Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Jerusalem and Rockets & Sirens

It's been a busy last week, since we started most of our placements. Last Thursday, we went to Jerusalem, starting at Mount Herzl to see the memorial for Ethiopian Jews who died on the way to Israel. The memorial is in a weird place and you have to walk through a gate to get there, but you can't get back through the gate, so we walked through the woods to get back on the path. We don't know if that was an intentional part of the visit or not. I'm not convinced it is. The memorial had stone dojos (traditional Ethiopian houses) and written testimonies of some individuals' experiences. I read a prayer and a short poem I found online and then we had a short discussion about what we thought. I liked that we saw a part of Mount Herzl that we hadn't seen on Birthright. Apparently, many Israelis don't even know that it is there (and it was only completed a few years ago to commemorate those who died on the trek in 1984). So, it was pretty cool to see it.

We then met up with a tour guide to hear more about Ethiopian Christians in Israel. It was an educational day! We toured the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and learned about the struggle over the claim to the roof between the Coptic Christians and the Ethiopian Christians. After eating the best hummus in the old city (I'm not even kidding - it's across from one of the stops of the Via Dolorosa trail), we walked through the Arab market to the Ethiopian Church. Unfortunately, it was closed, but we still got to see the outside. The tour guide left us then and we went to meet Kasa, an Ethiopian Jewish activist who lives and works in Jerusalem. She told her amazing story and we were able to ask questions.

I stayed in Jerusalem for Shabbat and had a lovely time with my Hebrew teacher from Jewel and her family. I also met another girl who is living in Jerusalem. So good to meet new, cool people! Then, it was back to the grind Saturday night - back on the bus, that is. The transition from Shabbat to the rest of the week I think is much harder when you keep Shabbat. All of sudden, you are thrown back into life of technology and transportation and it absolutely breaks away from that calm and quiet you have during Shabbat. I don't keep every Shabbat, but when I do, it's always new and I always learn something about other people, myself, and the world in which we live.

Monday night, we went back to Jerusalem for the MASA opening event, which included one hour of MASA promotion and then the Idan Raichel Project came on. The beginning was ridiculous and over the top. But the Idan Raichel Project was so amazing. I wish we could have stayed longer, but alas, we had to get back to Gedera. I'm hoping to get some of his music because it was really great!

On Tuesday, we had ulpan as usual. In the middle of the class, after break, the siren starts going off. We all stop and wonder what we need to do. Thankfully it was just a drill, and apparently the other ulpan teacher knew about it. Our program coordinator came in and confirmed that it is just a drill, no need to worry, and we will have a discussion about it later. Our ulpan teacher didn't seem too fazed by it, and we briefly had a discussion about better to have rockets than natural disasters which you can't get away from, really. I thought about the tornado sirens at home and how scared I always am when I hear those sirens. The sirens sound the same here, and everyone knows what to do when they go off. In the States, I always had a plan for what to do in case of a tornado. While you can't really escape either, the point the ulpan teacher made about better have rockets than natural disasters really made me think. Is it better? I don't know. It's just a different threat. I'm sure an Israeli in St. Louis during tornado season would be terrified (although probably not because Israelis seem to know what to do in case of an emergency). Regardless, while the chance of rockets coming to Gedera are very, very slim, it is good to know exactly what to do when sirens go off, and we had a discussion after ulpan to remind us. (Don't worry, Mom and Dad! Everything is good here!) Just another part of life in Israel.

By the way, I'm working on uploading photos from my trip thus far. Please be patient and I'll post the link when I have them all online! Have a good rest of your week and Happy Halloween for those celebrating it!

Monday, October 22, 2012

בית ספר ומשרד

Last week, we started our major placements in the community. One of the places I will be volunteering at is the Pines school (pronounced like penis or pea-nes). I feel that there are so many differences between the schools here and the ones in the US. The biggest difference which I feel I'm going to have a problem with is classroom management and discipline The classroom is chaotic. Pure chaos. And it doesn't seem to me that the students really listen to authority. When the teacher asks them to be quiet or sit down or do a certain exercise, there is a constant struggle. It seems like there is a lot of threatening of repercussions but there is no punishment that will make a difference. The teacher tries to give positive reinforcement but it doesn't seem to be enough. Stickers or small candies are not enough to make students want to behave. I think it is just part of the culture. All the classrooms seem to be the same. At the least the few that I have seen. I will need to start bringing games that will hopefully catch the kids' attention more. It was so hard. I'm comparing this experience to when I worked in the first grade class in Atlanta for a few months. In the US, there is respect for authority. The students call the teachers by their last name and when you are misbehaving, there are consequences that matter. Also, the students want to please the teacher. There is order. Kids are not all over the place. They don't all crowd around the teacher and yell to get their way repeatedly. I feel it is going to be a challenging year but I hope I can help with English (and as my Hebrew gets better, it will be easier).

I also started working in the חברים בתבה (Friends by Nature) office. This is the nonprofit that facilitates the projects in seven Ethiopian communities throughout Israel. I will be working on a project to help Ethiopian Israelis prepare for the application for the shluchim program. This is a Jewish Agency program that brings Israelis to work at Jewish summer camps. Ethiopian Israelis are disadvantaged in the application process and we are trying to prepare those individuals who are interested in participating in the program in preparing for the intensive interview process. The application deadline is in the next few months so we don't have much time to pull everything together.

I haven't begun my shabab, where I will be tutoring English in the home, and I haven't started another English teaching group where I will get the opportunity to teach older men and women (25-50 years) whose Hebrew is more advanced but the learning will all be oral. While it will be challenging, I think it will be really rewarding for all involved.

This weekend I am going to Jerusalem. We are having a one day seminar on Thursday about Ethiopians in Jerusalem and then a few of us are staying Thursday night at a hostel (that's the plan anyway) and I will be spending Shabbat with my Hebrew teacher from Jewel and her husband.

שבוע טוב!

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Neighborhoods and community

I have lived in a few different types of communities. I grew up in a suburb, went to college in a semi-rural area with fewer than 18000 people, lived in the mountains for a few summers on a camp, studied abroad in a city on a harbor with about 394,000 people, spent a year in St. Louis in the city, and I'm now living in Israel in a town with fewer than 20,000 people. While it is not rural like Carlisle, it is not a city like St. Louis. All these places have had different vibes and perhaps different definitions of community.

In the neighborhood where I grew up, it was quiet. People knew each other, maybe not everyone on the street or in the neighborhood, but we were close with people who may have lived a few doors down and we checked in on own neighbors who were older adults. Kids could play in the street, well some of the streets and I remember riding bikes in the neighborhood with friends without parental supervision a few times. Our suburb was definitely a community and worked to become an independent city by 2005.

College was different from this, obviously, and it could be louder into the night because of parties or people up and about late into the night. There were pockets of friends and you sometimes lived with your friends and sometimes not. In the dorms, we may have regarded each other at times and not at others. We didn't get to choose where we lived or who we lived with until we were upperclass, but it still worked. We were Dickinsonians and if we run into others who went to school there, even if they were in a different year, we are all members of the community of Dickinson alumni.

Last year, living in a city for the first time, I got used to noises from the street, and I remember being woken up by a domestic dispute one morning in winter when it appeared someone was kicking another person out of their house. My apartment building for the first 6 months there was filled with half young people in their 20s and half over 40. I didn't know my neighbors. For the next 6 months I lived in a building filled with mainly young professionals and graduate students, and again I didn't know my neighbors. While the neighborhood was quiet sometime, it was clear that I was in a city and there were times of day I wouldn't go out by myself and places nearby that I wouldn't go alone. I was involved with a nonprofit and a community of Jewish young adults who lived in different areas throughout the city and worked or studied different things. Being Jewish, we had a connection that brought us together.

The neighborhood I am living in now is different yet again from all my previous experiences. It is often loud, mostly with the sound of children. Sometimes it is playful, but I hear a fair share of crying children and yelling between adults. Most mornings I am woken to the sound of a particular child who is always crying. Children hang out in the streets in large numbers with one or two adults and stay out even when it is dark. The Shapira neighbors where I live in Gedera seems to be small, but welcoming.

At a barbecue the other night, we had a discussion about what makes a community a place where we want to live, and many of the answers had to do with knowing your neighbors, feeling safe, good facilities and schools, and a general sense of belonging in the community. Every place I've lived has been different but I have been able to fit in somehow. While many the above observations are concerned with the physical surroundings, and Gedera definitely is different than anywhere else I have lived, I think that the feeling of belonging is important and as we get more involved in the community, I hope that I can feel like more of a member of the community rather than an outsider Just before sukkot, we talked about temporary living, like the Jews wandering the desert for 40 years. This is my home for the next 9 months and while I am only here for a short time, it is important to me to feel like a member of the community, both within our house of Yahelnikim (the Yahel participants) and in the Gedera community. The group of Yahelnikim go together because we all have an interest in social change and what we are doing here, but we also are a group a strangers getting to know each other and live harmoniously in a house for the next 9 months - like the Real World but actually unscripted and hopefully without the drama.