Soreq Caves

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

Wine Tour

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

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:

This is most of my Hebrew Ulpan class, at a picnic we had our last day of class

Taylor, James the LDS guy, and James's wife Kindra

My good friend from Ulpan, Taylor!

Dinner with my new best friends, Patrick and Aaron

Playing in the water fountain one night with the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish kids 

(note the long sleeves and curly hair ringlets on the kids)

Feminist Protest at the Western Wall

On Friday morning I went with Katie, a friend from Hebrew class, to the Western Wall for a service at 7:00am given by a group called "Women of the Wall".  This is a group of feminist Orthodox Jewish women that believe that women should have equal rights as the men at the Western Wall.  

For a little bit of background, the Western Wall aka the Wailing Wall is a section of the original wall that went around the Temple Mount back in the Second Temple Period (Herod's temple, the temple during the time of Christ). Jews regard the Western Wall as holy and they gather in front of the wall to pray and worship.  The Western Wall is divided into two sections, one for men and one for females. The men are allowed to wear prayer shawls, hold worship services, read from the Torah, and sing and dance, while the women are not.  The "Women of the Wall" are a group that protests these unequal rights, and once a month they gather at the Wall on Friday at 7:00am to hold a worship service in the back of the women's section. 

Katie and I showed up early Friday morning and joined their service.  There was a group of about 50 women, reading the service from the Hebrew prayer book and singing together, most of them wearing prayer shawls.  Many of them were American born Israelis, and it was a wide variety of ages, anywhere from late teens to older women.  At one point in the service, I noticed an Israeli soldier with a little camcorder, filming us, and I turned to Katie and asked her why. She told me, "Well... this group has been known to get a little riotous in the past...". Oh the adventures I get myself into sometimes!  But everything stayed calm and proceeded smoothly and when we finished the service, we moved outside the area of the Wall down into the archeological park for the reading of the Torah and a lot of men in support of the group joined us.

This was such an interesting event to participate in, once again mostly for the people we were able to meet and talk to, particularly one girl who helped us to understand what was going on and where we currently were in the Hebrew prayer book.  I may go back again!

Videos I took of the group:

Singing as we walk away from the Wall

Reading of the Torah. Note how she passes it around and people kiss it. Also note how there are men present as well.

May 11, 2013 Update:
Yesterday there was an article in the NY Times about this group I participated with! This is a piece of the article:
"JERUSALEM — Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews tried to block a liberal women’s group from praying at the Western Wall on Friday morning, creating a tense standoff in the latest flash point of a broader battle over religion and identity that has engulfed Israel.
Heeding calls from their rabbis, religious teenage girls turned up in large numbers to protest the group’s insistence on praying at the wall in religious garb traditionally worn by men. The girls crammed the women’s section directly in front of the wall by 6:30 a.m., forcing the liberal women to conduct their prayer service farther back on the plaza. There, hundreds of police officers locked arms in cordons to hold back throngs of black-hatted Orthodox men who whistled, catcalled, and threw water, candy and a few plastic chairs."

Ulpan

I am currently taking a break from working in the lab to do a Hebrew Ulpan; aka an intensive modern Hebrew course.  Sunday to Thursday, I attend class for 5 hours and it lasts for one month, until the end of July.  We have two female Israeli teachers who switch off days and teach only in Hebrew, along with a textbook that also uses very little English.  The best part of Ulpan is most certainly the people in the class; people I have grown to love in just a few short weeks.  Our class is about 20 people, half of them American and the other half from all around the world including Germany, Norway, Finland, France, Korea, Italy (yay),Holland, South Africa and Canada.  

Each day we get to know each other during our class breaks and working in groups and activities we plan for after class.  We all come from very different backgrounds and yet get along so well.  Just over half the class is Christian, the rest are Jewish, many are studying Hebrew with the intent of pursuing some kind of studies in the Bible and Biblical Hebrew. Some of the interesting people I am friends with are a fellow LDS student with a degree in religious studies and Archeology who is headed off the BYU law school, a 32-year old Lutheran minister here with his wife and three kids, a "Hebrew Roots" Christian who wears the kippa and ropes hanging from his pants, eats kosher and observes Jewish holidays, currently in seminary with the long-term goal of teaching the Old Testament, a 21-year old very normal American kid studying international relations who just happens to speak Arabic fluently and be a clergy member of the Greek Orthodox Church, and many more.  Several of us watch movies, go shopping, explore tourist sites, and have a weekly Bible study together, conducted by the Lutheran minister.  Each person has their own story and their own unique reasons for spending a month in Israel learning Hebrew, and I am convinced that the main reason I am studying Hebrew in this Ulpan right now is for the opportunity to associate with these great people.

Italy... Again!

Two weeks ago I went to Italy for 6 days! It was a transition period from working in the lab to doing Hebrew Ulpan, and I had a few free days over the weekend. So I decided to go to Italy with Joseph and his sister Anna, and Josh, the 17-year old son of a religion professor at the BYU Jerusalem Center.

Because I knew Italy so well and knew people that we could stay with (and also because I was the oldest of our little group of 4), I was in charge of planning the whole trip.  For 6 days, we ran around Rome, Naples, and Florence and had an incredible adventure with our rental car and sleeping on floors, beds, and in cars.  

I will just share some of the highlights and pictures.

Josh and I go to the airport on Thursday (Joseph and Anna arrived earlier in the day) and we are picked up by some members of the Ostia ward, David, Riccardo, Marco. Oh how wonderful it was to see these people again, the YSA of the Ostia ward!  I love them so much, and as I talked to David before coming to Italy, he touched my heart by telling me that the members of the Ostia ward would be willing to help me in anyway because they were grateful for my service to the ward, it was their way of repaying me.  It brought tears to my eyes, and to see them again and their willingness to help me and my friends was so special! Especially because Riccardo was an investigator in Ostia, found when I was serving there a year ago, and now he is a baptized, strong member of the church! What sweet memories those are.

On Friday morning we went to the airport to pick up a rental car we had reserved.  There were some misunderstandings and I animatedly argued with the rental car person in Italian, surprisingly bringing back even more sweet memories and a passionate side of me that only the beautiful Italian people and Italian language can bring out, haha.  I honestly love the freedom I feel speaking in Italian to express exactly how I feel in exactly the way that I feel it.

After the car fiasco and an extra 150 dollars, we toured around Rome and left that night to go to Napoli, a city in my mission but one I had never been to.  We had plans to stay the night with Marco, a talented Italian studying at NYU who I had met on the plane just a month before.  He had an incredible apartment, in what was probably one of the richest parts of town, penthouse with a balcony and a view of all of Naples, the ocean, and Mount Vesuvius.  It was absolutely incredible, and to top it off we bought 5 Margherita pizzas and ate them on the balcony with the amazing view. That was definitely a highlight of the trip, a once in a lifetime experience.

On Saturday we went to Pompeii and it was hot. Then we drove to Positano.  Positano is a beautiful beach town just south of Naples on the Amalfi Coast. I had heard about how great it was from my mission companion Sorella Olsen, and it was one of my "must sees" next time in Italy.  The drive there was spectacular, a narrow winding road through steep cliffs that dropped down to the ocean and they somehow built a colorful little town on the side of these cliffs. 

Positano

Pompeii

Trevi Fountain

Saturday night was spent at Dima Scotchi's (a missionary I served with) on his floor, and on Sunday morning we went church hopping! Thanks to the rental car, we were able to go to Ladispoli for the first hour and Ostia for sacrament meeting and I saw so many people that I love so much!  Even better, in each ward I had an old companion currently serving there (Sorella Buma in Ladispoli and Sorella Olsen in Ostia).  Ladispoli was great, but being back in Ostia especially with Sorella Olsen, was a dream.  We were a few minutes late and I snuck in and sat by Angela, my Ukranian miracle baptism.  She had no idea I was going to be there, and was so happy to see me!  We stayed around church for an hour after it ended just so I could talk to everyone in the ward and I couldn't have been happier. Ostia was my favorite area, my favorite ward with my favorite people.  

In the afternoon we went to see the temple grounds. We had to see it from the top story of the building next door because the grounds are closed off, but it was crazy to see how much work they had done since last time I saw it!  9 months ago there was just a hole in the ground, and now there are 4 tall buildings under construction, the temple, church, hostel, and visitor's center. 

We toured around Rome a bit more, ate pizza in front of the Colosseum at night, and began our drive to Florence.  We couldn't find a decently priced place to sleep that night, so in the early hours of the morning, we pulled over at a random rest stop  in between Rome and Florence and slept in the car.  I couldn't sleep at all in the car, so I actually sat at the top steps of a closed cafe and watched the sun rise over Tuscany and listened to music.  Even though I was absolutely exhausted, it was one of the coolest experiences for me to find a little bit of alone time and reflect on things during the Tuscan sunrise.  

On Monday we toured around Florence and climbed to the top of the Duomo.  We made it back to our hotel just as the sun was setting. Our hotel was about a 25 minute bus ride from the heart of Florence, on top of a hill just about a little town, and it had a spectacular view! 

Duomo in Florence

View from the top of the Duomo in Florence

Ponte Vecchio in Florence

 

San Gimignano

San Gimignano from the top of a tower

San Gimignano

On Tuesday we toured other Tuscan towns including San Gimignano, a beautiful town on top of a hill with lots of towers.  That night Anna and Josh went into Florence to try to see Michaelangelo's David, and Joseph and I drove around trying to find a certain monastery. We weren't able to find it but ended up in a piazza with a spectacular view of Florence, and then got kebabs!

Wednesday we went to Siena and then I was dropped off at the airport, where I was flagged for being very suspicious (my passport picture looks nothing like me and I technically don't have a visa yet for Israel...) After intense questioning and an hour later, I made it on the plane but it was my fault that the flight was 20 minutes late! Oops!

Being in Italy was absolutely fantastic, made even better by Joseph, Anna, and Josh.  Every day we packed in so much, had a dozen mini-adventures, and memorable moments.  I want to just summarize what some of my favorite moments were:

1. Luca, my Romanian friend and investigator in Ostia, spent a day in Rome and came to Napoli, Pompeii, and Positano with us.  Hanging out with Luca was incredible, we all loved having him with us and he fit right in.  More than that, I was so impressed with him. Sorella Olsen and I found him on a train over a year ago, and although he isn't baptized, I am astounded to see how much he has changed. He is happy, he is so involved with all the other young adults of the Church, and is practically a member. Even more, I was so impressed with his maturity.  For any problem that came up or any question that needed answering, Luca was by my side, helping. He drove the car when we all were exhausted, helped navigate, and showed us great pizza places in Rome. It has been a long time since I have been "his missionary", but I still feel that missionary-like love and concern for him, and it made me so happy to see him doing so well.  

2. Food!

Pizza on the balcony in Napoli

Pizza at night in front of the Colosseum

Every town we went to, we stopped for gelato. So good!

Sandwiches in the pinetta on Sunday in Ostia. The same pinetta where we taught so many people, so many memories, we ate fresh bread with fresh mozzarella cheese and meat.  So simple and yet so good!

One of our many gelato stops

Pizza being made in Napoli

Eating pizza on the balcony in Napoli with Marco

3. Seeing all the people in the Ostia ward again. It was such a sweet reunion

Ostia!

4. Sunrises and sunsets in Tuscany, watching the sunrise on the balcony in Napoli.

sunrise over Tuscany at the truck rest stop. Everyone else was asleep in the car, hidden behind the trucks in the picture

View from our hotel room in Tuscany

Sunset over Florence

5. Spending hours driving around, lost, either in Rome or Florence or Napoli or on our way to some other place.  So many one way streets!  So many roads we drove on that were illegal for non-residents! Oops!

6. Adventures like jumping over the fence to sneak into the building by the temple grounds and scaring the only two people in the building. Or jumping the wall at Pompeii to run around the top of the ampitheater

7. Views of the cities from the tops of church duomos and towers

8. Not being able to express myself clearly in English and having to switch to Italian to more quickly give directions to Luca. Ahhh, Italian :)

9. Laughing fits over nothing because we were functioning on just a few hours of sleep each night

10. Being stung by a jellyfish at Positano! 3 weeks later and I still have the marks...

jellyfish sting!