Discussion Site I have started a new site on which it is much easier to post short notes / essays concerning issues here in the Middle East. It will take the place of this page on our website. Please visit the blog at www.osc2007zum.wordpress.com and feel free to post comments at the end of the entries.

Attention Grabbers in Israel It should be obvious from our "Travel Log" page that we thoroughly enjoy living in this country.  However, there are certainly some things that can quickly grab your attention in Israel.  For example, in March of 2007 I had a sub-machine gun pointed at me outside the Ben-Gurion Airport terminal as I was running from the rental car agency back to meet with Amanda and the kids (We were in danger of missing our flight!).   A guard at the entrance raised his weapon in my direction and demanded from me in Hebrew "לאן אתה רץ ולמה?" which means, “Where are you running and why?” in English.  As I stopped and started to explain in broken Hebrew that my wife and kids were waiting for me on level three, the guard switched to English and said, “You can speak in English.  But don’t run outside or inside the airport because people will think you are going to do bad things and bad things might happen to you.”    With that thought in mind, here are some pictures from Israel of sights you won’t often see in the United States these days…   Below are two photos of the bomb shelter on the third floor (our floor) of our apartment building.  We share this “common safe house” with three other families who live on our level, and there is a more serious shelter beneath the 16-story building for everyone (God forbid that we ever need it).  The solid steel door is blast proof, and there is an identical room like this on every floor of the building...all of them connected by a common system of ladders and manholes.  To make light of a serious situation, the room has become a great place to store our bikes!             Below is a photo we took on our visit to the Golan Heights in late October 2007.  It is a sobering reminder that Israel is technically still at war with both Syria and Lebanon since no formal peace treaties exist.  A landmine would certainly ruin an otherwise nice nature walk near the Northern borders.     In case you wonder what the newspaper headlines look like in Israel, here are a few examples.  If you want to read an Israeli newspaper online, check out  www.haaretz.com  for up to date news from Israel.  We happen to receive the Jerusalem Post at our door, and these headlines come from that paper.  Sometimes our morning coffee over the paper reminds us that we're not in Kansas anymore.

Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv On 22 Sept 07 our first visitors were able to experience Israel during the highest holiday of the year - Yom Kippur.  It is slightly bizarre by any standard because the entire country shuts down.  No shops of any kind are open, the highways are devoid of any traffic except the occasional emergency vehicle, and hordes of people take to the streets to ride their bicycles and walk.  The real point of Yom Kippur is a day of atonement for sins committed during the past year.  Many Israelis fast even if they are not religious, and many also go to synagogue for a large part of the day...the holiday is quite solemn.  We did not go to a synagogue this year because we weren't sure where it might be appropriate for us to go, but last year we went to the Yom Kippur service in Washington DC with our Hebrew instructor.  Maybe next year we will find a place where we will be welcome to observe the Holiday with Israelis. As you can see from the photo the streets are without any vehicles.

Ethan's 1st Birthday Ethan turned 1 on the 5th of November, but we celebrated a bit early with Grandad and Grandma Z. on the 5th of October the day before they returned to the U.S.!  Ethan was a huge fan of the cake, and Hannah was a huge fan of blowing out Ethan's candle.

Rabin Memorial Service (3 November 2007) I went to the memorial service for former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November third in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square (named for him after his death).  More than 150,000 Israelis turned out to honor the fallen leader, so it was a distinctive experience for me.  In part I wanted to see what a large-scale political demonstration looks like in Israel, and in part I wanted to get a feel for the mystique surrounding Rabin’s death.  In some sense Rabin is to Israel what John F. Kennedy is to the United States, a controversial leader made larger than life by the projectiles of a seemingly random assassin.  Like Kennedy, he was murdered by a fellow citizen, and so that makes the event particularly painful in the eyes of Israelis. He was shot at close range (after a peace rally in what is now called Rabin Square) by an ultra-orthodox religious Jew who thought the Prime Minister’s peace plans were conceding too much to the Palestinians at the expense of Israel.                         In my opinion, the memorial service highlighted some of the divisive currents/tendencies that exist in Israel today.  By chance, the taxi driver who picked me up in front of our apartment to take me to Rabin Square was ultra-orthodox (black and white clothing, long sideburn hair, black cipa, etc).  When I told him that I wanted to go to Kikar Rabin (Rabin Square), there was a palpable tension in the air and at first he said that he could not take me because there would be such a mess of traffic downtown.  I finally persuaded him to just “get me close” and I would walk the rest of the way.  When he dropped me off he said “You are going to feel the pain of a people tonight,” and wished me luck in getting back home at a decent time.  When I reached the square on foot, I realized why he had not wanted to bring me in the first place.  Of the 20,000 – 30,000 people I saw with my own eyes in the crowd of 150+ thousand, I noticed only a single cipa (the headgear that reminds a religious male Jew that G-d is always above him)!  In other words, this was a memorial service attended almost exclusively by secular Israelis.  Ehud Barak and various other leaders spoke of solidarity, unity, and other political buzzwords, but I was struck by the obvious chasm that exists between religious and secular Jews.  In fact, I felt like it was implied by the slogans and speeches of the night that the “religious right” of Israel was totally not welcome at the service…a natural phenomenon considering Rabin was murdered by an ultra-orthodox Jew.  I left the rally saddened that such deep divisions, it seems, exist in most great democracies of the world, yet encouraged that only in democracies do people tend not to fight each other over such things.

Hanukah at Hannah's Pre-School Amanda took Hannah to her Pre-School’s Hanukah party to get a glimpse of how they celebrate the Holiday in Israel.  As you can see from the photos, the party included a lot of dancing, singing, and waving of colored flags.  Hannah is the little blondie with the red dress, black shoes, and white socks that have fallen down around her ankles.  She came home with enough candy to rot out all of her baby teeth, and a plastic top called a "seveevone" (סביבון) in Hebrew.   Hanukah commemorates the retaking and rededication of the temple after the Syrians (leftover from Greek empire of Alexander the Great) desecrated it under the rule of Epiphanies.  The desecration included such things as sacrificing pigs on the altar of the Temple.  The resulting rebellion against the oppressors succeeded in putting the Jews back in power in Jerusalem and over the Temple.  A miracle took place in connection with this rebellion when only enough consecrated oil was available to light a menorah for one night…  However, for eight days the rebels were able to light the menorah from the miraculously “bottom-less” supply of consecrated oil, until new oil could be pressed and consecrated for use in the Temple.

Christmas in Israel For obvious reasons, Christmas time in Israel is certainly a lot different from Christmas time in the US…for the simple fact that no one celebrates Christian holidays in Israel outside of the tourist sites!  Amanda convinced me that we should pack an artificial tree with our household goods despite my protests against bringing “too much stuff”, and as usual, she proved to be right in that it was worth the effort.  We were the only ones in our 16-story apartment building with a Christmas tree in the window, and I’m convinced that there is a chance we were the only family with a Christmas tree on the entire street.   Questions about the lit Christmas tree in our front window from neighbors gave Amanda an opportunity to host a “Christmas cookie” party in our apartment with some other moms and kids from our building.  Amanda and Hannah certainly appreciated the opportunity to have Israeli children in our home rolling out dough, cutting out cookies and baking them before they went home with their mothers.  Amanda has established some good friends as a result of this unexpected get-together!   I took a leisurely day off from class on the 25th to celebrate the birth of Jesus with the family, and we had a relaxing day opening a few presents and appreciating one another’s company.