So believe it or not jumping loop-holes through Israeli ministries and such is not the highlight of my day or of my time in Israel so far. There has been a good amount of socializing going on or what I like to call "the other stuff"...
- - The White City - -
For those that don't know, Tel Aviv is referred to as the "White City". What does this mean? Well it means that the city and people in the city don't go to sleep and stay awake all night. This brings me to my first story about the "White Night".
On Thursday July 3, there was a "White Night" in Tel Aviv. It was a night that was planned by the city and such that spanned from 9PM on 7/3 until 7 AM on 7/4. There were concerts going on all across the beaches, dances, art exhibitions, folk dancing, lessons, and other cultural things all over the city (not just the beach). There were a few really cool concerts scheduled for sunrise which sounded great as well. So I was out that night with a few Garin members and some other friends who met other friends and we became this group of 15 or so by the end of the night. We were at the beach for most of the night but we were talking to other friends who were in different parts of Tel Aviv and said it was awesomd and everyone was out.
For a country which gets much bad publicity in the news for the wrong reasons, it was really comforting and fun to see this awesome social, cultural night life going on where everyone was just happy to be there...
Side Note: The first time I heard this term "White Night" was when I was hearing about my cousin's basic training in the army. They had these "White Nights" in which they would go to sleep and be woken up 2 hours later in the middle of the night in order to do training drills all night long. Really sounds like something great that I am looking forward to in the army (please note the sarcasm).
- - My first Encounter with the Springs Obsession - -
It wasn't until this visit to Israel that I realized that there was this cultural obsession with water springs. I guess it makes sense that for a country in the middle of the middle east any encounter with water would be exciting but I was still surprised to learn about it.
I went to Jerusalem to meet up with my friend Shlomit who lives there and who was off from the army for the weekend (She's a paramedic in the army). I knew we were going hiking but wasn't too sure where. She told me we were going to a spring and I was like whatever sounds great.
So we drive and park and hike and walk and get to this little spring in the middle of this field and unload our stuff. Around us there are these make-shift benches and decorations and a bon-fire pit. It was weird to see all this considering we were in the middle of nowhere. But apparently as Shlomit explained to me, Israeli youths like to go to these springs all over the country and camp out (sometimes over night) and just chill and relax near them. When a new spring area is found the first people who go there bring decorations and garbage bags and clean up the area around it and make it nice so that others can enjoy it (pretty neat idea). The spring we were at was actually in memory of a soldier who died 2 years ago that his friends spruced up. There was a lock-box near the camp site with pictures of the solider and his friends. It was really cool. Shlomit came prepared with this little gas stove and coffee and tea and it was awesome.
After the spring we went back to her house and got showered and ate Shabbat dinner (Friday night) with her family who happens to be observant and keeps Shabbat. It's no secret that I'm pretty secular but even so, Shabbat in Jerusalem just really has this great feel to it. Hard to explain...
- - Garin Members - -
While I do have friends and family here, the people I've been hanging out with most are those that are in my Garin group. In total we are 32 and I'd say over half of us are here already. The first official day is August 14th at the Opening Ceremony but we have a solid group that likes each other already. From what I hear of other Garin groups of the past (and even this year) we really hit it off with each other and are more social pre-ceremony than othe groups. I guess it will only get better from here as the opening ceremony is only 20 days away now!
- - The Car - R.I.P - -
So for the past 17 years (Yes, 17!), my grandparents have had the same white Subaru Legacy which they barely used. The car only has 75, 000 KM on it which roughly translates to, 46,600 miles. That is about 2,741 miles a year. Clearly ridiculous right? So yea, the car was old but not used often, you get the point. Anyway, so every time I've been in Israel since I started driving (I'm 23 now and my birthday is 12/4/84 (I like checks and cash)), I've used this car to get around.
On Wednesday night (early Thursday) at 2:45 AM I was driving my friend back home after a night out in Tel Aviv. It was only about a 20 minute ride. We got off the highway at their exit and all of a sudden the car started smoking and just stalled in the middle of the exit. Now I'm not advocating speeding or anything but let's be honest, in the middle of the night when the road is empty people are speeding and zipping by us while we are just stalled in the middle of the exit. We get out to push the car to the side of the road (smoking from under the hood continues) and really have no idea what to do. These two police-0fficers came by to make sure we weren't sketchy and helped us. I guess the radiator was hot from some of the hills on the highway. Yada Yada Yada, we call a tow-truck who gives us a time estimate of "within 2 hours" (very helpful really) and we wait. The car gets towed but I can't go with it so I stay over my friends house and wait till the morning when I can catch a bus back home. Of course my friend has to live in the middle of nowhere so door to door it takes me 4 hours to get from their house to my grandparents house. I check in on the car, and the car is dead. Like really dead. That was the last kilometer he'd ever see. Poor Bastard... Even worse, now ilan has to take buses and taxis and such. My grandparents went to buy a new car today which is supposedly coming August 10th (stay tuned for updates on that).
- - A different kind of all-nighter - -
Back-tracking now to the night before the car died, we had a different kind of all-nighter. So throughout the summer this organization called Nefesh B' Nefesh is having these flights from America, Canada and England which are full of Olim (people moving to Israel). About 6 members of my garin (you should know what this means by now) were on a flight that left JFK in NY on July 21 (the flight I was originally on for those keeping track) and landed in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning (7:30 AM Israel time, 12:30 AM EST AKA Boston time).
So anyway, about 4 of us from my garin decided it would be a really fun idea to go and surprise them at the airport and welcome them. Because this was a full flight of olim (220 people), there was going to be a welcome ceremony at the airport starting at 7 AM. We decided it was a great idea but the only way it was going to happen was if we stayed up all night and went straight to the airport at 6 AM. So we did that except we didn't really plan well. We ran out of money at around midnight and were stuck on the beach in Tel Aviv with no money (and therefore not much to do). We bought a bottle of something and that lasted us a bit but we still had too much time to kill. We talked to random people but that also didn't go far. We finally found this piece of cardboard and somehow got a hold of a pen and made the most ghetto sign possible to hold up when we saw our friends at the airport. The story is better if you were there or I guess if you were one of the people coming off a 10 hour flight and saw us, but the point of the story is that I need to live it up before the army and this was just one of those things I had to do.
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And Next Time... A look at some of my political thoughts/ideas and how they tie in (if at all) with what I'm doing in Israel. Also, next time I'm going to answer the "7 questions" which are basically the 7 questions I get asked most often about what I am doing and why I am doing it. If you have a specific question just ask it in the comments section and I'll answer it in the next blog.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Welcome to the Holy-Land
A little over three weeks have passed since I left the comfort of the USA and headed to Israel to start a new part of my life. I'm not starting this new journey in life alone. I'm part of a group of 32 people who are returning from the States to Israel to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) just like me. We're ages 18 - 24 and about half male half female. The group is through the Israeli Scouts Movement and is called Garin Tzabar. My group is called a 'garin'. I figured that enough time has gone by that an update was in order so here it is, my first shot at writing a blog...
- - Officially Returning to Israel - -
In all honesty, I don't think it has quite hit me yet that this is for real. To some degree it still feels like a regular yearly vacation that I've been used to taking in Israel. Sometimes when I think about the people and places I've said goodbye to in the States it hits me that the next time I'd possibly be able to see them is probably sometime next May or June during one of the "special" vacations I get from the army as a "lonely soldier" (a soldier whose parents are not in Israel while they are serving in the army). Only then does it seem real.
- - Israeli Bureaucracy - -
As soon as I disembarked from the El Al airplane in Tel Aviv on June 25th, the lengthy process of dealing with Israeli bureaucracy began. Israeli government offices and institutions are notoriously known for being slow, drawn out, and known for their love of sending you in circles. My flight was filled with 50 other singles and families making Aliyah (moving to Israel). When we got off the airplane we were sent straight to the Ministry of Immigrant Affairs which has an office in the airport. Most of the 50 people got their first government subsidy and immigrant cards but since I was not technically a new immigrant I was given a phone number and instructions to call it. I called but the person on the other end of the phone didn't know why I was calling and gave me another phone number. After a few more rounds of this I had an appointment set with the Immigration Ministry in Tel Aviv. I was told that before I went for my appointment, I'd need a bank account. I went to the bank the next day and was told that before I could have a bank account I would need a national I.D. card. Before I got an I.D. card I would need a letter from the army. I figured the best bet would be to go to the army and ask for some sort of paper or note stating that I haven't been running away from my service since I was 18.
The army didn't necessarily agree with this assessment from the start and was wondering where I'd been for the past 5 years. I explained to them but they didn't really want anything to do with me. They said that my "file" was being overseen by the recruitment office in Tveria (in the North). I pretended like I didn't know where that was (since it was inconvenient for me and 2 hours away) and asked them to try and take care of this here in the Tel Aviv area. I was told to wait and as minutes turned into hours wasn't too sure what was going to happen. I called the Garin Tzabar office here in Israel and explained to them what was going on and they said they'd make a few calls and get back to me. They called back 10 minutes later and said that within the next 10 minutes I'd be all set. Surely enough 10 minutes later an army representative came out of the office and gave me the letter I had been seeking. Lesson from this: having connections in Israel doesn't hurt.
From there I was able to setup a bank account, get my national I.D. card and number and also my immigration papers setup including my subsidy of 1500 shekels a month for the first year. I also got a new cell phone (pretty sweet little Nokia device) and managed to setup health insurance (this was almost as frustrating as the army process and took over 2 weeks to setup). The last thing I'm waiting for now is to convert over my driver's license. In order to do this I need to take one driving lesson with a teacher, have an eye exam and physical, and pass a driving exam.
- - Timeline of What is to Come - -
Right now I am living with my grandparents in Givataym which is a suburb of Tel Aviv.
August 14th - Move to a Kibbutz in Northern Israel with my 'Garin' group (32 youths).
Mid-September - The process of becoming a soldier begins. This includes physical, psychological and intellectual tests which will determine much about my service in the IDF.
Early November - Draft date into the IDF. Basic Training begins and will last between 4 - 8 months (again depends on what I'll be doing in the end).
- - Prisoner Exchange with Lebanon - -
Probably the biggest piece of news to happen while I've been here has been the prisoner exchange with Lebanon which happened this past Wednesday 7/16. A good summary of the deal can be seen here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gGxpzWERVNq09cHSTuA2GNHHsB3QD91V6IV00
Around the country, there have been a lot of mixed feelings about this deal and what it means and such. For myself it is also difficult to exactly determine what emotion I am feeling. Not having done the exchange would have left questions as to what happened to the soldiers and would have been difficult on their families. I think the best way to look at it is the way the President of Israel did. He said "...if the heavens asked me to which people I would rather belong, the people in mourning over the deaths of two of its soldiers or the people rejoicing gin the return of a craven murderer whose mark of Cain can never be erased, then the answer is clear."
I would most certainly agree with him on this.
Coming up in the next few days...my social life in Israel and what else I've been up to when not running around the bureaucracy circles.
- - Officially Returning to Israel - -
In all honesty, I don't think it has quite hit me yet that this is for real. To some degree it still feels like a regular yearly vacation that I've been used to taking in Israel. Sometimes when I think about the people and places I've said goodbye to in the States it hits me that the next time I'd possibly be able to see them is probably sometime next May or June during one of the "special" vacations I get from the army as a "lonely soldier" (a soldier whose parents are not in Israel while they are serving in the army). Only then does it seem real.
- - Israeli Bureaucracy - -
As soon as I disembarked from the El Al airplane in Tel Aviv on June 25th, the lengthy process of dealing with Israeli bureaucracy began. Israeli government offices and institutions are notoriously known for being slow, drawn out, and known for their love of sending you in circles. My flight was filled with 50 other singles and families making Aliyah (moving to Israel). When we got off the airplane we were sent straight to the Ministry of Immigrant Affairs which has an office in the airport. Most of the 50 people got their first government subsidy and immigrant cards but since I was not technically a new immigrant I was given a phone number and instructions to call it. I called but the person on the other end of the phone didn't know why I was calling and gave me another phone number. After a few more rounds of this I had an appointment set with the Immigration Ministry in Tel Aviv. I was told that before I went for my appointment, I'd need a bank account. I went to the bank the next day and was told that before I could have a bank account I would need a national I.D. card. Before I got an I.D. card I would need a letter from the army. I figured the best bet would be to go to the army and ask for some sort of paper or note stating that I haven't been running away from my service since I was 18.
The army didn't necessarily agree with this assessment from the start and was wondering where I'd been for the past 5 years. I explained to them but they didn't really want anything to do with me. They said that my "file" was being overseen by the recruitment office in Tveria (in the North). I pretended like I didn't know where that was (since it was inconvenient for me and 2 hours away) and asked them to try and take care of this here in the Tel Aviv area. I was told to wait and as minutes turned into hours wasn't too sure what was going to happen. I called the Garin Tzabar office here in Israel and explained to them what was going on and they said they'd make a few calls and get back to me. They called back 10 minutes later and said that within the next 10 minutes I'd be all set. Surely enough 10 minutes later an army representative came out of the office and gave me the letter I had been seeking. Lesson from this: having connections in Israel doesn't hurt.
From there I was able to setup a bank account, get my national I.D. card and number and also my immigration papers setup including my subsidy of 1500 shekels a month for the first year. I also got a new cell phone (pretty sweet little Nokia device) and managed to setup health insurance (this was almost as frustrating as the army process and took over 2 weeks to setup). The last thing I'm waiting for now is to convert over my driver's license. In order to do this I need to take one driving lesson with a teacher, have an eye exam and physical, and pass a driving exam.
- - Timeline of What is to Come - -
Right now I am living with my grandparents in Givataym which is a suburb of Tel Aviv.
August 14th - Move to a Kibbutz in Northern Israel with my 'Garin' group (32 youths).
Mid-September - The process of becoming a soldier begins. This includes physical, psychological and intellectual tests which will determine much about my service in the IDF.
Early November - Draft date into the IDF. Basic Training begins and will last between 4 - 8 months (again depends on what I'll be doing in the end).
- - Prisoner Exchange with Lebanon - -
Probably the biggest piece of news to happen while I've been here has been the prisoner exchange with Lebanon which happened this past Wednesday 7/16. A good summary of the deal can be seen here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gGxpzWERVNq09cHSTuA2GNHHsB3QD91V6IV00
Around the country, there have been a lot of mixed feelings about this deal and what it means and such. For myself it is also difficult to exactly determine what emotion I am feeling. Not having done the exchange would have left questions as to what happened to the soldiers and would have been difficult on their families. I think the best way to look at it is the way the President of Israel did. He said "...if the heavens asked me to which people I would rather belong, the people in mourning over the deaths of two of its soldiers or the people rejoicing gin the return of a craven murderer whose mark of Cain can never be erased, then the answer is clear."
I would most certainly agree with him on this.
Coming up in the next few days...my social life in Israel and what else I've been up to when not running around the bureaucracy circles.
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