Last night I went to a play at the נא לגעת (English: Nalaga’at, Lit: Please Touch) center in Tel Aviv. The play was entitled “Not by Bread Alone”, it started out in a bakery and showed people baking bread, then they put the bread into the oven and while the bread is baking we see the dreams of each of the characters acted out in turn and at the end of the play the audience was invited to go on stage and eat the bread that was baking the whole play and to talk to the actors. It was a very moving play.

The thing that made it so moving was that most of the actors were blind and deaf (3 of them were only deaf). They acted out what it is like to be deaf and blind, there were many moving moments for me. One of them was during one of the character’s dreams. He dreamed about being out in the rain alone, and then the lights were turned off in the theater (it was pitch black), and there was a thunder sound effect, however this was a special effect, because it was playing at the same time as other noises, so instead of hearing the thunder through my ears, I felt the thunder through my senses. The other moving moment was when I was on stage after the play and I was talking to one of the blind deaf actors (she had an interpreter) and after I told her that I was from Los Angeles she taught me the sign for Los Angles.

It was very meaningful evening. Something that made it even more special for me was the fact that it took place in Israel and that Israel is the only place in the world with organizations like Nalaga’at.

(Side note: it was also Lag Ba’Omer night when we went to the play, so we were not able to make a bonfire. We did see some on the side of the road though.)

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 Yesterday was May 21. It was a Wednesday, and if I would have been on campus I would have been able to sleep in until 7:30. However we had a trip and as a result I was forced to wake up at 6:45(am). Yes, I had to wake up at 6:45(am) two days in a row. Needless to say I was tired the whole day, however after hearing some of the people who talked to us about Israel the way that they did I woke up a bit.
We started our day at this place called Givat Hiviva, it is named after a Jewish woman who was working for the British during WWII and was captured and killed by the Nazis. We had two people come to speak to us there. The first person who spoke to us was named Lidia, she was originally British however she moved to Israel 50 years ago because of anti-Semitism, she told us about how as a child she tried to get a job but could not because when employers found out that she was a Jew they would not talk to her any more, she also told us of how as a child she was once beat up at school because a child was trying to find the horns on her head. She said that it was not the children’s fault that they hurt her that they were just ignorant. I disagree, when someone breaks a law that they do not know about they are still responsible for their actions, same goes for anti-Semitism. If someone does something anti-Semitic then they are still responsible for their actions, after all if they were ignorant then shouldn’t they educate themselves before they go and beat up Jewish kids to find their horns?
Next we were talked at  yelled at  forced to hear got to listen to this Israeli Arab Palestinian with Israeli citizenship named Amir. Amir is a fairly well off person, he was able to go to law school in England and in New York and he was able to establish his own law firm. Yet he complained about talked to us about how he is “discriminated against” in Israel. He told us about how the houses that are built without permits in his town (this is a scam to avoid paying taxes) don’t have electricity or sewage and how this is Israel discriminating against him and his people (the Palestinians, it is funny that he identifies with them because when asked if he would like to live in the Palestinian state when it is created he said no and it appeared that he might even have been a little bit scared of the West Bank and Gaza natives). Before he stated talking he told us that he was only going to tell us his personal experience, that he was not going to talk politics to us. Yet almost every word out of his mouth was an insult to his country, the country that gives him all of the freedoms that every citizen of a democratic state is entitled to, the nation of Israel. He even went as far to say that the Prime Minister of Israel is not his leader, he/she is only a leader for the Jews. He also said things like, I am not happy that I can never be a general in the IDF, yet before he said that he said that he did not want to be in the IDF and could if he wanted too. Also when he talked he said things like, “They don’t build roads to illegally built houses, I don’t want to tell you what to think, but do you think that it is fair? Well, it is not”. Then someone asked him if he thought Hezbollah was a terrorist organization, his answer was “Did you know that Israel was occupying Lebanon, well Hezbollah was trying to get them out, so no I do not think that they are terrorists.” He also said, “I think that they commit acts of terror, but they do it just like Israel does in response, so I do not think that they are evil” This really upset me and I am sure that everyone else in the room was upset by this too. Hezbollah is recognized as a terrorist organization by most countries and it works to undermine the Lebanese government. They also target innocent people while Israel only targets militants. His response was also disgusting, because he is an Israeli citizen and saying something like that is not very supportive of his country.
Next we heard from an Israeli Jew named Reuven who lives on the hills surrounding an Arab town. He told us how the people in the town below really don’t have much to complain about. Their kids don’t have to go to the army and they don’t need to be scared of their neighbors like he does. He told us of how he has friends who are Arabs and how for 3 years they were able to sleep well at night while he had to be worried about whether or not his children were safe. He also told us of how there was once a bomb planted in his town by someone in the neighboring town and now his town has a electric fence with a border patrol car surrounding it. For the most part I agreed with Reuven and thought the he made a lot of sense.
After that we got in the bus and saw a few Arab towns. The person who showed them to us was named Yuvi. He is an Israli Arab and is the most rational person that I met the whole day. He explained to us that most Israeli Arabs are not like Amir. He also told us that a lot of the problems that Israeli Arabs have are not really caused by Israel.

Later we drove to a Druze city and went to a market there. At this market I was literally pulled into a store and when one of the people who worked there saw me looking at an IDF sweatshirt they confused me into buying it for 60 NIS (actually that is not such a bad price), however when I got back to the dorms later that night I noticed that it was discolored.
Next we went to eat dinner at a Druze house, the food was really good. There was also a Druze girl who talked to us about the Druze culture and we were able to find a bit about what they believe. Calling this girl good looking would be an understatement.
Over all I had a very interesting day and I learned a lot.

Yesterday I went to the Weitzman and the Israeli Maritime college. It was supposed be a day themed around Israeli science. However it really wasn’t, the stuff we did at the Weizmann we could have seen at any normal science museum. The stuff we saw at the Maritime college was really cool, but it was not specific to Israel. We learned about intertidal zones, what marine scientists do in the lab and we got to see the sea turtle rescue center there. It was cool and I learnt a lot about sea turtles and how humans are effecting them, but I did not learn anything about the many sciences that are specific to Israel.

Last week we went in to the desert to see one of the main things in the Zionist dream. Making the desert bloom.

We left campus on Wednesday and went to this place called Revivim. Revivim is an really old kibbutz that was setup as an experiment to see if Jews could live in the desert. The answer they got was yes and because of their work the Negev was included in the Jewish land that was allocated in the UN partition plan. There we also saw the underground rooms that were used as a hospital during the war of independence. The rooms were safe because there were air pipes that were used to bring air into the room and the Egyptians thought that they were anti-airplane missiles and stayed far from the room.

After we went on a hike, it was straight up hill and it was evil. However, it was cool when we got to the top. At the top we found out that we were on a Makhtesh. A Makhtesh is a mountain formation unique to Israel, it is when erosion erodes a mountain until it ends upside down. It looks a lot like a crater.

After that we went to the house of Ben Gurion in the Negev. It was neat looking at his house, because even though he was a famous politician he had a very small and modest house. It really showed what type of person he was.

Next we went to a Bedouin town and rode camels. There were two people per camel and I was on a camel with Brendan. It was a fun ride but our camel kept stopping to eat on the side of the trail, and the person leading it would let it eat for a bit then laugh because it was eating a thorn bush and smack it so it would keep moving. It was very funny.

That night we had Bedouin food and slept in a Bedouin tent. We also learned about how Bedouin people in Israel are treated as normal citizens and enjoy the same equal rights that all Israelis have. We also learnt about how many of them serve in the army. It was interesting to hear someone who was not a Jew talk about the Jewish state with the same amount of pride that a Jew has.

The next day we got up really early and went to a lookout deck over Makhtesh Ramon, after that we got back on the bus and drove into the Makhtesh. After a long, curvy, and scary drive on a road that was almost as wide as the bus we began to hike. After a while of walking we reached these massive sand dunes and got to play on them. It was fun, the thing was the most fun was this rock that had a drop below it. We began to jump off it, I went twice and had a lot of fun.

When we arrived at the bus we then drove to Eilat and had free time there. I walked around with Mason and Eric. We went swimming and then had dinner. In between we walked around the mall where I got to have the experience of washing off my feet in the bathroom there (don’t ask). After dinner we drove to this Kibbutz that the reform movement founded in the 1970s. It is called Kibbutz Yahel.

That night we had a “party” with the “local” Israelis. It wasn’t much of a party and there weren’t really more that like 10 Israelis there, but it was still fun. After about 6 or 5.5 hours of sleep I got up and was forced got to go on another hike. It was an interesting hike that took us really close to the Egyptian border and we saw the land that once was Israel until we gave it back to make peace. The hike ended at a coral reef and we proceeded to snorkel in it. This was not my first time snorkeling and it was a lot easier for me this time than last time. (The last time was about 2 or 3 years ago in Catalina)

Then we were taken back to Eilat and given more free time. That night (Friday night) we slept on the Kibbutz and went to synagogue there. It was nice to see how the people who live there pray. It showed me that it is possible to have a middle ground when it comes to religion in Israel. We also spent Shabbat there and because of the (purposeful) lack of scheduling we had a really nice relaxing time.

Last Thursday was יום העצמאות‎(Israel’s independence day). It was a lot of fun, at night I went to a concert the the park and heard lots of bands play (the park was really crowded, I didn’t know that Hod Ha’Sharon was that big), the next day I went to the beach and went swimming and had a sand fight with a few other students. Later that day I went to a barbeque that the school made for us.

Being in Israel for the 60th anniversary of the declaration of the state was very special. In a few years when people talk about how Israel is, I will be able to say that I was there when the country turned 60.