Becca Rosenthal

Becca Rosenthal

Oakland CA

Kibbutz Group

A Week in the Desert (POSTED FROM THE KIBBUTZ!!!!!)

Hey Everyone,

Last time I checked in with you all, I was preparing to leave Jerusalem, something that I never thought would actually happen. We spent a week in the south of Israel, and that is what I am going to talk about now.

On Thursday (a week from today), we woke up at the crack of dawn, prayed, and headed off to the area around Ein Gedi

(a beautiful spring next to the Dead Sea) and did a hike down there. The hike was uneventful, but pretty anyways. From there, we drove over to a Bedouin tent where the group spent the night.  It started off with us taking a camel ride. Though I thought it was quite fun, the boys among us did not stop complaining for the most part since apparently it was not very comfortable for them. My partner and I named our rebelious camel ‘Uncle Buck’ since he was constantly trying to buck us off his back. It was terrifying, but quite amusing. After our camel ride, we had a delicious dinner, a fun bonfire, and then we went to sleep. The highlight of my night was the walk a friend and I took out of the tent area and down the road a ways in order to look at the beautiful stars. It was a cloudless and clear night, and as we were lying on the desert ground, we saw a comet that appeared to move in slow motion across the sky. It was AMAZING!

The next morning, we woke up, had breakfast, and got ready for another hike. I don't remember what it was called, but it was a really pretty hike somewhere in the desert in the south.  It involved a lot of climbing over rocks and there were a few places with ropes and ladders, so it was really fun. After the hike, we went to Kibbutz Ketora in the beautiful Arava valley. People assume that everything in the south of Israel is a part of the Negev desert, but the Arava valley is actually the desert that is parallel to the negev desert. The kibbutz is incredibly close to the borders of both Egypt and Jordan.I'll take this time to mention that despite the events going on in Egypt right now, life in Israel has continued normally as though nothing is going on. When we got there, it was roughly an hour before Shabbat began, so we had a mad scramble to get showered, dressed, and out the door. To say the least, getting four girls showered and dressed up in an hour is a virtually impossible task. We (mostly) succeeded though, and after a tour of the kibbutz, services, and a really good dinner, I went to bed, completely exhausted.

The next morning, we packed up and left Ketora en route to a beautiful hike in the Eilat mountains. Though I could say that it looked like every other hike in the desert, realistically, it was a little bit different. Instead of the mountains being primarily limestone, the mountains were mostly granite, so the color was a bit darker. The hike provided us with a view overlooking the city of Eilat, the Red Sea, the Jordanian City of Akoba (with its MASSIVE Jordanian flag blowing in the breeze), part of the Egyptian Sinai Desert and a lot of haze that blocked the view of Saudi Arabia.

The next morning at the crack of dawn, I woke up to hike Har Shlomo, a mountain in the Eilat Mountains that was to be the most difficult hike of Southern Tiyul. As we hiked up the peaks of the mountains playing every trail game you can imagine (Geography, Ghost, Contact, and more), we felt as though we were in the Lord of teh Rings movies hiking up Mount Doom. Eventually, though, we did reach the top of the mountain. The view was out of control all the way up the mountain and from the top.

All of the kibutzniks who did the hard hike of the day.

After a delicious post-hike-lunch, we got ready to go to the beach in Eilat where Nativ had set up for us to enjoy some water sports in the Red Sea: tubing, paddle boating, kayaking and Banana Boating. While it was by no means a beautiful day for water sports as it was foggy and cold, we had a total blast playing in the very salty warm water. We then had dinner back at the hotel and a free night in Eilat.

What made this night significant was that it was our last night together as a 92 person program (or at least last one for a long time) as the next day we were splitting up into our three groups. It was a very fun night. It started off with a friend and I getting ear piercings (because we had been talking about it for a long time), and ended with me and two of my best friends standing in the wake on the shore with our feet in the sea talking about life. It was a great way to both end the tiyul and end our time all together.

Wednesday morning was weird. We packed up and gathered in the lobby as a group of 92. While we all knew that eventually we would be splitting up and that eventually we would be volenteering in really cool other places, very few of us actually internalized that this would all mean leaving some of our closest friends behind in other places. It was a very intense and huggy half hour as we all said our "See you later" goodbyes, and then we were all on three seperate busses.

My bus landed about 3 hours later at Kibbutz Ein Tzurim, the place that I will be calling home for the next four months.

Shabbat Shalom,

Becca

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2010

A Sick Thanksgiving and an Incredible Museum

Hey Everybody,

Before I start talking about other events, I'm just going to mention what this time of year is like in Israel. It's the last day of November and it's currently about 75 degrees outside. While I'm enjoying the sunshine,

this constitutes a disaster for Israel, a country in the desert that is supposedly two months into its rainy/snowy season. Because of the weather, the chief rabbi in Israel declared yesterday a fast day in order to pray for rain. Though I didn't fast, I found the whole idea pretty entertaining. It is a classic "only in Israel" kind of situation. Furthermore, while in the United States, this time of year is the beginning to Christmas carols on the radio, Christmas lights everywhere, Merry Christmas themed everything and the ultimate feeling of not-belonging for anyone who doesn't celebrate Christmas. In Israel it's a little bit different. Street lights have Chanukiah shaped lights hanging off of them, and at night, the streets are lit up partially by them. On street corners and various roads all over, large chanukiot are sitting just waiting for tomorrow night to come to start the holiday. They don't blast Chanukah songs in the street, but to say the least, it feels like the Holiday season.

Now I'll talk about me.

Tuesday night, the girls of the Kibbutz group had an activity where we went to a gym to do Zumba with women from all over Jerusalem. I have seen few things in my life as entertaining as roughly 200 women ranging from ages 12 - 50 doing Latin dance moves in a gymnasium.

Wednesday was an anticlimactic day on almost every level in a way that I really enjoyed, but about half way through the day I realized that I was sick and would need to go to the doctor on Thanksgiving morning. Thursday morning, I woke up to go to the doctor expecting him to tell me to rest for a few hours and wave a magic wand to make it easy for me to breathe. Instead, he told me that I had incredibly contagious strep throat and gave me a prescription for antibiotics.

Nativ made a big deal out of Thanksgiving. On Thursday afternoon, a large group of people played football. I sat in my bed. On Thursday evening, roughly 150 alumni showed up to enjoy a night of videos, (semi-good) food, and fun. I sat in bed. After dinner, a large group of people spent nearly 4 hours watching every Friends Thanksgiving episode, and I slept. It was a BIG buzz kill.

I planned to go to Hoda Sh'aron with a friend this weekend to stay with her cousin, but because I was sick, I decided that it would be better to stay in Jerusalem. I expected to get better a lot faster than I did, so I wound up sick in bed on Friday night and much of Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon, however, I decided I was feeling good enough to enjoy a shabbat afternoon of board games and funny conversations with the people who were in Jerusalem.

After school on Sunday, a friend and I went to the Old City and wandered around for a while, having a good time walking through areas of the city that are not the most tourist friendly. The most interesting thing we saw were bottles of hair dye with the models' faces scratched out. My friend and I assumed that it had something to do with either lack of modesty or anti-western sentiment.

On Monday, my Holocaust class took a field trip to Ya'd v'Shem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. The museum itself is fascinating, and if you haven't yet been, I recommend STRONGLY that you go the next time you are in Israel. It focuses on the victims and attempts to put a face on the traumatic story that tends to be boiled down just to numbers. We also had a chance to hear from a survivor who spent the war hiding in homes of non-Jews in Holland. She was among the most upbeat 87-year-old women I've ever seen, and as wrong as it sounds, we all thoroughly enjoyed hearing her story.

After winning our football game Monday night (with a whopping score of 7-6), I came back to base and joined about 25 people in the room next door to mine in order to throw a surprise 18th birthday party for one of the girls in that room. It was a lot of fun, but it meant that I spent all of today exhausted. My roommates birthday is tomorrow, so I don't imagine I'll be getting much more sleep tonight.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2010

I SAW HARRY POTTER BEFORE YOU!

Hi Everybody,

Last time I posted, I had just returned from a failed attempt at buying Harry Potter tickets, assuming that in order to go to the first showing of the 7th movie, I would need to get my ticket in advanced.

I was wrong. My friends and I showed up about 20 minutes before the door to the theater opened. We were within the first 15 people there. All of us were completely shocked that there wasn't hysteria. When the doors opened, we all shuffled into the theater and bought our tickets.

Here are a few fun facts about the movie-goer experience in Israel

1) There are no random previews and video clips promoting upcoming movies before the actual previews and the movie begins.

2) Movie theaters have assigned seating. The sooner you show up, the better seats you get. If you want to sit with your friends, you have to buy the tickets together.

3) There is a intermission/smoking break in the middle of the movie.

4) HARRY POTTER DOESN'T SELL OUT IN ITS OPENING SHOW! There were over 40 unsold seats for this showing. I realize that it was 2:00 in the afternoon, but Harry Potter should make everyone leave work early and create a national vacation. I guess not here.

My weekend was very uneventful yet very nice. On Friday, I slept in til about noon or one, and planned to go to Shabbat services and get hosted out for dinner with a few friends. However, I took a 4 hour nap instead and nobody woke me up to go. After dinner on base, I played games of Jungle Speed and Settlers of Catan and went to bed.

The next morning, a few friends and I went to Shira Chadashah since we heard that a bat mitzvah was going on and we wanted to see how good the kiddush would be. Though the service was long and we were forced to feel the force of large amounts of prepubescent middle school kids, we found the experience to be worthwhile when we saw SUSHI at the kiddush. I also found the experience worthwhile since I ran into my tour guide from the Poland trip I went on 2 summers ago. He asked me why I hadn't yet joined him and his family for a Shabbat and I told him that I would figure out a time that works and get back to him. I'm SO excited for it.

On Sunday, my Modern Middle East class was canceled, so I got to remember what a lazy sunday feels like (with the exception of the fact that I had a paper to write). I woke up at around 9:30, did some work, helped other people with their papers, and did some more work. At about two, a friend and I went to the shuk (think of a bazaar) to get lunch. We had lunch consisting of samples from nearly 5 different bakeries and various nuts and dried fruits. The best part of the meal (and the only part that we chose to pay for) was the INCREDIBLE baklava that someone was selling. It was truly out of this world. By the way, I notice that I'm sitting here getting really excited about food, and I think it comes down to the fact that I miss the amazing variety of cuisines available to me in the Bay Area so I choose to focus on little things that are good but still pale in comparison.

Sunday night was spent playing music at Nativ's first official Jam Session (organized by the assistant director of the program who is a very good bass player, guitarist, and rapper (who would guess?). It was nice to play music with large groups of people and get the experience of vibing off of other people.

Yesterday was a long day, but a lot of fun. After a full day of school, we had a football game. We literally sprinted from base to the field about a mile and a half away. Having said that, it was quite worthwhile as we completely killed the "Little Giants" by a score of roughly 38-0. Some of us felt sort of bad since they couldn't have been more than 14 years old, but we needed the morale booster.

Today, I went to school and then to the Hadaya store in the old city to order myself and my sister Hanukah presents (Emma, if you're reading this, get excited). The most interesting moment occurred when my friend and I were attempting to buy a pastry from one of the stands around the Old City and I was asked if I was searching for a rich husband. It was a funny (though VERY creepy) culture shock moment.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Hey Look! A Political Protest Outside My Window!

Hey Everybody,

Monday, during my hebrew class, my teacher mentioned that there would be a rally that night at Hebrew U becuase of a law passed by the Israeli government giving more money to the Chareidi (ultra ultra-orthodox Israelis) for their Yeshivas (religious schools). The students studying in the universities were arguing that the people who only study religious subjects, don't go to the army, and don't pay taxes shouldn't be paid to go to school while students that study in secular universities have to pay for school, serve in the army, etc. Then I heard that the rally was actually happening outside of the Prime Minister's house. AKA, the rally was happening on the street outside my window.

On Wednesday night, I had an opportunity to go to a workshop taught by Yehuda Katz, a very famous musician in Israel who was the guy on stage during the Carlebach concert. He was your typical hippie spiritual orthodox Jew wielding a beautiful Taylor acoustic guitar as his weapon. After 45 minutes of us introducing ourselves and telling him why we were in Israel (and him asking us brutally hard questions to make us really think about our answers), he played us a song. It was beautiful, but it was nothing compared to what we did in the next activity.

He wrote a passage from the bible on the board, and told us that we would be writing lyrics to interpret this verse. I was like a kid in the candy store. While some kids chose to write in Hebrew and some chose to write in groups, I chose to write by myself. At the end, we all presented our songs, and I was very proud to present a song that I had written in 10 minutes that was legitimately heartfelt. It was the most unique songwriting experience I've ever had, but I very much enjoyed it.

He asked us for our lyrics sheets so he could look at them and thanked us for coming, but a few of us stayed afterward to ask him some questions. After giving us wise answers to all of them, he gave us his phone number and email address and told us to contact him for anything. He then told me that he'd be more than willing to host us for Shabbat dinners, study with us or play music with us. It was a truly magical experience.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

I Survived My First Week of College!

Hey Everybody,

After posting on Sunday, I headed off to the bus stop to take a bus to Hebrew U. I had only one class on Sunday, and it was pretty uneventful. The interesting parts of the day at Hebrew U really had nothing to do with class. As soon as I stepped off the bus and through the security gate, I was handed a flower and a piece of paper with a nice note to the students of Hebrew U welcoming me to a new school year. It was in Hebrew. Needless to say,

I had no idea what it was talking about. It was a nice gesture though. As my friends and I headed out of the main bus building, we walked along the same paths leading up to the International School that we had been walking for the entire previous month, but it was by no means the same place. It was filled with students walking, talking, hanging out, listening to the live broadcast of the Hebrew U radio show, playing music. It looked like a day at a normal college. Until I heard a familiar chorus of a song: "Find me somebody to love, find me somebody to love, find me somebody to love..." over and over again. I looked in front of me, and I see a massive crowd of students standing in front of a building holding balloons and I <3 HU signs singing that part of the song "Somebody to Love" by Queen. I then looked at the door of the building and saw a guy with a camera. I was so confused until I saw this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPo-6kxgiDk&feature=player_embedded

I was there when they filmed it. Welcome to college

.

My class on the Modern Middle East was very interesting in terms of subject material, but the lecturer was really bad. I ultimately decided that I was going to stick it out anyways.

On Monday, I fought my way into a class called "A Post Modern Reading of Modern Jewish Texts" which has the most incredible professor I've ever had the honor of learning from. He is the kind of guy who teaches you something that causes you to make all of these seemingly logical and brilliant connections and then explains to you why those conclusions are actually the most problematic thoughts in the world. I love it! After that, I had a holocaust class from another completely brilliant lecturer. He understands that we've all studied the holocaust before, so he doesn't spend time on things that we all have known forever. Instead, he looks at the war through all of these different lenses. It's been 2 days and I'm already obsessed. My only other class is Hebrew, and that seems to be the right level for me this time (thank god).

On Monday night, the Nativ Girls football team had its first practice. It was awesome to see about 20 girls from my program show up to play football on Monday and Thursday nights in a league in Jerusalem. After winning one of two quarterback spots, I headed back home knowing that it was going to be a really fun season.

The last few days have been very uneventful, as they have been filled with classes and homework for the most part, but I can say a few things about it in reflection

.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2010

Yom Kippur: WOW!

Hey All,

For those of you who haven't had the experience of spending a Yom Kippur in Israel, I highly recommend it. It is an experience like nothing else I've ever experienced. Never before had I seen an entire nation shut down; never before have I sat down in the middle of a busy intersection with over 100 people and sang songs AND not received strange looks from people passing by; never before had I felt completely comfortable walking up to total strangers asking for things; never before had I felt so weird seeing a car drive by.

These are only a few things that made this Yom Kippur special. I'll start from the beginning in order to tell you about the magic of the day. This post is long, but I'll tell you that the most amazing part of the day was the very end, so I recommend reading through it.

For Kol Nidre (the service the night before Yom Kippur), I went to the Great Synagogue that is less than a block away from beit Nativ. It is the shul where all the big-wigs go. They have a 20 man choir that leads the service along with the cantor. Although it felt like they were performing and we were mere concert-goers, listening to them chanting the haunting melody of Kol Nidre was an incredible experience. The shul itself is massive, and though the women's section is significantly smaller than the men's section, it still holds hundreds of people. I estimated 500 for the women's section, my roommate estimated 1000 - choose whom you want to trust.

After roughly 2 and a half hours, my small group of girls left the service (it still wasn't done) and headed outside. There, we found a group of Nativers sitting in a circle singing. We joined them, and for roughly the next hour or so, a large group of us sat down and sang every song that related to the High Holidays, Shabbat or Jewish summer camp that we could remember. Some people walking by joined in, others looked and kept walking, but everyone gained something by seeing the big group. The highlight of my night came when a man walked up to me after being handed a songsheet that Nativers use for Friday Night song sessions and told me that he made the packet as a staff member on Nativ 26 (this year is Nativ 30). After I left the song session, a friend and I had a nice walk around areas where we normally hang out at night--but they were all deserted. The area that is normally filled with hookah's and sloppy drunks had no people. Instead, it was filled with cats hissing and fighting loudly. Ben Yehuda street, which is normally filled with random people playing music for money was silent. The only cars that were seen anywhere were police and ambulances which drove by roughly every 20-30 minutes. Last night, I fell asleep to the sound of silence instead of sirens. It was just like Oakland.

During the day, I went to a total of five different shuls plus the Cotel. For Shacharit, I went to a small conservative minyan called Kedem with very sing-songy melodies and a very communal vibe. I ran into one person who I was on staff with at Ramah for the past two years and a woman who staffed my Israel trip two summers ago. It's a small world, for sure.

After that service and a nap, a group of us decided we would go to the Chorba in the Old City of Jerusalem for Mincha and for the Cotel (Western Wall) for Neilah (the conclusion of the fast). For those of you who don't now what the Chorba is, I'll give you a very brief overview (though I'm not sure exactly how correct I am, so don't take me too seriously). Construction on it began over 500 years ago, and it was destroyed and rebuilt many times. Most recently, it was destroyed in 1948 and rebuilt and completed only 4 months ago. I would have loved to say that praying there was a great experience, but alas, it wasn't. While the men prayed in this beautiful building made of old Jerusalem Stone with nice paintings on the walls, my female friends and I were blessed with a lovely tent that was built outside next to the windows to allow us to hear what was going on (sort of). Having said that, there was a bed sheet covering the windows to make sure we couldn't be seen. It was pretty clear we weren't wanted, but we stayed there for all of Mincha anyways.

For Neila, a friend and I went shul hopping in the old city of Jerusalem. We started off wandering, hoping we'd find something with a good womens section. An old woman asked us where we were trying to get to, and when we told her we were lost, she told us to go to her shul with her. When we finally got there, we noticed that the women were in the same building as the men, but none of them were engaged in what was going on, not to mention that we couldn't even see the men and the leaders of the service...thus we left.

THIS IS THE BEST PART OF THIS ENTRY.

I can't say that the entire service was surreal, but there were a few moments fro, being at the Cotel that really stood out to me. In order for you to understand the significance, I need to tell you a bit about exactly what the Cotel is and how it works. The Cotel is a very old wall that was part of the Western segment of the wall surrounding the 2nd Temple 2000 years ago. When the temple was destroyed, the cotel was the closest thing standing to the former location of the Holy of Holys (the place where only the High Priests could go in the Temple). It is currently run by a very Orthodox authority, and there is a dividing wall separating the plaza in front of it (splitting the men and the women), and the women never sing loudly (as they will just face death glares from other women).

It is difficult for me to explain the feeling of having my hands and head on this ancient wall when I heard the shofar blasting signifying the end of the holiday, but I'll try to do so by explaining what other incredible things happened in the few minutes prior to that moment. While the men were chanting Avinu Malkeinu (sorry non-Jews, I'm not explaining), the women were not standing silently. Instead, a large group of women from every age group, every country, and every denomination of Judaism was singing loudly WITH the men. I was harmonizing with them and not getting glared at. Instead, I was facing smiles. It was a truly beautiful moment to see men and women at the Cotel together united in anything, but especially something spiritual. I will truly never forget this moment.

I hope that for those who read this, you got some motivation to try to get to Jerusalem for at least one Yom Kippur in your life. It is an experience that I will never forget.

Becca

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2010

Nativ 30: The Journey Begins

It's weird to be writing this entry, because it's my first entry written from Israel. Though I've only been here for a few days, I feel as though I am completely at home (even though half of my belongings aren't yet unpacked. I am living at Beit Nativ at the Center for Conservative Judaism on Agron and King George in Jerusalem. A guy named Benjamin Netanyahu (if you don't know, he's the Prime Minister of Israel) lives across the street and Gilad Shalit's parents are camped out in a tent about a block down from the center. There is a constant chorus of car horns as we live at a busy intersection and Israeli drivers don't know what patience is. The building is beautiful. Like most other places in Jerusalem, it is made primarily out of Jerusalem stone, which is the same stone as the Old City was built with (google it if you don't know what that looks like). I'm loving it.

We haven't done much yet on the program. The first full day, we had some orientation and then took a walking tour around our neighborhood. We're about a 5 minute walk from Ben Yehuda street, which is a fun shopping area filled with both tourist stores and bars (among other things), and there are 2 big parks within a 3 block radius of us. That night, the 30 members of the kibbutz group went to a BBQ in Independence Park where we hung out playing frisbee, music, and having some good old fashion bonding time. That night, a large group of us enjoyed the perks of being in a country with a drinking age of 18 and hit the bars (safely...don't worry). It was an interesting experience to be an american in an israeli area, since the large group of us practically had the words "WE ARE TOURISTS" written in large letters across our foreheads.

Today, after having a doctor's appointment for the lovely pink eye (thanks Dr. B), I went to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to have my orientation for the minimester that I'll be taking before real classes begin in mid October. I won't burden you with telling everything we did since it was rather dull, but I will talk about my favorite part - our walk through the botanical garden. This garden is known for having every plant that grows naturally in Israel in teh garden at some place. I find it cool that so much history is contained in the greenery.

Tonight, the group is going to the Israel vs Malta soccer (I mean football) game as the Israeli national team begins the quest to qualify for the European cup.

That's it for now, and I'll check in soon.

Becca