Our last month except for one great weekend

Blog March 5-April 3, 2009

March 5, SR: We had our first overnight guest, Stan’s friend and fraternity brother from college at Purdue, Paul Duckor. Paul came to visit us in Santa Rosa and we told him about our great time in Sar-El, volunteering the Israel Army that he decide to do it also. He stayed with one night before moving to the ‘Little Inn in the German Colony’ just 1 block from our place. After dinner at our place we went to a concert at Beit Avichai, which is a new cultural center situated in the center of the city on King George street. This cultural center believes in gathering the voices heard in the Jewish-Israeli dialogue, to give them a facility and to allow them to be heard and have an effect on Israeli society and culture. We heard Ladino music with 2 wonderful singers and band of 5 with some very unusual instruments.

March 6, SR
We had Roberta’s friend from previous Sar-El volunteer experiences, Gerry Gelber over for lunch.
We had dinner with our Temple Shomrei Torah tour group visiting Jerusalem. We meet them at the Reform Congregation, Shir Hadash for a wonderful Shabbat service and then walked with most of the group to their Hotel Mt. Zion for dinner. The buffet was expensive but good.. The hotel has a great view of the Old City and is very old but very luxurious hotel still in the old style.

March 7: I took Paul to 4 synagogues for Shabbat. First the very modern one on Emek Refa'im across the street from our place, then, The Great Synagogue, then the Conservative synagogue, and
then the Italian synagogue, just in time for the Kiddish with good pastries. After lunch we took a cab to the Israel Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls and the fabulous model of Jerusalem as it might have looked in 60 CE before its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. We had a great dinner at La Boca on Emek Refa'im which was excellent. Paul left the next morning to go to the airport to start his Sar-El experience.

Hadassah Hospital, March 10, 2009. Roberta:
We took the #19 bus to Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem—there is a second Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. These are really huge complexes of hospitals of many specialties. The Ein Kerem campus contains the synagogue with the beautiful stained glass windows by Chagall where we got a private tour thanks to my life membership in Hadassah

The organization, Hadassah, a women’s Zionist organization founded 100 years ago, was nominated for a Noble prize a few years ago. Although the prize went elsewhere, this was a well-deserved honor, the only non-governmental organization (ngo) so honored. Hadassah Hospital serves people of all ethnic, national, and religious affiliations including Israeli Muslims, Christians, and Jews, as well as people from Arab counties ( although they like to keep that quiet). Patients are assigned rooms based only on medical need so it is not unusual to find a Jewish Israeli and a Arab Muslim Israeli in the same hospital room.

Doctors at Hadassah Hospital also come from many places in the world to work, do research, and/or learn. There are physicians from Turkey and from the Palestinian Territories. A Palestinian Muslim is chief pediatric oncology nurse for the past twenty five years who works the chief Jewish Israeli pediatric oncologist. There are no figures on religion or ethnicity or nationality of patients or doctors. It is obvious from the dress of patients’ families that many groups come here.

The pediatric hospital is seven stories built around a courtyard. Each balcony is decorated with whimsical figures made of neon lights. There are two glass elevators (like the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco)—I love riding in glass elevators especially feeling the sensation of growing tall riding up and growing short riding down. Each kids patients’ room has computer so the child can talk with his family and schoolmates as well as play games. If the home or school doesn’t have a computer they provide that too.

Unfortunately Hadassah is one the groups swindled by Madoff so times are financially difficult. The woman who guided us around took a 2% cut in pay and will work for no pay two days per year. Those earning more took a 4% cut and are working four days per year without pay. Nevertheless I felt morale was high and people believed in what they were doing.

The Ein Kerem campus is so large that there is a shopping mall with shops and restaurants. More buildings are going up. The national bird of Israel nests here, the building crane—OK, give me a big groan.

We walked through the Emergency Department—looks like every other modern ED. However there is one room called the VIP Suite because if a famous person needs to be in the ED, the doors can be shut so the patient has privacy. Ari Sharon was treated in this room. When Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was about to visit Israel, her staff came to look at the facility to be sure it would be ok in the event of a medical emergency.

We left Hadassah Hospital to see the village of Ein Kerem. It was far from the hospital—we did not realize this and started to walk—and walk—and walk. Finally saw a cab who stopped for us; the cabby wondered what we were even doing on this route which resembled a highway without pedestrian walkways. Ein Kerem was picturesque favorite spot for Christian tourists since Mary was born there and visited with Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, hence the Church of the Visitation up the side of the mountain which we visited also. Many foreign tourist groups were there—Spanish speaking, Italian, Polish. Some of the groups sang beautiful faith-filled songs. Mary’s Well is also here. We caught the #17 bus back to Jerusalem.



March 11, SR: Purim in Jerusalem is a day later than elsewhere since it is a walled city and in the Book of Esther in the capitol city of Persia was the walled city Shushan. The Jews were fighting the locals who had wanted to kill them on the regular day of Purim so they celebrated the following day. Thus to memorialize the defeat of the enemy of the Jews, walled cities celebrate Purim one day later as was done at that time. We were invited to Marcia and Dennis Gelpe home for a Purim shludat festive lunch. They usually prepare a Italian feast from one area of Italy with special recipes. However their daughter Yafa and Sean (in Nursing school) had twins Bracha and Eliana and one just came from the hospital that day so in place of feast we had pizzas that Dennis made. A lot of fun to see new parents so proud and confident of their skills.

March 12-15 Trip to Eilat, then Jordan for day in desert in Wadi Rum and day in Petra-
THIS IS INTERESTING!
Roberta And Stan in Italics:

We took the 7am bus #444 from Jerusalem to Eilat—four and a half hours traveling south along the western coast of the Dead Sea (aka The Salt Sea in Israel). The distance is 200 miles; the fare 35 shekels each ($9 senior rate). We could see across to Jordan. Eilat is a beach city on the Red Sea, famous for snorkeling and diving wonders, coral and brightly colored fishes. The Oceanaquarium provides wonderful views of these after you’ve descended thirty or forty feet under the water surface.

There are shark tanks in another area and well as tanks with sea horses, sea turtles, and big fish. There was an exciting movie about a boy joining his marine biologist father in the sea to study sharks. Nature photography was wonderful. The seats in the theatre moved as if one were on the boat or diving under the sea. In case you are wondering in the movie—the bad shark poachers did not get their prey, a 15 foot whale shark the oceanographers were tracking, thanks to father and son who cut the poachers net so the shark could escape thru the net. A police flown helicopter captured the poachers and presumably justice triumphed. And then the seats stopped moving.

Friday morning at 7:30 am an Israeli woman from Desert EcoTours picked us up at the hotel and took us to the Jordanian border where we paid $40 to cross into Jordan (only $4 to get back). On the Jordanian side Mr. Mustafa walked us across and introduced us to Ali who would guide us into Wadi Rum, a desert area in the south of Jordan made famous by Lawrence of Arabia. Ali is a Bedouin who learned Bedouin desert ways from his grandfather. After getting a university degree in Chemistry he followed his grandfather’s instructions and joined the Jordanian army. He rose to the rank of major before he retired. During his service he spent a year in Monterey, California, studying at a war college (not the language school) where he learned English. He also learned Yugoslavian during two years as part of the UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo with the Jordanian army. This was an educated man.

Wadi Rum was interesting— vast desert with cliffs and rock formations—somewhat like parts of the Southern Utah national parks. Ali was interesting too. He believes that everything a person needs to know what is found in the ‘Holy Book the Koran’. A person with a problem can find the solution in the Holy Book the Koran. He believes in strict interpretation of the law, i.e. if 2 unmarried teenagers have sexual relations they each are hit with 100 blows with a stick; they will probably die but if perchance one lives, it is punishment enough. Adulterers are stabbed to death with everyone throwing 100 knives. A thief’s hand is cut off. These are carried out not by the Jordanian justice system but by the Bedouin community. The honor of each clan is uppermost in the Bedouin society.

Sometimes Bedouin and governmental justice systems overlap. If a Bedouin from one group accidentally does something to another Bedouin from another group, the authorities may jail him; meanwhile the two Bedouin headmen meet and discuss things and if they come to an agreement go through an ancient coffee drinking ritual. They then go to the authorities, say the matter has been resolved; the authorities will then release the man from jail and the agreed upon solution is carried out by the tribe.

Ali is a Sunni Muslim; there is much strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims based on a disagreement over who would be Mohammed’s successor. Mohammed’s son-in law and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib was passed over as successor 3 times and only became leader after 2 of the first 3 leaders were assassinated. Ali was in turn assassinated. Shiites (25%) were for Ali and still hope for his return whereas Sunnis(75%) were for the first 3 actual leaders and their non-family successors. Our guide Ali says the schism between the two fractions will never be settled and the Shiites are crazy. According to Ali, suicide bombers go against the teachings of the Koran. He also predicted that over the next few centuries there will emerge a united Arabia which will then rule an Islamic world much bigger than the present one.

Wadi Rum (pronounced with an Italianate u as oo) is beautiful—stark desert, blue sky, and impressive cliffs, caves, a few stone bridges. Roads are often obvious only to Bedouin. We walked up rock formations using trails, while Ali walked straight up like a mountain goat even if he was 50ish. He cooked chicken for lunch over an open fire. The four-wheel drive jeep climbed mountains of sand—sometimes having to approach fast on level ground, picking up speed so it could go up a sand or rock mountain. We drove all around this very large desert area with amazing formations. Lawrence of Arabia and his Arab troops hid here before attacking the Turkish train as shown the movie. The locals doesn’t like that many rock formations are named by him, for example the ‘ The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ also the name of one of his books.

That night we stayed in a very nice Amra Hotel in Wadi Musa—which is a short walk to Petra. The hotel had a great view of the mountains but also of the mosque only 2 blocks away. But at 3;15 am the mosque 100 feet away called the faithful to prayer—and again at 4:15 am and again at 5:15 am. Musa is Arabic for Moshe he said, since the Arabs have a tradition that Moses hit the rock to bring water in this area. Nice of them to name town after Moses our great teacher. He showed us a distant mountain with a white building on top that they believe is the tomb of Aaron.

Petra was amazing. First the colors are beautiful—deep rose colored rock. The Nabateans who lived there from about 200 BCE to 150 CE were probably Bedouins from Saudi Arabia turned traders first of incense from Yemen and later spices from India. They had the trade routes cornered and did very well. However, they left very little in the way of written records—mostly they left buildings carved into rock in very intricate and precise manner. Some buildings were temples, seats of government, and tombs. Recent Bedouins gave names to the buildings like “The Treasury”—this was probably a temple but they called it the treasury because they thought it still contained treasure and the bullet holes demonstrate their effort steps to retrieve the supposed gold in the rocks. We hiked up 900 steps plus incline trails up a mountain to see the “Monastery” building and realized afterwards we should have taken a donkey up as it was quite a walk. By the end of the day we had probably walked eight strenuous miles. The Monastery was amazing similar to a large Greek temple but carved out of solid rock so that all columns, capitols, roofs, & inner rooms are all out of one piece of rock. No mistakes were allowed and every column was perfectly straight.

Some of the tombs were really caves in the rocks and interestingly until 30 years ago people lived in these caves. They had to bring bottle gas up the mountain for heat as well as carry up all food and water. We meet a fellow selling his mother’s book, “I married a Bedouin” and he lived in one of the caves. This area was only a real tourist attraction beginning in 1980’s until the boarder crossing with Israel was settled and a new highway built with World Bank money from Aqaba north. There were 3 towns along 3 sides of the mountains leading to Petra in Wadi Musa that we drove thru. The only real modern buildings recently constructed were 3 hotels. The zoning in each town is very haphazard with buildings in random locations with no side walks, and trash was very common along the road. We saw similar conditions in East Jerusalem and attributed the trash to rebellion against Israel. But since the same was in Jordan, we conclude that it is just the Arab way.

Back to the border by cab—met on the other side by Desert EcoTours who dropped us at the bus station in Eilat. Time for a short supper then boarded the 7:30 pm bus to Jerusalem. Fortunately we had made reservations or we would have been out of luck—there were three buses at that hour and all were filled. We got to Jerusalem at midnight just in time to get the last bus back to our apartment.

It was easy traveling in Jordan—partly this was because we were on a tour and connections worked. In Israel we travel on our own so it is more strenuous—figuring bus departures, routes, hotels, etc.

Good night,
Roberta
March 16: SR: Lunch with cousin Shira Abraham, daughter of Mort and Miriam Steinberg, at Café Hillel on Emek Refa'im. Husband is Steven, a Rabbinic student. This café was blown up by a suicide bomber/murder in the Second Intifada with many killed. I like to go there to show we are not afraid of what happened. Of course, now all restaurants in Israel have guards that check anyone entering and one pays a slight surcharge for this piece of security. It also employees a vast number of people.

March 19: SR: My son Aaron came to visit. He arranged a trip to Israel to collaborate on finishing a review article in physics at the Technion in Haifa. He got here just in time to have dinner with us and we walked to the Wolfson Building where we saw a live taping of a cable TV show called ‘Live from Israel’ run by right wing modern Orthodox young men. It was over the top for this show which didn’t have a comedian or music group unlike what I saw last year. One can see the shows on the web.

March 24, 2009 Volunteers for Israel experience: Roberta and Stan in italics

We meet at the airport to get our assignment. Interestingly there were 31 volunteers from Finland all going to one base. Amazing and wonderful that so many Christians want to help Israel. We joined 9 others to a base close to Gaza in the Negev. One from New Zealand and one from Italy both Christian and both volunteering for 3 months total. Three other Christian Americans very Zionistic who had actually moved to Israel and bought places in Arad. Since they were on tourist visa they had to leave the country for 5 days every 3 months. One was a single 83 very sweet women who is thinking of marrying/living with a Jewish man and wanted our advice on getting together as an older couple. The other was a couple who moved to Israel separately and they tried to get us to make aliya for our own good. Incredible. Amazingly this very nice Christian couple tried to get us to move to Israel for our own good. Only in Israel!!

Our job was to work on clothes, equipment, ammo clips that solders used in the fighting in Gaza and to get it ready for another battle should it come to that. The mess hall was being remodeled so for dairy breakfast and dinner we ate in a building with one wall open to the outside. I called it the aviary since we shared the space with several different kinds of birds.

The soldiers were nice except that some did not want to work. Some only spoke Russian beside Hebrew of course which was a problem sometimes trying to figure out our work duties. We had flag raising at 8 am every day and we each of us got a chance to raise the Israeli flag once. Nice

We are in the Negev Desert on our third day with Volunteers for Israel, also known as Sar El in Hebrew. The first day was hot; suddenly we couldn’t see more than one hundred yards; the hills were obliterated by brown-ness; a ferocious wind blew—this was a sandstorm. Then rain poured from the sky as the wind continued.

My roommate, Eugenia a Russian with a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Moscow, and I were quite warm and dry in our barracks—only possible because of sleeping bag and warm long johns. She left Russia 30 years ago because of the anti- Semitism in her field and the low pay for University faculty. She made more money teaching English on the side.

There are fields of yellow daisies on base. They looked a little bedraggled in the morning after the rain but perked up by afternoon. Eugenia and I are working indoors cleaning and packaging communications equipment. The next week we sorted and readied uniforms and jackets which will go into IDF duffel bags. This tour the 2nd language of the IDF is Russian—fortunately Eugenia is fluent or it would be very difficult to know what to do. We worked with a thirty seven year old man originally from Ethiopia. When he was nine years old, his family of seventy walked from Ethiopia to Sudan where they boarded a plane to Israel; unfortunately many of his family died on the walk from disease, bandits, and sparse supplies. He is very happy to be in Israel and to do his reserve duty on a call-up for the Gaza Incursion.

March 29, 2009 The Sar El Trip

The first stop is the Tank Museum in Latrun. Forget that this sounds as if only over-grown boys would be interested. It’s one of my favorite sites with a beautiful presentation of history as well as a moving memorial to those in the tank core who died, 4657 men, in all the Israel/Arab wars. In 1948 Israelis could not capture this fortified building on a crest that controlled the only road to Jerusalem that was besieged. They were finally able to construct a new road called the Burma road to circumvent Latrun and resupply Jerusalem. In 1967, they decided that had to take this military base from the Jordanians, so they had a big tank force fire on the building but got no response. After another round to shelling with no response, they entered the building only to find the Jordanians had left 2 years before! Even Israeli intelligence sometimes slips up.

Outside are lots of tanks dating from the 1948 War of Independence; these include Sherman and Patton tanks as well as Israeli, Czech, British, and French tanks. On a long wall are chiseled the names of those who fell, organized first by war and then in alphabetical order regardless of rank. The only change is when father and son or brothers died in the same war—their names are together. The lack of rank designation observes that we are all equal in death. It was very moving.

Inside the building is a square room with a ceiling four stories high under a skylight. The floor is glass and reveals stones and water. The sides of the room look like the dark khaki outsides of tanks. Water runs in small streams down the sides leaving rivulets of rust. Five years ago when I was here last, the rust hadn’t formed. It was very foreboding in here as it was to represent challenge and death in a tank.

The building also houses the Museum of Jewish Allied Soldiers of World War II.. No group had such a high percentage of solders, i.e. one and a half million out of a population of eighteen million. Of men between the ages of 18 and 40 years, 24% served under sixteen nations. 500,000 were in the US Army; 550,000 in the Soviet Army from which 40% died and 600 were decorated. 122,000 were in the Polish Army. About 30,000 served in Britain’s Palestinian Brigade (Back then Jews were Palestinians and this was an entirely Jewish unit as only a few hundred Arabs volunteered who were then told to go home).

There was a display for each national group listing the number who served, the number who died, and the number decorated. Each section had pictures of Jewish generals, admirals, and decorated soldiers. The US section showed a few generals (I forget names), Admiral Rickover, and the recipient of the Medal of Honor who escaped from his burning tank, jumped on another one, shot nineteen enemy and captured 250. He was killed in 1944—not clear if it was during this action or another.
I find the Jewish Allied soldier section very moving because it reminds me of my father and some of the other veterans I’ve met.

Then we “did lunch” in Sderot, a desert city in the Negev which is most famous as the recipient of Qassam rockets from Gaza for the past eight years. Because of these daily attacks, the economy and psychology of the inhabitants have suffered. Israelis try to go there to frequent businesses. The outdoor market had beautiful produce but the goods were a bit shoddy.

We paid a spontaneous visit to the Sderot Headquarters of Mogen Dovid Adom—the Red Cross of Israel—where two Sar El volunteers had just donated an ambulance. There was a brief ceremony of handing the keys to the chief medical officer. The names of the couple and a dedication to their parents were written on the ambulance.

The next stop was Kibbutz Sa-ad located about three miles from Gaza. Founded in 1947 by Jews who believed in “Torah and Work.” The kibbutz began as desert and they brought in a pipeline for water along the main road in one night all under the noses of the British. Today they grow wheat, avocados, chicken, sheep, and run a plastics factory. The kibbutz now with many tress all around is famous for preventing Egyptian forces from reaching Tel Aviv in the War of Independence in 1948. A group of 40 young men and women stopped the Egyptian forces for many weeks. During one lull in the fighting the 2 sides meet for chess matches in the field between them. When the fighting resumed the Egyptian force did not fire on the kibbutz and tried to go around it. A son of one of these Israeli’s fighters told us this and many of stories of this heroic battle that helped save the new state. The kibbutz has a small museum with shell marks still on the walls and the roof affording a great view of Gaza.

We then rode by bus to the top of a hill where only a small water reservoir separated us from the Gaza Strip. Bet Younis, the origin of missiles into Sderot was just west of the opposite shore. Gaza City was just beyond—it’s many high rises pink and white-walled against the blue sky.

I think this will be the last I write about Israel 2009. It was quite an experience and we will return.