Flying out in a week!

You heard it here...I fly back to the northeast on July 30th. I leave from Tel Aviv in the morning and from there it is a 12 hour flight. Fun.
I look forward to going back. It's been too long since I've seen my awesome family and friends who I miss and think about everyday.
There is one drawback though. [building suspense] July 30th on the Jewish Calendar is a holiday. Not a joyous holiday, but the day of Tish b'Av, the ninth of Av. In history, this day brings sadness. To list a couple of things that happened this day:
-Both of the Temples were destroyed that day (The Western Wall in Jerusalem is a wall of the second temple destroyed by the Babylonians led by Nebucheddnezzar)
-WWI began
-The cattle cars transporting the Jews began from the ghettos to Treblinka, the worst of the Camps
-(Biblically)The spies that went to scout out Israel brought back incorrect and slanderous reports that the people believe, and thus they were sentenced to wander in the wilderness for forty years until all the people that believed the report were dead (between the ages of 20 and 60)
-Rome seized Jerusalem and razed it in the following year (the Jerusalem today is built on top of those ruins. dig down 30 feet and you'll hit another city!)
-Jews were expelled from England 1290 and Spain in 1492 (check the records, Colombus had trouble getting out of port because of all the Jews fleeing)

So yea, I get to fly on this date. On this day, we fast for 24 hours. I have to now figure out how that's going to work considering I'm flying westward and thus "back in time." Hopefully I won't have a 36 hour fast. Ha. But once the Temple is rebuilt, the Jews will no longer have to continue doing this. The fast also serves as a reminder that the Jews have become to comfortable in the Diaspora (dispersion after the destruction of the 2nd Temple). As long as the Temple is not here, we are reminded that we are not doing our job. We are to be a "light unto the nations" and right now, we are kind of a joke. Assimilation is the greatest killer of the Jews that all the Holocausts and Pogroms combined. The kicker is, Assimilation is our choice. Jews are the fault behind that. So Tish B'Av is an important holiday to observe the situation and do all in our power so that we don't have to fast next year.

Behind every great man is a great woman, and behinder his is his wife.

The beginning of this week was a bit rough. I woke up from a nap and had the feeling that I was dumped. You know that feeling? Like someone had hit you in the chest with a rock and loneliness wells up within. Yea, not so fun. I don't even know what happened. I think it's because the one good friend that I made here, Daniel "Chocolate Chip"riani went back to the states. With him I fought off the Republican-Conservative majority. Now, I'm the only liberal that I know of (or at least one that is brave/stupid enough to admit in public). So I just shy away from political conversations. But Cipriani and I had similar upbringings, both being from CT and partying a lot in college. Which, now that I think of it, is not that rare. But as for the friend thing, I just need to keep plugging away to find my groove. There are lots of great people here from different backgrounds on different levels of life. While I don't necessarilly see any "best friends" like the kind I have back in the US, there's lots of potential.
The beginning of the week, my hebrew teacher lost his mother to what seems like a quick illness. It was the first time I've seen Jewish mourning. The mourning includes not doing anything for a week. You sit in a chair that very low to the ground and people come to visit you. As a visitor, you don't speak until spoken to. I think that's great, because how many times does one need to hear "I'm sorry..." when there's nothing else to be said. The whole process is surprisingly relaxed.
Back in the states in 2 weeks!

Riot on Shabbat, Refuse the Nation

For the past month, Orthodox Jews (the ones dressed in black with the long side-burn thingys I call "boing-a-boings") have been rioting the opening of a parking lot that's intended to be open on Shabbat. They riot on Shabbat. People have been hurt and the parking lot has remained closed as a result of their actions. Shabbat is a day of rest and study. These certain Orthodox Jews ( and I stress certain because I don't want people who read this to generalize to all Orthodox Jews) who do not participate in the army, when there are religious options, feel like they can disturb the peace about a parking lot that is nowhere near their religious area of Mea Sharim. Instead, they should be studing Torah or spending time with their families. I guess they forget that this is a secular country and all they are doing is casting a poor light on the Orthodox and religious Jews in general.
Anyways...I went to a museum for Menachem Begin (pronounced Bay-gen) that was really cool. He was all for the state of Israel and was able to get things done. He wasn't a Hawk and focused on Israel from the inside out. A policy I like. Maybe America could do the same. But who am I to talk, I haven't been back in the states in half a year. But that will change shortly in less than a month.
Life is good though. Tonight I will be having dinner with Rabbi Elbaz, a highly-intelligent man with a great sense of humor. Well time to go for a run in the heat. See a lot of you soon!