This is a subject that is somewhat difficult for me to discuss for a number of reasons. It is much harder than coming out. When you are gay (or bi in my case… in case there was anyone left who wasn’t aware of this fact about me, there you go. I mean, since we’re being honest here) it is something that can be presented at least as just who you are, an essential part of you, and you can ignore anyone who tries to make you justify it. Sexual orientation is not something that, in most of modern society (at least in the contexts in which I usually find myself), one must justify.

Religious observance is.

I didn’t start to put on tefillin until I got here. I didn’t because I was scared. I was scared of people seeing me take on a new observance, even though it is perfectly normative for women to do so within The Conservative Movement. The even scarier step was beginning to wear a tallit katan.

Last night I was over at my friends Juan and Abby’s for dinner. I mentioned them yesterday… I met them at Kedem on Shabbat. They are both rabbinical students at JTS and are wonderful people and I think very good friends for me to have. Abby wears a tallit katan with her tzitziot hanging out. I wear mine tucked in for now. She asked me why I started to wear a tallit katan, and I had to tell her that I decided years ago that it was something that I should do, and that I was always too scared to do so till now.

Years. I have been holding off on this practice because of my fear for years.

At Hillel’s place on shabbat at one point I got up to go to the bathroom. Hillel handed me a box of tissues and told me “Oh, you’ll need this. The paper in there isn’t cut.” This is in reference to the fact that one is not supposed to tear paper on shabbat, so frum Jews will either use facial tissues or pre-cut the toilet paper before shabbat. In my family, we don’t worry about this. In my family, we don’t worry about a lot of things. But… this is a little difficult to explain… I was sincerely touched by the gesture, though I’m sure he didn’t think it especially significant. I was touched my friend was making it easy for me to be observant. I have had so little of this in my life, where every observance is a fight and a struggle and a source of… I’ll just come out and say it… of shame. Telling an old friend that I wear tzitziot makes my face go hot. When I daven in my room here in the apartment I am gripped with fear that the man with whom I am staying (who has known me since earliest childhood) will knock on my door… because I will have to either say “Not now please” which is rude, or interrupt my tefillah and open the door and have him see me in my tallis and tefillin… which is a terrifying prospect to me.

All this is made somewhat more complicated because I am a woman and the most visible observances I am trying to take on are traditionally those of men. Most Orthodox Jews believe that women are exempt (and therefore implicitly forbidden) from wearing tzitziot and tefillin and from praying three times a day (something that I am working myself up to). No one is, strictly speaking, required to cover their head, but most Orthodox men take the custom as law because it is so prevalent. Women are not considered obligated in this unless they are married and then they are expected to cover their hair. I cover my head much in the manner that men do (though sometimes I will wear a scarf which makes me look married) and for the reasons that men do (to be reminded of “what is above us” and to remember observance) and many look upon this disapprovingly as a matter of בגד איש (beged ish) or a woman wearing the clothing of a man, which is not permitted. (I don’t have a problem with בגד איש. I do not think that there necessarily is even such a thing as בגד איש. We can talk about matters of fluid gender another time.)

Were I a man taking on these observances, folks on the street wouldn’t look twice. And that is, in fact, part of why I feel that I should take on these observances. If someone were to ask me why I wear tzitziot, the first think I wonder is “if I were a man, would you ask me the same question?” It is of course important to be able to explain why you do these things, but if the only question is why I, a woman, would do such a thing… well then it is time to assert my egalitarianism, isn’t it?

I think that I will continue this line of thought later.

This past shabbat was filled with even more awesome than the last. First of all I had dinner at Lisa and Alans. The Magills and their magildren were there and I got to talk to Danny a bit about stuff which is always really nice. I was wearing my purple scarf on my head (cause I felt like not wearing a kippah) and Alan said to me “You know Gella… you’re looking very traditional. Very (small c) conservative. Except you’re wearing pants. It kind of throws the whole thing off.” There was a pause. I thought about this for a minute. Then I started giggling. “What? What’s funny”

I hesitated.

“You only think I look conservative because I have my tzitzits tucked in.”

Much laughter. More on this subject in the next post.

Dinner was lovely, and there was, of course, scotch to follow. Funnily enough, it was Danny’s scotch. See, Lisa and Alan’s friend Adam was there, and he had brought a flask of scotch. Danny’s response? “Oh, I have some nice scotch with me. Lets open that up.”

Danny Magill, ladies and gentlemen. It was an 18 year old Glenfiddich. Very nice.

In the morning I went to Kehillat Kedem, a progressive egalitarian minyan that also meets at a school, and consists largely of American students, many of whom were folks I’d met in the Beit Midrash. Some were from CY, some from Pardes. Again, everything was conducted in Hebrew. This time around I did bring my Sim Shalom and my tallit. Turns out they use Sim Shalom there. I went to Kedem because Hillel invited me for lunch and told me that it was where he was going, so I decided it was worth checking out. The first guy to daven was someone I’d seen in the beit midrash. He had an interesting style of davening/reading… he really pronounced his ע and every dagesh. It was almost like listening to Arabic. I was given the third aliyah. That’s a nice thing about being new somewhere… you always get an aliyah. After services Hillel introduced me to some people, and I actually introduced Hillel to someone… a young rabbi dude (JTS trained) whom I had met at tfillah and who (sidenote) actually took me for a little walk around the area past kikar tzarfat. I think his name is Adam Rosenthal.

Ok so here are some pictures from that walk… NOT to be confused with pictures taken on shabbat. I do not take pictures on shabbat.

This is a tomb from the time of the Hasmoneans. It’s just… there. In the middle of this residential neighborhood.

This is the ancient graffiti on the wall… they think it’s a boat.

This is a giraffe. It is in a playground. Apparently it is famous.

So back to shabbat…

After shul Hillel and I and his brother Gilan, his brother in law Ariel, and a girl named Aviva all headed over to Hillel’s place for lunch. Hillel’s roommate Ben joined us. Conversation was lively and we discussed Aviva’s job as a Tzahal prosecutor of terrorists, Ariel’s research project on Jewish right-wing nutters, Yiddish, genealogy, and various other things. After this we played Taboo, which I had never played and which was fantastically fun.

After a little bit of quasi-napping during which Ariel and I discussed the nature of Conservative institutions, two other folks showed up for Seudat Shlishit, Juan and Abby to whom Hillel had introduced me at shul. They are JTS student. They are geeks. They are awesome. And they could easily be my new best friends. We were regaled by Juan with stories of naked men doing strange things in and around mikvaot.

…

It wasn’t what it sounds like. But it was hilarious.

After Ma’ariv and Havdalah (we also had Mincha in there after lunch) Hillel set up his laptop and projector so we could watch a movie on his wall. We watched The Chosen, which I hadn’t seen in a very long time. We all had fun (mostly Hillel and Abby) pointing out mistakes in the film regarding Chassidic and Jewish practices, things that the characters were doing and saying that would never happen in real life (and also that didn’t happen like that in the book) etc.

Abby and Juan walked me home and we stood on the corner of HaPalmach and Kharlap talking about JTS. They said some very nice things to me which I will not soon forget. They have also informed me (not suggested, but *informed* me) that I will be at The Yeshiva for two years, not one. We shall see.

I am happy. I am happy that I can make friends like that, and that people get excited to meet me. I’m happy that I’m here.

Last week, my first shabbat in Jerusalem, was lovely and fun. I had dinner here in the apartment with Jeff and some friends he had invited over who were all lovely people and fun to talk to.

Shabbat morning I went to Mayanot, a מסורטי (Masorti/Conservative) congregation that meets in the gym of a מסורטי high school. It was a nice place and seemed to be geared toward young families. Everyone spoke English but the announcements and דבר תורה (d’var Torah - teaching on the week’s reading) were in Hebrew… as was, of course, the service. I hadn’t brought my tallit with me because I just didn’t know if that was how they did מסורטי here or not. I also didn’t bring my סידר סים שלום (Siddur Sim Shalom, the Conservative Movement’s prayer book) and discovered that the סדורים (siddurim - prayerbooks) that were available were the all Hebrew סדור in the front, חומש (chumash - 5 books of Moses) in the back kind. Now, I’ve always known that I relied way too heavily on the English in the סדור (yes, most of my silent davening is in English. No, I’m not satisfied with this state of affairs. Yes, I am working to remedy it.) but I never realized just how lost I would be without the translation. I guess it was a bit of an eye-opener. Didn’t detract too much from my enjoyment of being part of the קהל (kahal - congregation). As a matter of fact, I got (what was to me) a very special honor… I was given the first עליה (Aliyah) to the תורה (Torah). This was special and interesting because traditionally the first עליה is reserved for a כוהן (kohein - descendant of the priestly family). Being a lowly ישראל (Yisrael - people who are not patrilineally descended from the priests or the לויים, the Levites) have never had the first עליה. Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure it was proper for me to take it, given that my מנהג (minhag - custom) is to honor the כהנים (Kohanim) in this way… but I’ve been doing a lot of switching between following my family’s and my home congregation’s מנהג and doing like the proverbial Romans… and I was taught that it is generally improper to turn down an honor in shul.

Ok, a note about the Hebrew… I have set my language bar such that I may switch back and forth easily between typing in Hebrew and in English. I am trying to learn to type proficiently in Hebrew, and so I am practicing. Hopefully certain folks reading this will visually assimilate some of the Hebrew characters and words, and others… well, if I make spelling mistakes please let me know. My Hebrew sucks.

Anyway, after shul it was off to Lisa and Alan’s for lunch and… yeah, bridge. Alan and Natan kept encouraging me to play, but I still had no idea how the game worked! I mean, I understood about tricks from playing Spades and Hearts, but I was completely lost on the bidding. So I just watched and spent some time playing with the little kids. Later I went home with Natan and Gabe and they taught me שש-בש (sheshbesh - backgammon) and Cribbage, of all things. We did הבדלה (havdalah - the ritual ending the sabbath) and I walked back to the apartment.

All in all a successful first Shabbat, I thought.

ETA: Ok, it’s not really that long, but after inserting all of that Hebrew it feels long. So I’m leaving this to be continued.

So again, I’m gonna throw out strict chronology for the sake of talking about today. I also do want to talk about the past two Shabbatot and the new friends I have made, who are AWESOME! But I want to talk about my accomplishments of today (No pictures, unfortunately, but hopefully you can deal with that for an entry or two).

First of all, I went clothes shopping. Now, those of you who know me well know that this would be noteworthy even in America. I have a lot of trouble with clothes shopping… usually there are tears involved. But moreso, I did shopping in Israel… in Hebrew (mostly) and in a place where younger women tend to be stick thin. The sales lady at the first place I went was very sweet and very helpful. The best part was that she indulged my switching back and forth between English and Hebrew, and she switched back and forth right along with me. Which is significant because usually, when you speak to an Israeli in English, they will henceforth לעולם speak with you only in English. One other place I went for clothing, the man who owned the shop didn’t speak English, but he was patient and spoke to me in relatively clear simple Hebrew, somehow without coming off condescendingly. I was amazed with my success!

My other accomplishment today was the דואר… the Post Office. Before Shabbat I received a slip in the mailbox which meant that I had a package. It was a book that I was expecting… Jason ordered it for me just before I left. Anyway, I went to the central post office on רחוב יפו because, what do I know from post offices in Israel? So I walked in and showed a random lady my piece of paper and asked where I should go. She told me “אחרי הדלת *something something something…*” which was enough for me. I went past the doors she had indicated and asked the first person in a window I saw. He looked at my paper and said something about התאטרון ירושלים… which I correctly guessed meant that there was a post office near the Jerusalem theater and that I needed to go there.

I got back to the apartment and asked my friend Hillel (online) if he knew if there was a post office near the תאטרון. I emailed him a photo of the piece of paper and he pointed out where it said what post office it was… it is the Chopin post office. So I headed out and walked up to the בית הנשיא (the President’s Residence… which I never get tired of saying) which I know is close to the תאטרון and I asked the nice man with the gun “איפו התאטרון ירושלים?” He answered me using nice easy words like “שם” and “שמאלה” and made it pretty simple. I asked “יש איפו שהו דואר?” (Can’t figure out how to get the question mark in the right place, but eh…) which, I think means “Is there a post office somewhere?” by which I meant “is there a post office near the theater.” I’m sure there was a better way to ask that but I got the point across and he answered in the affirmative.

So I got to the post office and I asked the nice man who searched my bag where I should go. Only problem was that I couldn’t immediately find my piece of paper to show him and ask what I should do, so I tried to communicate as best I could what I needed to do… he indicated that I should go in. I found my bit of paper and showed it to the lady at the counter who said something to me in Hebrew that I couldn’t understand and I had to revert to English which I figured was ok after all the good work I’d done till then. She told me that there was a machine outside where I should scan the barcode on the slip and I’d get my package. I was a little apprehensive about what exactly was supposed to happen at the machine outside, but I went outside and showed the man my slip (which I now had in my hand) he understood and pointed to the machine.

This machine was pretty darn cool… I allowed myself to use the English option cause I really didn’t want to mess this up. It told me to scan the slip under the red light, and when I did a door in the machine opened and… my package was sitting there on a shelf! Dude! After retrieving my book (thanks Jason) I went back inside and bought stamps in… Hebrew, which the nice post office lady kindly indulged me in.

Oh yeah. I rock.

I’m gonna throw out chronology for a moment to post this:

That is smoke. I noticed it walking home from an all-day babysitting gig yesterday and it occurred to me that it might be important, so I took a picture.

And indeed it was, as I suspected it might be, related to this:

Yes, this is the Jerusalem gay pride parade, which I only got a glimpse of from a distance. My friend Lisa and I took her daughter and Uri who I was watching and we walked up Emek Refaim which was closed to traffic. There were soldiers and police everywhere. Seeing as how I was pushing a stroller I decided not to take pictures, but boy… there is something about seeing all those soldiers on the street.

Anyway, the smoke was, I suspect, the result of this:

While Jerusalem police prepared to protect the pride parade in the center of town Thursday afternoon, anti-parade protestors seeming decided to relocate their demonstrations. Less than an hour before the parade began, a number of protestors are suspected of having set fire to various spots in forests around the city.

So apparently the protest was more extensive than what Lisa and I experienced from our edge of the security which included chants of “Boosha! Boosha!” (Shame, shame) and “Yerushalayim Ir HaKodesh!” (Jerusalem is the Holy City) and a couple of signs (I only got a partial pic of one, front and back

Apparently there was also this:

Israeli police have arrested an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who they say was planning to bomb a gay pride march in Jerusalem overnight.

An Israeli police spokesman said police found an explosive device in the man’s bag.

A man from the Conservative shul told me this morning that one of the news channels is completely ignoring it. *sigh*

Ending on a happier note, Lisa’s son Caleb aced his Karate test.

One of the things I did not get to do on birthright in January 2002 (for those who need a refresher, that was the first trip after September 11th) was to go to the shuk. Beth and Ira decided that it was wrong that I had never been to the shuk and took it upon themselves to remedy this situation.

The Shuk is an experience of all senses. The colors are amazing… there are a lot of things I could say but they’d all sound like dumb clichés, so this will be mostly pictures.

Here Beth is showing me that, as evidenced by the beautiful apricots that this is mishmish season. This made me think of my friend Karam in Brooklyn. He taught me the Arabic expression “بكرة في المشمش” - “Bokra fi al mishmish” which he told me means “tomorrow in the apricot,” and I have heard variously translated as “come back in the apricot season” or “Tomorrow there will be apricots.” Essential meaning, “Yeah, right” or “never gonna happen.”

This is fresh pita. As we approach the pita stand that Beth likes, she explains to me that you don’t want your pita 15 minutes old. She points to the pita coming out of the oven and says “This is what you want.” She picks up a freshly packed “נילון” (That’s “neelon,” plastic bag) of pita and holds it out to me.

“Feel.”

“You have to beg them to take your money,” she explains. “See, he’s walking by and he’s going to ignore me. Again.”

“Fried things, grape leaves, schnitzel, to honor the holy Shabbat”

Stopping for some sweets for Shabbat, Ira points out this place. “See,” he says “where there’s a menu, and it looks like it’s telling you what they have? They don’t mention the pots. See, if you know to peek in the pots, you can get something nice.”

And this, of course, is the infamous David Dagim.

“This is the guy who takes my order,” says Ira.

“And this is the guy who gives me a hard time.”

One of the really lovely things about shopping the shuk is that you get to taste just about everything. The cheese guy gave Ira and me each a slice off a big hunk of really lovely gruyere, while another poured us each a taste of some pretty nice Tishbi wine. Beth and I were handed some dried cranberries by the nut guy and we all tried the mysterious bean salad at the place with the humous and herring.

I am a fan of the shuk.

On the way there, Ira pointed out this sign:

“Doesn’t it look like it says OBGYN?”

Ok, so now let’s see how much I can remember of Thursday…

Thursday morning I woke up early (not difficult since I crashed hard and early Wednesday night… slept until around 3:30 Thursday morning) and went to morning minyan at the synagogue in the Fuchsberg center. The walk is a nice one, not too far at all. The thing about walking here is that the sidewalks tend to be… erm… occupied.

Like for example by cars. Or garbage or recycling bins. Or by electrical towers with big signs on them that say “DANGER OF DEATH!!!” But anyway, once you get the hang of the way Israelis drive it is not so difficult to work in and out of the street traffic and make your way. In NY you get to be an empowered pedestrian. Here, not so much.

Anyway, I went to shul and met Rena there. Rena is one of my surrogate moms. She was our neighbor when I was a kid and is a member of our synagogue community and the mother of two boys who are my sister’s and my age respectively. She was in Israel for a couple of weeks visiting her mom. So I got there, greeted Rena, and pulled out my tefillin.

Now class, does everyone know what tefillin are?

This is a photo I just took of the instruction sheet here in the Beit Midrash. I have my tefillin in my bag but I didn’t want to pull them out and unwrap them to take a picture right now sitting here in the Beit Midrash. Too much work. Anyway, tefillin are those things that are translated as phylacteries… big help, right? Basicall they are little leather boxes tied to the head and arm with leather straps. The boxes contain bits of parchment inscribed with words from the Torah. You put them on when you pray in the morning on days that are not Shabbat or Yom Tov (a no-work holiday). Traditionally a Jewish male begins putting on tefillin every morning when he comes to the age of bar mitzvah, that is, the age at which one becomes, theoretically, mature enough to be obligated in all applicable mitzvot (commandments/points of Jewish law). In practice, it is generally difficult to find non-Orthodox people who actually put on tefillin every day, and even among those who consider themselves Orthodox, not everyone actually does put on tefillin and pray every day. In my family, none of us three kids were given tefillin or taught how to put them on, perhaps because the only time we were expected to be in shul or to pray at all was shabbat and yom tovim.

Recently I decided that it was time that I acquire a set of tefillin, and so I did. The day before I flew out I had my friend Rabbi Josh Gutoff teach me how to use them. The thing is, the part of putting on tefillin where you wrap the strap around your hand is really kind of complicated, and it is difficult to totally have the hang of it from doing it only one time.

So I got to the hand bit and I got a bit lost. I noticed that there was a youngish and friendly looking guy talking to someone next to me, so I tapped him on the shoulder.

“This is only my second time leying tefillin, and I’m a little lost. Could you help me?”

He was happy to. In fact, he was the rabbi.

The “helpless with tefillin schtick,” as Josh calls it, is a good way to meet people.

After services, Rena took me to breakfast on King George Street.

Our waitress indulged our mixture of Hebrew and English and helped us with words that we didn’t know. The fact that nearly everyone here speaks English is both a blessing and a curse. It means that you can get most things done with little difficulty, but it also makes it that much easier to not learn Hebrew, if you are an Anglo.

On King George street I saw this and was amused.

Later that day I was invited to come over to the Skop-Steinberg residence to see the family.

The Skop-Steinbergs are good friends from Brooklyn who made Aliyah almost a year ago. Their youngest son is Akiva who is 9 and with whom I have a special bond that none of us really fully understands I don’t think… I love him as though he were… not exactly my own kid… not exactly my brother… maybe something in between.

I said hi to most of the crew and then spent a lot of time sitting on the sofa (I say couch, but to Akiva, “sofa” is an important concept, and their couch is “sofa”) singing songs to him.

Here’s the thing… there is another family at Kane street, our Brooklyn shul, with whom I am close. They moved to France for a little while. Their youngest son was… well, he was quite young when they left, but he was old enough to say to me “I promise I won’t forget you!” And when they returned a year later, he had forgotten me. Given Akiva’s special needs, I was a little worried that he wouldn’t remember me, especially considering the fact that I had heard reports that he had asked for other members of our synagogue community but hadn’t heard of him asking for me. Was I not a grand concept in his world the way Rose or Penny or Ralph were?

I walk into their house and Natan, the eldest, is there. “Akiva,” he says, “look… it’s Gella!”

Akiva doesn’t move.

“Akiva, come say hi to Gella!”

Nothing.

“Akiva! Who is it? It’s…”

At this I came to him and put an arm around him. He slowly looked up, his eyes focusing on my face, and a big smile spread across his. “It’s… It’s… It’s Gella!”

At this he took me by the hand and led me to the sofa where he demanded by name (or really by code word) every single song that we used to sing together in Brooklyn… and in the correct order!

Talking to Ira about this later, his response was “Gella, there are a lot of things that Akiva can’t do. Remembering is not one of them!”‘

Not long after, Alan (another Kane Streeter who made Aliyah with his family in the past couple of years) called saying that the Skop-berg clan should deal the cards for a game of bridge.

Apparently I am expected to learn bridge. Quickly.

Well, that’s most of Thursday. I should do something useful with my time now. I spent all morning studying Taanit… maybe I should go back to it.

More to come.

I apologize for the delay in the bloggage… there were some technical difficulties regarding the management of pictures. I wrote this a few days ago… I don’t think that I will be able to blog day-by-day accounts as I had planned because already too many days have passed and days run into each other (this morning I said the tehillah for Wednesday by accident… losing track). So we’ll just see how it goes.

***

I’m sitting in the Midrachov, on Ben Yehuda street. I finally have some time to sit and write something, so here goes…

Okay, so the flight was… grueling. That’s the only word for it. I took my friend Rena’s advice and didn’t sleep the night before the flight hoping that I would as such be able to sleep on the plane. No such luck. I was able to sleep for maybe two hours, broken up, during the 10 hour flight. I arrived around 9 am and Lena was there, just as promised, to pick me up. We got into a cab and Lena communicated our intentions. So we head off on the road to Jerusalem. Thing is, Lena didn’t recognize the road. She kept looking around rather nervously saying “Usually we go by route 1. This isn’t route 1. At a certain point we pass a sight that says “Atarot.” A this Lena says “Oh. Oh, I know where we are. We’re in the West Bank.”

Oh. Well then.

“Yeah, and that wall we’ve been driving past… that’s the wall.

At this point I remembered that I have a camera.

We arrived at Rechov Harlap and Jeff met us downstairs. Lena inquired as to the validity of the route we had taken and he confirmed that it was a proper route. The road we took was apparently a protected Israeli road that goes through the West Bank. Not that I was worried or anything, but… well, it certainly was interesting that having been in the country less than an hour I’d already been technically in the West bank.

As I said yesterday, this ain’t no birthright trip.

After settling in at Jeff’s Lena took me for a whirlwind walking tour of The Old City. Well, first we got a little lost… we misunderstood Jeff’s directions and rather than walking up Harlap to Itamar Ben Avi we walked out onto HaPalmach in the wrong direction. I should state for the record that I have absolutely no problem with getting lost… sometimes it is the best way to learn the lay of the land. And had we not walked in the wrong direction I would have not seen the happiness that is this:

After examining the map (as depicted above) we found our way to the Fuchsberg center on Agron street which is where all the Conservative stuff, including the Yeshiva, is located.

From there it is a hop skip and a jump to The Old City. Lena took me to The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I don’t think I had been inside before. It was beautiful.

I can’t wait for my cousin Bibiana to come visit.

We walked around in the covered marketplace for a bit, and we ventured into the Muslim quarter. Again… this ain’t no birthright trip. We came out into a place of narrow streets on the Jewish side. We turned a couple of corners and all of a sudden there was The Dome of the Rock peeking at me over a wall.

We stopped briefly at The Kotel (more thoughts on this later… my relationship to The Kotel is a complicated one) and then realizing just how tired I was, we decided that after one more sight we should head back. So she took me across Hell

Yes, that’s right. I’ve been to Hell and this is what it looks like. And there’s an amphitheater in it. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, this is the valley of Gehinom. Right across Gehinom is the most beautiful and expensive neighborhood in Jerusalem, Yemin Moshe.

At the windmill, I started singing Don Quixote’s theme song and Lena happily joined me. ‘Twas nice. So…

Um, a small child, maybe 10 or 11, just came up to me and stuck his face in mine smiling, tapped some keys on my comp, shook my hand and ran away. I immediately checked my pockets to make sure everything was still there. Odd.

We headed back to Harlap (the right way this time) and Lena took her leave of me.

***

Now that we’ve got the pics sorted out, more will be forthcoming very soon, promise.

DSCF0651, originally uploaded by spin0za1.

Posting directly to the blog from Flickr should be working now.

– The Management

I am in Yerushalayim! I’m debating whether or not I should start referring to the city as Yerushalayim when speaking/writing in English, or if I should continue to call it Jerusalem. *shrug*

It’s been one day and I’ve already been in The West Bank and The Muslim Quarter. This sure ain’t no birthright trip!

I have some pictures already, and I will blog around them later today. For now I just wanted to get something up here and let all of my loyal fans know that I have arrived safely and such and such and such.

More later. L’shalom!