the chags never end
Chag Sameah some more – we had a nice, low-key Yom Kippur at the farm, and we’re gearing up for a big Sukkot celebration starting tomorrow. I’ll be glad when all the holidays are over, so we can get back into the rythym of things at the farm.
This weekend I was in Be’er Sheva, an unapologetically gritty city in the Negev desert. I went with two girls from the program, Anna and Michal (who studied abroad at Ben Gurion U in Be’er Sheva last year), and we stayed with an American girl, Tess, who runs the Green Community Center for an organization called Bustan, which works on sustainability projects and with Bedouin communities. The Bedouins, I’ve learned, are treated almost as badly as the Palestinians by the Israeli government, but in different ways – they’re essentially forced in to townships (which is very different from their traditional nomadic ways) that have no infrastructure like roads, schools, or medical care, so life is very difficult. There are only 8 recognized townships, but also many other unrecognized townships which are periodically bulldozed …
Our weekend, however, was pretty chill- we helped do a bit of work in the garden, played music, ate good food, knit and read all day. On Friday we went to the shuks, which were far more chaotic than any of the other shuks I’ve been to – everything you can imagine for sale, out of folding tables or overflowing from shops, rotten produce underfoot, hawkers shouting out prices in Hebrew and Arabic, smells and sounds crowding your sences. We bought olives and goat cheese, tomatoes, pita, and rugelah for the weekend, and then took a break for some nana tea – black tea with mint and lots of sugar – an Arabic drink that is DELICIOUS.
On Saturday, we took a walk down the same streets and pedestrain mall that the shuks had overwhelemed the day before, but, because it was shabbat, the streets were totally deserted, we didn’t see people for for half an hour at a time. We walked to Abraham’s Well, some biblical well for which Be’er Sheva is partially named (meaning Seven Wells); there were tons of kids and adults picnicking and a birthday party with bouncy castles going on. Nest to the park is a small valley and spring, through which a sheperd was driving her flock of about 70 goats (and 8 donkeys and two dogs) – that was interestig to watch.
Her ein Jerusalem, there is a special Sukkot shuk that sells only the 4 plants special to Sukkot – citron, willow, myrtle, and date palm. Each represents something specific: citron, the heart; willow, the lips; myrtle, the eyes; and heart-of-palm, the spine. Together, tehyre shaken and are a special holiday mitzvah. There are hundreds of Hasidic men at the shuk now, carfulling inspecting every palm frond and willow leaf in the market. I actually saw one old man with one of those squinty-jewel-appraiser-eye pieces looking at a citron we was thinking of buying. Partying is serious stuff here.
Next week we have almost a whole week off, and I’ll probably go to up north to Haifa to stay with a friend from the farm, and also visit Harduf, a kibbutz that includes a community for adults with developmental disabuilities (similar to the one I worked at in New York this winter -spring). These anthroposphic communities do inpiring work – check out Hardou here: http://www.kamah.org.il/eng/elisha.asp
Michal, Anna and I visited one of Michal’s friends at the soup kitchen where she used to volunteer, and we got this great advice (said about the ups and downs of running a soup kitchen without many resources): “Sometimes it is more better, sometimes it is less better, but always it is better.” That’s a good attitude, isn’t it?
