said they weren't but they'd take me there (!). I then spent the next half hour wandering the streets and alleys of the old city with these guys. They wouldn't admit that they were lost, and they wouldn't ask anyone but a fellow soldier for directions. Since most of the soldiers around were from the same unit, nobody knew how to get around, but of course no one would admit they didn't know, so we went in quite a few circles.

Of course, I was happy as a clam, getting to shmooze with these guys. They were all commanders training commanders in the infantry unit, which, I got the impression, was not a small deal. I asked them about what the toughest thing about their job was. They answered that it was the responsibility of command (they thought of their charges as their children), and the sleep deprivation (they count themselves as lucky if they three hours a night). The one I spoke with the most is in his last year of service and is continuing on to officer's training - another year and a half. Both of his older brothers and his father were officers, so for him it's not even a question. Plus, he says, the money's good - 7000 shekels (~$1700) a month, tax free, all of which goes into the bank.

I asked about last summer's war, which they all served in, and heard first hand all the horror stories I'd read about - being trapped in Lebanon, with the enemy behind and in front of them, no supplies, feeling abandoned. I asked if he was angry and he said yes, and then I asked if he was cynical and he said no - he was more energized. He, like most Israelis I've spoken to about this, is absolutely sure another war with Lebanon and probably Syria is coming, and he is also convinced that Iran and the U.S. will be pulled in as well. Though last summer was bad, everybody is training now with a purpose, with an acute awareness of the stakes, and with a certainty that the training will be put into action in the very near future.

Banjo Kodesh (Holy Banjo)

I wandered into a religious CD store during my first day in Tzfat and saw this on the shelves. I had to ask them to pop it in, and when I heard the bluegrass 'oy yoy yoy's, I had to have it. The first song is straight ahead bluegrass, with a Shabbos niggun for a lyric, and it's surprisingly good - the Yiddish inflection goes well with a fiddle and a banjo. Unfortunately, the album soon succumbs to the overproduced bombast typical of Orthodox popular music, though recovers a little bit. File this as another entry into the surreal world of Orthopop (there are many YouTube videos out there to demonstrate, but I don't have the time to find them -- I'm sure some of my readers can provide links in the comments).

Hitchhikers are better than GPS systems

They may laugh at you and your silly GPS while saying mocking things to each other in Hebrew, but they'll save you from taking a dirt road through the mountains when a fast, easy highway is sitting right in front of you. Marked with a sign, no less. Maybe that's why they were laughing at me.

Israeli teenagers with a death wish

Okay, maybe the title is a little extreme, but these kids are frikkin' crazy. I went to the Yehudia nature preserve and hiked a trail that at one point required swimming through a stream. There's a waterfall about thirty feet high with a ladder you have to climb down and then drop in the water. There was a line that took an hour to get through, because so many kids screwing around at the bottom. After a while, some of the kids started climbing halfway up the ladder, climbing onto a rock outcrop, and jumping in, ignoring the many signs saying the jumping was forbidden. Then, inevitably, one particularly brave (or stupid) kid decided to skip the ladder and jumped from the very top. The funny thing was, he asked the supervisor of his group if he could do it, and the guy just shrugged, so he jumped. He almost hit the rocks on the edge of the pool, but was fine, and was soon followed by a bunch of other kids, like a procession of lemmings. I, of course, was worried out of my mind -- the whole thing almost gave me a heart attack. Mom, I did you proud.

Later on, at a less steep waterfall, I decided to jump myself. I was perched on the edge, about to make the jump, when a five year old kid with peyos pointed to the sign and said, "ze asur" -- it's forbidden. A teenager sitting next to him laughed and said, "'ee must not be Israeli." I paused, looked at the five year old, gave him my best Israeli shrug, and jumped.

Brooklyn in the mountains

I got into Tzfat tonight expecting a Carlebachy type of hippy nature preserve, looking forward to spending time with my fellow lost souls. Instead I find miles of men in black coats and hats and women in salmon suits and wigs. What's going on? I feel like I'm in Borogh Park. Where are the blue tzitzis flying in the air? Where are the Birkenstocks? I'm spending Shabbos here and I'm worried I made a big mistake...

Dead vultures in Gamla

One of the last places in Israel to see Griffon vultures is in the Gamla nature preserve in the Golan. Gamla is a stunning valley with the sort of cliffs that give the vultures a good place to nest and perch (we all know how vultures like to perch). There were reports in the 1800s of hundreds of vultures in Gamla. Various forces reduced the population, the most prominent being the (forced?) departure of the farmers whose herds the vultures fed upon, and secondary poisoning -- the vultures would find some animal killed by poision, eat the animal, and die themselves. But up until this year, there were still forty breeding pairs in Gamla, which is still quite a crowd. Sadly, now all but two are dead, victims of some sort of mass poisoning. One of the rangers, an Israeli woman in her twenties, told me that they searched all over Israel but couldn't find the source of the poison. Since the birds can fly up to 300 kilometers looking for food, it may not even have come from Israel, but they'll never know -- Syria won't even talk to Israel and the Lebanese weren't so interested in investigating Israeli vultures.

The ranger told me it was as good as certain that by this time next year there would be no more vultures in the Golan, just as she was sure that in a few years there would be no more Golan to visit at all. At least not in Israel. She and others I've spoken to feel pretty hopeless about the current government, and are convinced that the Golan will be back in Syrian hands within a few years.

In Israel you never have to drive alone

Or at least in the Golan you don't. Hitchhikers everywhere. It's great. I feel like I'm running a public taxi service for Israeli teenagers and soldiers (often the same thing). I always have company, though they're not always very talkative. I'm sure it would help if I learned Hebrew.

Unfortunately, it has now left me with a dilemma. A soldier I gave a ride to yesterday left his cap in the car. What should I do with it? Return it? I feel like they'll laugh at me. But if I try to take it, what if I'm caught at the airport? Trying to leave the country with a mysterious Israeli army cap. Maybe they'll wonder what happened to the soldier that was underneath it. Maybe I'll suffer an infamous Israeli interrogation and never be the same again. I could duck the issue and throw it out. But I don't want to throw it out. It's a nice cap. What to do, what to do?

A final note on Poland

After the ceremony ended between the Israelis and the Poles, the Israelis started wandering about while the Poles stayed at attention. Best moment: an Israeli soldier pulling out his digital camera and taking a picture of the Polish soldier stuck at attention.

Poland: it's the new Israel!

I hadn't been to Israel in 12 years. The last time I went I had to ask my rebbe permission to go. Ah, to have a rebbe to tell me what to do. How nice that was. This time, after weeks of agonizing, by the time I finally decided to go the cheapest ticket was through LOT air, a Polish airline, and featured a nine hour layover in Warsaw. I knew I was in for an experience when I called them to request a kosher meal. 45 minutes on hold listening the same three minute loop of a hearty-voiced male choir singing Polish folk music to orchestral accompaniment.

On the day of the flight, I got there two and a half hours early to find a line of about three hundred people snaking around the airport terminal while three harried LOT employees tried to handle them all. I started to imagine a plane held together with masking tape and superglue, with burlap covered seats and octogenarian stewardesses ignoring all the passengers and reading their newspaper.

None of that happened (I'd have to wait til the toilet paper in the bathrooms at the Warsaw airport for anything resembling burlap). I did see a few extravagant mustaches, but that's about it as far as filling in my Polish sterotypes went.

When we landed, the plane broke out in applause. When I landed in Tel Aviv the next day, nobody applauded. What the hell? Looks like Poland is the new Israel. Who knew.

Warsaw looked very much like the city in Kieslowksi's Decalogue (that was Warsaw, wasn't it?) -- depressingly gray and beige cement socialist-era apartment buildings everywhere. The overcast weather only added to the impression.

My first stop was the only surviving synagogue from before the war. The building was either amazingly maintained or extensively restored -- a pristine interior with echoing acoustics, beautiful masonry, and, like so many other old shuls I'd visited, not a soul in site.

That changed when a tour of Israeli bais-yaakov (very religious) girls came chattering into the space. They were reluctant to enter the ground floor at first, gravitating to the women's section upstairs, until one of the girls asked their rabbi, a rumpled looking rabbi type with a kint kippa, untucked shirt, and tzitzis flying free. He answered with a shrug, and the girls descended into the main sanctuary and took the place over. One stood on the amoud and shuckled like a chassid, others went to the ark and kissed the curtain, others sat on the wooden benches and bent over texts. Then they started davening. I felt like the intruder, like I should have been upstairs. It was cool to see these very frum girls taking over a synagogue.

After that, I went to the umschaglplatz, the place where Jews were sent to be put on the trains from the ghetto to the camps. The memorial, appropriately enough, evoked a train station, and was very small. It's interesting the relationship between memorials and scale. I think I've come to associate a powerful memorial with a big memorial. This one didn't make much of an impression.

Wandering towards the next ghetto memorial (there are at least four of them), I heard the strains of a trumpet playing Hatikva, the Israeli national anthem. I arrived to find a squad of Israeli soldiers, about a hundred of them, in full dress uniform, milling about, shmoozing and taking pictures of each other. I asked what they were doing there, and It turns out the anniversary of the ghetto uprising had been that week, and they were there for various ceremonies -- they were about to go do one in conjuction with the Polish army. I, of course, asked if I could get on the bus and come along, and they, being Israelis, didn't find it such a strange request. The soldier I asked went to his commanding officer, a guy wearing a very snappy khakhi jacket, who in turn asked his commanding officer, a guy in a snappy charcoal jacket, who then asked the guy in charge of everything, who was some guy in street clothes with an impressive facial scar. He told me to take a taxi. Which I did.

The ceremony was at the memorial to the Polish uprising against the Germans, which was set in a large open square. The Israelis got there and started to mill about again -- a few people were actually doing something, but most were just hanging out. Then the Polish contingent came, about twenty soldiers, and as soon as they got off the bus they started marching in lockstep, marching in well-practiced formation into the square, flanking either side, their boots stomping in unison. The Israelis stared at them.

I guess the Israelis and the Poles hadn't coordinated very well. The Polish soldiers were expecting the Israelis to be as well-prepared as they were, which they weren't, so they ended up marching back to their bus while the Israelis got their act together. Which took about half an hour. Their commanding officer kept having to shush them. When he started calling for "sheket, bevakasha," it struck me that they looked more like kids at summer camp than soldiers in an army. Summer camp with guns.

Maybe it's just that the Israelis could give a shit about marching in formation, are more concerned about results than an impressions. Or maybe they just can't spare top soldiers for cermonies.

At any rate, they finally got into something resembling a formation, the Poles came marching back in, and the ceremony got under way. A wreath was laid, a speech was made, and the Israeli trumpeter played Hatikva again. And when she did, the entire unit sang along. Okay, it felt even more like summer camp, but it still gave me goose bumps. The Polish folk brought their own trumpet player, who played taps and the Polish anthem, a peppy little number but nothing to write home about.

And I have to say, not only did the Israeli trumpeter kick the Polish guy's tush -- she was pretty hot to boot.