Caitlin in Jerusalem: August 2012

Friday, August 24, 2012

Soreq Caves

Today we went to the Soreq caves, just a little west of Jerusalem!
Awesome stalactites and stalagmites.

On Tuesday I went on a full-day tour of wineries in northern Israel! Kind of random for someone who doesn't drink wine, I know, but one of the people at Shabbat dinner every Friday is Eli and Eli is a wine connoisseur. In fact Eli gives tours of wineries as a job, and he invited everyone from Shabbat dinner to come and he would give us all a tour! So Patrick (another LDS Hebrew U student) and I decided, what the heck, why not? Sure, we can't drink the wine, but it was going to be a great opportunity to see some of the beautiful vineyards in northern Israel.

So Eli, Naomi, Dina, Patrick and I stuffed ourselves in a little car and drove the three hours up to the Galilee and Golan Heights area and we went to three different wineries: Adir, Golan Heights, and Naftaly. I was surprised to discover that I really didn't mind spending all day learning about wine! Each winery was completely different from the previous, different in size and location and feel, and we even focused on a different part of the wine-making process at each place. It went from Natfaly, a little winery in a small town that the guy ran as a hobby, producing 10,000 bottles/year to Golan Heights which was a huge company, producing 8 million bottles/year.

We learned all about growing grapes, how the slightest differences in climate, sun, soil would produce grapes that make an entirely different wine. We learned about sorting the grapes, the fermentation tanks, the aging in oak barrels; everything I could possibly want to know! And then ended each tour with a wine tasting (or in my case, I could say that I have become an expert wine-sniffer!). I learned all sorts of skills I will never use such as the need to aerate the wine ("let it breathe, let it breathe!"), but I loved it at least partially because of the beautiful vineyards and scenery. Israel is a little country but very diverse, you have absolute barren desert in the south, rolling Judean desert hills in the middle around Jerusalem, and green and forests in the north. And it was so nice to be in an area with a little more greenery!

The first winery (Adir) was also a dairy farm, and perhaps my favorite part of the day was the lunch meal we had there! They brought out a platter with 6 different kinds of cheeses, fresh bread, strawberry jam, eggs, fresh salad with pesto and my new favorite thing "pomegranate goat yogurt"!! It was amazing!!!

Eating grapes in the vineyard

One of the tour guides

The other tour guide

Eli, the wine connoisseur

Goat cheese platter

Lunch at Adir

Oak barrels for aging wine

Wine tasting/sniffing

Another wine tasting

Naftaly winery had some grape juice for Patrick and me!

Lunch at Adir

Saturday, August 11, 2012

The Beach at Nitzan

I went to the beach for the second time in Israel!

This time Aaron and Patrick (two LDS Hebrew U students who just arrived recently) went with our new Israeli friend Moshe to a beach right by the little town of Nitzan. Nitzan is between Ashdod and Ashkelon in southern Israel, right above the Gaza Strip.

Moshe's sister lives in Nitzan and he dropped off us at the beach for a few hours while visiting her. Moshe explained to us a little bit about the history of Nitzan, almost the entire town is made up of Israelis that were evacuated from the Gaza Strip in the early 2000s. (The Gaza strip is an area of Israel that is a Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas). These Israeli refugees were sent to Nitzan and almost the entire city is made up of caravillas, a type of mobile home. Moshe was also telling us how rockets from the Gaza strip reach Nitzan, so these Israelis escaped the Gaza strip but still are close enough that they experience the effects of it. Very interesting...

Pictures from the beach:

Me, Moshe, Aaron, Patrick

Synagogue and Singing

On Friday night I went to my first Jewish Shabbat service. I went with Aaron, my new LDS Hebrew U friend, and he had been to this synagogue before and liked the songs that they sang more than other places. So this is how it works: Shabbat services last a little more than an hour, just like sacrament meeting, and the entire service is read from a prayer book in Hebrew. But that isn’t quite accurate, because the service isn’t “read”, it is sung. Apparently each synagogue will sing the same prayers, but the tunes that they use vary, which is why Aaron particularly liked this one synagogue.

In the synagogue, the women and men are separated, each on one side of the room and divided with a veil; this is to keep everyone focused on the service rather than thinking about how cute the boy/girl sitting in front of them is. Can you imagine if LDS sacrament meeting was this way! There is a male leader for the service who directs us in the prayers and often sings aloud passages that the rest of us listen to (I was wondering how this works because I imagine they always have to have a decent voice, are there tryouts for this sort of thing?).

The songs that they sing are hauntingly beautiful, I don’t know quite what it is about them but they touch my heart. It brings me back to 5 years ago being in Jerusalem, we had a “Bedouin tent dinner” one night in the desert in southern Israel, and after the dinner a few Israelis sang some traditional Hebrew songs. I remember clearly feeling a huge peace wash over me, being so touched by the songs and thinking, “one day, I want to sing these beautiful Hebrew songs”. And here I am, 5 years later back in Jerusalem, sitting in Shabbat services and singing those “beautiful Hebrew songs”, isn’t it interesting how things come together sometimes?

I had written in my journal after the experience at the Bedouin tent dinner, “I was feeling the Spirit I guess”. Absolutely I was, just as I did again at Shabbat service, and just as I have many times been touched by the Spirit as strongly in other religious traditions as in our own. Because the Spirit comforts, guides, and testifies of truth, in any of its forms. Yes, I believe we have a high concentration of that truth in the LDS church, and yes, I believe that when we make and maintain covenants with God we are entitled to feel the influence of the Spirit more profoundly in our lives, BUT the same Spirit clearly comforts, guides, and testifies in all cultures and people, leading them to Christ because everything good comes of Christ. So when I feel those wonderful happy feelings in foreign settings, I am not confused or disillusioned but rather grateful that the God I believe in loves all His children enough to give them truth and light. And once again it was confirmed to me that at the very least, the Jews possess a unique, rich cultural heritage, and likely are in at least some senses of the word, a “chosen” people.

Mitt Romney recently got himself in trouble over claiming that Israel’s economic advantage over Palestinians was in part because of their rich culture, and although I don’t agree with the underlying inference of an inferior Palestinian culture (there is so much depth and beauty to both cultures, you really can’t claim superiority on this one), I do agree with the message that there is something unique about these Jews. Compared to the billions in the world they are nothing, just a speck, and yet thousands of years of history and miraculous events, the Jewish people are still around and the world still has its eyes on them. What is it about such a small group of people that has caused such a stir? I believe that part of it has to do with covenants made many years ago, promises from God that he would preserve and protect his people, the children of Israel.

I also learned that I wish we would sing the Biblical Psalms like the Jews do; they seem to have much more meaning when combined with a melody. After all, they were written not to be read, but to be sung; we should keep with the tradition and preserve the psalmist’s original intent!

This was a scattered post with a bunch of thoughts, but that is how my mind works I guess and these are the things I have been thinking about since Shabbat.

Random pictures from the last few weeks: