Jonah Mancini

One of the more beautiful things that take place here in Israel is the observance of the Sabbath. The buses stop running, few to no cars can be seen on the road, most shops and restaurants are closed from sundown Friday eve to sundown on Saturday eve. Do to the imposed day of rest, for those of us from the states who are not used to preparing for such a complete halting of services as occurs on the Sabbath can find this day to be quite irritating if one would have anything that they would need to get done.

As is usual in the world of Jonah (the one where it is just a bit impossible to plan more then 2 hours ahead) I found myself not quite prepared when the Sabbath came upon us about a week or two ago. So after class let out, a friend of mine asked I had any plane for the Sabbath, and not to my surprise I didn’t have any, so I responded “no”. He then asked if I wanted to walk down to the old city with a couple of friends of his. I thought that it might be fun, so I agreed to join them. Our numbers started out as six when we headed out to the Old City on foot (no buses, few to no affordable taxies, by foot was the most readily available option).

One thing I have to say about traveling around Jerusalem. No matter what happens, there is always the option to travel by foot. You are never stranded anywhere in the city. In about just one and one-half hours or perhaps two, you can walk the city’s span. I find this incredibly convenient, however like most things, in this to there is a catch. If one decides to walk about the city of Jerusalem one will constantly feel what I now call the one true geographical anomaly (and no, I don’t mean animal)! Just as grandpa used to lie when he would tell us that he would walk to school barefooted in six feet of snow… uphill Both ways, in Jerusalem no matter where you go you are walking uphill! Perhaps this is why the Psalms of Accent (Psalms 120-134) always mentioned going up to Jerusalem.

As it is, even though we started a good 500-600 ft above the Old City, we somehow ended up walking uphill to it. By the time we had reached the Old City, we planed on meeting up with one more to make our group a perfect Seven in number. And even though we almost had to walk the complete circuit of the Old City (the whole length of the outer wall) to find him, we eventually met up at the Jaffa Gate (AKA the Beautiful Gate). Some of the number in our group had yet to see the Kotel (Wailing Wall) so we made that our first planed stop. In our meanderings though the Old City on the way to the Kotel, we came across several group of high school kids doing what is called a “birthright pilgrimage” where Jewish students tour Israel in order to become familiar/attached to the land that GOD gave them. And as all good things do, these pilgrimages end at the Kotel, the closest one can get to the Temple mount (the place where the Temple of GOD stood) without going up on top. These birthright pilgrimages are wonderful to observe, full of singing, dancing, praying, and great excitement that can only occur in large gatherings of youth.

At the Kotel, one pilgrimage group that we inadvertently followed filed through the one door security station and out onto the Kotel plaza. It is at this point where all men separate themselves from the women as each gender moves down the plaza to their respective sides of the segregated Wailing Wall to again pray and sing more songs (one of which included jumping up and down which I think was irritating some of the more orthodox Jews who were at there stations’ dressed all in black, saying prays and ushering in the Sabbath). It was at this point where the guys and girls in our group split up to go down to the Kotel. Now it is a grave rule that all men must not come before GOD with their heads uncovered so those of us without a hat (all head coverings are acceptable, baseball caps included) are provided one at the cardboard-kippah dispenser (a kippah is a small hat that just covers the back/top of one’s head which sometimes resemble a doily)

Kippah … Doily …
Me being as prepared as I am, I had no hat, so I promptly place the cardboard kippah on my head and proceeded down to the wall. After a moment at the Wailing Wall my friends and I reconvened for the beginning of the Sabbath, we looked on the wall and the now very crowded plaza as the Shabbat was now upon us. It was at this time a rather wryly Jewish man began running around gathering people up and asking them questions. He made his way over to our group and asked us “what are you doing tonight!” and “where are you going?!” and “Do you have a place to be!?” To which of all of these we answered “I don’t know”. So he said back to us “You come with me!… You will eat at my house! Wait here… follow this man!” So we filed in behind this guy who walked out the Old City and a very brisk pace and up the hill (always uphill) to a Jewish neighborhood where we squeezed into an apartment about 900 sq ft to find a good 40 people already gathered for Shabbat Dinner waiting for new comers.

The whole of events that happened after we joined them for the Shabbat dinner were one of the coolest things I could have hoped to experience in Israel! The man whose apartment we were in had been doing this for the past 15 or so years. He and his family prepare a Sabbath meal and then go out and find anyone they can to share the meal with. Whether Christian or Jew or Muslim or Agnostic or if you speak English or Hebrew or German or anything, in his house on the Sabbath you are welcome at his table. The only thing required to partake in this meal is respect each other and have no talk of politics. The course of the evening went as follows. We washed our hands (the orthodox Jew sitting next to me showed me how I was to do it - Matthew 15:2?) Said a blessing and broke bread. Then conversation and much eating filled the eve as food kept coming from the kitchen until our host stood and gave an interpretation of the Parsha (weekly reading from the Torah) and then invited anyone else to give any kind of interpretation/teaching they wished as long as they followed the respect and no politics rule. People of all ages and languages would stand up one after another to perhaps bless the people at the table (tables) with their interpretations or teachings that they had gained through life or study. At then end of the meal, our host again arose and bless GOD and we shared in the fruit of the vine together (wine). He again thanked all of us for coming and invited us back any time we wanted.

That evening we walked back to our little hill on the other side of the Old City with a unique form of calm and companionship that swirled around us as we spoke with each other. In the midst of the reality that can be found only in Jerusalem… that is; The place where the world’s three major religions and peoples baring cultures from everywhere are crammed together into one little city is about as volatile a situation one could create. And in the midst of all this religious and culture and political tension, that evening I had a truer sense and vision of what peace is and I was not the only one who was effected by it. My friends were moved in such a way that they were searching for songs that we could all sing together. And when common songs could not be found we found ourselves listening to each other sing songs about anything and everything.

What does it mean when we say Shabbat Shalom (Sabbath Peace)? I believe now believe I have seen it first hand over a meal where we broke bread and drank wine. GOD is good.

Mason was born on Thursday, July 6th 2006. Erik and Allison are two wonderful people of whom I have the pleasue to call friends. Thank you for your love and friendship. Many Blessings on the Twist family! Mazal Tov! Do check out their family webpage www.thetwistfamily.org

One of the first days I was here at the Hebrew U. I came across a rather nice fella who lived directly above me. This is not what made him nice however, but more-so the fact that he had purchased internet access and was now allowing the whole of our dorm to use it. One day, he pulled me aside and stated that he was going to be moving back to the US and wanted to know if I wanted to pick-up his internet account. “I most certainly do!”, I exclaimed. So we began to make the arrangements for me to take over his account.

He (Bryson) and I walked down to the place where these magic events (like transferring of internet accounts) happen. This place also had, what I thought at the time to be a magical name… “Bezek”. Much to my chagrin, magic was just the thing that allowed anything to be accomplished with in this tele-com company. As my new friend and I arrived at the Bezek office (it was more like the backroom of some less then fresh market and was located in what seemed to be a rundown strip-mall), I thought to myself how many times I had heard of how things can get complicated in Israel and that maybe this might be my chance to experience it first hand. I was surprised however to find the transfer of account to my name to be incredibly smooth. Not only to my surprise but to that of Bryson’s as well, yet in his great experience while living in the country he asked for a copy of the paper work (I could hear echoes of my father’s voice in his actions).

While the attendant was away making copies, Bryson commented on how amazingly smooth everything went, quite the opposite was his first experience with Bezek. As he began to tell me of his ordeal with the nation-wide tele-com company he used a word that all Israelis are far too familiar with. It is one word that sums up the whole of life here in Israel; the untimeliness of most officials, poor directions/instructions on just about everything, the fear of suicide bombings and other militant actions, general disregard for traffic laws, the constant tension between the world’s 3 major religions, etc. This word is life in Israel. Belegen. Belegen basically refers to the vain of chaos runs through every aspect of life in Israel. Can’t get to work because of a traffic block: Belegen. All power in the dorms have been turned off today: Belegen. Your locked in the old city for 3 hours due to a possible threat: Belegen. Bryson told me that this would be a very useful word for me in the future.

Well, come to find out that future for me was only 2 days away when Bezek came to install my phone line. They were supposed to arrive sometime between 2 and 5 that day and never showed up. So about 30 minutes to 5:00 I call Bezek to ask if they are going to send someone out today or not. With great effort I button-mashed my way past their automated service that was only in Hebrew or Russian and was able to speak with someone who could both communicate with me and answer my questions. Come to find out, the technician had already been to my locations, but never came up to my room. They said, “all I need to do is plug a phone in to the jack in the wall to check and see if I had a dial tone”, then they would turn my DSL access on. The problem with this is, I don’t have a phone to plug into the wall, as a matter of fact, no one in my whole building (20 floors of 3 suits with 2 people to a suite) had one. So, Bezek says to me that they will do nothing until I can verify that I have a tone… so I run down to the door office which is surprisingly open where a young woman about my age is sitting watching women?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s tennis on TV. I ask if I can borrow one of the three phones that have been strewn about in the office for 2 minutes so I can verify that I have tone. Now I needed to get all of this done before 5, so that if there is a problem the technician can come back and fix it. Well, the young woman at the desk says to me, “No, you can not use any of these phones because I need them to work”, as she continues to watch her program. So I ask her, “what happens if you need to leave your office, how does your work get a hold of you”, she said by cell phone as she shows it to me. Time is ticking away towards 5 and I am debating with this woman to see if I can borrow their phone to plug in to my wall jack just a few floors above her. After I convinced her that when I have the office phone it would be just as if she had stepped out of the office for a couple of minutes, I ran with it up to the 14th floor where my room is and plugged it into the wall where I found out that, YES…. there was NO tone. The time at that point was well after five and so the technician had already gone home for the day.

This was a Friday and nothing happens on the Shabbat in Jerusalem so it was not until Tuesday of the next week that the tech could come back out. So I call Monday to verify that the tech is coming to my place the next day, where I get caught up in a debate with the woman from Bezek on the other end of the line about whether or not I can access the account. The account had been transferred into my name and my credit card but since I was not the person who opened the account (Bryson) she could not speak with me about it. After about 45 minutes of this I verified my identity and that a tech was indeed coming out to my location the fallowing day.

When the Tech arrived he spent about an hour tracking down the reason as to why I had no signal in my room. At the end of it (running up to my room, down to the basement, up to the rooms above me and back again), apparently the cord in my wall had been ripped in two and it had been not 5 feet from the jack. With a quick patch job, he tested my phone line and what would you know, it worked perfectly. He then tested the DSL modem, but it did not work. He said to me that it will not work now but it will in a couple of hours… so he left and I was content to wait a couple hours more. That night, the DSL modem worked… well mostly. It was communicating over my phone line but was not allowing me to access the internet. I then got on the phone with Bezek only to find out that I needed to deal with another company, the one that provided the DSL service which also had the name Bezek… but Bezek International. SO I called them and was with them for an hour on the phone before we conference called the other Bezek company. So I was on the phone with 2 Bezeks and still without solutions. At the end of the conversation, they had decided to send out another technician the next day but if the problem fixes itself to call them so they can cancel the Tech. SO I called them the next day after class to verify that I had a Tech coming to see me, which I once again got another run around… as I was waiting I tried again to get back on the internet… and wouldn’t you know it the problem had fixed its self! So I canceled the Tech and a week and a half later I had internet and was now thoroughly acquainted with the Belegen that is life in Israel!

I came into my room after class today and sat down at my computer in order to update my blog. I opened up my web browser and saw a title that splashed across the Yahoo home page, “Stephen Hawking asks, how will the human race survive the next 100 years?” This move me to deep thought about us human beings and all that we are capable of. Perhaps it is because I am a religious individual who attributes all good things to a higher being (that is the Creator), but I was not as negatively disposed as Dr. Hawkings’ questing seemingly expects one to be. His question would seem to imply that it is only though braving extreem challanges or through a major upheavle in current social/political/environmental practice with little hope of success will our race continue its postarity. This is not to say that I am blind to the current situation in our world today or even to the situation currently in the country where I now dwell (Israel), but I guess what it really comes down to is what I see potentialy dwelling in the hearts of men. People like Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Darlene Large, people who’s hearts bleed for those in pain and suffering. Just as the human condition enables world leaders and governments and mega-corporations and religious oppressors to create and maintain corrupt institutions, it also produces a subset of people who serve for the betterment of mankind and the world they live in by working within the current corrupt institutions whatever they may be and here by seasoning the otherwise bitter taste that is the Human race.

In my opinion, this is much of the force behind many of the teachings that Jesus Christ made, namely; “Love your neighbor as yourself” (though the Christ was not the first to make this claim, but was well founded in Jewish law and history leading up to Jesus?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ day as recognized by Jesus himself). The Jewish law found in the Torah instituted a system that allowed for the non-existence of poor or oppressed groups, but rather a complete sense of unity where debts could not last more then 7 years and no payment be taken for a debt that would be debilitating to the payee. Biblical perspective would also not only say for our neighbor but also for the environment (this includes dolphins, trees and the like - here’s one for the tree hugger) for it was the first command given by GOD to mankind when he was placed in the garden. There are echoes of this throughout proverbs and found more explicitly in the Torah. Not unlike people, there was a year, one in every 7, where the land was made to rest from its being worked. Also found to be informative to this matter is the well noted blessing Israel (Jacob) gives to his children, and more specifically his sons Simeon and Levi. It is stated this way:

“Simeon and Levi are brothers– their swords are weapons of violence. Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel! I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel.”

The credit of violence was not attributed to them only for what they had done to their fellow men, but also what they had done to livestock and for the whole of this were duly cursed. And just as the human condition produces warriors within the corrupt system for the salvation of the oppressed, it also produces warriors in kind for the sake of our good earth. As I see it, there is hope for mankind, a hope that looks beyond the next 100 years, beyond the next thousand years. Part of the human condition is that there is an everlasting hope for continuance. And I do believe with my whole heart that this hope will prevail.

Here in Israel, the Sabbath day begins Friday at sundown and everything shuts down (actually things shut down more like an hour before the sunset just to be on the safe side). So if you want to do anything on Friday it is best that you do it while the sun is high in the sky. A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to play some basketball, so I joined him and a couple of other guys from the Narkis St. Congregation for some midday basketball, and let me tell you the sun may have been high in the sky, but it felt as if it were only a few 100 feet from us. As we were playing Bball, guys kept showing up, so what stated as a 2 on 2 match grew to a full court game of 5 on 5. It had been a really long time since I had played a full court game, and to be honest I wasn’t really getting back in time to on defense. All in all I had a blast and am looking forward to playing again. Some of the guys we played with were quite good. At any rate after the game I went home tired, sunburned and in pain, so when I made it to the dorms I took a short shower and just fell into bed!

Later that night was to be the first Shabbat Dinner for us here at the Hebrew U. or at least those of us who just arrived in the country. When I woke of from my nap, I looked over at the clock and it was 8:09 and we were to meet for the dinner at 8:00! So I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and ran out of the building. Thank goodness the place for the dinner was in a hotel right across the street from my dorm building. I ran across the street and into the hotel and down to the ground floor. I walked up to the first table I came to and asked if I could join the group sitting there (which they agreed to let me join them) just as the guy leading the group began the opening prayer! Ahh… just like the most of my life, I made it just in the knick of time! The food was good and I enjoyed myself talking with some of the folks there at my table. After dinner I returned to my room and watched Amalie with my roommate. This is a great movie! Its so happy!

The next morning, I felt all the running I did the day before. My calves felt like they ripping themselves from my legs. And even though I had worn sunblock playing basketball, I could still feel the sun on my face when I woke up. So as sore and sun-sticken as I was I decided to make the day of rest and actual day of rest and recuperation. So I didn’t make it to the Narkis St Congregation this morning for their Shabbat service. The more things change the more they stay the same I guess.