When It Rains, It Purims

Purim is a wild holiday.  Fireworks, candy, costumes everywhere, and tremendous amounts of dancing to loud, bass-bumping Israeli pop music until the wee hours of the morning (we're talking  4 am on three consecutive nights in my neighborhood, people).  Definitely a unique experience.

I've participated to some degree, in that I went to a costume dance party with my choir friends, and have been eating a lot of candy.  Which I typically do -- but this time it's free, and Jewish. I may or may not have made myself sick just now, in my office, as a professional grown-up scholar, by eating an entire family-sized box of watermelon-flavored squishy sugar things my roommate gave me this morning. They were delicious - but in a you-want-to-crawl-under-a-table-and-die-after-eating-them kind of way.

Purim is like Jewish Halloween, which is very strange to anyone familiar with the historical events commemorated by the celebration:  On this day several millennia ago, the Persian Jews were saved from utter annihilation by the beauty and wiles of one Queen Esther.  So they dress up in neon wigs and get drunk on imported beer?  Well, maybe it's a bit like St Patrick's day in that way.  (By the way, happy That Holiday to you folks at home! Not that anyone I know really celebrates it all that much...we being descendants of the subtler German/Dutch folk)

I think the celebration yesterday and today has been especially hearty (the official day of Purim was Sunday for everyone else, but in Jerusalem it is celebrated a day later for some unfathomable diplomatic reason having to do with which cities have walls and which don't. In fact, I think someone tried to explain it to me at the aforementioned party, but while he was talking the DJ put on a Jackson 5 track and I may or may not have abruptly abandoned him mid-sentence for the dance floor because, well, Jackson 5!)

Anywho, the partying has been all the more rambunctious because it's been pouring rain here for the last week but stopped in time for celebration.  This is very good news in a parched land, especially since winter was as dry as Ezekiel's bones (aside from the freak blizzard in December).  Now the sun has come out and things are verdant, buzzing and blooming.  I even picked a lemon off of an overhanging tree on Saturday (on Shabbat! I picked fruit on Shabbat!) and am quickly adjusting to the rare treat of seeing ripened fruits (mostly citruses) hiding in branches as I wander through streets and alleys.

I promised beach pictures a while back, as well as tales of a drive through the West Bank.  I post them below -- I hitched a ride with friends of a friend to Tel Aviv on March 1st and spent a glorious day in the sun on the beach, and drinking in the culture of Tel Aviv.  On the way back we drove past Ramallah and other major cities in the West Bank; it was a jolt at first to realize where we were, and to associate my memories of battles, bombings, political, economic and social upheaval -- with these wee Palestinian cities.  Because as you will see from my pictures (taken out the car window, alas), they are just cities: regular little towns - villages even - that are only different in subtle ways of architecture from Jewish homesteads.  People live and eat and work in these cities, and carry on life as best thye can for their families. And underlying it all is an enormous struggle against a biased - some of my secular friends even call it a racist - government.

But more on all that later (and boy, do I have more -- I've at last made a friend who has significant economic/social dealings with Palestinians, and the stories she has told me already....yofi ("whoa").    Especially stay tuned for the Inside Scoop regarding the Soda Stream controversy.

That's all the prose for now.  Sending you all very warm wishes, and hoping your winter ends soon...

Northern Tel Aviv

looking West out onto the Mediterranean 

I read about Entanglement. And then I built a sand castle. All the little children on the beach stared at me --  I am pretty sure it was because they were wondering how I was able to craft such smooth battlements using naught but my fingers. 

Palestinian village in the West Bank -- note housing is more angular with square windows, in Arabic style.  Mosque minaret dominates landscape, as do the enormous barbed wire fences surrounding the city. 

Ramallah, from the Israeli side of the fence. Notice the acres of fencing, metal obstacles, barracks, guard towers and search light posts between us and the city.

The border fence. Slightly more intimidating than the one we have, don't you think?
And many, many more soldiers with guns.