Otzma Chai
Friday, February 27, 2004
Moving Day!
Yes, friends, it's that time of the year again. Time to pack up and move. It's six-thirty am and I'm ready to take a quick nap before putting all my stuff in a moving van in a few hours. Laundry has been folded and rolled and squished and stuffed. Mold has been scraped off of suitcases and selected sweaters and sandals. Clutter has been placed in plastic bags that sit patiently at the door, waiting to be brought to the no-longer-overflowing dumpster. And I sit at a computer, not wanting to leave this wonderful town. Not to mention regular internet access.
So this week has been incredibly intense, which is why neither I nor any of my roommates were able to pack much before today. Along with working our regular jobs, this week was the much-awaited Beit Shemesh Children's Storybook Carnival. After weeks of planning and advertising and organizing and ticket-selling, we opened up the carnival. Over 150 children ages three to eight got to visit booths in various lands, doing activities and learning about how "Books Can Take You Places." Then they were able to make their own book and have it bound for them. The theme of the carnival was "Im Korim, Magi'im l'Mokomot Nifla'im!" the Hebrew equivalent of Dr. Suess' "Oh the Places You'll Go!" literally translated as "If you read, you'll go to wonderful places." (And one of the best parts - my roommates bought for me as a going away present the Hebrew version of the Dr. Suess book.)
Wednesday night was a party for us made by other library volunteers. It was lots of fun to hang out with them and talk without work stressing us out. Plus, one of the boys who volunteers at the library actually has a bit of a business making and selling cakes, and he made us one that was so delicious and absolutely incredibly gorgeous. Unfortunately, none of the pictures of it came out, but trust me - phenomenal. It was a chocolate cake decorated with a basket weave of icing, sunflowers, and the words, "Goodbye, My Friends." One of the head librarians made each of us a beautiful beaded bracelet with all our favorite colors. Mine is blue, green, purple, and white with blue stars. I'd never ever trade it for either of the other girls' bracelets. Happily, they each feel the same way towards our bracelets, too. I'm going to miss everyone at the library so much! Luckily, I recently took out two new books so I absolutely need to come back to visit Beit Shemesh and return the books.
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The above was written while still in Beit Shemesh, but due to some logistical issues, I was unable to finish the email before leaving. I am currently in Jerusalem, at an internet cafe, back to paying ten shekel an hour for internet and secondhand smoke. But them's the breaks.
The past three months in Beit Shemesh will probably remain the highlight of my Otzma experience. First of all, I'm absolutely and completely in love with the city. Although it may be lacking a movie theater or bar, there are two coffee shops, lots of small stores, a market, and wonderful, friendly, amazing, beautiful, diverse people. Not to mention the fact that Beit Shemesh rests beautiful on rolling hills, where the skyline isn't interrupted by office building and hotels. And, it's super-close to Jerusalem.
I also feel like this was the one time I got to make the biggest difference. By working in a high school and elementary school, tutoring students individually, and working at the library and the book carnival, I was truly able to see the work of my hands with my own eyes and ears. Not only that, but I truly began to feel like a part of the community. With dozens of Shabbat invitations, I knew I was always welcome in my neighbors' homes. Best of all were times simply spent walking down the street or riding on a bus. I would run into students or mentors or neighbors and we would talk briefly before continuing on our ways. I felt like I belonged.
The next part of Otzma begins Sunday. We will be doing Jewish learning with an organization called Ta Shma while living in Jerusalem. [You may remember Ta Shma from the amazing Shabbaton I went on with them in the desert during Hanukkah.] We will learn for three weeks in Jerusalem (some Otzma-niks have opted to volunteer on an army base instead). After these three weeks, we continue on to the last track of Otzma. Most Otzma-niks (like my roommate Alisha) will be interning in Jerusalem. Some will be interning around Kfar Saba with my roommate Lara. Six will volunteer on Kibbutz Shiller near Rechovot (like my roommate Betsy). Three, including my roommate Terez, will volunteer on Kibbutz Yizrael near Afula. I will work with two other Otzma-niks on Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu near Beit She'an.
But right now, I need to go lug some of my stuff to the other side of Jerusalem. I'm spending Shabbat with some Pardes students on a Shabbaton they organized for themselves, us, and WUJS participants. It should be lots of fun - I'll let you know.
Shabbat Shalom,
Sarah....
Friday, February 20, 2004
On the Kindness of Strangers, or Making New Friends
Last Thursday night, at a party down in the happenin' development town of Kiryat Malachi, I realized I still had no plans for Shabbat. So I went through my cellphone list and called up a kid named Tzvi. We'd met at a Shabbat meal a few months earlier and ran into each other twice since then. Almost immediately he asked if I needed a place for Shabbat. Well, as a matter of fact....I was going to ask the same thing after about ten minutes of small talk, but the Israeli mentality had already beaten that out of him. I gratefully accepted.
Friday night for dinner we ended up at this wonderful meal of strangers and not-quite-strangers. It just so happened that one of the hosts was a guy I had met months ago - he helped me carry mattresses across the Old City in Jerusalem to the apartment we were crashing in for Simchat Torah. The meal was great. As it ended, though, we realized that the hour-and-a-half long walk home, though always pleasant in the company of new friends, becomes slightly less so in the pouring rain. But seeing as there were no alternatives we accepted the dripping reality and tried to remind ourselves that rain, especially in Israel, is quite a blessing.
Saturday morning services were wonderful, and afterward, seeing as I had no lunch plans, I tried to discreetly eat a decent amount of the food laid out in honor of the Bat Mitzvah. However, just as I was grabbing a second grape leaf, my friend Suzanne introduced me to her friend Mark. He said, Hi, Nice to meet you, Do you need a place for lunch? Well as a matter of fact.... So I arranged with Tzvi, my wonderful host with a bed from the previous night, where to meet him for the afternoon services and meal, and left with my new friends.
The meal was great, the conversations wonderful, but as desserts wound down the incessant rain seem to change into an unfamiliar consistency - white! Yes, friends, it was snowing in Jerusalem! This was very exciting for five Californians and a Floridian in Israel, yet slightly puzzling. We stuck around for a few hours, until Shabbat was over, and finally decided that if the snow wasn't going to let up, we'd just have to brave it after all. So we bundled up in our inappropriately light jackets with minimal layering and hit the streets. And yes, friends, I was still wearing sandals.
I walked with Suzanne and her husband Marcus and their guest Jeff to their apartment. And by walked, I mean slipped and slided and ate snowflakes and threw snowballs and fell less-than-gracefully numerous times. When we finally arrived at their door I found some clean snow, slipped my sandals off, and left a few barefoot prints in the snow to confuse any passers-by. In their warm apartment I put my sandals on the heater, while Marcus showed me on a map how to get back to Tzvi's apartment. Meanwhile Suzanne dug up a pair of dry socks and I thanked them numerous times before braving the snow again in new socks and wet sandals.
Thankfully, Tzvi was home and quite understanding about the meal I'd missed that we'd planned on going to together. After fighting with the phone lines for two hours, I turned down Tzvi's invitation to stay an extra night, and opted to attempt to make it back to Beit Shemesh. The taxi driver, insisting that buses weren't running to Beit Shemesh even though the national operator told me they were (my taxi driver was right), offered to drive me home for sixty dollars. When I insisted on refusing he dropped me off a few blocks from where I needed to go because he saw other people waiting. Although buses didn't seem to be running (thanks a lot, national operator), the sheiruts (shared-taxi-vans) were. As we waited for the sheirut to leave, a woman in the van saw my cold, wet feet and immediately dug through her bag, insisting that I change out of my wet socks for her dry ones. I tried to say no, but she was budging and my feet were really cold. I thanked her, and subsequently fed her complaining daughters with some oranges I happened to have in my backpack.
This week has been quite average, except that it is time to begin saying my goodbyes. By this time next week I will begin my three week stay in Jerusalem before moving on to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in the North. As our time at each volunteer site ends, the people I work with remind me again and again of their kindness and gratitude. Nona, the teacher I worked with at the elementary school gave me an adorable pen, a beautiful laminated poem in Hebrew, a thankyou note in English, and some chocolates. The best part of this gift was the chocolates, or rather, their box. The box says in wonderfully alliterative Hebrew, "Ma'sh'hu l'mi'sh'hu sh'hu ma'mash ma'sh'hu ma'sh'hu." (Something for someone who truly is really something.)
Today was also my last meeting with Shiran, one of the girls I tutor in English individually in the evenings. We decided to go out to the one cafe in Beit Shemesh as a celebration. She's come such a long way in her speaking confidence and we barely had to revert to Hebrew at all. As we left, she gave me an adorable keychain with my name on the front and an explanation on the back. She helped me translate it so that I could understand it all. We walked back to our homes and she offered again for me to come to them whenever I was in Beit Shemesh, for the next three months or even in a few years.
Work in the library is still going strong - next Monday and Wednesday is the much heralded Children's Book Carnival which we Otzmaniks have been planning since we got here. Although only about a third of the slots have been filled so far, we're relying on last-minute Israeli mentality to fill up the rest. It's very exciting, as is the goodbye party the library staff is making for us on Tuesday. Maybe this makes me quite a dork, but I'm truly looking forward to the party. The library has been my favorite volunteer site in Beit Shemesh and I absolutely love all the people I work with. It will be utter heaven to be able to hang out with them without bratty kids spitting sunflower seeds on the carpet or coloring in the beginning reader books.
And what about this upcoming weekend? Remember Suzanne and Marcus from last weekend? They've invited me over for this Shabbat. I'm bursting with excitement! I'll keep you posted!
And though I may not be the best at responding to all of your emails, I truly love reading about your adventures as well. Take care!
Love,
sarah....
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Why is my bed shaking?
Hi Everyone!
This week has been quite ordinary. Well, aside from the ongoing strike, that is. Some other Otzma-niks who are currently living in Kiryat Malachi visited us this week. Their entire city has shut down. While the schools are still operating in Beit Shemesh, nearly every site the volunteers in Kiryat Malachi work at has been closed. In solidarity with the workers, the Otzma-niks there joined a protest march all the way from Kiryat Malachi to Jerusalem. When the protest reached the Beit Shemesh junction they decided to leave and stop by our house. And even though their entire city has practically stopped, with the water and electricity being shut off a few hours every day, they were shocked by what Beit Shemesh looked like.
Yes, friends, the garbage continues to pile up. The dumpsters have long since overflowed into the sidewalks and streets. We have even seen some of the cats dead, crushed by the garbage. Two of my roommates who volunteer with the ambulance service have been called to a number of pedestrian-vehicle accidents. With everyone needing to practically walk in the middle of the streets to avoid the trash, it's not a surprise that every one of these accidents has occurred near an overflowing dumpster. Our friends in Kiryat Malachi warned us to take precautions against the Black Plague that they swore would soon overrun our town. I think they were kidding.
But I don't want to bore you with a repetitive email. So what's new, you ask?
I tutored some girls in English early this morning. I returned home around ten am and decided to go back to bed for a nap. A few minutes later, I felt my bed shaking and I rolled over, expecting to see a roommate trying to wake me up. There was no one else in the room, but the bed was still shaking. In fact, looking up at the ceiling, I saw our light bulb swinging back and forth and back and forth.
I thought, Oh My G-d! It's an earthquake! Then I thought, don't be an idiot, you're in Israel, there are no earthquakes here. And so then I thought, It's a bomb! But the bed kept shaking and I thought, Oh no, a really big bomb! Then I thought some more and realized, If this was a bomb, I'd hear people screaming. No screaming therefore no bomb.
The shaking finally stopped and, still traumatized, I found one of my other roommates who was home and awake. Lara was very calm about the whole thing. It felt exactly like an earthquake, my Californian roommate explained to me. But we checked the news on TV and online with no mention of it.
I went back to bed and then remembered my radio. I dug it up, turned it on, found news, and listened to two commentators argue about the various merits of brand name shoes and their popularity in Israel, Europe, and the US. Frustrated, I laid back in bed with the radio still on. A few moments later a woman's voice came on and she started talking about something different. As I tried to focus my brain on what she was saying I heard something about disrupted cellphone service. I took the radio out to my roommate and we listened as the woman did actually talk about an earthquake. She was in Kfar Saba. Then calls came in to the station announcing the earth had also shook in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Eventually, I fell back to sleep wondering if the apocalypse had finally come. Now that I'm awake again, I've read up on this strange occurrence.
- A moderate earthquake measuring 5 on the Richter scale rattled Israel and its Middle East neighbors at 10:20 A.M. Wednesday, sparking panic in many areas, but causing no injuries and only limited damage.
- The quake rumbled for several seconds throughout Israel, knocking out wireless phone service, apparently due to a flood of phone calls. In the northern city of Acre, a building under construction collapsed.
- Israel is located along the Great Rift Valley.
- Biblical prophets foresaw destructive earthquakes, which they believed would herald a return of the Messiah.
As far as I can tell, the Messiah hasn't arrived and the strike still isn't over. So tomorrow I will go to work in the morning as always. I wish you all an uneventful week.
Love,
Sarah....
Earthquake Articles -
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/393241.html
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040211/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_earthquake_2
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040211/sc_afp/mideast_quake_040211110706
Thursday, February 05, 2004
Shvita! (Strike!)
So maybe you remember a few months ago when I complained about how one day we showed up to work at the national park in Ashkelon and were turned down because apparently there was a strike going on. Well that strike barely affected our lives whatsoever. And although we still have power and water and all the necessities, after day five of another strike I'm beginning to see how it actually does affect my life. While the rest of the world may think all Israelis are talking about is whether or not Israel will pull out of Gaza (and trust me, they're talking about it), the stench of garbage is getting a bit overwhelming.
[Some background, you say? Basically, since Sunday 231 local authorities have shut down all municipal services. Some 15,000 employees in 79 local authorities have not received their wages in months, with the localities owing their staff about 200 million shekels. This has not affected fifteen of Israel's largest cities due to the set up of their budget, but Beit Shemesh is one of the cities affected.]
So what does this strike affect?
1. No garbage collection.
The dumpsters are overflowing everywhere and it's getting smelly just to walk down the street. Here's a page from an Israeli newspaper online:
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/391137.html
The caption of the picture reads "Zevel ne'eran b'rechovot, Ashdod." (Garbage piles up in the streets, Ashdod.)
2. No city hall office hours for the public.
As if this wasn't a good enough idea as is, some municipal offices are closed even to their own employees who need to get in. For example, one of my roommates is working on a municipal partnership project with Nottingham, England. The Nottingham city council had a town meeting tonight, but needed an extra document from Beit Shemesh. Unfortunately, due to the strike my roommate was not allowed into her office to retrieve the document for them.
3. No social welfare services.
Another grand idea. This means my roommates who work at an elderly day care center get to sleep in.
4. No parking tickets.
Okay, so no one's complaining about this one.
5. No kindergarten helpers, administrative personnel, janitors, transportation workers, and security personnel in schools.
This means a few things. First, teachers have to spend their day taking turns doing guard duty during their classes or prep time. Every school must have a guard at all times. (Unlike in the States, where the guards keep students with weapons out, these security guards also must make sure no terrorists come in.)
Also, without janitors the classrooms have been getting dirtier and dirtier. Either the students take out the trash in the classrooms or it continues to pile up and onto the floor. These are schools without cafeterias, so this trash also includes all the snacks and lunches from the past week.
Without the schools providing transportation, students who live too far from their schools must be picked up by their parents midday or pay for alternate transportation out-of-pocket.
Because of sanitary conditions or because teachers are no longer prepared to do guard duty, school principals have been deciding individually whether to open schools.
6. Junctions blocked.
The junctions throughout Israel connect all major roads and there is no way to get from one place to another without passing through junctions. Yesterday, striking local government workers demonstrated at only 35 junctions across the country, although they had warned that they would block 80 major roads.
After a huge Super Bowl party we hosted Sunday night (the Super Bowl was from 1am-5am here), we realized that our fifteen guests might have trouble getting home the next morning depending on which junctions were closed. Luckily, everyone seemed to make it back eventually.
So that's about all I can think of right now, though I'm sure the strike has affected other things too. I just hope the employees get the pay they are due and the strike can end Sunday as expected. I'm not quite sure how much longer it will take before the dumpsters start overflowing into our windows.
All the Best,
Sarah....
