Israel, Part 5

Today is Sunday, July 6th and marks one full week in Israel.  I quickly do a survey of what clean clothes I have available to wear and I am quite pleased with what is remaining.  I am happy I won't need to do any laundry (either by hand or send out through the hotel) during my time in Israel.  Yay for me. :)

We start the day off listening to the founder of "Our Soldiers Speak", Sgt. Benjamin Anthony.  He tells us what it was like to be an IDF soldier on the frontlines.  Holy Moly!  He was very intense, passionate and a powerful speaker.

Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial) is next on the itinerary.  I loved how the building was designed and the mood that is set as you are walking through the rooms.  You have no choice but to zig zag, and go from room to room to room; it is impossible to cut through the middle walkway and bypass the exhibits.  I've been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. several times and it is a very different experience.  You can't possibly compare the two places.  Yad Vashem is only one floor and as you make your way through the memorial, the back wall is a ceiling-to-floor window that looks out to the land and mountains.  It was designed this way intentionally to make you feel the openness and freedom as you are completing the tour.  So well done.  The other amazing exhibit is the Children's memorial.  It is a very dark room, only illuminated by one flame of a candle.  There are hundreds of mirrors reflecting off the one flame making it look like an infinite number of candles.  As you walk around the circular room, a voice is announcing each and every child's name, age and city they were from that was in the holocaust, over 1.5 million children.  

The eternal flame at Yad Vashem.  The only picture I was allowed to take.

After a quick lunch, we move onto the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) base.  We had care packages made and was able to give them directly to the soldiers.  We spent the better part of an hour getting to talk and connect with the soldiers.  This was definitely a highpoint in the trip for me.  We were allowed to take pictures, but we promised to not post any on any social media sites.  One of the soldiers put his machine gun around me to take a picture.  When the other women wanted to do the same, the soldier pointed to me and said  "She professional".  It was very funny.  The young men and women are so brave.  It was an emotional few moments for me to tell a few of them how proud of them I was.  How safe I felt being in Israel because of them.  How often my dad tells me that there is no military in the world better than the Israeli military.  I am sure the soldiers I told this to could hardly understand me, as they spoke very little English.  But Dawn tried to make me feel better and said they could feel my emotion.  I hope so.  It was later reported a week later that the woman I gave my care package to was seen wearing the Washington Nationals hat I included.  This made me smile when I heard that.  I am glad she is enjoying it and I hope they all stay safe and make it through this very scary time fighting Hamas.  We were allowed to take pictures, but we promised to not put them on any kind of social media. 

Ah, we are only halfway through the day.  Hard to believe, right?  It's off to Beit Shemesh to visit the Ethiopian National Project.  Beit Shemesh is the Jewish Federation of Washington, DC's sister city.  ENP brings Ethiopian Jews to Israel and helps them get settled into their new lives.   We got to hang out with the young children and teens.  We helped them make shadow puppets for a puppet show they put on for us at the end of our visit.  We had very little language understood between us and them and we still managed to get along just fine.

Girls from Ethiopia.

Dinner was arranged at a woman's house named Lily.  She served us a traditional Kurdish dinner.  I am still not entirely certain of what it was I was eating, but it was incredibly yummy!  There was so, so, so many dishes.  I was brave and tried a few things I don't think I would've normally been daring to do.  Two women who lived nearby came over and sat with us at our tables.  I had a woman named Orly at my table.  She was simply amazing.  I loved her sense of adventure and could listen to her stories all night long.  She did the Israeli version of "Wife Swap".  Really!  And she just got done with a 24 day competition in her car.  She had to race from Jordan to Germany in a car that was either over 20 years old or cost less than 1,000 euro.  She was one of only a few women competing with something like 600 men.  I told her I HAD TO friend her on facebook and see all the cool things she was up in the years to come.  So we are now facebook friends.  The only problem is, her page is entirely in Hebrew!  I can't understand any of it.  hahahahaahaha.

This is Orly.  Coolest woman ever.  I look like I am half asleep.

As dinner was ending we went out to the front porch and watched a beautiful sunset.  The weather was gorgeous.  A highlight of my day was getting a phone call from Ian after he got off the plane from camp.  It was so great to hear from him.  Boy did he sound older on the phone.  Or maybe he was just as tired as I was.  :)

Me pointing to the sunset.

On Monday we started winding down.  This was the last day for the majority of the JWRP women.  Our city (the 18 of us) was staying an extra day, but everyone else was flying out late Monday night. We started the morning by writing letters to ourselves.  These letters will be mailed to us at some point in the future; maybe in 5 months?  Not sure.  

Then Lihi Lapid (apparently a very famous Israeli author) spoke to us.  Not entirely sure what she was supposed to be talking to us about.  It was a bit hard to follow her.  I think she must do better writing her thoughts than speaking them.  I will end this on a positive note and say she seemed to be very nice.

Lori spoke to us briefly about "Bringing it all home".  How to incorporate everything we heard, saw and experienced back to our regular lives.

After filling out our evaluation forms, Dawn and I decided to head out a bit early and do some shopping.  This is where our day starts to get VERY CRAZY!!!  We went to Cardo.  It is this covered (underground?) section, in the Old City that has many, little Jewish shops selling everything from Judaica, jewlery, scarves, art, and assorted tchotchkes (gosh I love that word...tchotchkes).  Dawn and I are having fun shopping and making our way through the shops.

What a neat picture of the cat in front of the picture of the cat.

This is what the Cardo area looks like.
 

Before we realize what has happened, the Jewish shops have switched over to muslim shops.  We are no longer in the Jewish section. The shop windows are no longer displaying Stars of David jewelery.  The little shops are no longer selling judaica.  It took us too long to realize that Jews are no longer walking around the market.  Dawn and I are the only women who are wearing shorts and have our faces/heads exposed.  We then notice the men have pro-Palestine shirts on.  We realize we need to get out.  There is music playing throughout the space and I do a little wiggle, like a dance move.  I am a few steps ahead of Dawn.  This guy grabs Dawn's arm and tells her to "get me out of there. There is no dancing allowed."  We continue ahead and try to find the closest exit.  I keep suggesting we retrace our steps and go back the way we came.  Dawn is pretty freaked out and refuses to go back in front of that guy again.  So we go deeper and deeper into the Muslim market area.  It is not good.  We must've walked a good mile trying to find a way out before finally getting back out onto the street level.  We are no where near the Jewish quarter.  We are in the heart of the Muslim Arab quarter.  Dawn is very concerned for our safety.  While I would like to get back pronto to an area I recognize, I do not feel like we are in danger.  As Dawn astutely says, either one of us is overreacting or one of us is underreacting.  Either way, I think we make a good balance.  We try to hail a cab and no one is stopping for us.  Out of nowhere, we hear this man's voice say, "Ladies, ladies, what are you doing here?"   It is Omar from our hotel gift shop.  Dawn and I had met him a few days prior when I was looking for a stamp to mail a postcard.  We started a conversation with him and found out that Omar was in the middle of celebrating Ramadan.  He also told us that many people will not give him any business in the predominantly Jewish hotel we were staying in because he is Muslim.  Dawn and I instantly bonded with Omar and gave him our business.  He makes custom necklaces with your Hebrew name and between the two of us, we ordered 5 of these necklaces with Omar.  And, now Omar was our hero and was coming to our rescue.  He was like a beacon of light crossing the street walking over to us.  He was surprised to see us.  We filled him in on what was going on and how we needed help to get a cab.  Within a minute Omar had a cab stop for us and we were able to make our way back to the hotel.  Our cab driver had no idea where our hotel was or had even heard of it.  Somehow we managed to direct him back to the other side of Jerusalem where we were more welcomed.  As we told a few people where we ended up and could see their reactions, Dawn was right to be freaked out.

Omar, our hero.

We have one last event with JWRP before we say good-bye to all the other cities and our D.C. group  continues for an additional day.  It's off to a closing banquet at Gavna.  Gavna is this beautiful setting and we experience another very tasty meal.  Each group has prepared a skit or musical number of some sort to preform.  Our group's skit was changing the words of the song "Call Me Maybe" to wording that was specific to our trip and all we had been through.  Dawn was our leader in creating this song and did an excellent job!  We didn't have enough time to practice beforehand so it was pretty funny getting up there and going for it.  A few of the other cities did an excellent job.  It was very entertaining.

What an amazing group of women to get to know and travel with.

Another very long day. I am starting to get used to the jam-packed itinerary.
 
Stay tuned for Israel,  Part 6.....Are we home yet?  The trip back that doesn't seem to end.